PATTERNS AND CONCEPTS: MILITARY REVOLUTIONS
Five military revolutions have had that effect in Western history:
- the creation in the seventeenth century of the modern nation-state, which rested on the large-scale organization of disciplined military power
- the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century, which merged mass politics and warfare
- the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century and after, which made it possible to arm, clothe, feed, pay, and move swiftly to battle the resulting masses;
- the First World War, which combined the legacies of the French and Industrial Revolutions and set the pattern for twentieth-century war
- the advent of nuclear weapons, which contrary to all precedent kept the Cold War cold in the decisive European and northeast Asian theaters
These five upheavals are best understood through a geological metaphor: they were earthquakes. They brought systemic changes in politics.
