Abstract
The argument to be made can be highlighted immediately by recalling that John Nef’s War and Human Progress (1950) argues the strong thesis that war is inimical to human progress. I contest this by saying that war has sometimes played a positive role in human progress. Phrasing the matter in this way perhaps gives too many hostages to fortune. To avoid the discussion of red herrings, let me be specific about my argument: war in Western European history played a significant role in the triumph of capitalism. I begin by analysing the role of warfare in Imperial China, India and in Islam of the arid zone; in these civilisations war did not help capitalist development. In contrast, war played a vital part in allowing and enabling the emergence of an autonomous economic dynamic of broadly capitalist hue in the Occident.
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© 1987 British Sociological Association
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Hall, J.A. (1987). War and the Rise of the West. In: Creighton, C., Shaw, M. (eds) The Sociology of War and Peace. Explorations in Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18640-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18640-2_3
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