Abstract
Using methods and themes from Charles Tilly’s work, this paper presents a number of propositions related to empire-to-state transformation. We argue that variations in national state development from imperial metropole origins can be explained, at least in part, by variations in imperial administration, finance, development, identity, and inequality. Capacity is a critical determinant of the results of state transformation, while decisions about finance and investment are both economic and political. Identity and inequality are inextricably linked to empire, and our exploration of these concepts demonstrates that they are the outcomes of variable processes linked to concrete, if inadvertent, lines of imperial decisions.
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Notes
There is one piece that explicitly addresses empire: Tilly’s introduction to Barkey and von Hagen (1997). Like many of Tilly’s articles, there are enough questions and suggestions for empirical research there to exhaust a graduate program for a decade.
Nation-states are, according to Tilly (1992), a rare subset of national states. A primary characteristic of nation-states is the shared linguistic, religious, and symbolic identity among the inhabitants, which is not necessary, and even rare, among national states. As Tilly himself does, we use the term “state” as short hand for “national state” from this point on.
See especially Tilly (1994b). We begin to see the cost of generality of definition here. Tilly engaged in a career-long “dialectic” regarding the historical development of modern macrosocial political structures, and when he talks about state transformation here he implies both national state development as well as the transformation of political authority throughout the history of governance.
See, for example, Reynolds (2006). Obviously, empires vary on any number of axes. Primary classifications begin with historical era (ancient or modern), method of expansion (by land or by sea), region (East Asian, European, Middle Eastern, etc), and duration. Other classifications include “mission” of the empire (land acquisition, prosletyzing , etc), relationship to the periphery (settler, non-settler), and metropolis polity (aristocracy, dictatorship, etc.). A major variable is size, which can be measured any number of ways, including by land mass, population, and economy. Finally, empires may be classified by territorial continuity with major distinctions between continental empires such as the Russian or Chinese, and transoceanic ones such as the British and Spanish. With this in mind, this article focuses on a broadly inclusive form of empire, specifying distinctions only as the relate to significant consequences in national state outcomes.
For a good discussion of the definition of empire with an emphasis on control, see Doyle (1986, pp. 30–47).
More specifically, imperium was associated with the power of the state to make war, providing a nice parallel to the classic Weberian notion of a state. See Richardson (1998).
See Howard (1991, pp. 33–35). Such a view may not be popular. Certainly in the United States, the notion that “manifest destiny” was an imperial project is not fashionable in many circles. A fascinating and very Tillyesque project would analyze why some very successful empires did not consolidate into states (e.g., from the Venetian Empire to an Adriatic Republic).
In some cases, the “empire” was a much better representation of the “state” than was the “nation.” See comments by DeGaulle in Cooper (2005, p. 153).
See Miles (1990). Interestingly, the granting of citizenship may have been a way of increasing the reach of taxation.
Tilly (1992, p. 3) argued that though Britain is often identified as an example of a nation-state, it was, in fact, due to the varied and strongly self-identifying ethnicities within its territory, a national state.
The geography of domination was reversed after 1989. Germany may be the clearest case of an empire creating a state. Prussia’s success in first defeating alternative imperial centers, then co-opting the nationalist sentiment, and, following 1871, imposing itself as prima inter pares, led to the creation of contemporary Germany whose borders would not have appeared at all “natural” or inevitable in 1815.
Similar concerns would prevent using the amount of violence required for rule as an indication of imperialness. Further, the definition does not explicitly exclude such entities as the European Union, Commonwealth of Independent States, or even, arguably, some transnational entities such as the International Monetary Fund.
Thus, the stability of entities such as contemporary Russia may simply come down to whether one can be certain that the process of imperial shrinkage has stopped.
Tilly (1992) notes that “it is all too easy to treat the formation of states as a type of engineering...” (p. 25). “Struggle over the means of war produced state structures that no one had planned to create, or even particularly desired” (p. 117).
An added scholarly benefit to exploring the link between empire and state-building is to vastly expand the number of cases for comparative analysis in the lines of work of Samuel Finer and Michael Mann.
Of course, the organizational capacities of the Europeans, particularly as applied to violence, contributed to empire. The pattern of bureaucracy following empire appears practically universal, however. See Adas (1998).
After a period of domestic strife and foreign aggression the Dominate period saw a shift to a highly centralized and bureaucratic, if despotic, era of rule beginning in 284 AD. See, for example, Luttwak (1979).
For a fascinating comparison between the Roman and Chinese cases and the links between empire and bureaucracy, see Scheidel (2009), particularly the chapter by Rosenstein (2009). The essays in this book suggest that much of the divergent historical progress from the 5th century AD on in the regions covered by the two empires may be explained by their differing administrative structures.
See, for example, Bell (2007).
See Cosgel (2005). Empires could also function with both kinds of administration. The “second” British Empire after the Napoleonic wars featured a variety of models from a simple dependence on traditional leaders to the creation of autonomous professional civil services and the granting of considerable governmental autonomy to regions.
See Centeno (2002) for further development of this idea.
There is a long history of western, particularly British, political discussion of the difference between an “oriental” (Asian) tradition of despotic rule and the western tradition leading to nation-states. See Wittfogel (1957) for a classic treatment. The term is no longer in favor, due, in part, to the rejection of the term “oriental,” to say nothing of the irony of the comparison.
On the problem of anachronistic use of the term “nation” see Scales and Zimmer (2005).
Earlier he discussed “state-led” vs “state-making” nationalism in Durable Inequality (1999, p. 175ff ). It is clear that the top-down model of nationalism is a homogenizing, agglomerating force originating with the political and cultural elites, while the bottom-up model is an individuating force, a form of state-making that creates political identity from popular cultural identity.
The place of African-Americans remained a political problem because they could be neither completely excluded nor included de facto. The already existing Mexican population was small enough as not to present much of a problem.
For Tilly’s discussion of inclusion and exclusion in citizenship and identity politics, see Tilly (1994a). Characteristically, and correctly, Tilly argues that nationality and citizenship are both relational social categories, which only have meaning in respect to others.
For a summary of this discussion, see Scales and Zimmer (2005, pp. 22–23).
See Kier and Krebs, eds., In War’s Wake, forthcoming.
Most famously, in French colonial textbooks, where Africans were taught about “Our ancestors the Gauls.” Achebe (1987) gives an illuminating description in his Anthills of the Savannah.
The three suffered a total of 488,000 dead and wounded in World War I—a struggle that had little geographic salience for any of them. This is much higher than the totals for the US, which had 8 times the population. Perhaps no better example exists of this phenomenon than that of Jans Smuts, who began commanding Boer commandos against the British and ended serving in the (British) Imperial War Cabinets of both world wars.
Or they shift in strategy depending on the situation. the Soviet Union initially celebrated its (supposed) non-ethnic identity, but then switched to a Russian chauvinism in the face of the Wehrmacht, and then slipped back to a more universalistic rhetoric in the 1950s.
Surprisingly, some empires have come close to this. For many of the ethnic groups of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires (and especially those living in “mixed” areas or where they were a minority), imperial membership offered their best political protection.
For how this played in Latin America, see Adelman (2006).
These can be in turn differentiated between those where ethnically defined elite used the empire for their enrichment and those where the empire itself led to the creation of multiethnic imperial elite.
Who was not even ethnically Russian, just as George V was not English.
The original meaning of rossijskij denoted membership in the Russian Empire, but not necessarily ethnicity. During the last half of the nineteenth century, Russian and non-Russian groups began to assert their identities and claims often in reaction to each other, and the appeal of the universality of the empire become more fragile.
See Imber (2004).
This was a consistent pattern through the 400 years of great power status of the Habsburgs. Pagden (2001, p. 44) describes the empire of Charles V (Charles I of Spain) as more a “multinational corporation than a state.”
“All governments, democratic or otherwise, inevitably intervene in the production of inequality. The do so in three distinct ways: by protecting the advantages of their major supporters; by establishing their own systems of extraction and allocation of resources; and my redistributing resources among different segments of their subject populations” (pp. 37–38).
On how categories of social relation, including national identity, play a role in durable inequality, see Tilly (1999).
Beginning with Trajan, however, the Romans were arguably successful in creating an “imperial poeple.” See Cooper (2005, p. 159). By the early third century, the distinction between citizen and non-citizen had largely disappeared with the empire (except, of course, for women and slaves).
The character of Ronald Merrick in the Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet is a perfect example of the type.
Perhaps the clearest indication of his thinking on how to develop a research agenda, particularly on the topic of historical macroprocesses, is Tilly (1984).
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Centeno, M.A., Enriquez, E. Legacies of empire?. Theor Soc 39, 343–360 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-010-9111-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-010-9111-7