Storm from the Steppes: Warfare and Succession Institutions in Pre-Modern Eurasia, 1000–1799 CE

Abstract A prominent literature on pre-modern warfare and institution-building holds that intense military competition in pre-modern Europe encouraged institutional innovations—for example, centralized bureaucracies and monopolies on coercion—that empowered rulers and enhanced state capacity, with salutary effects on long-run political development. States that adopted these innovations were more likely to survive, whereas those that did not succumbed to invading armies. Yet links between geopolitical competitiveness and capacity building are largely theorized and tested based on the European historical experience. A broader view of that period reveals a more complicated picture. The dominant mode of warfare throughout much of medieval and early modern Eurasia, Inner Asian cavalry warfare (IACW), favored succession institutions that selected for competent military leaders at the expense of long, secure reigns and cumulative capacity-building potential. I explore these links between IACW, succession practices, and rule duration with a novel dataset of over 300 Eurasian dynasties.