"It is really quite hard for ancient or medieval armies to do meaningful long-term damage to an agricultural economy; farmers flee, crops are hard to destroy and in any case armies can’t do anything to the land itself. [...] Even a sustained collapse might mean something like only a 25% reduction in total production; by contrast Liberia lost 90% of its GDP in just six years of internal warfare from 1989 to 1995."
Now, I could pick some nits with that: crops are not that hard to destroy. But that just results in a few years of famine. On the other hand, a proper counterexample would be the Thirty Years War, but I don't know what the actual long term consequences for the northern German economy were.
Now, I could pick some nits with that: crops are not that hard to destroy. But that just results in a few years of famine. On the other hand, a proper counterexample would be the Thirty Years War, but I don't know what the actual long term consequences for the northern German economy were.