El estado militar fiscal

Dedicado al Maestro Doctor Hugo Perini

Me metí en la lectura de los primeros capítulos de The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe de varios autores, un estudio comparativo sobre la capacidad de los aparatos estatales del siglo XVIII de hacerse de recursos para la guerra. Fue una época de marcados contrastes entre décadas de conflictos amplios y prolongados alternadas con treguas de recuperación económica y diplomática. Sigo de aquí en más la explicación de Hamish Scott en cuanto a la relación de los estados militar-fiscales entre ellos.
Para hacer el uso más inteligente de su cuota de poder militar en función de sus recursos, los gobiernos debieron adaptar los sistemas de contabilidad mercantil a las necesidades del estado, en un moderno antecedente de la actual ciencia de las finanzas públicas y su herramienta esencial con la cual calcular los recursos y los gastos, el presupuesto.
Un elemento tan básico como las tablas de doble entrada no fue incorporado por los estados -y en algunos casos solo temporalmente- hasta entrado el siglo XVIII.
El primero en producir algo semejante a un presupuesto fue Colbert con su "Memoria sobre las finanzas", en la que, finalmente ignorado, desaconsejaba a Luis XIV emprender una guerra contra Holanda.

Recien merituada en el siglo de las luces, la importancia de la información estadística radicará en su incidencia sobre las decisiones de los gobernantes, como lo ejemplifica la actitud de Luis XVI de abstenerse de intervenir, debido al estado de bancarrota de la hacienda francesa y la amenaza prusiana, en la crisis política de Holanda en la década de 1780.
Claro que una constante actual no podía estar ausente allí: una cosa es estimar ingresos y erogaciones y otra muy distinta es percibirlos y administrarlos de modo de hacerlos llegar a destino, una dificultad agravada por la burocracia ineficiente y la multiplicidad de agencias de recaudación, particularmente en Francia y Rusia. Mucho más eficientes eran la recaudación en Gran Bretaña con impuestos especiales (excise) y el gasto militar en Prusia.
Tomando en cuenta un enfoque largo del siglo (1688-1815) caracterizado por el aumento de inflación y el crecimiento demográfico, los ingresos aumentaron pero a menor ritmo que el gasto militar. La noción de estado militar-fiscal en el plano interno acentuó la necesidad de agilizar la administración, dentro del ciclo de coerción-capital elaborado por y citado de Charles Tilly (cuya lectura tengo pendiente), mientras en lo exterior fomentó la competencia estimulando nuevas fuentes de financiamiento.

La primera gran experiencia en la contracción de deudas, la de Holanda, le permitió mantener cierto protagonismo en las relaciones europeas durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVII, hasta que el costo anual de los intereses desde 5,7 millones de florines en 1680 a 14,5 millones en 1728, lo obligó a reducir sus fuerzas armadas a una cuarta parte y perseguir una política de neutralidad. No obstante, los problemas financieros continuaron y para 1806 el pago de intereses insumía 41% de todo lo recaudado, 10 veces más que en 1640.
Las cuantiosas guerras de la monarquía Habsburgo llevaron a Austria a cuadriplicar la deuda entre 1700 y 1740 con 100 millones de florines, cuando la recaudación era de 22. En 1727 los servicios de la deuda representaban 27% del gasto anual. Por su parte, la guerra de los siete años arrastró a las finanzas austríacas más allá del límite:

The Austrian war effort was primarily funded by borrowing, and the state debt rose from 113 million florins to 285 million florins, seven or eight times annual revenue and 150 per cent more than the pre-war total.

Francia no estaba mucho mejor, pues a finales de los 1760s, su deuda se estimaba en al menos 2000 millones de livres, 6 veces las recaudación anual. Los gastos de repago consumían 60% de los ingresos, el doble que en 1753.

La deuda pública de Gran bretaña pasó de 16,7 millones de libras en 1697 a 40 millones en 1714 y 50 millones en 1720, aunque con una baja sucesiva de las tasas del 10 a 4%, posibilitada por el largo plazo de los préstamos, siempre garantizados por la confianza en una mayor recaudación tributaria (aumentada 7 veces en términos reales entre 1665 y 1790). La deuda nacional pasó de 2 millones de libras en 1688 a 834 millones en 1820. La deuda en Gran bretaña era 15 veces mayor que en Francia, y sin embargo el costo de pagarla era el doble en Francia (7,5% del PBI contra 3,8), aunque la deuda francesa era mucho menor (56% del PBI contra 182%).
Era Gran bretaña y no Prusia el quien más años pasaba en guerra:

Britain enjoyed plentiful and relatively cheap credit throughout her eighteenthcentury struggle with France and its allies. Thirty per cent of the costs of warfare were consistently met through such borrowing, and in the Seven Years War this figure approached 40 per cent. Only from the 1790s did it fall below 30 per cent.96 This structural advantage was why eighteenth-century Britain was able to be so bellicose and to fight for such extended periods. Counting the long eighteenth century as the decades from 1688 to 1815, the British state was at war for over half of this time: about 70 years out of 127. No other contemporary state, with the single exception of its great rival, France, approaches this total. By contrast, eighteenth-century Prussia, which unfairly enjoys a reputation for aggressive militarism, was fighting for a little more than one-fifth of this period. The Hohenzollern monarchy was undoubtedly a successful fiscal-military state – or rather a military-fiscal one98 – but until the 1790s it was also a power which sought to avoid warfare, and did so with some success.

Las consecuencias de la mayor 'aguante' de Gran bretaña fueron que pudo poner los términos en la mesas de negociación, a las que Francia en su crónica debilidad financiera oportunamente acudió primero (1748, 1763 y hasta 1783).
Otra consecuencia se desprende de la rivalidad naval. El costo de una actividad de capital intensivo (el promedio de vida de un buque de línea era 12 años) probó ser demasiado alto para la espalda francesa y el presupuesto y calidad naval se fueron reduciendo.

The resulting problems were particularly apparent during the Seven Years War, when the French fleet was first weakened by economies in 1758 and then, after a full-scale financial crisis in autumn 1759, completely disabled for the rest of the conflict by a shortage of money.111 The scale of these difficulties is apparent from the cuts made in the naval budget for 1760. In the previous year this had stood at almost 57 million livres, but for the next campaign Berryer, the naval minister, requested 40 million, was given authorization to spend only 30 million and actually received less than 24 million, representing little more than 40 per cent of expenditure in 1759 – a salutary reminder that allocations were often not paid in full, or anything like it. And, in any case, over half of this reduced sum was required to settle bills from the previous year.

El evidente deterioro llevó cada vez más a los ministros a concebir una estrategia de flotas combinadas con España, cuya sobre-dependencia de los recursos de américa lo hizo un aliado poco estable.
Prusia y Rusia fueron adoptando nuevos rubros impositivos como los impuestos especiales y el impuesto por cabeza, aunque proporcionalmente siguieron siendo más importantes las contribuciones en especie (granos, animales) y reclutas.
Para algunos estados, otra fuente de financiamiento eran los subsidios, principalmente provenientes de Francia y Gran bretaña como lo prueba, para el primero, el caso del Piamonte saboyano, y en el segundo, especialmente el de Prusia

During the Seven Years War the annual British subsidy to Prussia of £670,000 – even though it was only paid from 1758 to 1761 – contributed almost one-fifth of that kingdom’s total war costs and had the additional advantage of being paid in specie.

Durante el reinado de Federico Guillermo I (1713-1740) Prusia evitó incurrir en deuda alguna y su sucesor Federico el grande (1740-1786) apenas contrajo empréstitos internamente, manteniendo ambos el presupuesto equilibrado. Posteriormente Prusia tomó préstamos en la plaza de Amsterdam, como Rusia y Austria lo hicieron, además de allí, en las de Génova, Milán y Bruselas.
El ritmo de las guerras revolucionarias y napoleónicas impactó en las finanzas de todos los participantes, trayendo a la palestra a unos y noqueando a otros, provocando que en su transcurso hasta Gran bretaña debiera introducir un impuesto a la tierra. Pero el precio pagado por participar en las 7 coaliciones logró dejarlo posicionado como el mayor y quizás único ganador de la contienda.

Britain, of course, was the only state to be a member of every single coalition against France between 1793 and 1815. Financial resilience, together with the navy that Britain maintained, the subsidies it paid and, eventually, the army it despatched to fight on the continent, brought about the defeat of France. Britain’s foreign secretary, Lord Castlereagh, did much to shape the final settlement concluded in 1814–15 and to bring about the realization of british strategic and commercial interests. A t the same time, London was becoming Europe’s leading financial centre, as the French occupation of Amsterdam first weakened and then destroyed its role as a source of government borrowing. London’s rise and Amsterdam’s eclipse underlined the fact that Britain’s emergence as a E uropean and world power ultimately rested on the distinctive and uniquely successful fiscal-military state which it had evolved during the long eighteenth century, and on the Financial R evolution which had done so much to sustain this.

Armas, gérmenes y acero

Al ver el documental Guns, germs, and steel basado en el libro homónimo del naturalista Jared Diamond encontré una teoría del desarrollo que, si bien no comparto del todo, la reconozco novedosa y estimulante. No habiendo leído el libro en donde se formula toda la teoría, no puedo largarme a comentarla en profundidad, pero como introducción el documental me ha acercado al menos una idea del esqueleto.
Dicho a groso modo, la investigación de Diamond se centra en la influencia de la geografía sobre el hombre y cuánto debe éste a los condicionamientos del hábitat, expresados en dieta, enfermedades y materias primas, posibilitando el despunte tecnológico a los más favorecidos inicialmente en la dotación de recursos y restringiéndoselo a otros con mayor escasez.
Explica como la disposición latitudinal -este/oeste- de Eurasia facilitó la transmisión de cultivos y animales en climas y terrenos semejantes desde medio oriente -cuna del trigo- hacia Europa o bien hacia la India, en contraposición a Amerca, cuyo eje longitudinal -norte/sur- hizo más dificultosa la adaptación de los cultivos a biósferas diversas, aparte de que la estrechez del paso por centroamérica y lo escarpado de la orografía desde ya obraron de obstáculos naturales a la comunicación de americanos entre sí.
¿Por qué cuando en Eurasia ya se manejaba el acero y la pólvora, América todavía se ubicaba tecnológicamente en la edad de bronce, sin tener si quiera conocimiento o aplicación de la rueda?. Para Diamond la respuesta sigue estando en los cultivos y los animales. Hace un recuento de todas las especies animales domesticables del mundo y concluye que la suerte no le fue esquiva a Eurasia al recibir la mejor distribución de animales útiles al hombre. Caballos, ovejas, cerdos, vacunos, cabras, mulas, etc., todos invaluables como fuente de proteína, leche, reserva, abrigo -lana, cuero- como animales de tiro -carga y labranza-, como instrumentos de combate y de movilidad, con ellos aumentando en mucho la productividad, de suerte tal de permitir dedicarse a otras labores -la escritura y la metalugia-, técnicas que a su vez repercutieron en mayor productividad. Mientras tanto, el único animal doméstico en posesión de los aborígenes americanos era la llama, con un uso modesto en la altiplanicie andina -no soportaba el peso de un hombre ni grandes cargas-.
La suerte, de nuevo, quiso hacer del encuentro entre la civilización europea y americana un ejercicio de irreductible supremacía de los primeros no sólo a través de sus mejores armas (con todo, los conquistadores españoles no llegaron a sacarle todo el provecho a la todavía rudimentaria pólvora) cuanto por medio de los gérmenes. No vamos a extendernos en desarrollar este conocido y debatido aspecto de la colonización, más que para señalar, en punto al origen de los anticuerpos, que para Diamond fue la convivencia con animales portadores de todo tipo de microbios la razón por cual tan bien podían resistir los europeos a las plagas más devastadoras para los indios. Siempre hablando en términos relativos, pues para demostrar que los europeos no eran inmunes a todo flagelo relacionado con los microbios, trae a colación el intento de colonización -poblando y labrando la tierra- desde el sur de áfrica que, teniendo en un principio éxito en las zonas templadas, se detuvo al ingresar a los trópicos por la incapacidad de controlar la malaria y las estaciones. Dada la dificultad de asentar europeos permanentes, la obra colonial se limitó a construir bien adentro vías férreas para extraer, transportar y embarcar los recursos naturales.
Aunque deja muchas lagunas, según tengo entendido atendidas en el libro, el trabajo videodocumental está bien presentado. Jared Diamond es una especie de arqueólogo-antropólogo viajando por todos lados, interactuando con los locales, ensayando reflexiones tendientes a resolver el enigma de la desigualdad en el mundo, mientras un relator con voz en off narra la teoría propiamente dicha, teoría a la cual yo achacaría tres "pecados":
-Es determinista: básicamente, distribuídos los animales domésticos y los cultivos más ricos en un vasto continente con amplia facilidad de transmisión, el resultado no podía ser otro que el actual.
Me cuesta diferenciar una ventaja determinante como la atribuída a medio oriente, lugar de encuentro de tres continentes, con una simple ayuda o favor dado por la naturaleza. Me cuesta creer que el hombre necesariamente propagará sus cultivos y animales, aunque no puedo decir lo mismo de los gérmenes, que escapan a su voluntad. Hay algo más ahi, algo que da valor intrínseco a las conductas humanas. Cuando los hititas hallaron y aprendieron a trabajar el hierro enseguida obtuvieron una ventaja sobre sus vecinos. Al principio no lo comerciaron, creyendo mantenerse en la delantera merced al monopolio. Finalmente las piezas elaboradas como así también el mineral, y a mi juicio lo más importante, el conocimiento para trabajarlo, fue transmitiéndose a los vecinos a cambio de otros bienes, en relaciones mutuamente beneficiosas que dieron lugar al nacimiento de más imperios en medio oriente y más adelante adelante a la civilización helénica.
-Es materialista: Jared hace un gran análisis del papel que ocupa el hardware, pero relega a un segundo plano todo el conocimiento, el know how, las ideas, las mismas que dan cabida a la emergencia de individuos capaces de hacer la diferencia. Entiendo que Jared alguna concesión hace al lugar ocupado por la cultura en el desarrollo. En el segundo DVD recuenta cómo Pizarro tenía una idea aproximada de la estrategia necesaria para derrotar a Athahualpa, porque había leído el diario de Cortes con sus secretos para la conquista. Hoy convenientemente guardado en la biblioteca de Salamanca, fue impreso y publicado en la época gracias a la imprenta de tipos móviles.
Es reduccionista: los euroasiáticos no son en sí mejores ni peores, pero tienen mejores cultivos -arroz, trigo, cebada- y animales, que consiguieron y supieron/pudieron adaptar mejor a su entorno, y esa ventaja inicial pronunciaría todas las ulteriores. El mundo de Jared es como un ensayo de laboratorio en el que separa dos colonias de hormigas por un canal de agua, y dota a una de ellas con mejores recursos alimenticios. Aparentemente el resultado final no podrá ser otro que la colonia mejor dotada surque el espacio intermedio y termine dominando o devorando a la otra colonia. Me parece que es bastante más complejo, y explicar los factores culturales como un simple emergente de cierto orden de factores materiales, es escaparle a la explicación, que ha de conjugar la nada sencilla interrelación de ambos.
Quienes quieran ver más, pueden leer la crítica de J.R. McNeill, hijo del legendario historiador canadiense William McNeill. Interesante Acosta, porque dicha en forma de pregunta, la respuesta es la siguiente: siendo que eurasia es el continente más grande, que tuvo casi siempre el 80% de la población del mundo, ¿no hay hasta una propensión probabilística a que se dén allí los acontecimientos más importantes de la historia?. Si interesa, después la seguimos.

A lo macho

Al segundo día todo indica que se irá confirmando la sospecha de que el nuevo gobierno de nuevo tiene muy poco. Entre lo poco nuevo está eso de lo que, por falta de alguna diferencia más relevante hablan tanto: ahora el presidente es mujer.
Entonces, si llevados al plano de lo banal vamos a encarar la diferencia entre el presidente y la presidenta, hagámoslo en términos de género, para hacer así una aproximación más general.
Para ello echo mano al magistral War in human civilization de Azar Gat, obra magna del historiador militar israelí dedicada al estudio multidisciplinario de la violencia desde la biología más primitiva hasta la compleja sociedad actual. En el subcapítulo que me propongo copiar Azar no deja nada librado a su nombre; escudriña la genética y memética de hombres y mujeres, valiéndose de los más granados conocimientos en neurobiología, sociología, psicología evolutiva, arqueología y antropología.
Dejándoles pendiente la consigna de analizar si la violencia es un asunto sólo de hombres, aquí tienen al respecto un abordaje sin desperdicio del maestro Azar.


Interlude: Man the beast? (pp 77-86)
It would appear that up till now I have been a little vague about something. I have generally discussed ‘humans’ and ‘human warfare’, where perhaps I should have more accurately referred to men. From earliest times and throughout history, fighting has been associated with men. Crosscultural studies of male/female difference have found serious violence as the most distinctive sex difference that there is, except, of course, for child bearing itself. Is that a matter of education and social conventions, or are men naturally far more adapted to fighting than women? This question has much contemporary relevance and is at the centre of a heated public debate about women’s equality in modern society: can and should women nowadays enlist in combat roles in the armed services? The first obvious and generally controversy-free, fighting-related difference between men and women is that of physical strength. Men are considerably stronger than women, on average, of course, and all the following data are on average. To begin with, men are bigger than women. They are about nine per cent taller and proportionately heavier. Even these facts do not tell the whole story, because in muscle and bone mass men’s advantage is bigger still. Relative to body weight, men are more muscular and bony, with the main difference concentrated in the arms, chest and shoulders. Fat comprises only 15 per cent of their body weight, compared with 27 per cent in women. As athletic results and repeated tests show, men’s biggest physical advantage is in strength. Although they are less flexible than women, only about 10 per cent faster, and have a 4:3 advantage in aerobic capacity, they are doubly as strong as women (except for the legs, where the ratio is again 4:3 in favour of men).

As throughout human history fighting has been a trial of force, this sex difference has been crucial. Anatomy is not everything, however. As mentioned, the quoted data are average. It in fact comprises a wide range within each sex, and there is obviously some overlap between the scales of the two sexes. Some women are stronger than or as strong as some men. There is, however, another sex difference to consider. Are men by nature mentally more aggressive than women, especially being more predisposed to violence and, even more, to serious violence? Are the minds as well as the bodies of males and females different? This is a highly charged topic in the contemporary debate. Tabula rasa liberals and feminists during the 1960s and early 1970s believed that, apart from obvious physical differences, men and women were the same. All other differences were attributed to education and social conventions. Over time, however, as more and more women entered the ‘man’s world’ in the workplace and all other walks of social life, many later-generation feminists have come to a different position. They have come to feel that the ‘man’s world’ was exactly that—very much structured to fit the needs, aims, and norms that were peculiarly male. They have felt that mere equality of access to male-structured domains was unsatisfying for women. Gender attitudes to sex are one of the most interesting cases in point. One of the greatest achievements of the sexual revolution of the 1960s was that women in the west have earned the right to much the same freedom in sexual relations as men had always enjoyed. Soon, however, women discovered that they did not want to exercise that freedom in quite the same way as men. Thus, although latter-day feminists have continued to seek equality and opportunity, many of them now feel that these mean freedom to behave in greater harmony with women’s own particular needs and aims, and, wherever necessary, change the world in that direction. Interestingly, it has now been feminists, not only male chauvinists, who have stressed women’s qualities versus men’s. Indeed, feminists have charged that it was peculiarly male tendencies, such as overcompetitiveness, emotional coldness, faulty communication, and aggressiveness, that were responsible for many, if not most, of this world’s ills, including war. Those feminists may claim some support from the scientific research of human biology, which earlier had all too often been somehow regarded impatiently as irrelevant to the debate.

The whole trend of recent scientific research has stressed sex differences in the mind as well as the body. In this chapter, we have already referred to the biological explanation for the differing sexual attitudes of men and women, but scientists have discovered many more differences. Repeated cognitive studies have revealed, on average, male advantage in spatial orientation, which might also explain the persistently recorded male advantage in mathematics, especially at the very highest levels. Women have recorded better in spatial attention to detail and spatial memory, verbal skills, and judging other people’s moods and complex human situations—the famous ‘female intuition’. These differences have long been attributed solely to education and social expectations, but the great changes in social attitudes that have taken place in the last generationseem not to have altered them much. Indeed, one of the ‘hardest’ sciences of them all, brain research, has yielded significant sex differences.

Cognitive studies, aided by brain scanning, have revealed that men and women in fact use different parts of their brains in coping with various cognitive tasks. Furthermore, whereas the right and left hemispheres of a man’s brain are much more specialized, those of women operate in greater co-operation, and the corpus callosum connecting them is larger. Not only are the bodies of women and men structured somewhat differently but also that particular organ of their bodies, the brain, and hence their minds. The architect of these different structures is our genes, and their agent is the sex hormones, particularly the famous male hormone, testosterone. Scientists have found that its presence begins to structure the male as different from the female right from the start, from the very beginning of the fetus’s evolution in the uterus (biologically, the original form is the female). Male and female differences in identity are already largely shaped at birth, and behavioural differences between the sexes are recorded very early, before social conditioning can play an effective role. Crudely put, baby girls are more interested in people, whereas baby boys are more interested in things. Later on, despite the great changes that have taken place in educational patterns and the efforts of conscientious parents, boys and girls show differences in play preferences, with the boys much more inclined to competitive, rough and tumble, aggressive games and toys. Females also produce testosterone, only much less than males. In addition, some divergences from testosterone norms have occurred as a result of natural reasons (which produce identified medical syndromes) and owing to chemical influences caused, for example, by medication. It has been found that so-called tomboy behaviour in girls correlated closely with higher levels of testosterone. On the other side, low testosterone levels in males result in unassertive and ‘feminine’ behaviour, whereas the highest levels of testosterone to which men are exposed during adolescence result in extra aggressiveness. Traditional human insight, embodied in such concepts as the Chinese yin and yang, has been found to be not that far off the mark. Perpetration of serious violence and crime is in fact the most distinctive sex difference there is, cross-culturally. As mentioned earlier, among the !Kung Bushmen, all of the 22 killings registered in 1963–9 were committed by men. Of 34 cases of bodily assault, all but one were committed by men. In the USA, males comprise 83 per cent of murderers, a similar share of those committing aggravated assault, 93 per cent of drunken drivers and about the same percentage of armed robbers. Even though murder rates diverge widely in other parts of the world, the woman/man split remains roughly the same in favour of men. Furthermore, even that sharp split does not tell the whole story. The actual split is sharper still, because much of the serious female violence and murder comes in response to male violence or under male leadership. Thus, as a comprehensive survey reveals: Crime statistics from Australia, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, England and Wales, Germany, Iceland, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Scotland, Uganda, a dozen different locations in the United States, and Zaire, as well as from thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England and nineteenth-century America—from hunter–gatherer communities, tribal societies, and medieval and modern nation-states—all uncover the same fundamental pattern. In all these societies, with a single exception, the probability that the same-sex murder has been committed by a man, not a woman, ranges from 92 to 100 percent.

This brings us to the nature of women’s aggression and violence. Women can also be aggressive. However, their aggressiveness is much less channelled to physical violence than men’s aggressiveness is, and even less to serious physical violence. Typically, women resort to serious violence in two cases: when the danger comes close to home—in desperate defence against an acute threat to themselves and their children; or to harm the ‘other woman’ in rivalry over a man. Furthermore, in comparison with men’s violent aggression, that of women tends to be non-physical, indirect, and anonymous. What is the source of this most distinctive sex difference in serious violence? Again, the biological explanation is clear and was first elaborated by Darwin. Both the bodies and minds of women and men have been subjected to somewhat different evolutionary pressures during the millions of years of human evolution. These pressures have been most different where sex specialization and diverging reproductive roles have been most involved. As scholars have pointed out, precisely because in humans both parents invest in child rearing, sex specialization/division of labour became more possible than in some other animal species, including our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. In evolutionary terms, women specialized in child bearing and rearing and in foraging close to the home base, whereas men specialized in long-distance hunting and in the struggle to acquire and defend women and children, specializations that required, among other things, force and ferocity. Indeed, the difference was more than occupational. Not only did men compete for women both inside and outside the group, but, in case of a threat to the children, the father, although also highly significant for the children’s provision, was more expendable than the mother in this respect. For this reason as well, the men formed the group’s main line of defence, while the women covered the children to the best of their abilities. Moreover, Palaeolithic men were of no use to the enemy. For them, the options were either running away or fighting to the finish. By contrast, women were themselves a resource in competition. They had better chances than the men did to survive the day by submitting, conforming, co-operating, and manipulating.

Both the capabilities and evolutionary strategies of men and women, capabilities and strategies that were of course interconnected and mutually reinforcing, made men much more predisposed to fighting than women. But do environmental influences, most notably education and social norms, not count at all? Do genes not always interact with culture? Obviously, environmental influences matter a great deal and are responsible for a wide diversity of cultural norms. However, contrary to the fashion in much of the gender studies, cultural norms are not infinitely flexible and wholly relative. As a rule, cultural norms play, and diverge, along a scale set by our inborn dispositions. (Needless to say, the subject is extremely complex and, as we see later, it becomes even more complex with the new opportunities, interactions, and tensions created by accelerated cultural evolution.) The fact remains that among hunter–gatherers, in the ‘human state of nature’, women’s participation in warfare was extremely marginal. Even more than hunting, in which women also marginally engaged in a few societies, fighting was a male preserve and the most marked sex difference. Indeed, in this case, it can certainly be said that among hunter–gatherers social norms reinforced inborn dispositions. Even if some women were physically and mentally capable of participating in a warriors’ group, this very rarely happened. The ‘culture of war’ and the ‘bond of brotherhood’ within the warriors’ group were famously cultivated among the men. As mentioned earlier, the local groups in the human state of nature were literally composed of brethren. Furthermore, women were to be defended rather than interfere with the warriors’ group cohesion by the powerful forces of sexual distraction.

This does not mean that women had no role in warfare. In most cases they, too, had very high stakes in what the men were fighting for, or at the very least in their men themselves. Thus women in primitive warfare often accompanied the men to battle and took part in it as cheerers and providers of auxiliary services, such as the gathering and re-supply of used arrows and spears. As mentioned earlier, only in very rare cases did they actively participate in the fight, mainly by shooting arrows, and if the danger reached the inner ring of women and children, women also desperately tried to contribute to the defence. The famous Amazons, of course, were, significantly, a myth, albeit, like many myths, not entirely devoid of some basis in reality. The Scythian and Sarmatian pastoralist horse archers of the Ukrainian steppe were described by the classical Greek authors as the ‘neighbours’ of the Amazons. Some of the warrior graves excavated in the region were those of women, buried with full military gear. In one Scythian royal kurgan (mound) four of fifty warrior graves belonged to females. In the supposed Sarmatian region, 20 per cent of the warrior graves excavated were those of women. The bow made possible a marginally greater female participation in warfare. Civilization created many new, ‘artificial’ conditions and relationships, making a far-reaching transformation in the human way of life possible. Nevertheless, throughout most of history, female participation in warfare barely changed at all from the patterns described above, which had been evolutionarily shaped by physical, mental, and social constraints. Apart from desperate home defence, women’s participation in warfare was limited to auxiliary services to the male warriors as camp followers and prostitutes. To be sure, women were excluded from many activities and occupations in historical societies. Still, they were absent from the warriors’ ranks to an ever-larger degree than from any other occupation in which they traditionally did not participate. But what about modern, industrialized, and especially advanced industrial societies? These have undergone tremendous, unprecedented changes, which, among other things, greatly transformed women’s place in society.

How do these changes affect, and how can they affect, women’s participation in combat roles in the armed services? The bottom line is that they do, although overall perhaps not by a very wide margin. Physically, fighting with guns and explosives has already made a change. For example, in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Dahomey, the king’s army included an elite bodyguard unit of women, which grew in number from hundreds to thousands. The women, armed with guns, as well as with bows and arrows, machetes and clubs, were reputedly ferocious warriors. From the late nineteenth century, women began to participate actively in many revolutionary and guerrilla forces, which combined informal social structures and radical ideologies. Their participation in combat roles in the Soviet and Yugoslav armed forces during the Second World War and on the communist side in Vietnam is well known. However, even in these often-cited cases, where a radical social ideology prevailed, the home country was invaded and women were anyhow at grave risk, and an acute shortage of manpower existed, women’s role in warfare was still limited. Most women took men’s places in the factories and fields, or performed auxiliary services within the armed forces. Those who actually participated in combat roles amounted to no more than 8–12 per cent of the combat troops, not far from their estimated share in the famous Dahomey army or in those very few tribal societies that had allowed women to participate in battle, including the Scythian and Sarmatian ‘Amazons’. Furthermore, in Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and other revolutionary countries, women were excluded from combat roles once the war was over. Why is this so, and how likely is this situation to persist in advanced industrial societies? After all, the modern mechanical and electronic battlefield has created numerous tasks that involve little if any physical force. Fighting is done with firepower, and the movement of people and loads is largely mechanical. Many women can drive or fire an armoured fighting vehicle as well as many men, or for that matter command the vehicle, an armoured battalion, or an armoured army. Some women are even strong enough to be able to serve in ordinary infantry units, which still rely heavily on physical force. However, Hollywood’s G. I. Jane notwithstanding, women are rarely likely to be strong enough for elite infantry and commando units—no more in fact than they are likely to compete successfully in any serious men’s football league, let alone boxing or weightlifting. Women flew as combat pilots in the Soviet air force during the Second World War. But how many of them can successfully compete for similar capacities in the much more competitive air forces of modern advanced powers has still to be ascertained. In any case, this leaves many active combat roles that women can perform.

The mental sex differences in respect of warfare have similarly narrowed but not closed. As much of today’s fighting activity is done from afar and with little physical contact, it involves much less of the aggressive and violent attitude traditionally associated with men. Even if not wholly a matter of pushing buttons, modern fighting more than before bears the character of an occupation that requires more cool-headed professionalism and organizational discipline than aggressive predisposition. There can be little doubt that women could cope successfully with the mental task if they so wished. But would they so wish? The indications are that the number of those who would wish it is far smaller that that of men. Even if the physical aspect posed no problem, far fewer women than men are inclined to combat activity and combat careers. The reasons for this motivational difference again go back to fundamental sex-related predispositions. On average, men are more attracted to this type of competitive, high-risk, violent, machine-related activity. In the same way that the introduction of effective contraceptives, although greatly affecting women’s sexual attitude, has not closed the gap between the sexual behaviour of men and women, far-reaching changes in social and family patterns do not wholly eradicate sex-related occupational preferences. Throughout history women’s overburden with child bearing and rearing was one of the factors that precluded their active participation in warfare. Indeed, significantly, the famous Dahomey women warriors unit was only possible because its members, officially married to the king, were forced to celibacy on penalty of death. The force may have evolved from the harem guard, to which no man was allowed access. Furthermore, the women may have customarily undergone excision at childhood. Even though women in today’s developed world give birth to only two children, on average, and household duties are far lighter than before and more equally divided between the sexes, the woman’s share in raising the children still tends to be larger. (Despite the doctrine of equality, the law recognizes this by tending to prefer the woman for custody of the children in cases of divorce.) More than men, women would shrink from a highly risky career that involves long periods of absence from the husband and children. This sort of preference has long been attributed to lingering cultural inequalities in the way society is structured. Although these inequalities were indeed acute and still exist, it would now seem that their inborn element was too easily overlooked. Even if the greatest equality of access to the educational and labour markets were achieved, the sex differences would be such that the inclinations of men and women would, on average, be different in some important respects. Even in Scandinavia, where nearly 80 per cent of women are in the workforce, fewer than 10 per cent of the women work in occupations where the sex balance is roughly equal. Half of all workers are in jobs where their own sex accounts for 90 per cent of employees. The choice of a combat career is a field in which the sex difference is particularly marked.

The Netherlands is a case in point, having the most egalitarian legislation and policy in the developed world. From the late 1970s the Dutch authorities granted women equal access to all military jobs and have acted intensively to encourage them to exercise this freedom of opportunity. Nevertheless, as the feminist authors of a study on the subject have written with dismay: ‘The interest of women in the army seemed to diminish more than to increase. . . . The physical requirements remained a problem and so did the acceptance of women by their male colleagues. . . . The demands for combat jobs in the infantry, cavalry, artillery and the Royal Engineers are too high to be met by most women.’ Female participation in the army, especially in combat roles, remained in the low percentage points. In Norway as well, another country with highly egalitarian legislation and policy, the picture is very similar, partly, although not solely, because of women’s own lack of interest. But what about those women who do desire a combat role and a combat career? In the labour market as well, many occupations are unevenly divided between the sexes, but equality of access on merit has nevertheless been secured in the developed countries to any member of either sex who chooses any particular occupation. Are there any special arguments that might warrant an exceptional status to the occupation of fighting? More complex family arrangements, mentioned by reluctant armed services, have already been discussed. These may be overcome by a combination of female and military compromises. The prospect of possible captivity is a major consideration. As we have seen, women are far more exposed than men to sexual abuse, especially when out of the protection of the law and orderly society. This, too, however, is a risk that society might choose to leave to individual female choice. Finally, can men and women live close together for long periods of service in intimate combat groups without being distracted by sexual attraction that would disrupt their combat effectiveness? Does not the famous ‘male bonding’ in the combat group depend on the absence of women? Is not the ‘culture of war’ itself, those traditional qualities of warrior masculinity, best inculcated in an exclusive man’s world? Indeed, at this point some feminists form an awkward alliance with male sceptics, arguing that experience shows that participation in combat units makes women forfeit their own true nature and adopt male-type thinking and behaviour.

We lack sufficient experience to judge how significantly the dynamics created in modern mixed-sex fighting units would affect their combat effectiveness. In principle, fighting units need not, of course, necessarily be mixed for women to participate in them. Separate units for men and women are also possible. In summary, it would probably not be wild speculation to suggest that the forces that have opened the labour market for women are too irresistible for the armed services to withstand. Women are integrated in larger numbers, even in combat roles. On the other hand, women’s participation in such roles will probably remain marginal compared with that of men. The evolution-shaped physical, mental, and social factors that have made fighting the most polarized sex-related activity are unlikely to disappear.