Environmental Manipulation As A Tool For State-Making Activities
Open Access
Author:
Blanchard, Travis
Area of Honors:
Political Science
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Gregory J Kruczek, Thesis Supervisor Matthew Richard Golder, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
State-Making Environmental Manipulation ISIS Israel U.S. in Vietnam Charles Tilly's Bellicose Theory of State-Making
Abstract:
The Bellicose Theory, formulated by Charles Tilly, contends that wars are a great stimulus to centralizing state power and building institutional capacity. Indeed: “War and preparation for war involved rulers in extracting the means of war from others who held the essential resources- men, arms, supplies, or money to buy them- and who were reluctant to surrender them without strong pressure or compensation” (Tilly, 1992). The extraction of resources to fund war-making and state centralization, on some level, entails environmental manipulation. Yet this dynamic is almost entirely overlooked by scholars. In fact, when environmental manipulation is discussed, it is usually within the context of environmental activism. Additionally, there is seldom any discussion of the resource extraction involved. By comparing the cases of ISIS, Israel, and the United States, this project aims to provide a more nuanced view of how environmental manipulation facilitates state-making. I argue that environmental manipulation is an overlooked, yet critical tool state-makers employ to increase territorial control and, by extension, facilitates the activities that build institutional capacity: state-making, war-making, protection, and extraction.
