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The period 1490-1700 was one of increased interaction among areas of the world. Most active in this process were the Atlantic European powers, along with a number of other expansive powers, including in Europe the Ottomans and Russia. Military success was as much a matter of political incorporation as of technological strength, and incorporation depended on the successful allocation of the burdens of supporting military structures. The raising of men, supplies, and money was the aspect of military organization most important to the states of the preindustrial world, and the ease of the process was significant to the harmony of political entities and thus to the effectiveness of their military forces. Organization must be understood as political as much as administrative, and indeed the political nature was paramount. Rulers lacking political support found it difficult to sustain campaigns and maintain military organization. This was a problem for Charles I in his conflicts with Scotland in 1638-1640.

The pursuit of land and heiresses linked the monarch to his aristocrats and peasants. As wealth was primarily held in land, and transmitted through blood inheritance, it was natural at all levels of society for conflict to center on succession disputes. Peasants resorted to litigation, a lengthy and expensive method, but the alternative, private violence, was disapproved of by state. Monarchs resorted to negotiation, but the absence of an adjudicating body, and the need for a speedy solution once a succession fell vacant, encouraged a decision to fight. Most of the royal and aristocratic dynasties ruling and wielding power in 1650 owed their position to the willingness of past members of the family to fight to secure their succession claims. The Tudors defeated the Yorkists to win England in 1485, the Bourbons fought to gain France in the 1580s, the Austrian Habsburgs to gain Bohemia in 1621, the Braganzas to gain Portugal in the 1640s, William III to gain the British Isles in 1688-1691, and the Romanovs to hold Russia in the 1610s.

More generally warfare created ''states,'' and the rivalries between them were in some fashion inherent to their very existence. Examples include the importance of the reconquista of Iberia from Islam to Portugal, Castile, and Aragon; of conflict with the Habsburgs for the Swiss Confederation and with England for Scotland; and the importance to the Dutch Republic of the threat from Spain and then France. State-building generally required and led to war and also was based on medieval structures and practices that included a eulogization of violence. War was very important, not only in determining which dynasties controlled which lands or where boundaries should be drawn but in creating the sense of ''us'' and ''them,'' which was so important to the growth of any kind of patriotism.

From 1490 to 1700 professionalization and the rise of standing (permanent) forces on land and sea created problems of political and military organizational demand. Structures had to be created and cooperative practices devised within the context of the societies of the period. It is unclear how far professionalization and the rise of standing forces created a self-sustaining dynamic for change, in an action-reaction cycle or synergy, or to what extent effectiveness was limited, therefore inhibiting the creation of a serious capability gap in regard to forces, both European and non-European, that lacked such development. This is an important issue, given modern emphasis on organizational factors, such as drill and discipline, in the rise of the Western military.

Another important factor in change and professionalization was the development of an officer corps responsive to new weaponry, tactics, and systems and increasingly formally trained, at least in part, with an emphasis on specific skills that could not be gained in combat conditions. Although practices such as purchase of military posts limited state control (or rather reflected the nature of the state), officership was a form of hierarchy under the control of the sovereign. However, most officers came from the social elite, the landed nobility, and, at sea, the mercantile oligarchy. An absence of sustained social mobility at the level of military command, reflecting more widespread social problems with the recruitment of talent, was an important aspect of organization and a constraint on its flexibility.

European forces were not the only ones to contain permanent units and to be characterized by professionalism, but the degree of development in this direction in different parts of the world cannot be readily compared because of the lack of accurate measures and, indeed, definitions. Furthermore, it is necessary to consider how best to weight the respective importance of peacetime forces and larger wartime establishments.

In accounts of global military history, the early modern period is generally presented in terms of a European military revolution defined by the successful use of gunpowder weaponry on land and sea. The onset of late modernity follows either in terms of greater politicization and resource allocation and an alleged rise in determination beginning with the French Revolution, or in terms of the industrialization of war in the nineteenth century, or in both. Such a chronology, however, due to its failure to heed change elsewhere, is limited as an account of European development and flawed on the global scale.

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