Loans as per cent of expenditure: 33.3%.Kennedy presents a table (page 81, table 2) of 'British Wartime Expenditures and Revenue' between 16 is especially illustrative, showing that Britain was able to maintain loans at around one-third of British wartime expenditures throughout that period The Habsburg failure segues into the thesis of chapter 3, that financial power reigned between 16, using Britain, France, Prussia, Austria-Hungary, and Russia to contrast between powers that could finance their wars (Britain and France) and powers that needed financial patronage to mobilize and maintain a major military force on the field. They had managed, but only just, to maintain the balance between their material base and their military power better than their Habsburg opponents. The victory of the anti-Habsburg forces was, then, a marginal and relative one. All states, even the United Provinces, were placed under severe strain by the constant drain of resources for military and naval campaigns. There are no stunning contrasts in evidence here success and failure are to be measured by very narrow differences. The argument in this chapter is not, therefore, that the Habsburgs failed utterly to do what other powers achieved so brilliantly. This chapter also emphasizes the importance of Europe's political boundaries in shaping a political balance of power. Chapter 2, 'The Habsburg Bid for Mastery, 1519вЂ“1659' emphasizes the role of the 'manpower revolution' in changing the way Europeans fought wars (see military revolution). He changes the metric of power based on the point in time. Kennedy uses a number of measures to indicate real, relative and potential strength of nations throughout the book. The book then proceeds chronologically, looking at each of the power shifts over time and the effect on other Great Powers and the ' Middle Powers'. It briefly discusses the Ming (page 4) and Muslim worlds (page 9) of the time and the rise of the western powers relative to them (page 16). The book starts at the dividing line between the Renaissance and early modern history-1500 (chapter 1). The relative strengths of the leading nations in world affairs never remain constant, principally because of the uneven rate of growth among different societies and of the technological and organizational breakthroughs which bring a greater advantage to one society than to another. For that reason, how a Great Power's position steadily alters in peacetime, is as important to this study as how it fights in wartime.

The triumph of any one Great Power in this period, or the collapse of another, has usually been the consequence of lengthy fighting by its armed forces but it has also been the consequences of the more or less efficient utilization of the state's productive economic resources in wartime, and, further in the background, of the way in which that state's economy had been rising or falling, relative to the other leading nations, in the decades preceding the actual conflict. The 'military conflict' referred to in the book's subtitle is therefore always examined in the context of 'economic change'. Kennedy states his theory in the second paragraph of the introduction as follows: He concludes that declining countries can experience greater difficulties in balancing their preferences for guns, butter and investments. Throughout the book he reiterates his early statement (page 71): 'Military and naval endeavors may not always have been the raison d'ГЄtre of the new nations-states, but it certainly was their most expensive and pressing activity', and it remains such until the power's decline. Kennedy argues that the strength of a Great Power can be properly measured only relative to other powers, and he provides a straightforward thesis: Great Power ascendancy (over the long term or in specific conflicts) correlates strongly to available resources and economic durability military overstretch and a concomitant relative decline are the consistent threats facing powers whose ambitions and security requirements are greater than their resource base can provide for.

Rise of nations nation powers