Beginning in the late Early Modern era, the transition from monarchies to nation-states and the advent of ideologies like nationalism led to governments around the world waging war on a different scale. As described by Prussian military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz, a sense of national duty was used to conscript soldiers from all walks of life, train them to a professional and coherent fighting force, and waging war became an extension of carrying out national policy. The first successful example of this model was seen in Napoleon Bonaparte’s France at the turn of the 19th century. After coming to power via the vacuum created by the French Revolution, Napoleon amassed an army of over one million Frenchmen, trained and disciplined them to a level never seen before, motivated them through a sense of national loyalty and duty, and …show more content…
The Industrial Revolution, which began before these sociopolitical changes started occurring, was what enabled the massive upscale in the way warfare was conducted. Furthermore, given the resulting merchant class that emerged as a result of the Industrial Revolution, governments began enlisting the aid of the merchant class to finance their exorbitantly expensive wars (Gabriel & Metz, 1992). Going back to the example of Napoleon and in layman's’ terms, Napoleon could not have supplied one million men with military hardware if not for the advances in manufacturing from the Industrial Revolution. That being said, the previously agrarian economies of monarchies were terribly inadequate for even attempting to fund such a war. A globalization of economies as a result of industrialization, manufacturing-based economies, and new financial instruments (such as banks, hard currencies, and credit) allowed new nation-states to turn warfare into a major financial investment with the intent of achieving political goals (Gabriel & Metz,