ABSTRACT
Readers of this book are by now painfully aware that the story about the advent of the modern Weberian state is by and large a story about Europe. This one-sided focus on a particular region – Centeno (2003, 275) talks about ‘empirical Eurocentrism’1 – is one reason the nexus between war and state formation figures so prominently in the literature. As has been argued ad nauseam, from the High Middle Ages onwards, Europe constituted an international system in which the threat of war was ubiquitous and state-builders had to strengthen the centre to survive the ruthless competition. Just think of the misfortune of Poland, not to mention formerly sovereign states such as Burgundy, Naples, Bavaria, and Saxony, which all disappeared in the maelstrom of war.
