The Precocious Institutions of Early Modern Warfare

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The medieval church never sought democracy. It had no idea what these forces that are unleashed would produce. But this highly autocratic, highly centralized actor allowed millions of people to have a very real say in their governance and for the modern capitalist economy to take off. I do think that there are sort of two big lessons from here from this account. One is that we focus on war as a force of state building, but to me war is fundamentally destructive. And what's happening in Russia and Ukraine right now, the Ukrainian state may emerge stronger from this war, or it may take decades to rebuild.

When it comes to the development of Western Europe there was religion and then there was science. That is how the story is generally told but Anna Gryzmala Busse believes that modern Europe owes more to the religious part of that than is generally appreciated. She has written Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State (Princeton UP, 2023) and talks to Owen Bennett Jones about religion and the European state.

Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies