Mobilizing Resources for War by Economic Expansion: Contrasting Economic Visions
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Date
2025-05-29
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Citation of Original Publication
Mitch, David. “Mobilizing Resources for War by Economic Expansion: Contrasting Economic Visions.” The Routledge Economic History of War, 2025. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003275275-9/mobilizing-resources-war-economic-expansion-david-mitch?context=ubx&refId=7985dd51-83b7-41de-93bd-06b4661c35ae.
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)
It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License Deed - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International - Creative Commons, which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License Deed - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International - Creative Commons, which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Abstract
The pursuit of economic growth has come to be taken for granted as a policy goal with the motive commonly presumed to be improvement of human welfare. However, a historical perspective points to ulterior factors such as military upheaval threats as central motives for governments to pursue economic expansion. In societies as diverse as Qin and Han dynasty China, early modern Europe, Meiji era Japan, the Soviet Union in the early Stalinist years, and post-war United States and OEEC Europe, the desire to provide resources to support military activity was a central motive in setting economic expansion as an important policy goal.