War and State Building in Medieval Japan

The nation state as we know it is a mere four or five hundred years old. Remarkably, a central government with vast territorial control emerged in Japan at around the same time as it did in Europe, through the process of mobilizing fiscal resources and manpower for bloody wars between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This book, which brings Japan's case into conversation with the history of state building in Europe, points to similar factors that were present in both places: populat...