The Causes of Modern Conquest

• In Event: New Research on Territorial Conquest, Expansion, and Empire

Abstract

Although conquests of entire states became rare after 1945, recent research has shown that conquests of small pieces of territory persisted. It is puzzling that states take such aggressive actions--and even fight wars--over what are remarkably small pieces of territory. This paper investigates the causes of modern conquest after 1945 by combining new conquest data with research that geo-codes the characteristics of territorial disputes. We argue, first, that the traditional explanations for territorial conflict predicated on the value of the territory--resources, strategic location, population, size, and ethnic composition--fail to explain patterns of modern conquest, in part because they do not accord with the small size of the seized territories. We then develop and test theories of conquest better suited to explaining aggressive actions over territories without obvious material value. This paper contributes to the scholarship on territorial conflict by offering a new explanation for when and why states seize territory, thereby challenging the conventional wisdom about the decline of territorial conquest.

Authors

• Dan Altman, Georgia State University

• Melissa M. Lee, Princeton University