[As anyone who has followed this blog since its inception (has anyone?) will know, I have long been interested in the issue of the post-imperial state in the West, and indeed whether or not the polities that existed in c.650 can be considered to be states. Having wrestled with this issue for a decade, I have finally come up with a discussion and definition with which, provisionally at least, I am pretty happy and which I can use to gove focus to the chapters (some of which I have written) on administration, taxation, military service, the law and so on. So far it is under-referenced and the text itself doubtless needs revision and more depth and detail - it is very much a first draft, even if - I hope - a first draftof the final version, but I hope it might be of interest and possibly provide a basis of discussion. My plan is that Part 2 of the book (The End of Western Antiquity: The Transformationsof the Year 600) will pick up on some of these points to reconsider a more idealist explanation, that will stress the elements of the performative, and subjectification more heavily, and so revise the materialist explanation provisonally set out at the end of part 1.]
The first part of this book
concerns the changing relationships between those who held political power at
the centre – kings and their senior palatine officials – and people in the
myriad local and regional communities, often nested within each other, that
made up post-imperial western polities. This is a dynamic relationship that
must be looked at from the perspective, or perhaps cluster of perspectives, of
both core and periphery. On the one hand a polity needs to be able to make its
writ run throughout its territory, at least to some extent, if it is to have
any claim to a real existence as something more than a convenient geographical
description. On the other hand, the local communities cannot be held in place
within a polity by force alone. The consent of those communities to their
incorporation in the state is at least as important. The relationships between
central and local society can be seen as a tension between the ‘top-down’ – the
government’s ability to, in Jan Glete’s words, ‘penetrate local society from
above’ – and the ‘bottom-up’ – the desire, or even need, of local communities
to be incorporated in the polity.[1]
We will see that fairly profound changes in these relationships occurred in
western Europe between the mid-sixth and mid-seventh centuries.
The existence, or otherwise, of
states in the early medieval West was much debated around the turn of the
second millennium. That debate now seems generally to have subsided, having
resulted in its seeming settlement in favour of the proposition: there were
states in the west. This book argues against this consensus. The idea that
early medieval polities can be classed as states seems to result from some
rather muddled thinking and unhelpful basic assumptions, and frequently
contradicts the definitions of a state offered, where they have been proposed.
It seems reasonable to suspect that a principal reason for the popularity of
the notion that early medieval Europe was a region of states is to be sought in
justifiable opposition to the persistent idea that the early middle ages were a
period of backwardness, lawlessness and anarchy: the Dark Ages. On the
contrary, runs the argument, early medieval kingdoms were often complex and cohesive
political units. There will be no dissent from that proposition here. However,
political complexity and cohesion are neither the exclusive preserve nor the
sufficient definition of a state.
As we will see, it is easy to
overemphasise the role of coercion and force in the creation of a state.
Indeed, a government’s reliance upon coercion and military action to prevent
the break-up of its territorial jurisdiction is usually held to be symptomatic
of its failure. As Cicero had said, many centuries earlier, ‘nor is there any
military power so great that it can last for long under the weight of fear’.[2]
However, more recent scholarship has in some regards gone to the other extreme
and laid too heavy an emphasis upon the ‘bottom-up’ aspect mentioned: the
willingness of local elites and others to ‘buy into’ incorporation within a
realm. As mentioned, such consensus is essential and as Braddick has argued in
a discussion of the early modern English state, emphasis on the ‘top-down’, on
state institutions, on coercion and imposition masks much of the historical
reality or lived experience of states.[3]
The success of early medieval regimes
in ensuring that local holders of power bought into their legitimacy surely
produced politically coherent kingdoms or polities (to use more descriptively
neutral terminology) but – as mentioned – a politically coherent polity is not
necessarily a state. Nor is the eternal retreat of the term down the political
chain of command – to lordships[4] – a
solution; logically we could retreat yet further, ultimately to Germanic
Hausherrschaft or Roman patria potestas.
Defining and debating
the State
Obviously, this discussion hangs
on the issue of what one means by the term ‘state’. Why does it matter if a
late antique polity was or was not a state? After all, the concept of the
state, in a recognisably modern sense, did not exist in late antiquity. This is
not in itself a strong argument; after all most of our modern analytical
concepts – gender being the most obvious example – would be alien to systems of
thought in the period under discussion, without them thus being rendered
analytically worthless. The question nevertheless remains as to whether the
concept of the state has similar analytical value. My contention is that, if
rigorously defined, the term does allow us to distinguish some polities of a
particular type – of a certain governmental complexity – from others. This in
turn helps in thinking about change over time. Use of the term ‘the state’ has
semantic baggage, which cannot be avoided. Whether one likes it or not, the
term is haunted by the concepts encapsulated in its usual definition, and this
makes it difficult to use in situations where the images it conjures are
incongruous. The term ‘state’ also implies the concept of ‘not-a-state’. This
is a problem for those who have wanted early medieval kingdoms to be classified
as states for in most cases it is difficult to imagine what sort of polity
would not count as a state if western European realms after 600 do generally
qualify as such.
My concern is not to create a
typology of different types of political organisation, or sub-types of
generally-used terms. Past discussions have created such sub-categories as
stages in political development – tribe, chiefdom, state – through which
societies have moved. Others have proposed essentially teleological
sub-categories such as ‘proto-state’ or ‘early state’. I wish simply to delineate
a broad category of ‘the state’, into which states of all types might be
grouped, in distinction from an equally broad, if not broader, set of polities
that are not states. I will then use the category as a means of describing
what, in my understanding, happened to western European government between
c.550 and c.650. It should not be imagined that I invest the term with ethical
or moral significance.
Such an agenda brings us to the
problem of definition. Within the voluminous scholarly literature on the nature
of the state, most definitions converge on a number of issues. Michael Mann
defined a state thus:
The state is a differentiated set
of institutions and personnel embodying centrality, in the sense that political
relations radiate outwards to cover a territorially demarcated area, over which
it claims a monopoly of binding and permanent rule-making, backed up by
physical violence.[5]
Mann also argued that a state had
to control all four of his sources of social power: ideological, economic,
military, and political. He also, interestingly, completely skipped over the
period that concerns this volume. Nevertheless, he does say that some
post-imperial states existed but that they were small and short-lived.[6]
By comparison, at the heart of John
Haldon’s definition, taken from a work written at least in part explicitly to
counter Mann’s modified Weberianism from a Marxist perspective, is:
[A state is] ‘a set of
institutions and personnel concentrated spatially at a single point and
exerting authority over a territorially distinct area.[7]
To take a third definition, Chris
Wickham’s definition of the state turns on five things: [8]
1.
The centralization of legitimate enforceable
authority (justice and the army)
2.
The specialisation of governmental roles with an
official hierarchy which outlasted the people who held official position at any
one time;
3.
The concept of public power …;
4.
Independent and stable resources for rulers;
5.
A class-based system of surplus-extraction and
stratification
This definition tallies
reasonably well with those of other thinkers, including those who work on the
middle ages, such as Susan Reynolds. It is broad enough to encompass a range of
state forms, but also strict enough to rule out other forms of complex
political organisation. Yet, if the definitions given by Mann, Haldon and
Wickham are uncontroversial, they apply badly to western Europe after c.600, as
will be seen in the succeeding chapters.
However, rather than employ a
single definition based on a series of attributes, in a ‘check-box’ fashion, I will
use some of the issues around which discussions of the state tend to converge
as what one might call ‘discursive spaces’. Partly this is to avoid the
problems involved in all ‘criterion-bundle’ types of definition, of whether all
or, if not, how many of the criteria need to be satisfied for a polity to
qualify as a state, or of whether all are of equal weight, and so on. It evades
a potentially Manichaean dualism between states and non-states. Partly, too,
this is because these areas of discourse were, insofar as I can determine,
spaces of the political in late antiquity as in other periods and did not stop
being such when a polity reached a particular level of governmental complexity.
In other words, the state is always in tension. They do not define a
state but they are the conditions of its possibility. The state is – to some
extent at least – in perpetual renegotiation and constituted by that
renegotiation. A polity might be counted as a state as and when the various
areas of discourse tend towards acceptance of, or acquiescence in, government
and administration of a particular sort.
Subjectification: circuits
of the political
This feature will be dealt with
in more depth in the second half of the present book but it needs some
preliminary introductory discussion here. Most crucial in defining the
existence of the state is the way in which, the regularity with which, and
how far down into society, people are called into being – or interpellated – as
subjects of a particular government. What interpellation means is the process
by which a person is identified as occupying, and compelled to take up or speak
from, a particular subject position, in our case as a member of a polity. Such
interpellations are inevitably political, whether the person in question is
summoned before a court, called upon to pay imposts to, or to perform services
for, the state or required to enact the state’s justice, collect dues, or
organise requisitions of goods or labour. When communities assemble – or are
assembled – in the course of a polity’s governance, their members are
interpellated into a specific political position. In all such situations, we
are confronted with the negotiation of the relationships between the polity’s
citizens (constituted as such) or between the government and officers of the
polity and those citizens.[9]
The different ways in which these
subject positions are created, called forth, or interact can be called circuits
of the political: they are the conduits through which political power flows. They
are the means by which communication and negotiation take place; they are the
arenas within which political acts take place. They can run ‘vertically’ down
from the central government, via its officers to the ordinary citizens in its
different regions or localities, or they may operate in a more ‘horizontal’
fashion within the communities of various types and levels within a polity. A
rural community within which taxes or other dues are paid and perhaps organised
– which might, indeed, be defined by its fiscal obligations – could form such a
circuit. The wealthier land-owners or aristocracy of a region might form
another, as might the community of state officers. Other circuits might be
configured slightly differently, such as between the local representatives of
the government and the people they govern (envisaged here as all being part of
a particular political community), or between wealthy patrons and their
clients, or between a polity’s officers and the aristocracy of an area. The key
issue is the way in which their position as the member of a polity determines
the subject position taken by the individuals involved in these circuits. One
might suggest that such circuits are most extensive and are activated most
frequently in polities that we might categorise unproblematically as states. We
might, furthermore, propose that in those circumstances, while the legitimacy
of state power is constantly negotiated, it is generally accepted.
Office-holding and
local government
Though often seen as less
important than the control of force or legitimate violence, the issue of the
role of office-holding in the establishment of legitimate local authority is
possibly more central to the definition of statehood. On what basis is
legitimate power exerted in the localities? In some ways the basis of the
authority is more important here than its effectiveness. It is really in this
area of local government that the intersection of different circuits of power
is located. It would not be controversial to argue that, in a state, legitimate
authority belongs to the office and not to its holder, and that the deployment
of the power invested in such an office for an official’s personal ends is
frequently decried as an abuse. In practice, this might be tolerated to a
certain degree; indeed the opportunity to benefit personally from
office-holding is frequently what draws people to seek such positions in the
first place and can thus be the glue that holds a state together. Nonetheless, the
more important point is that when this behaviour appears in political
discourse, the rhetorical vocabulary employed is that of malpractice and
corruption. It is in this area of the political that the importance of the
existence of a public sphere, separate from the private,[10]
is made manifest. In this context, the tenure of these positions and the
systems whereby appointments to posts are made are of crucial significance.
Ideally, tenure of office and the personnel involved should be determined by
the state. Where an officer cannot in practice be removed from a position or
where the central government in effect has no say over who is appointed to
specific posts in its administration, the extent to which that polity can be
considered as a state would seem to be limited. In those situations the ability
of the government, not simply to have its writ run into the localities but also
to involve the inhabitants in political discourse, would be seriously curtailed.
To use electronic circuitry as a metaphor, important resistors have been placed
in certain points of the political wiring. The flow of political power into
certain parts of the circuitry is controlled or even terminated at the level of
the administration.
Force and violence
Many discussions of the state,
like Mann’s and Wickham’s, rest in part upon the Weberian notion of a monopoly
of legitimate violence and the capability of backing up its jurisdiction with
force. A polity within which the central government did not ultimately have the
sole power to determine which acts of violence were legitimate and which were not,
or which lacked the capacity to punish actions which fell into the latter
category, would have difficulty qualifying as a state by anyone’s definition.
It would also seem perverse to regard as a state a political unit which had no legitimate
access to an armed force with which to pursue its goals in foreign policy or
combat rebellion at home.
Nevertheless, too much weight has
been laid on these issues. The imposition of governmental writ can only ever be
a small part of the definition of a state. After all, a government whose
presence is felt in the localities primarily through the mechanisms of
punishment or repression would today be classed as ‘failing’. Certainly, it
would seem to be losing the consent vital to its cohesion. At the same time, though,
the presence of such coercive force does not in and of itself guarantee the
ability to use it. If an army stands aside in the face of a political coup, or
sides with the rebels, we may witness the failure of a regime – even of a type of regime – but not necessarily the end of a
state, unless the institutions that govern the existence of the army collapse
with it. The latter point has been central to numerous analyses, such as
Althusser’s,[11]
and is one reason for my rejection of definitions based upon the possession of
particular attributes in favour of a discursive definition. Taken together,
these two points highlight the importance of the acceptance of the government’s
legitimacy by its constituent communities, and thus of the discursive approach
to the definition of a state. Nonetheless the potential for the use of
such force is surely a vital area in distinguishing polities that might be
classified as states from those which might not. Even where the subjects of a
realm restrain themselves from certain actions out of fear of the retribution
that the state might (though rarely, if ever, does) visit on them, that
self-governance cannot long exist where the possibility of such punitive action
is absent. Consequently, military service and the raising of armies will be the
subject of one of the following chapters.
Perhaps more importantly than those of legitimate force and coercion,
however, the issues that surround the raising of an army are very significant
in making the existence of the state felt in the localities. This is so whether
we are talking about the levying of manpower by way of conscription, or in the
exaction of military service from those who are held liable to perform it, or
in the extraction of surplus to provision or equip armed forces. In all of
those areas we can see the involvement of the officers of the state in local
communities, making demands upon their manpower and produce. Whether such
processes ran smoothly or not – and perhaps at least as much in the latter case
than the former – they were the focus not simply for the exercise of power by
the state’s officials but for the renegotiation of that power. They could be an
opportunity for officials to exploit their power through ‘bribery and
corruption’ but could equally be occasions when they could act as spokesmen or
intermediaries for the people placed under their jurisdiction and thus extend
their patronage and personal prestige in other ways. In all such situations and
especially when local contingents assembled or when supplies were gathered at a
particular point, the state made itself felt in the lives of its constituents. Such
processes are essential to the flow of power through the ‘circuits of the
political’ discussed earlier.
Taxation and justice
The same points can be made at
least as strongly in relationship to the levying of taxation in its various
forms. The precise nature of the revenue
of the state, whether from taxation or from other, more directly controlled
fiscal resources, seems to me to be less important than the fact that a concept
exists of the state having its own revenues, separate from the private
resources of those that hold power in its name. Where systems of imposts exist,
however, it might be argued that their importance to the definition of a state
consists less in the value or quantity of resources raised than in the process
of their levying. As we shall see in chapter 5, a case can be made that in many
ways the systems of taxation that persisted after the disintegration of the
Western Empire were valued precisely as mechanisms for maintaining the circuits
that connected the centres of power with local communities and that this might
have been important than their role in the collection of revenue. As will be
argued, the raising of taxes opened channels of communication between
government and the governed. It presented opportunities for the renegotiation
of obligations and privileges, for the demonstration of the ability to
intercede with a kingdom’s officers on behalf of a community, or for the
manifestation of political grievance, as well as for the simple operation of
legitimate authority. Frequently, as with the summoning of those liable to
military service, in the collection of fiscal imposts royal government was
performative; state power existed in the process of exaction rather than in the
sums produced.
Perhaps more than anything,
though, the operation of the law and justice are crucial points in the working
of the state as envisaged here and illustrate the importance of the
performative[12]
aspect of state power which I am stressing. The assembly of the law-court is a
classic instance of interpellation. Everyone there occupies a particular subject
position: judge, plaintiff, defendant, third parties, witnesses, or
oath-helpers: even the people who have come merely to watch. Ultimately those
subject positions are defined with reference to the law, manifest in the person
of the judge, and the sources of the judge’s legitimacy: the power vested –
clothed in the person of – the presiding figure. These are the moments of the formal
activation of particular legally-recognised identities and of all sorts of
social relationships – not least kindred relations – that might otherwise remain
dormant. The lawcourts and the administration of justice are, then, possibly the
best laboratory within which to study the operation of our ‘circuits of the
political’ and the extent to which public, state power reaches into local
communities.
Knowledge and state power
The issue of knowledge might at
first sight seem like a strange category with which to think about pre-modern
state power. The flows of knowledge and information are, however, a crucial element
within, to continue my electrical metaphor, the currents of power that run in
both directions around the circuits of the political. State governments are,
however, very often concerned with the collection of information about persons
and communities within their bounds and this can be seen in antique and
medieval contexts, around the globe, as well as in more recent periods. Under
the heading of knowledge, however, I want to include more than simply the
collection of census data or similar. What sorts of knowledge – if any – does a
government require of its officers, and how, if at all, does this a direct
bearing on government? It also matters to consider the uses to which such
knowledge is put. In this regard I cast the net fairly wide: food-provision
during famine; water-supply; emergency relief; feeding the poor; caring for the
needy; the provision of entertainments; and so on.[13]
The other key aspect of this, clearly correlated with the others, is that of what
we might think of as publicity, openness, and access, on the one hand, and
secrecy on the other. What are the limits to the government’s knowledge of its
people, or the people’s of its government? This has become one of the key
aspects of the state in the contemporary world;[14]
does it help us think about pre-modern state governments?
The Agenda of Part 1
The first part of this book
explores the issue of whether the polities that existed during our period can
be considered as states and the extent to which change over time, as well as
variety across space, can be detected in this sphere. It does this first of all
by considering the ways in which the circuits of the political can be detected
in the areas discussed: administration, taxation and the fisc, military service
and the law. After a discussion of the
arenas within which political events might take place the attention moves to
consider other circuits of the political by considering the arenas within which
social exchange took place and a wide range of social relationships and
practices. The focus then moves to religion and the circuits of power that ran through
the church. In the end an image ill be presented of an important period of
change in which, to continue our metaphor, the wiring of western European
polities was crucially altered so that the flows of power that had connected some
areas with the central government were now crucially interrupted or even broken
altogether. Finally provisional explanation will be offered in terms of.
competition for the material resources upon which local and regional power
depended.
[1]
J. Glete, ref.
[2] On Duties, 2.26.
[3] M.J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, 1550-1700 (Cambridge, 2000). My great thanks to my former student Laura Salvage who drew my attention to this, in the course of an undergraduate essay that was a far more hard-hitting critique of my ideas on the state (as they were at that point) than anything I had received from established scholars!
[4]
Reference
[5] M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol.1, p.37.
[6] Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol.1, p.390.
[7] J. Haldon, The State and the Tributary Mode of Production, pp.32-33
[8] C.J. Wickham, The Framing the Early Middle Ages
[9]
I use citizen here in a loose sense to mean all subjects of the state.
[10]
As in Wickham’s definition.
[11] L. Althusser, On Ideology
[12]
Explain performativity. Ref Loxley.
[13]
This aspect of my project is influenced by James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a
State, and also G.R. Trumbull IV, An Empire of Facts.
[14]
In this regard I have been strongly influenced by C. Barbour’s Derrida’s
Secret: Perjury, Testimony, Oath.