The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000With 200,000 hardcover copies in print, this book has received worldwide attention. Kennedy explains how the various world powers have risen and fallen over the five centuries since the formation of the "new monarchies" in Western Europe. |
From inside the book
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... or more of GNP by the year 2000 , a larger and larger amount of equipment
such as machine - building and metalworking tools would be consumed by the
military , crowding out the share of investment capital going to the rest of industry
.
This may seem a bold statement to make in view of the very extensive publicity
which has been given to the far larger totals of Soviet aircraft , tanks , artillery ,
and infantry divisions in assessments of the U . S . - USSR " military balance ” -
not to ...
... is to say , decision - makers in Washington must face the awkward and
enduring fact that the sum total of the United States ' global interests and
obligations is nowadays far larger than the country ' s power to defend them all
simultaneously .
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The rise and fall of the great powers: economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000
User Review - Not Available - Book VerdictYale historian Kennedy surveys the ebb and flow of power among the major states of Europe from the 16th centurywhen Europe's preeminence first took shapethrough and beyond the present erawhen great ... Read full review
Learning from History, July 19, 2003
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Kennedy chronicles the rise of the Great Powers starting with the Ming Dynasty in China and taking us all the way to the contemporary times of the 1980s.
By analyzing world history through the prisms of economical, political, and military status of each great rising power, Kennedy fuses a theory of why certain countries throughout history (1500-present) rose to be regional or world powers and why they later collapsed.
<P>
As the other reviewers noted, Kennedy's book falls short of accurately predicting the changes that were to follow the publication date of his book (fall of Russia, Asian market crises). Nevertheless this book is a valuable historical resource.
Contents
The Rise of the Western World | 3 |
World Power Centers in the Sixteenth Century | 5 |
2 | 18 |
Copyright | |
32 other sections not shown