The military revolution and political change: origins of democracy and autocracy in Early Modern Europe (review)

244 Reviews Downing, Brian M., The military revolution and political change: origins of democracy and autocracy in Early Modern Europe, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992; cloth; pp. xii, 308; R.R.P. US$35.00. Brian Downing makes clear his indebtedness to Barrington Moore Jr's famous Social origins ofdictatorship and democracy. His own book tackles similar problems and works at a similar level and on a similar scale. Its conclusions, however, are markedly different. Whereas Barrington Moore focussed on the role of internal social relationships in determining the path to their m o d e m forms taken by individual states, Downing's argument concerns the impact of war and the military revolution. This argument can easily be summarized. First, European states were unique in developing by the end of the Middle Ages a 'constitution' that had the potential to develop into 'democracy'. That fact alone means that when we come to consider the origins of 'democracy' and 'autocracy' in the Early M o d e m period, we are not looking for the cause of something completely new. Instead, we are looking for those forces that impelled states either to reject or to build on their medieval inheritance. Downing finds those forces in the military revolution. Those states exposed to high levels of warfare, and able to engage in it through high levels of 'domestic mobilisation', such as France, became absolutist. States either less exposed to warfare, such as England, or able to engage in it with lower levels of 'domestic mobilisation', such as Sweden and the Netherlands, preserved their constitutionalist heritage. However, a third category exists: those states exposed to warfare but unable to meet its demands. Such states, of which Poland is the classic example, ceased to exist altogether. There is little point in quibbling over the details of this argument. Historians are more likely to be troubled by the general way in which evidence is pushed into a fairly tight framework. Witness, for example, the chapter on England, which reads as a relentless attempt to avoid nuance and multi causality. However, that being said, historians are also likely to find the broad shape of Downing's account reasonably plausible. This is in good part because it is based on synthesizing a considerable body of very up-todate historical reading. There are, however, problems in this. Barrington Moore had the capacity to stimulate, and to infuriate. Downing's book, immensely impressive when considered as an intellectual artefact, says little that is not already known. Much of his argument is implicit in the existing Reviews 245 literature on the mUitary revolution. Perhaps there is a sort of paradox here. Historians are more likely to accept the work of sociological generalizes when that workreflectstheir own findings. But they are then less likely to learn much that they do not know. The contrast with Barrington Moore's work is instructive. Few historians now believe much of Social origins but the debate that it engendered had its value. It is hard to see Downing generating the same debate. But it is easier to see that his name will crop up in the footnotes of historians, appreciative of the wide range of material that he summarizes for them. One final comparison is worth making. Jack Goldstone's broad comparative survey of Revolution and rebellion in the Early Modern world seems to possess features that make it of much greater value to historians than Downing's book. Both are sociologists, but Goldstone conveys a much more intellectually challenging sense of what exactly comparative history is, and of what it can and cannot do. Furthermore, he attempts to integrate demographic, economic, and political history along a much broader front than Downing does. While Downing's conclusions are much sounder, there is rather less value in being thus 'right' than in being provocatively wrong in the way that Goldstone is. The enterprise scarcely seems worth undertaking unless its conclusions can provide a perspective on the past not readily open to the ordinary professional historian. Glenn Burgess Department of History University of Canterbury Erickson, Amy Louise, Women and property in Early Modern England, London and N e w York, Routledge, 1993; cloth; pp. xiii, 296...