THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES by Philip Bobbitt Read Free Book Online

technologies caused a revolution in
government
from which, in the seventeenth century, the modern state emerged. Roberts himself had drawn attention to issues of state formation, national identity, centralization, and the development of state bureaucracies, and this aspect of his argument was picked up by others. 3 Geoffrey Parker, Roberts's greatest student, observed a strikingly similar pattern that culminated in the establishment of the Ch'in imperial dynasty. 4 And he concluded that there occurred in European armies such a massive growth in manpower, accompanied by a profound change in tactics and strategy, and on European societies such a greatly intensified impact of war, that equally profound changes in the structure and philosophy of government came about. 5
    To manage the sheer size of seventeenth century armies—Gustavus Adolphus had 175,000 men under arms—states could no longer rely on the traditional ways in which troops were raised. Roberts suggested that governments met this challenge through constitutional centralization, first taking control of the recruiting, equipping, and supplying of troops (which in turn required a more extensive and accountable administrative structure); then establishing permanent standing armies; and finally funding this vast military and administrative expansion through the sophisticated credit and financial systems that are a key characteristic of the modern State. By 1660, it was claimed, the military revolution had had its effect: the modern style of warfare had come into being and with it the modern State, exemplified by the progressive regime of Protestant Sweden.
    This thesis was criticized, however, by Parker. 6 He attacked the idea that the military advantage had shifted to constitutionally progressive regimes, and wrote admiringly of the Spanish, who, he claimed, were at the forefront of new weapons technology and the introduction of smaller, more tactically flexible units. Indeed, it was the Spanish army, as early as the 1570s, that had taken on the characteristics of a permanent standing army, with its extensive structures for financing, training, logistics, and command. In subsequent work, Parker focused on a differing explanation for the increase in army size than that proposed by Roberts: rather than reflecting a response to the more ambitious and decisive strategies of the seventeenth century, Parker traced the growth of armies to developments in fortification in the sixteenth century. It was not so much the development of artillery capable of blasting down fortresses as it was the change in the fortresses themselves, enabling them to employ this technology defensively, that set the terms of the sixteenth century battlefield. This change produced the
trace italienne
, characterized by low formidable walls, broken by complex bastions to enable fire against sapping trenches, and surrounded by obstacle-strewn but visually clear fields that permitted fortress artillery to rake a besieging force with fire. Parker argued that commanders,contemplating these new fortifications, were compelled to increase greatly the numbers of troops in order to man the ever more complex and lengthy siege lines and, if on the defensive, to garrison fortresses for an aggressive defense. For Parker then, the revolution began a century earlier.
    In contrast to this claim, Jeremy Black argued that the military revolu-tion actually occurred a century
later
than that proposed by Roberts. 7 The development of the ring bayonet, which effectively replaced the use of pikemen by giving the musketeer a pike of his own; a surge in the number of troops engaged in battle; the standardization of equipment, including uniforms; and vastly more comprehensive logistical infrastructures all impressed Black as having a decisiveness that was absent in the transient reforms of earlier periods. Moreover, rather than seeing the creation of the modern state as the outcome of an earlier military revolution, Black