Abstract
In my introduction, I argued that as circulating signs of state authority, coins assume a key political dimension. But while the materiality of coins helps to pinpoint these particular objects of inquiry, the more abstract quality of “state” introduces additional complexity for its study. So in order to analyze the relation between coinage and state formation, I should first clarify what I mean by the “state,” which as a key political concept has been a subject of scrutiny within several disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, sociology, political science, and history. Within and across these disciplines, approaches vary: from analyses of the historical development of particular institutions; to comparative studies of states employing different models of governance; to intellectual histories tracing the usage of the term “state,” or the underlying concept, within discourse at various points in time1; to Marxist analyses of the state as a manifestation of class conflict.2 Despite the diversity of definitions and historical accounts of state formation, some common factors do emerge.
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Notes
Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford UP, 1946), 78.
Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1990 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 1.
Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), 18.
Poggi, The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990), 9–10.
Jordan, Shakespeare’s Monarchies: Ruler and Subject in the Romances (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997), 20.
Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume I: A History of Power from the beginning to A. D. 1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986), 26, 22, 24, 25, 27, 37. Braddick draws from Mann his own definition of the state as “a coordinated and territorially bounded network of agencies exercising political power… exclusive of the authority of other political organisations.” State Formation, 9.
Black, Kings, Nobles & Commoners: States & Societies in Early Modern Europe, a Revisionist History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 2.
Political scientists still tend to emphasize state building. See, for example, Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997)
and Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994).
For a recent critical reassessment of Elton’s argument, see Christopher Coleman, “Introduction: Professor Elton’s ‘Revolution,’” Revolution Reassessed: Revisions in the History of Tudor Government and Administration, ed. Christopher Coleman and David Starkey (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 4–11. Although recent scholarship on the state has argued that historians have placed too much emphasis on institutions, especially because of the influence of Elton’s three “points of contact”—court, privy council, and parliament—these institutions remain a key component of state formation. For critiques arguing overemphasis on institutions, see Hindle, State, 21 and Braddick, State Formation, 6.
Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government: Administrative Changes in the Reign of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1960), 3–4, 8, 415. Elton later argues that any attempt to “dethrone the Reformation” as a key factor in the emergence of the sovereign state is untenable. Ibid., 426.
Corrigan and Sayer, Great Arch, 17; Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, Vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), 378. On the various strands of critical reaction to Elton, including the Past and Present debate, see Coleman, “Introduction,” 4–5.
Clanchy, “Does Writing Construct the State?,” Journal of Historical Sociology 15 (2002): 68.
See Skinner, “The State.” Despite the seemingly clear boundaries between these two models of governance, some scholars have observed an operative combination of the two defined by a separation between “absolute” and “ordinary” prerogatives. For example, C. H. Mcllwain interprets in Bracton a distinction between gubernaculum and iurisdictio, the sphere of government according to which the king has “absolute” prerogative, and the sphere of right within which the king had limited power. See Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997), 148.
See also Corinne Comstock Weston and Janelle Renfrow Greenberg, Subjects and Sovereigns: The Grand Controversy over Legal Sovereignty in Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981), 12–32.
Robert Eccleshall, Order and Reason in Politics: Theories of Absolute and Limited Monarchy in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1978), 47, 48.
Ibid., 76; Elyot, The Boke named the Governour (London: J. M. Dent, 1907), 8–9.
Eccleshall, Order, 69; Kantorowicz, King’s, 152. See Henry de Bracton, On the Laws and Customs of England, trans. Samuel E. Thorne (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1968), 2:19.
Saint German, Doctor, sig. K11r; Saint German, An answere to a letter (London, 1535?), sig. G6r-G6v. For another example from John Rastell writing around 1513, see Martin Ingram, “Reformation of Manners in Early Modern England,” The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England, ed. Paul Griffiths, Adam Fox, and Steve Hindle (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996), 55.
Kantorowicz, King’s, 87; Monod, The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe, 1589–1715 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1999), 39–40, 37. James’s supporters employed the two-body theory in Calvin’s Case (1608) to support his attempted unification of England and Scotland. See ibid., 68 and Kantorowicz, King’s, 14–16, 24.
Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (New York: Bedminster, 1968), 1:241, cf. 1:215–16;
Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea, of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 606, 585. Hindle notes the theocratic nature of early modern kingship in which the “divine right of kings was a matter of charismatic authority.” State, 33.
James Tully, Introduction to On the Duty of Man and Citizen by Samuel Pufendorf, ed. James Tully (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991), xviii.
Davies, A History of Money: From Ancient Times to the Present Day (Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2002), 26.
For more comprehensive histories of the mint, see this work as well as C. E. Challis’s A New History of the Royal Mint (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992) and The Tudor Coinage (New York: Manchester UP, 1978).
The double-struck coin was made by engraving one pattern on the head of a punch for the obverse of a coin and another on a die for the reverse side. The design for the reverse typically indicated the coin’s denomination. E. Victor Morgan, A History of Money (Baltimore: Penguin, 1965), 13–14.
Catherine Eagleton and Jonathan Williams, Money: A History (Richmond Hill, ON: Firefly, 2007), 24.
Arthur R. Burns, Money and Monetary Policy in Early Times (London: Keegan Paul, 1927), 75.
Glassner, “An Evolutionary Theory of the State Monopoly over Money,” Money and the Nation-State, ed. Kevin Dowd and Richard H. Timberlake, Jr. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1998), 22–24;
Ure, The Origin of Tyranny (New York: Russell & Russell, 1962), 2; Burns, Money, 82–83. Ure also notes, “It may be more than accidental coincidence that the most anti-tyrannical state in Greece [Sparta] was without a real coinage.” Origin, 24.
Grant, Roman History from Coins: Some Uses of Imperial Coinage to the Historian (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1958), 69.
Spufford, Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988), 9.
Nicholas Mayhew, Sterling: The History of a Currency (New York: Wiley, 1999), xi, 3. The word “shilling” derives from the Saxon sciling, a “piece cut off,” referring to fragments of coins or silver. Under the Roman Empire, the term came to be associated with the Roman solidus. Morgan, History, 18. See also Royal Mint, 25.
Charles Johnson, “Introduction,” The DeMoneta of Nicholas Oresme and English Mint Documents, trans. Charles Johnson (London: Thomas Nelson, 1956), xix-xx.
Brooke, English Coins (London: Methuen, 1950), 176–77.
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© 2011 Stephen Deng
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Deng, S. (2011). Dimensions of State Formation. In: Coinage and State Formation in Early Modern English Literature. Early Modern Cultural Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118249_2
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