Leonid Grinin. ANALOGUES OF THE EARLY STATE

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ANALOGUES ANALOGUES OF OF THE EARLY STATETHE EARLY STATE

© Leonid GrininLeonid Grinin

IUAES, 3-6 October, 2010, Antalya

• 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-statepolities 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.

THE MAIN IDEAS OF THE PRESENTATION

• 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.

POLITOGENESIS AND POLITOGENESIS AND THE STATE FORMATION PROCESSTHE STATE FORMATION PROCESS

• 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 STATETHE 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.

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.

However the early state analogue lacks at least one of the necessary features listed in the early state’s definition.

THE EARLY STATE ANALOGUETHE EARLY STATE ANALOGUE

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.

EARLY STATE ANALOGUES. EARLY STATE ANALOGUES. I have identified the following types I have identified the following types

of analogues:of analogues:

• 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 EXAMPLESTYPES OF ANALOGUES AND EXAMPLES

1. Some independent self-governing communities

• 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

2. Some large tribal alliances with a relatively strong power of a paramount leader


• 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

3. Large ethnic-political (tribal) alliances and confederations: without the ‘royal’ power but with developed social and economic stratification


• Large complex chiefdoms on the Haiti Island• Hawaiian chiefdoms (within the range between 30 000 and 100 000–120 000)

• Scythia in the 6th–5th centuries BCE • The Xiongnu ‘Empire’ (in the 2nd century BCE)

4. The quasi-state alliances of nomads that were large and strong militarily and may have looked like large states

5. Many complex and very large chiefdoms


• 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.

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)


Classification of states and their analogues by their size

There are no recognized stable large ESA

Large ES (the Incas' Empire)

More than3 000 000

Medium-large ESA (polity of Xiongnu, 200 BCE – 48 CE)

Medium-large ES (the early state inPoland, the 11th–14th

centuries)

From 300 000to 1 500 000-

3 000 000

Medium-size ESA(the Aedui, Arverni, Helvetii in pre-CaesarGaul)

Medium-size ES (the Hawaiian state in the 19th cent.)

From 50 000to 300 000

Small ESA (Iceland in the 10th

century)

Small ES (typical city-states of Central Mexico at the eve of the Spanish Conquista)

From 15 000 to 50 000

The smallest ESA(Tribal confederations of the Tuareg)

The smallest ES (some Greek poleis)

From 5000 to 15 000

Early state analogue Early state analogue (ESA) type and its (ESA) type and its

examplesexamplesEarly state (ES) type and Early state (ES) type and

its examplesits examplesPolityPolity sizesize((populationpopulation))

• 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 ANALOGUESWays of the development of analogues:

1) from the evolutionary pre-state level, e.g.,through synoikismós. 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).

THE PATHWAYS OF ANALOGUES Stateless polity may transform into a state

from the following levels:

Within the the ‘‘horizontalhorizontal’’ modelmodel 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 TWO MAIN TYPES OF THE PATHWAYS TO STATEHOODOF THE PATHWAYS TO STATEHOOD

Within the the ‘‘verticalvertical’’ modelmodel the state formation took place in a direct way, i.e. directly from small pre-state polities to a primitive state.

primitive states

small pre-statepolities

statesearly state analogues

small pre-statepolities

‘‘VERTICALVERTICAL’’MODELMODEL

‘HORIZONTALHORIZONTAL’’MODELMODEL

TWO MAIN TYPES TWO MAIN TYPES OF THE PATHWAYS TO STATEHOODOF THE PATHWAYS TO STATEHOOD

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.

SPECIAL CONDITIONS SPECIAL CONDITIONS OF EARLY STATE FORMATIONOF EARLY STATE FORMATION

The state formation is connected with sharp changes of habitual life and/or the necessity of new decisions and reforms including:

• 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 SPECIAL CONDITIONS OF EARLY STATE FORMATION

N < 100 000

N > 100 000

100000 < N < 1500000

the widest possibilities for the competition of alternative political forms

the possibilities of competi-tion of such form begin to de-crease sharply

transformation into a larger and more complex analogue

degeneration

transformation into a state

THE COMPETITION OF ALTERNATIVE THE COMPETITION OF ALTERNATIVE POLITICAL FORMS POLITICAL FORMS

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 CONDITIONS OF PRESENCE OF MEDIUM-LARGE STATE ANALOGUES

Up to 1,5-3 millions people

• 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).

THE COMPETITION OF ALTERNATIVE THE COMPETITION OF ALTERNATIVE POLITICAL FORMS POLITICAL FORMS

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Thank you for attention!Thank you for attention!

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Leonid Grinin. ANALOGUES OF THE EARLY STATE