Preface

The Pursuit of Power is meant to

be a twin to my earlier book, Plagues and Peoples. The latter sought to
discern major landmarks in the interaction of human populations and
microparasites, paying special attention to the relatively abrupt niche
changes that organisms undergo from time to time when some new
mutation or penetration of a new geographical environment allows
them to escape briefly from older ecological limits. This book under­
takes a similar inquiry into changes in patterns of macroparasitism
among human kind. Disease germs are the most important micropara­
sites humans have to deal with. Our only significant macroparasites are
other men who, by specializing in violence, are able to secure a living
without themselves producing the food and other commodities they
consume. Hence a study of macroparasitism among human popu­
lations turns into a study of the organization of armed force with
special attention to changes in the kinds of equipment warriors used.
Alterations in armaments resemble genetic mutations of microorgan­
isms in the sense that they may, from time to time, open new geo­
graphic zones for exploitation, or break down older limits upon the
exercise of force within the host society itself.
Nevertheless, I have refrained from using the language of
epidemiology and ecology in describing changes in the way armed
force has been organized among human beings, partly because it in­
volves a metaphorical extension of the strict meaning of the term
“macroparasitism,” and partly because symbiotic relationships be­
tween efficient armed forces and the society supporting them com­
monly exceeded the parasitic drain on local resources required for
their maintenance. Microparasitic symbiosis is also important in dis­
ease ecology. Indeed I argue in Plagues and Peoples that civilized, that
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