The State Does Not Live by Warfare Alone: State Capacity and Armed Conflict in the Long Nineteenth Century in Europe and the Americas

A great deal of literature has analyzed the relationship between warfare and state capacity in late-modern and contemporary times. While there is a consensus regarding the significant impact of mass warfare on fiscal expansion during the first half of the twentieth century, the interplay between limited wars, public revenues and state capacity in the nineteenth century remains unclear. Our paper seeks to shed light on this issue by making use of several novel datasets of public finance, administrative reforms and warfare in the long-19th century in Europe and America. We empirically test the short and long-term effects exerted by 19th century wars on public revenues and other measures of state capacity, and provide a research agenda of some of the main challenges ahead. Among them, we make the case that a nuanced classification of wars, military outcomes and dimensions of state capacity remains essential to grasp the complexity of the relationship between warfare and state capacity.