Over the past 500 years, states have become dominant institutions around the world, sending the broadest and most diverse powers in the field of economic well-being, health, social security and the very life of their citizens. This book explains how states became centers of power at the expense of countless other polities that fought each other over the preceding millennia. Richard Lachman traces the competitive and historically random struggle through which subjects began to see themselves as citizens of nations and began to associate their interests and identities with states. He explains why the civil rights and benefits they achieved, and the taxes and military service with which they in turn repaid their own nations, were so different. Looking ahead, Lachman understands what the future holds for states: will they gain strength or, conversely, lose it when globalization, terrorism, economic crisis and environmental disasters fall upon them? The book offers a comprehensive assessment of the social science literature that addresses these issues and places the state at the center of the world history of capitalism, nationalism, and democracy. It will be a basic reading for researchers and anyone interested in the social and political sciences.