Productive Pacifists: The Rise of Production-Oriented States and Decline of Profit-Motivated Conquest

Abstract

Abstract Scholarship suggests the profits from conquest have decreased over time. Given this, why were some states faster to abandon profit-motivated conquest, and why are some still seeking wealth from territorial control? We argue that land-rent dependence influences a regime's economic preference for territory. The more a state depends on rents extracted from land (i.e., the more land-oriented the economy), the greater its willingness to invest in securing control of territory. We develop a novel measure of land orientation, with 200 years of data, to evaluate the linkages between land orientation and military competition over territory. Across 160 regression models, we find robust evidence that land orientation predicts territorial competition. These results hold in both democracies and autocracies. The global reduction in land-oriented states offers a plausible explanation for the decline in the number of large-scale territorial conquests. Our findings also explain why some states retain strong economic motivations for conquest.