Review - the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000

Paul Kennedy’s book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, is a 677 page tome describing not only the rise and fall of various great power states between 1500 to 2000 but also virtually every other state that played a role in world politics during this time.   Kennedy’s thesis is simple enough and certainly one not new in the world of political economy. He relies on no particular political theory (although hegemonic stability theory, mercantilism, and liberalism could all be used as support for why great powers rise in the first place)   Kennedy simply states that the rise and fall of great powers is a cyclical process. He contends that the rise of great powers (the Hapsburg Empire, Napoleonic France, the British Empire,   Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the United States) corresponds to a subsequent rise in economic power.   He further states that great powers decline in part due to a overstretch of resources to include especially supporting a large military.   The main drawbacks to the book (aside from the fact that it was written ten years ago, prior to the collapse of Communist Europe) is that the thesis is very narrow, yet Kennedy covers a vast amount of time and Kennedy uses some faulty analysis while failing to take into account other important factors.
A summary of the book is difficult considering it covers nearly 500 years of history.   Essentially Kennedy breaks his analysis down into three main sections:   Strategy and Economics in the Preindustrial World (1500-1815), Strategy and economics in the Industrial Era (1815-1942), and Strategy and Economics Today and Tomorrow (1943-2000).   Each of these sections are further devided into chapters dealing with separate geographic area.   Kennedy uses this framework to broadly describe changes within the international political system in particular, how various states reacted to these changes.   Aside from being a best-seller when it first came out ten years ago,...