Early modern warfare in Western Europe exposed civilian populations to violence, hardship, and disease. Despite limited empirical evidence, the ensuing mortality effects are regularly invoked by economic historians to explain patterns of economic development. Using newly collected data on adult burials and war events in the seventeenth-century Low Countries, we estimate early modern war-driven mortality in localities close to military activity. We find a clear and significant general mortality effect consistent with the localized presence of diseases. During years with major epidemic disease outbreaks, we demonstrate a stronger and more widely spreading mortality effect. However, war-driven mortality increases during epidemic years are of similar relative magnitude is those in non-epidemic war years. Given the omnipresence of warfare in the seventeenth-century Low Countries, war-driven mortality was remarkably constant rather than a sharp discontinuity. The economic impact of warfare likely played out over the long term rather than driven by sudden large mortality spikes creating rapid structural change.

西欧早期的现代战争使平民面临暴力、苦难和疾病。尽管经验证据有限，但经济史学家经常援引随之而来的死亡率效应来解释经济发展模式。我们使用新收集的有关 17 世纪低地国家成人墓葬和战争事件的数据，估计了靠近军事活动地区的早期现代战争驱动的死亡率。我们发现与疾病的局部存在一致的明显且显着的一般死亡率影响。在重大流行病爆发的几年中，我们展示了更强大和更广泛传播的死亡率效应。然而，在流行年份，战争驱动的死亡率增加与非流行战争年份的相对幅度相似。鉴于 17 世纪低地国家无所不在，战争导致的死亡率非常稳定，而不是急剧中断。战争的经济影响可能会长期发挥作用，而不是由突然的大量死亡率飙升造成的快速结构变化所驱动。