Dr. Victoria Gierok (University of Oxford): ''Capacity and Warfare: The Impact of the Thirty Years' War on Urban Germany''

Abstract:
The state made war and war made the state is a key tenet of the history of state capacity. Many historical case studies show how warfare led to developments in fiscal and administrative capacity as well as innovations in debt financing – often benefitting economically productive agents. This paper shows that the case of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany fits this pattern – until it doesn’t. Based on new data from city account books, I show that towns in the Holy Roman Empire increased their fiscal extraction and debt issuance at the beginning of the war, but faced severe economic and financial contraction towards the end. The debt crisis in particular continued for several decades afterwards and was likely detrimental to the broader urban economy. Public spending on defence and debt repayment increased substantially during the War and stayed at higher levels afterwards, whereas spending on public construction, particularly in Imperial Cities, declined. Overall, the towns that were initially economically more powerful, i.e. the Imperial Cities, suffered more severely and saw the largest extraction of resources. The War contributed to the shift in economic power from autonomous towns to territorial rulers and a general decline of urban economies.