Essays in the Historical Political Economy of Violence and the State

This dissertation explores the relationship between violence and the state. The first chapter demonstrates how the cost of doing violence can lead to either state fragmentation or centralization in the ancient world. The second chapter empirically tests the validity of the democratic peace and hegemonic peace theories in Antiquity. The third chapter examines how historical imperial institutions, interacting with local institutions, shaped economic trajectories among Native Americans in the United States.

 

Chapter one demonstrates how the cost of weaponry can lead to different state equilibria. The introduction of iron weapons in 1200 BCE significantly lowered the cost of creating weapons. The pseudo-monopoly elites had on violence, caused by the high transaction costs of creating bronze, was ended as iron was widely available and cheap to non-elites. The sudden reduction in violence-cost for non-elites meant that elites were unable to hold larger territories, and non-elites could pick off fringe areas of Bronze Age empires. The result was political fragmentation leading into the Iron Age.

 

Chapter two, co-authored with Jordan Adamson, tests whether democratic peace and hegemonic peace theories hold for the ancient world. We use a newly constructed dataset on battles in the ancient Mediterranean to demonstrate that democratic Classical Greek poleis were not only not peaceful, but potentially more belligerent relative to their non-democratic peers. We also demonstrate that hegemonic peace theories fail to explain ancient peace. Hegemons like Rome, Macedon, the Delian League, and the Peloponnesian League are all associated with violence in different forms.

 

Chapter three examines whether or not contact between Native Americans and Catholic missionaries can explain growth trajectories on American reservations. Past literature on the persistent effects of exposure to Catholic missionaries has struggled to find unifying results. Studies on South America, the United States, and Central America have all shown different effects for similar treatments of Catholic Spanish missionaries. This chapter studies not only the treatment of Spanish Catholics, but also French Catholics. I find heterogeneous effects for treatment and argue that my results may be evidence that the larger imperial institutional context, interacting with local Catholic institutions, is driving the results.