Name: The pursuit of power
ISBN: 9780631131342

The pursuit of power

"In this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNeill moves with equal mastery from the crossbow -- banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another -- to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of drill in the seventeenth century to the emergence of the military-industrial complex in the twentieth. His central argument is that a commercial transformation of world society in the eleventh century caused military activity to respond increasingly to market forces as well as to the commands of rulers. Only in our own time, suggests McNeill, are command economies replacing the market control of large-scale human effort. The Pursuit of Power does not solve the problems of the present, but its discoveries, hypotheses, and sheer breadth of learning do offer a perspective on our current fears and, as McNeill hopes, 'a ground for wiser action'."--Publisher description.

What Hacker News says

lordgrenvilleApr 2022

On this subject I highly recommend William McNeill's The Pursuit of Power.

thread

AnimalMuppetJul 2019

Now that I have access to the book, I'll try.

Stark says, "Eventually, Mandarins at the imperial court had noticed that some commoners were getting rich by manufacturing and were hiring peasant laborers at high wages. They deemed such activities to be threats to Confucian values and social tranquillity[sic]. Commoners must know their place; only the elite should be wealthy. So, they declared a state monopoly on iron and seized everything. As Winwood Reade summed up, the reason for China's many centuries of economic and social stagnation is plain: 'Property is insecure. In this one phrase, the whole history of Asia is contained.'"

Footnotes for sources list "Hartwell 1966, 1967, 1971, McNeill 1982" for the info on the iron industry, and "Reade 1925: 108" for the quote.

"Hartwell 1971" resolves to 'Hartwell, Robert, 1971. "Historical Analogism, Public Policy, and Social Science in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century China." The American Historical Review 76:690-727.'

Hartwell 1966 is "Markets, Technology, and the Structure of Enterprise in the Development of the Eleventh-Century Chinese Iron and Steel Industry." The Journal of Economic History 26:29-58.'

(No Hartwell 1967 is listed in the bibliography.)

McNeill 1982 resolves to 'McNeill, William H. 1982. The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society Since A.D. 1000. Chicago: University of Chicago Press'

Finally, Reade resolves to 'Reade, Winwood. 1925. The Martyrdom of Man. London: Watts.'

I'm not sure that Reade is important for more than the quote. I suspect that Hartwell and McNeill are the source of the actual info on what happened in China.

And, presuming that Stark summarized adequately, the problem may have been hiring peasants for high wages. That may in fact have been somewhat disruptive to the existing social order...

thread