MILITARY LOGISTICS, FISCAL CAPACITY AND INSTITUTIONAL EFFICIENCY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF IMPERIAL DEFENCE BURDENS IN MACEDONIA (MACEDONIAN, ROMAN, BYZANTINE AND OTTOMAN EMPIRES)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35120/sciencej0501107bKeywords:
military logistics, fiscal capacity, state capacity, defence expenditure, institutional efficiency, imperial political economy, Macedonia, Macedonian Empire, Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Ottoman EmpireAbstract
This study examines the relationship between military logistics, fiscal capacity, and imperial defence burdens through a comparative analysis of four major empires that governed the territory of Macedonia: the Macedonian Empire under Philip II and Alexander III, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. The research challenges the conventional assumption that a higher percentage of economic output allocated to military purposes necessarily corresponds to greater military power or long-term state stability. The central hypothesis advanced in this paper is that imperial military strength and political durability were not primarily determined by the proportion of GDP devoted to defence, but rather by the degree of institutional coordination, fiscal mobilization capacity, and logistical efficiency embedded within the governing structure of each empire.
Given the absence of continuous and directly measurable GDP data for ancient and medieval societies, the study adopts a methodologically cautious framework that distinguishes between reconstructed economic output, documented state revenues, and military expenditure as a share of public budgets. The research relies on comparative historical analysis, secondary quantitative reconstructions from economic historians, fiscal documentation where available, and institutional-military literature. Particular attention is given to differentiating between military expenditure as a share of total state revenue and its estimated share of reconstructed GDP, thereby avoiding false statistical precision in premodern contexts.
The analysis demonstrates that although the military sector constituted the dominant component of public expenditure in all four empires, their logistical architectures and fiscal integration mechanisms differed substantially. Macedonian military expansion relied on high mobility, minimal logistical encumbrance, and resource extraction through conquest. Roman defence was sustained through institutionalized provisioning systems (annona militaris), standardized infrastructure, and integrated fiscal administration. Byzantine military organization combined decentralized thematic land grants with centralized reserves and advanced communication networks. The Ottoman system initially achieved cost-efficient military mobilization through the timar structure before gradually shifting toward centralized and fiscally heavier models of modernization.
The findings indicate that imperial sustainability correlated more strongly with institutional-logistical coherence and adaptive fiscal structures than with the absolute magnitude of military expenditure. Empires in which military systems exceeded the adaptive capacity of fiscal and administrative institutions experienced structural vulnerability, regardless of the percentage of economic output allocated to defence. The study contributes to fiscal-military state theory and imperial political economy by proposing an Institutional-Logistical Efficiency perspective for evaluating premodern defence burdens within a historically grounded analytical framework.
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