REVIEW ESSAYS Nations, Empires, and Wars

Waves of War is destined to be influential— and controversial. This book examines nationalism, ethnic strife, and war. These topics are not only prominent in the headlines but also of interest to comparative historical sociology, political sociology, and macrosociology more generally. While the topics are familiar, this is a challenging book. Andreas Wimmer presents a novel theory, creates new and powerful databases, and pursues demanding quantitative analyses spanning several centuries and the entire globe. He reframes several important debates, and the reader must understand foundational concepts in novel ways and come to terms with complex and demanding empirical analyses. For those persuaded by Wimmer’s arguments and evidence, the lessons for sociology and sibling disciplines are valuable and farreaching. Even for those who disagree— especially for those who disagree—coming to terms with Waves of War will be important because this book will be setting the agenda and framing debates for years to come. Wimmer asserts that his understanding of nationalism puts legitimacy on center stage: ‘‘The idea of the nation as an extended family of political loyalty and shared identity provided the ideological framework that reflected and justified this new compact. It meant that elites and masses should identify with each other and that rulers and ruled should hail from the same people’’ (p. 4). This social compact ‘‘made the first nationstates . . . militarily and politically more powerful than dynastic kingdoms or landbased empires. . . .’’ (p. 4). Through conquest, absorption, emulation, and diffusion, states around the world have followed suit. Nationalism has been, is, and will be (for the foreseeable future) the most effective and pervasive basis of political legitimacy. To explain where and why nation-states first emerged, Wimmer contrasts France to the Ottoman Empire over a millennium. He relies on ‘‘a power-cum-legitimacy approach’’ (p. 6), an institutionalized balance of power and stable exchange relationships. As summarized in the following table, his modeling rests on four sets of actors: