The Business of War in Europe, 1000—1600 115sustained by the preservation of primary patterns of human interac
tion. Obedience, after all, is always best rendered to persons already
known to the follower by long familiarity. Status relationships, tradi
tional social structures, local hierarchies of deference and precedence;
all these fitted as subordinate elements within the political command
structure. Despite personal rivalries of the most diverse sort among
local magnates, the principle that social behavior should conform to
hierarchically patterned roles undergirded and sustained the entire
system. This meant, among other things, that only a tiny fraction of
the entire population could be mobilized for military action. But
Asian rulers acquiesced readily enough since any more general mobi
lization would have put arms in the hands of persons and classes who
could then be expected to challenge existing social hierarchies and
patterns of government.
Market relationships, on the contrary, tended to dissolve and
weaken traditional, local, and primary patterns of human interaction.
Response to market incentives allowed strangers to cooperate across
long distances, often without realizing it. Mobilization of a larger
quantity of goods and a greater number of men became possible with
the kinds of economic specialization and technological elaboration
that market relationships could sustain. Power and wealth, in short,
could be enhanced by reliance on market incentives to human action,
however much rulers and the majority of their subjects may have
deplored the greed and immorality that was thus let loose upon the
world.
Breakdown of established patterns of conduct always appears de
plorable to a majority of those who witness it. The European public, as
much as European rulers of the early modern centuries, disliked and
distrusted the handful of monied men who enriched themselves by
constraining rulers and their subjects to conform to the dictates of the
market. But rulers and subjects found there was little they could do
about it. In Asia similar sentiments were effective because the market
for goods and services remained relatively weak, being confined to an
artisan level. In Europe, once a few self-governing cities in Italy and
the Low Countries had demonstrated the enhanced wealth and power
that a more enthusiastic unleashing of market incentives could create,
market articulation of human effort gained the upper hand. By the
sixteenth century, even the mightiest European command structures
became dependent on an international money and credit market for
organizing military and other major undertakings. Philip II’s hapless
financial record is proof of this proposition. As a result, the continued