Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe - Rilegato

Thomson, Janice E.

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0691086583 ISBN 13: 9780691086583

Casa editrice: Princeton Univ Pr, 1994

Riassunto

The contemporary organization of global violence is neither timeless nor natural, argues Janice Thomson. It is distinctively modern. In this book she examines how the present arrangement of the world into violence-monopolizing sovereign states evolved over the six preceding centuries. Tracing the activities of mercenaries, pirates, mercantile companies, and sovereigns from the Mediterranean to the Northwest Territories, the author addresses compelling questions: Why do we have centralized bureaucracies - states - which claim a monopoly on violence? Why is this monopoly based on territorial boundaries? Why is coercion not an international market commodity?
Thomson maintains that the contemporary monopolization of violence by sovereign states results from the collective practices of rulers, all seeking power and wealth for their states and themselves, and all competing to exploit extraterritorial nonstate violence to achieve those ends. She examines the unintended consequences of such acts, and shows how individual states eventually fell victim to nonstate violence. As rulers became increasingly aware of the problems created by non-state coercive tactics abroad, they worked together to curtail this violence, only to find it intertwined with nonstate violence on the national state level. Exploring the blurred boundaries between the domestic and international, the economic and political, and the state and nonstate realms of authority, this book addresses practical and theoretical issues underlying the reconciliation of violence with political legitimacy.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"All may . . . welcome [Thomson] as a fellow-grappler with that protean problem that confronts historians and . . . social scientists alike: the shortcomings of international society [today], and the degree to which those shortcomings are attributable to the idea that 'sovereign states' have of themselves, and the self-interested ways they tend to behave within it."--Geoffrey Best, Times Literary Supplement

"Thomson's book is well worth reading. It is historically rich and theoretically erudite."--Michael C. Desch, Mershon International Studies Review

"Janice E. Thomson's title may mislead. She is a political scientist, [but] ... there is much in Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns for historians too; for the many with an interest in state-formation and the not-so-many interested in the development of the interstate-system or, as some of us prefer to call it, international society. The common factor in the discussion of the two processes is the question of the legitimate uses of armed force."--Times Literary Supplement

L'autore:

Janice E. Thomson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Princeton Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0691086583
• ISBN 13: 9780691086583
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 219