Palace Coup Dilemma: How Land Grants Improved Statebuilding in Medieval Europe

• In Event: Down with the Crown

Abstract

Scholars have overlooked an important commitment problem for historical statebuilding: how do state leaders increase the power of the military without giving military and economic elites the power to overthrow them? Historically, land grants in exchange for military service overcame this problem by co-opting elites and making revolts less successful. Wars also helped this process: states with land grants improved their military's capacity and compliance, but polities fighting wars without land grants faced greater instability. To test this, this paper uses extensive data from England (927 to 1707) and the Byzantine Empire (560 to 1453). The results suggest that land grants (as well as the interaction with war) decreased political instability and increased tax revenue. Land grants might explain why Western European polities benefited from war while other states were weakened by it.

Author

• Dan Gamarnik, University of California-Santa Barbara