IUAES, 3-6 October, 2010, Antalya
ANALOGUES OF THE EARLY STATE Š
Leonid Grinin http://www.socionauki.ru/authors/grinin_l_e/
THE MAIN IDEAS OF THE PRESENTATION • There have been known many polities which differ from the early state significantly in political organization and other characteristics, but are similar to the state in size and complexity. • The most productive path to follow is to recognize such complex non-state polities not as pre-state polities but just as early state analogues. • For a long time one could observe a more frequent emergence not of early states, but of various early state analogues.
POLITOGENESIS AND THE STATE FORMATION PROCESS • The politogenesis should never be reduced to the only evolutionary pathway leading to the statehood. • Analogues of ES can well be regarded as being at generally the same level of sociocultural complexity as the early states. • An analogue of ES after it reaches such a level of sociocultural complexity which permits its transformation into a state may continue its further development without transforming into a state for a very long time.
THE EARLY STATE is a category that is used to designate a special form of political organization of a complex agrarian society that determines its external policy and partly its social order. • ES possesses supremacy and sovereignty (or, at least, autonomy); • ES is able to coerce the ruled to fulfill its demands, to alter important relationships and to introduce new norms, as well as to redistribute resources; • ES is based (entirely or mostly) on such principles that are different from the kinship ones.
THE EARLY STATE ANALOGUE
is a category which is used to designate various forms of complex stateless societies that are comparable to early states with respect to • their size, • sociocultural and/or political complexity, • functional differentiation, • the scale of tasks they have to accomplish. 9 However the early state analogue lacks at least one of the necessary features listed in the early state’s definition.
EARLY STATE ANALOGUES. I have identified the following types of analogues: 1. Some independent self-governing territories (urban, civil or civil-temple communities etc.). 2. Some large tribal alliances with a relatively strong power of a paramount leader. 3. Large ethnic-political (tribal) alliances and confederations without the ‘royal’ power. 4. The quasi-state large and militarily strong alliances of nomads. 5. Very large complex chiefdoms. 6. Some others.
TYPES OF ANALOGUES AND EXAMPLES 1. Some independent self-governing communities • Iceland in the 10th–13th centuries • Some temple-civil communities of ancient Arabia • Certain Greek poleis (e.g., Delphi) • Don or Zaporozhian Cossacks • The Brotherhood of the Coast Caribbean Pirates
TYPES OF ANALOGUES AND EXAMPLES 2. Some large tribal alliances with a relatively strong power of a paramount leader • Some Gallic peoples, particularly in Belgica and Aquitaine (in the 1th century BCE) • The Goths polity in the 4th century CE on the Northern Black Sea coast under Ermanaric • Burgundianes, Salian Franks, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, etc. (in the 5th and 6th centuries CE) • Huns ‘empire’ under Attila in the 5th century CE
TYPES OF ANALOGUES AND EXAMPLES 3. Large ethnic-political (tribal) alliances and confederations: without the ‘royal’ power but with developed social and economic stratification • Some Gaul peoples before Caesar’s conquest in the 1st sent. BCE (Helvetti, Aedui, Sequani) • The Saxons of Saxony before they were conquered by Charles (the end of the 8th century) • Tribal confederations of the Iroquois, the Tuareg, or the Pechenegs • Highland Daghestan federations of communities, jama'ats • The village groups in south-eastern Nigeria, sometimes including dozens of villages
TYPES OF ANALOGUES AND EXAMPLES 4. The quasi-state alliances of nomads that were large and strong militarily and may have looked like large states • Scythia in the 6th–5th centuries BCE • The Xiongnu ‘Empire’ (in the 2nd century BCE)
5. Many complex and very large chiefdoms • Large complex chiefdoms on the Haiti Island • Hawaiian chiefdoms (within the range between 30 000 and 100 000–120 000)
TYPES OF ANALOGUES AND EXAMPLES 6. Other different types • Large and developed polities with indeterminate characteristics, judging by what is known about them, they can be regarded neither as ‘pre-state polities’ nor as states (e.g., The Harappan civilization) • Some secret societies (e.g., among the Mende and Temne in West Africa; and in Melanesia) • Corporate territorial systems (e.g., a community of merchants with its center in the city of Kanish in the early 2nd millennium BCE with its peculiar constitution, organs of self-government, court, treasury, a chain of factories along the trading route connecting Mesopotamia with the Mediterranean and Aegean seas.
Classification of states and their analogues by their size Polity size (population) From 5000 to 15 000 From 15 000 to 50 000 From 50 000 to 300 000 From 300 000 to 1 500 0003 000 000 More than 3 000 000
Early state analogue (ESA) type and its examples The smallest ES The smallest ESA (some Greek poleis) (Tribal confederations of the Tuareg) Small ES (typical citySmall ESA states of Central Mexico (Iceland in the 10th at the eve of the Spanish century) Conquista) Medium-size ES Medium-size ESA (the Hawaiian state (the Aedui, Arverni, th in the 19 cent.) Helvetii in pre-Caesar Gaul) Medium-large ES Medium-large ESA (the early state in (polity of Xiongnu, th th Poland, the 11 –14 200 BCE – 48 CE) centuries) Large ES There are no recognized (the Incas' Empire) stable large ESA Early state (ES) type and its examples
THE PATHWAYS OF ANALOGUES Ways of the development of analogues:
• some had no potential of the transformation into the state (Tuaregs); • their politogenesis was forcibly interrupted (as this happened with the Iroquois, Gual etc.); • many analogues did transform into states, but only after they had achieved a rather high level of complexity and development that was quite comparable with that of many states.
THE PATHWAYS OF ANALOGUES Stateless polity may transform into a state from the following levels: 1) from the evolutionary pre-state level, e.g., through synoikism贸s. This way was typical for some Greek societies, as well as for Mesopotamia in the late 4th and early 3rd millennium BCE; 2) from the level of small state analogues (this way the Great Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan started); 3) from the level of the medium-size state analogues (the Hawaiian Archipelago); 4) even from the level of the medium-large state analogues (Scythia in the early 4th century BCE).
TWO MAIN TYPES OF THE PATHWAYS TO STATEHOOD Within the ‘vertical’ model the state formation took place in a direct way, i.e. directly from small pre-state polities to a primitive state. Within the ‘horizontal’ model we first observe the formation of early state analogues that were quite comparable to the state as regards to their complexity, whereas later those analogues were transformed into states.
TWO MAIN TYPES OF THE PATHWAYS TO STATEHOOD primitive states ‘VERTICAL’ MODEL
small pre-state polities
early state analogues ‘HORIZONTAL’ MODEL small pre-state polities
states
SPECIAL CONDITIONS OF EARLY STATE FORMATION The state formation is connected with sharp changes of habitual life and/or the necessity of new decisions and reforms including: 9 9 9 9 9 9
conquests or military amalgamations; inadequacy of old administration methods; civil confrontation; sharp growth and artificial concentration of population; weakening or discrediting of power with situation of complex problems; some important technological or social innovation etc.
THE SPECIAL CONDITIONS OF EARLY STATE FORMATION
• The special circumstances are requested not only for primary early state formation, but also for almost all secondary and tertiary states. • So if there are no such special conditions, the complex polities may have developed in the forms of analogues of ES for a very long time. • That is why many of analogues transformed into ES very soon after contacts with neighbor states, or its opening by Europeans, borrowing of firearms etc.
THE COMPETITION OF ALTERNATIVE POLITICAL FORMS N < 100 000
the widest possibilities for the competition of alternative political forms
N > 100 000
the possibilities of competition of such form begin to decrease sharply transformation into a larger and more complex analogue
100000 < N < 1500000
degeneration transformation into a state
THE CONDITIONS OF PRESENCE OF MEDIUM-LARGE STATE ANALOGUES Up to 1,5-3 millions people 1. The possibilities of their existence depend directly on the presence of large sedentary civilized neighbors and the early state analogues' ability to compete with them militarily. 2. Sizes, might, and complexity level with respect to the realization of external political functions of the nomadic agglomerations correlated rather tightly with the same characteristics of the interactive states.
THE COMPETITION OF ALTERNATIVE POLITICAL FORMS • For a very long period of time the early state was just one of a few forms of political organization of complex societies. • ES only became typical as a result of evolutionary selection. • However, it is important that it was the state that became finally the leading form of political organization, whereas all the other polity types disintegrated, or got transformed into the states. • Analogues – after state had become a typical form – got significant advantages only in marginal ecological conditions and with less perspective evolutionary economic forms (in particular, with extensive animal husbandry).
Thank you for attention!
http://www.socionauki.ru/authors/grinin_l_e/