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The Pursuit of Power by William H. McNeill

Broad and interesting survey of the use of military advancements and technology as a power vector across history. Starts with the bronze age and trade-based advancements in both weaponry and metallurgy, and runs all the way to the 20th Century's full industrialization of war under centralized command and control.

The bronze age (circa 3500 BC) was history's first verified instance where trade was performed over great distances because tin and copper deposits were never near each other except in rare cases.

Also interesting to see the (albeit frequently forgotten) civilizational discovery that instead of extracting a one-time benefit from plundering conquered lands, you can get long-term, sustainable annuity benefits by exacting annual tributes. This produces a lot more value--and a lot less suffering--for both victor and vanquished.

Note the spontaneous ordering of a merchant class to invent and produce iron/steel (and as a result arms) in China, and how this discovery, along with China's staggering global lead in seagoing skill, naval power, regional control and mercantile power, how all of these world dominating capabilities came and then suddenly faded away in China, weirdly. The Chinese empire developed amazing technologies and capabilities, only to let them rot and die away as China retrenched and retreated from the global scene.

Of course these capabilities (including iron, steel, paper, gunpowder, even the establishment of a merchant class) were to be picked up centuries later in Western/Central Europe and used as vectors for dominating the rest of the world. 

Proto-industrialization of war began in the mid-19th century, beginning with the Crimean war in the 1850s, and then accelerating through the American civil war in the 1860s, and various Prussian/European conflicts to follow. Of course the world wars of the 20th century became the apotheosis of industrialized war under centralized command.

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