By Ryan McMaken
Mises.org
May 18, 2024
[Dangerous Ground by John Suval, Oxford, 2022, 281 pp.]
Historian Charles Tilly once famously described the origins of the state as this: "war made the state and the state made war." Tilly also understood, however, that the process of building and consolidating state power involved much more than simply waging wars against competing states. As Tilly notes in his book Coercion, Capital, and European States, states engage in several other activities to consolidate and expand their power.