Blood and Treasure: The Economics of Conflict from the Vikings to the Modern Era

A history of the economics of warfare from the Viking Age to our current era, revealing how armed conflict has influenced world power.

Wars are expensive, both in human terms and monetary ones. But while warfare might be costly it has also, at times, been an important driver of economic change and progress. Over the long span of history nothing has shaped human institutions—and thus the process of economic development—as much as war and violence. Wars made states and states made wars. As the...