:<i>Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe</i>

TLDR

Global violence is a modern, non‑natural phenomenon whose organization blurs domestic‑international, economic‑political, and state‑nonstate boundaries, raising questions about reconciling violence with political legitimacy. The book investigates how the sovereign state monopoly on violence emerged over six centuries, why it is territorial, and why coercion is not an international market commodity. The author traces the activities of mercenaries, pirates, mercantile companies, and sovereigns across the Mediterranean to the Northwest Territories to explain the rise of centralized bureaucracies claiming a monopoly on violence. The study finds that sovereign states’ monopoly on violence stems from rulers’ competitive exploitation of extraterritorial coercion, leading to unintended consequences that ultimately made states victims of violence and forced them to curb it, though it remained intertwined with nonstate violence.

Abstract

The contemporary organization of global violence is neither timeless nor natural, argues Janice Thomson. It is distinctively modern. In this book she examines how the present arrangement of the world into violence-monopolizing sovereign states evolved over the six preceding centuries. Tracing the activities of mercenaries, pirates, mercantile companies, and sovereigns from the Mediterranean to the Northwest Territories, the author addresses the questions: why do we have centralized bureaucracies - states - which claim a monopoly on violence? ; why is this monopoly based on territorial boundaries? ; and why is coercion not an international market commodity? Thomson maintains that the contemporary monopolization of violence by sovereign states results from the collective practices of rulers, all seeking power and wealth for their states and themselves, and all competing to exploit extraterritorial violence to achieve those ends. She examines the unintended consequences of such acts, and shows how individual states eventually fell victim to violence. As rulers became increasingly aware of the problems created by nonstate coercive tactics abroad, they worked together to curtail this violence, only to find it intertwined with nonstate violence on the national state level. Exploring the blurred boundaries between the domestic and international, the economic and political, and the state and nonstate realms of authority, this book addresses practical and theoretical issues underlying the reconciliation of violence with political legitimacy.