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Book Symposium
Waves of WarNationalism, State Formation, andEthnic Exclusion in
the Modern WorldCambridge University Press
Andreas Wimmer
Comments on Waves of War
Jack A. GoldstoneWoodrow Wilson Center
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Wimmer has sought to turnaround Charles Tilly’s famousclaim that
state-making is tiedto wars; Wimmer instead insiststhat both modern
nation-statemaking and wars are the resultof nationalist
aspirationsclashing with older imperialstate forms or with
competingnationalisms. Yet the analysiscompletely overlooks another
ofTilly’s major topics – the role ofrevolutions in history.
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Comments on Waves of War
Mabel BerezinCornell University
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A weakness of analytic modelsand mechanisms is that theytend to
be a-historical and a-temporal, that is they attenuatethe effects
of context andculture. While Waves of Warcovers the entire
modernperiod, the internal processes ofchange and development
thatcontribute to thick cultures andcontinuities are not part of
theanalysis. As this is a book ofcomparative historical
politicalsociology, the absence ofhistory—in the form of
contextstands out. As the relationshipbetween war, ethnic conflict
andnationalism is the core of thebook, I kept asking myself whatwe
might learn if we applied thismodel to Putin and the Ukraine,to
Gaza, or to ISIS.
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Author’s Response
Andreas WimmerPrinceton University
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In short, Waves of War showsthat the spread of the
like-over-like principle and the formationof nation-states have
beendriving forces behind civil andinterstate war...
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...even where the transition tothe nation-state
occurredgradually and in a negotiatedand agreed manner, such as
inSweden or Botswana, the resultis a profound re-configuration
ofthe power structure, broughtabout by the new cross-classalliances
that Goldstoneemphasizes. In this broadunderstanding of
“revolution”,almost every transition to thenation-state is
revolutionary —and the book is indeed aboutthe causes and
consequences ofthe national revolution, broadlydefined, around the
world.
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Statistical analysis is certainlya-contextual—it has to be
toachieve its aims—but thisdoesn’t mean that it cannotuncover cases
and groups ofcases in which contextualmatters appear to make
historywork differently than “onaverage.”
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