Profits from conquest have declined over time, but some states abandoned profit-driven expansion sooner than others and some still pursue territorial wealth. This study shows that how much a state depends on rents from land — its "land orientation" — shapes its economic preference for territory and therefore its willingness to invest in securing control of land.
🔎 Why Land Orientation Shapes War
- A state's dependence on land rents increases the economic payoff to holding territory, which raises incentives to invest in military efforts to secure or expand borders.
- Land-oriented economies are therefore more likely to engage in territorial competition even as conquest becomes less profitable on average.
📊 Measuring 200 Years of Land Dependence and Conflict
- Introduces a novel, long-run measure of land orientation spanning 200 years.
- Links that measure to observed military competition over territory across states and time.
- Tests the relationship using a large battery of specifications to probe robustness.
📈 Key Findings
- Across 160 regression models, land orientation robustly predicts territorial competition.
- The effect holds in both democracies and autocracies, indicating regime type does not eliminate the land-orientation incentive.
- The global decline in the share of land-oriented states provides a plausible explanation for the long-term reduction in large-scale territorial conquests.
- The results also explain why some states continue to retain strong economic motivations for conquest despite the overall drop in conquest profits.
⚖️ Why This Matters
- Connects domestic economic structure (land rents) to international incentives for territorial conflict.
- Offers a parsimonious account for the historical decline in conquest and a framework for understanding which states remain most prone to territorial ambition.
