An economist’s view of military history from the Vikings to the Ukraine war may not sound promising, but Duncan Weldon has written a clever, provocative look at wars and fighting over the centuries, a book that is both insightful and easy to read.

Weldon works chronologically, beginning with the Vikings and ending up analyzing Russia’s performance in the war in Ukraine. The lesson he draws from the Vikings is the evolution of raiders into territory-controlling “stationary bandits,” and then states. While the Norsemen may have originally been satisfied with taking home plunder—such as golden chalices from Irish monasteries, both they and their victims evolved. The Vikings began to conquer and settle in the British Isles, and British kingdoms decided to pay tribute rather than fight them. And, he emphasizes, the Vikings spent this tribute locally, expanding the economies of the British. This first chapter—“Rational Raiders”—is typical of Blood and Treasure: it is just 13 pages long, has no combat narratives, and provides a set of simple lessons in the economics of the Vikings and their victims.

Weldon moves on to medieval Europe to explain why some rulers—though not the French—chose the longbow, while others preferred their armies to rely on the crossbow. Although the longbow provided superior lethality in battle, it demanded long professional training, leading to a corps of expert archers. Ordinary soldiers could be trained to use the crossbow quickly. Rulers who trusted their people, and their neighbors, opted for the longbow, while those who feared rebellions and rivals accepted the inferior performance of the crossbow.

Although the book has a chapter on Genghis Khan and his “global empire,” Weldon sticks to European and American examples for the most part. He explains how the Dutch and the English, which had somewhat democratic governments with parliaments, were able to raise money for armies and navies year after year, while Spain, though it was able to import silver from the New World, could not finance its wars, and lost out over the long run. Another example from Europe ventures into cultural history, with a clever explanation of how and why the condottieri of Italy became patrons of the arts. His poster child here is Federico da Montefeltro, who grew wealthy as a mercenary, but channeled this wealth into humanistic pursuits, including the training of a young Raphael.

Many of the seventeen chapters of Blood and Treasure have lessons that revolve around currency and banking, generally focused on the power of stable government finances to enable warfare. That is the same story that Weldon tells when he moves to the United States, and the American Civil War. The country had had a chaotic history of national banks being established, then abandoned, and a disastrous system of dozens of state and local banks emitting paper currency that was not accepted around the country, nor did these notes retain their value. Once the war started, and the Lincoln administration realized that it might last for years, the government passed first the legal Tender Act, and then the National Banking Act followed in 1863. These laws set the country on the road to a stable currency. They also enabled the Union to finance its war effort, something that the Confederacy, with its weak central government, was unable to match.

When Blood and Treasure moves into the twentieth century, Weldon concentrates on the economics of total war. The number of men involved in combat, the number of civilians killed, and the economic damage to entire nations all increase dramatically. He has an excellent chapter on Stalin’s solution to these challenges, which was creating a brutal command economy devoting the Soviet Union to war to an extent never seen before. Unfortunately for the Soviet Union, the system that enabled it to beat Nazi Germany was not suitable for the challenges posed by peace and the Cold War.

Nazi Germany is the subject of the most unusual chapter, “The Luftwaffe: When Rewarding Bravery was Self-Defeating.” Here, Weldon explains how the Luftwaffe’s incentive system for fighter pilots—medals and other honors—pushed talented pilots into increasingly daring combat tactics. This produced aces with incredible scores—Erich Hartmann ended the war with 354 victories, far outstripping any British or American ace—but led to an air force that suffered casualties at an unsustainable rate. The chapter is also unusual for discussing individual aces; Weldon usually describes trends, not people.

Blood and Treasure is readable, brings up new ideas, and ends with “Notes for Further Reading,” rather than endnotes or a bibliography.

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Our Reviewer: Jonathan Beard is a retired freelance journalist who has devoted most of his life to reading military history. When he worked, he wrote and did research for British, American and Danish science magazines, and translated for an American news magazine. The first book he owned was Fletcher Pratt’s The Monitor and the Merrimac. Jonathan reviews regularly for the Michigan War Studies Review. His previous reviews here include Down the Warpath to the Cedars: Indians' First Battles in the Revolution, The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941-1944, Prevail Until the Bitter End: Germans in the Waning Days of World War II, Enemies Among Us, Battle of the Bulge, Then and Now, Mussolini’s War: Fascist Italy From Triumph to Collapse, Engineering in the Confederate Heartland, The Bletchley Park Codebreakers, Armada, Allied Air Attacks and Civilian Harm in Italy, The Collaborators, The Enigma Traitors, When Men Fell from the Sky, Midway: The Pacific War’s Most Famous Battle, When Men Fell from The Sky, The Lost Scientists of World War II, U.S. Battleships 1939–45, The Last Emperor of Mexico, Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan, Convair B-36 Peacemaker, Eagle Days: Life and Death for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, The Concentration Camp Brothel, The Maginot Line, and World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews.

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Note: Blood and Treasure is also available in audio & e-editions.

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