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 IBN HALDUN UNIVERSITY
ALLIANCE OF CIVILIZATIONS INSTITUTE

Mart, 2023, 210 Sayfa
Bu tez, gerek Avrupa’da, gerekse Osmanlı topraklarında modern ulus-devletlerin nasıl oluştuğuna ilişkin özcü yaklaşımların yetersizliği sezgisinden yola çıkıyor. Bir yanda feodal ve diğer yanda gayri-feodal (veya Şark Despotizmi, veya Asya Üretim Tarzı) şeklinde bir ikilem yaratıp, sonraki bütün gelişmeleri, değişmez olduğu farzedilen bu kalıplardan türetmek veya çıkarsamak gibi Avrupa-merkezci eğilim hep varoldu. Bu, esas itibariyle tek-faktörlü bir perspektif. Tarihin koşullu, çok-faktörlü gelişimini gözardı ediyor. Buna karşı, katı determinist olmayan; kazalara, tesadüflere, çeşitli aktörlerin (kendi açılarından) hatâlarına da yer açan ve pay tanıyan bir tarihsel sosyolojiden yanayım. Bu çerçevede, gerek Batı ve gerekse Doğuda fiyefe (timara) dayalı devletlerin kurulmuşluğu temel tarihsel gerçekliğinden yola çıkıp, bundan sonra gelişen farklı iktidar biçimlenmelerine uzanmaya çalışıyorum. Bu başlangıcın üzerine, bir, Askerî Devrimin modern devlete geçiş üzerindeki etkisini ekliyorum. İki, Milliyetçiliğin mevcut kaplara yeni içerik doldurmak suretiyle modern devleti ulus-devlete dönüştürücü etkisini ekliyorum. Üç, emperyalizmi ve sömürgeciliği devreye sokarak, Avrupa dışında bu süreçlerin nasıl cereyan
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ettiğini görmeye çalışıyorum. Böyle bir karşılaştırmalı egzersizin, medeniyet araştırmalarında önemli bir yeri olması gerektiği kanısındayım.
Anahtar kelimeler: karşılaştırmalı tarih, Avrupa merkezcilik, medeniyetler, batı medeniyeti, osmanlı imparatorluğu.

This thesis starts from a dissatisfaction with essentialistic approaches to the formation of modern nation-states in Europe and across the former territories of the Ottoman Empire. There has always been a Eurocentrist tendency to create a dichotomy of feudalism vs non-feudalism (or Oriental Despotism, or the Asiatic Mode of Production), and to derive or deduce all subsequent development from these supposedly unchanging identities. This is a fundamentally monocausal perspective. It overlooks the contingent, multifactoral unfolding of history. Against it, I follow a historical sociology that is not strictly deterministic, but allows for accidents, including mistakes on the part of (and from the perspective of) the various actors involved. Thus an attempt is made to look beyond the basic historical fact of fief-based states in both East and West, to the different power configurations resulting therefrom. To that beginning, I add, first, the impact of the Military Revolution on the genesis of the modern state. Second, I add the impact of Nationalism, filling up existing containers with new content to go from the modern state to the nation-state. Third, by bringing in imperialism and colonialism, I try to go outside Europe to see what happened elsewhere. This kind of comparative exercise is a valid sub-field for civilization studies.
Key words: comparative history, eurocentrism, civilizations, western civilization, ottoman empire.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the individuals who have substantially contributed to the successful completion of my PhD dissertation.
Before anything else, I would like to thank my advisor, Prof Dr. Halil Berktay, for his unwavering counsel, invaluable support, and exemplary mentorship throughout my academic journey. I am grateful for his expertise, patience, and commitment in providing me with the necessary resources and instruments to succeed in my research endeavors. I would also like to thank all the other members of my committee, namely Dr. Ercüment Asil, Dr. Önder Küçükural, Assoc. Prof. Akşin Somel, and Dr. Mehmet Mert Sunar for their constructive criticism and insightful comments that have significantly improved the quality of my work.
Special thanks are due to Dr. Vahdettin Işık, Director of the Alliance of Civilizations Institute, not only for his academic support but also for helping me and my family find a home in Istanbul. We have always felt that we are members of Işık’s family. More special thanks go to the Secretary of the Institute, Ms. Esra Pusat, for constantly keeping me on track, reminding me of all relevant deadlines, and correcting some crucial mistakes in preparing my thesis documentation.
I am also grateful to many other members of the Alliance of Civilizations Institute, including Prof. Alparslan Açıkgenç, Prof. Miriam Cooke, Prof. Dr. Bekir Karlığa, Prof. Bruce Lawrence, Prof. Recep Şentürk, and Assoc. Prof. Nagihan Haliloğlu for their invaluable support and assistance since I joined the Institute. Their contributions have assisted me enormously in expanding my knowledge, refining my skills, and gaining a deeper comprehension of my field of study.
I cannot express enough gratitude for my family's unconditional love, unwavering support, and unending encouragement. My parents have always been my role models, and their unwavering support and direction has been crucial to my academic success. My wife Fatuma Ibrahim Shaykh Teha deserves extraordinary thanks for supporting the family alone during all my study stays away from home. I am indebted to my children Aymen Ibrahim, Hiba Ibrahim and Aya Ibrahim. They have been my constant source of motivation and inspiration throughout my academic journey.
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I would also like to express my appreciation to my fellow students and colleagues, who have been a source of inspiration and motivation over all these years. Their presence has enriched my life. I have survived through their encouragement, support, and feedback. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Huthaifah Busuulwa, who has always provided me with invaluable guidance and advice.
Once more, I would like to express my deep appreciation and gratitude to everyone who has supported and encouraged me throughout my academic voyage. Without your unwavering support and guidance, I could not have achieved this result.
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TEŞEKKÜRLER
Doktora tezimi başarıyla tamamlamama büyük katkıda bulunan herkese derin şükranlarımı sunarım.
Herşeyden önce, tez danışmanım Prof. Halil Berktay’a, akademik yolculuğum boyunca esirgemediği tavsiyeleri, paha biçilmez desteği ve örnek yolgöstericiliği için teşekkür borçluyum. Araştırma çabalarımda gerekli kaynak ve enstrümanları bana kazandırmada gösterdiği uzmanlık, sabır ve adanmışlık hakkında ne desem azdır. Aynı şekilde, jürimin diğer üyelerine, Dr. Ercüment Asil, Dr. Önder Küçükural, Doç. Akşin Somel ve Dr. Mehmet Mert Sunar’a da, çalışmamı iyileştirmemi sağlayan olumlu eleştiri ve sağlam yorumları için burada teşekkür ediyorum.
Medeniyetler İttifakı Enstitüsü Direktörü Dr. Vahdettin Işık’a, akademik desteğinin ötesinde, ailemle benim İstanbul’da kendimize bir ev bulmamızı ve kurmamızı sağladığı, bizi kendi ailesinin bir parçası gibi gördüğü ve hissettirdiği için de özel bir teşekkür borçluyum. Keza Enstitü Sekreteri Sn. Esra Pusat’a da, beni sürekli koruyup kolladığı, yoldan çıkmamı önlediği, uymam gereken bütün kritik tarihleri hatırlattığı, tez sunuş belgelerimi hazırlarken düştüğüm hatâları bir bir düzelttiği için özel bir teşekkür borçluyum.
Medeniyetler İttifakı Enstitüsü’nün daha pek çok öğretim üyesinin de üzerimde büyük hakkı var. Bu bağlamda, Prof. Alparslan Açıkgenç, Prof. Miriam Cooke, Prof. Dr. Bekir Karlığa, Prof. Bruce Lawrence, Prof. Recep Şentürk ve Doç Nagihan Haliloğlu’na da, Enstitü’ye katılmamdan itibaren gösterdikleri yardım ve destek için; ufkumu genişleten, becerilerimi keskinleştiren ve çalışma alanıma ilişkin kavrayışımı derinleştiren katkıları için teşekkürlerimi sunarım.
Ailemin koşulsuz sevgisi, sarsılmaz desteği ve tükenmez teşvikine şükran borcumu ifade edecek sözcüleriise bulamıyorum. Annem ve babamı hep örnek aldım; bana sürekli arka çıkmaları ve yol göstermeleri, akademik başarım açısından tâyin edici oldu. Eşim Fatuma İbrahim Şeyh Teha, evden uzak kaldığım bütün çalışma dönemlerim boyunca ailemizi tek başına çekip çevirdi; kendisine nasıl teşekkür edeceğimi bilemiyorum. Akademik yolculuğum boyunca ilham ve teşvik kaynağım, çocuklarım Aymen Ibrahim, Hiba Ibrahim ve Aya Ibrahim oldu.
Bütün bu yıllar boyunca bana destek ve ilham veren öğrenci arkadaşlarım ve meslekdaşlarımın varlığı hayatımı zenginleştirdi; zorlukların üstesinden, onların desteği, teşvikş ve geri dönütleri
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sayesinde gelebildim. Bu bağlamda, değerli rehberliği ve tavsiyelerini hiç esirgemeyen Dr. Huthaifah Busuulwa’ya da teşekkürlerimi sunuyorum.
Tekrar, beni bu akademik yolculuğumda destekleyen ve teşvik eden herkese derin sevgi ve teşekkürlerimi sunmak isterim. Sizler olmasaydınız bu sonuca ulaşamazdım.
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Table of Contents
APPROVAL PAGE iii
ACADEMIC HONESTY ATTESTATION v
ÖZ vi
ABSTRACT viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
Table of Contents xiii
CHAPTER ONE 1
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER TWO 13
THE QUESTION OF “FEUDALISM”: FIEF-BASED STATES 13
AND POWER CONFIGURATIONS IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE 13
2.1. Introduction 13
2.2. A peculiar sequence: First Rome, and then Medieval Europe 13
2.2.1. Rome and the Mediterranean 14
2.2.2. Complexity and impending collapse 15
2.3. People's condition in Late Antiquity 16
2.4. The Age of Migrations 17
2.5. The Dark Ages 18
2.6. The Middle Ages and the new peasant economy 21
2.6.1. Medieval agriculture 22
2.6.2. From fiefs to (European) feudalism 24
2.6.3. From a semi-tribal free-for-all, to a semblance of order 26
2.6.4. Separating the general from the specific 27
2.7. The historical context of Dark Ages fief-distribution 29
2.7.1. How these Germanic fief-systems were shaped 30
2.7.2. Warfare, knights, fiefs 32
2.7.3. The further impact of civil wars and succession crises 34
2.7.4. Feudal monarchies 35
2.7.5. From feudal to national monarchies 37
2.7.6. The special position of Medieval towns and cities 38
2.8. The emergence of representative assemblies 39
2.9. The demise of feudalism as a variety of the fief-based state 41
2.10. Estates and aftermath 41
CHAPTER THREE 45
THE QUESTION OF OTTOMAN “NON-FEUDALISM”: 45
THE TIMAR SYSTEM AND THE SULTANIC STATE 45
CHAPTER FOUR 72
THE MILITARY REVOLUTION, AND CHANGING 72
POWER CONFIGURATIONS IN EUROPE AND THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 72
CHAPTER FIVE 104
THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 104
CHAPTER SIX 134
IMPERIALISM AND COLONIALISM: 134
NATIONALISM OUTSIDE EUROPE 134
6.1. Introduction 134
6.2. Colonialism and imperialism 138
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6.3. The debate over reforms and good intentions 141
6.4. Information and public opinion 143
6.5. Models and modalities of imperial rule 144
6.6. Imperialism and racism 146
6.7. Anti-imperialist struggles within Europe amid rising nationalism 148
6.8. Irish nationalism: a peculiarly strong example 150
6.9. Dreams of a glorious imperial past as ambition for anti-colonialism 155
6.9.1. The Balkan wars of independence 156
6.9.2. The Greek Megali Idea 158
6.9.3. Other imperial dreams in the Balkans 159
6.10. European imperialism outside Europe 162
6.10.1. British imperialism: A case of modern European colonialism 162
6.10.2. The civilizing missions 164
6.10.3. Race ideology and colonialism 170
6.10.4. Threats and public support to colonial efforts 171
6.11. Anti-colonial efforts and ideological implications 172
6.11.1. African anti-colonialism and continuing struggles 177
6.11.2. Where are the independence struggles and their result? 178
6.12. Conclusion 180
CHAPTER SEVEN 182
CONCLUSION 182
REFERENCES 187
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
This thesis started out as an inquiry into the comparative role of Islam in the Turkish and Ethiopian patterns and processes of nation-building and modernization. In time, as I came to understand the need for deeper background knowledge, my focus moved mentally “backward” to grasping the basic building blocks involved in the formation of modern states in the West vs. the Rest, or in Medieval Europe as a proxy for the West versus the Ottoman Empire as a proxy for the East. I found myself reading heavily in (a) the historical sociology of traditional agrarian states and societies; (b) Early Modern changes in warfare and their impact on the rise of the modern state; (c) nationalism; (d) the impact of nationalism on multi-national empires both inside and outside Europe; and (e) coming out of all this, what I see now as different and yet converging paths to the “nationalization” of the modern state. In a way, this may be considered as a lengthy introduction to (or preparation for) what I had originally intended, and which, I now realize, I was not ready for when I first started on this project.
And yet, what I have ended up with is probably closer to the spirit of Civilization Studies. For what I now have is a better study of contrasting civilizational patterns and trajectories. The present text seeks to investigate the power dynamics and societal structures in cash-based and fief-based states in Medieval Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and similar or comparable social formations. It tries to explore the different power configurations resulting from these basic types of state, and how these power configurations in turn had a transformative impact on the potential for or emergence of modernity. Hence there could be in it elements capable of contributing to further advances in civilizations theory - by engaging in broad trans-regional and cross-cultural comparisons.
In a path-breaking new approach to world history that entails a major effort to break away from Eurocentrism, Clive Ponting (2000:3) has noted that societies acquire greater civilizational distinctiveness at elite levels and elite texts. Conversely, as we go further and further down the social scale, the more similar do they appear. It is with these basic structures that I begin. I try to
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combine empirical history with social theory. If there is going to be a state, first there has to be an economy capable of surplus production in order to sustain this state. This means reminding ourselves of the universality of peasant economies and societies. Secondly, if there is going to be a state, there must be a sustainable state apparatus. That is to say, there must be what Jared Diamond (1997:89-90) refers to as non-economic specialists, i.e. specialists in governance, administration and warfare. There must, in other words, be a ruler (a king or sultan), and around him and below him, an army, a central administration, and a provincial administration (comprising a hierarchy of governors and sub-governors or their equivalent). In fact, as described by Ponting (2000:143), this was just about what early states had:
The functions of these early states and empires were extremely limited. They had only very small bureaucracies to carry out government functions, and there was often little distinction made between the activities of the ruler’s private household and the state. Their main aim was to collect taxes and maintain an army for external and internal control.
Then the key question becomes remuneration. All people in these and similar positions must somehow be compensated for their work and loyalty. Most fundamentally, as semi-tribal war-leaders grow through chiefs into founders of dynasties, they have to be able to hold on to their fighting force, whether (like themselves) of a semi-tribal or a more orderly nature. Up to some point, this can be done by customarily redistributing movable booty. This can be done relatively easily as long as we are talking of small communities and small spaces. But when the spoils of war acquire the form of territory, or land with peasants living on it and cultivating it, a new form of institutionalization becomes necessary.
So the question of how to pay for the state apparatus becomes crucial. In turn, this gives rise to a broad contrast between cash-based states and fief-based states. As generally noted, and further argued by Halil Berktay (1987), it depends on (a) the level of monetization, and (b) transport and communications technology. In brief, modern states are cash-based states because the existence of a developed market economy, where money is the accepted medium of exchange and there is plenty of it in circulation, enables them to collect cash taxes and pay cash salaries. In contrast, most pre-modern states in Antiquity or the Middle Ages were unable to do so. Instead, they had to rely on payment by land or payment through grants of tax collection rights. Thus they gave rise to the fief-based state. Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China and India, the Middle East, Byzantium,
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Medieval Europe, the Islamic Caliphate or subsequent Turkish-Islamic states all fall in this category because sooner or later, in some way or another, they created and ran a fief system. As Ponting (12000:145) puts it with regard to the common morphology and pattern of Early Empires in Eurasia:
In new empires the initial rulers had to solve three linked problems -- how to reward their followers, how to control the newly conquered areas and how to maintain an army. The solutions had to be based on a fundamental constraint -- land was almost the only asset and form of wealth. The solutions adopted were nearly always the same -- the grant of conquered land to individuals within the elite so that they could use it to support a given number of soldiers to be provided to the ruler when required. (This system is called ‘feudalism’ in European history but it is merely one form of a phenomenon that was common across Eurasia for several millennia.)
What is interesting here is that Ponting takes note of both a general category and also differences within it. In one way, these conditional land grants (or fiefs or fief-systems) are functionally equivalent; that is to say, they fulfill the same basic need or requirement. But this is not to say that they are the “same” in every way. Of course they have differences, and in the course of time, as a result of further development in various geographies and cultural settings, some of these differences become more obvious. As a result, seemingly disparate states, forms of government, and power structures emerge. So when we jump centuries, even a few thousand years ahead, and come to c.1000 – 1500, for large parts of the European Middle Ages we encounter a system of government characterized by relatively weak kings and a strong, hereditary land-owning blood mobility. As Ponting notes, this is what has come to be accepted as “feudalism.” It is taken as equivalent to “decentralization.” In contrast, in more or less the same time period when we look at the Ottoman East, for example, we see relatively strong sultans coupled with the absence of hereditary land-owning blood nobility.
This is a contrast that gives rise to a series of questions, and has attracted the attention of many thinkers throughout the Early Modern and Modern Eras. Why is this so? Why is there such a difference between Medieval Europe as the West and the Ottoman Empire (or China, or India) as the East? Is equating feudalism to the concrete visage of the European Middle Ages a satisfactory conceptualization? Could this concept be softened and broadened, in line with Ponting’s
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suggestion, to include other fief-systems and fief-based states? Alternatively, if feudalism is only and only what existed in the European Middle Ages, what are we going to call (or how should we classify) roughly similar or comparable societies (in the Pontingian sense) outside Europe? Are they also feudal, or non-feudal? If non-feudal, what else can we call them? Can we give them an appropriate name of their own? Furthermore, can this question of feudalism vs. non-feudalism have had something to do with the subsequent emergence (or non-emergence) of capitalism? In other words, is there a necessary connection between feudalism and capitalism? Was it because feudalism existed in Medieval Europe that capitalism was able to come out of it; alternatively, was it the absence of a fertile womb of feudalism in the East that prevented capitalism from being born? More crudely put, was there something in the “nature” of the East that served to block this transition from re-modernity to capitalism or modernity?
These are some of the main questions or problems in this regard that have arisen and been debated at various times at least since Niccolo Machiavelli.1 Such debate has not been smoothly continuous, but has tended to peak at different points, with the way the question is put, as well as the answers given, tending to change over generations. Ernest Gellner (1988:154-170) provides a comprehensive list of such theories developed and argued over time. What is striking is the extent to which the contrast, as perceived at a certain point in time, for example in 1500 (re: the presence/absence of feudalism) or 1850 (re: the presence/absence of capitalism), has tended to be ascribed to a fundamental civilizational difference. It is this enduring supposition that the present thesis proposes to challenge by suggesting the possibility of an alternative, historical explanation -- that is to say, an explanation rooted not in the way essences have deterministically unfolded but in the way actual, concrete history has accidentally happened.
Yet this perspective was not there for a long time. Instead, from a very early date there was a tendency to look for a monocausal explanation. There had to be, so it was thought, an essential difference that was the great secret of history. This was taking place in a Eurocentric and strongly Orientalistic intellectual atmosphere. Furthermore, for a long time legal-political history was
1 As Michael Meeker (2002) notes, in The Prince (1515), Machiavelli compared the Ottoman polity with the French Kingdom, noting that while it was much more difficult to conquer the Ottoman Empire, once conquered it could be held more easily, because there would be no multiplicity of subordinate foci (like European feudal lords) to provide multiple resistances.
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dominant. So from Machiavelli through Montesquieu to Hegel, a whole series of European thinkers sought for the answer in the political sphere. This led to the idea of Oriental Despotism. Already from the 16th to the 18th centuries, the West was said to have had (or developed) limited kingship, unlike the East, which was said to have Oriental Despotism.2 Subsequently, with the further development of an industrial capitalist market economy, attention began to shift from political to economic (and social) history. Economistic explanations became widespread, and in this context it was Karl Marx (1857-1861, 1859, 1867) who came up with a most comprehensive theory of economic determinism. Within his economic base and superstructures model, he tried to find an economic (capitalism-based) explanation for everything. He also applied the same logic to the East; there must have been something different about Oriental societies at the economic level that disabled capitalism. For Marx (1857-1861/1965), this was what he called the Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP). In the West, primitive communism (read: tribal society) had led to the slave mode of production, which had led to the feudal mode of production, out of which had come capitalism. In contrast, in the East primitive communism had evolved only a little into the Asiatic Mode of Production, which then lasted forever, causing stagnation and blockage (until the arrival of dynamic Western capitalism from the outside). So here, Marx was either substituting the AMP for Oriental Despotism, or putting the AMP as an economic base under the political superstructure of Oriental Despotism. But whether political or economic, it was still an essentialist approach.3
After the 19th and early-20th centuries, there was a long interval before the 1960s and 70s, when all these AMP-vs.-feudalism debates came back into mainstream scholarship in a big way. There were several reasons for this. It was a time of decolonization and the search for national development on the part of newly independent Third World countries. This led to explorations in the historical origins of what had come to be called underdevelopment. Simultaneously, within Western Marxism, intellectual circles around the French and Italian Communist Parties were asking similar questions in an attempt to break away from what they regarded as Stalinist models of unilinear development. All this resulted in an explosion of fresh interest in what were broadly
2 For a history of this idea, see, for example, Franco Venturi (1963). This line of thinking has come down to this day in the form of arguments about rights and liberties; see, for example, Ernest Gellner (1994b), as well as John Hall (1986).
3 For two 1980s’ critiques of the Eurocentric and essentialist understanding embodied in the AMP hypothesis, see Brendan O’Leary (1989) and Bula Bhadra (1989).
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referred to as questions of imperialism, underdevelopment, and pre-capitalist modes of production. On the one hand, many anthologies were published on what Marx and Engels had said about the AMP, or the Orient in general. A typical example is Bailey and Llobera eds (1981). On the other hand, in circles of American, English, French and Italian Marxist historians and economists there took place a major debate about the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (so-called).4 This was triggered by a book written by the British Marxist economist Maurice Dobb (1946), which was reviewed by the American Marxist economist Paul Sweezy (1950). Dobb (1950) wrote a rejoinder: others came in, and suddenly, over the 1950s and the 60s there was a pile-up of article after article that created considerable excitement at the time, and may have inspired a few generations of young scholars taking their first steps in the social sciences to turn to history or historical sociology.5 The AMP debate was largely Orientalistic from the start, because people were building so much on Marx’s authority. As for the Transition debate, it was neither explicitly about the East nor about East-West comparisons. Yet it was Eurocentric by implication, first because they were looking at the West all the time and debating just how it was that capitalism had happened in the West, whether it was through the role of big merchant capital or of small producers rising from the ranks to become industrialists. It was all supposed to be within the scope of Marxist theory.
What they missed (in fact, what the AMP theorists also missed) was the Eurospecific nature of the definition of feudalism that everyone was using. As previously indicated, and as will be explored further in Chapter II, like most other agrarian state-societies there had arisen a fief-system in Europe, too, with the first Germanic kingdoms in the Age of Migrations. Then over the next four or five centuries, it developed in a hereditary direction, which as Clive Ponting (2000:145) says was quite general with the Early Empires. Hence by AD 1000 it acquired the decentralized, weak-kings-strong-fief-holders power configuration already mentioned. Much later, in the 19th century, European Medieval historians, who knew only Europe and did not know anything else outside Europe, looked at its familiar face, together with all its concrete, specific, acquired traits, including the powerful hereditary landed nobility, and called all of it feudalism. Otherwise put, it was the
4 For its subsequently collected papers, see R. H. Hilton ed (1976).
5 For some salient contributions, see: Hindess and Hirst (1975), Hindess and Hirst (1977); Paul Q. Hirst (1975); Chris Wickham (1985); Halil Berktay (1987); John Haldon (1993).
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specific Medieval power configuration, and not the basic fact of a fief-system, that was defined and identified as feudalism. This made it very difficult to find anything else that could be recognized and accepted as feudal in the same way. Instead, what happened was a very large category of non-feudalism that came to accompany and complement it. This was what Marx called the Asiatic Mode of Production. It wasn’t really something in itself; it was a residue, catch-all, a by-product of Eurospecific feudalism. It was useless as a way of trying to escape Eurocentrism and Orientalism. For it was just as Eurocentric and Orientalistic as its supposed opposite, Eurospecific feudalism.
Is it possible to get rid of this trap? Is it possible to step outside the Western feudalism vs. Eastern non-feudalism (or AMP) dichotomy? Can both European feudalism, and together with it the Ottoman timar system, be reduced to their bare essentials? This can only be done by taking both the Medieval European and Ottoman power configurations, and marching them back to their origins. This is what I shall be trying to do in Chapters II and III. I am going to pose a double question about these political trajectories: If they both begin with the necessity to distribute land and create a fief-system, just how is it that in one (Medieval Europe) there emerges a weak-kings-strong-fief-holders kind of power configuration -- after which, kings will be trying to recover the rights and prerogatives they have lost. This is an effort that stretches over several centuries. Gradually they succeed in centralizing more and more, and this leads into what is called Absolutism. This European Absolutism makes sense against a background of European Feudalism (or the European type of feudal monarchy). Kings did become more powerful, and they do curtail, subdue and subordinate their nobilities. But they didn’t, they could not, dispossess them (they cannot take away their lands which have become hereditary private property). In the Ottoman Empire, in contrast, the struggle of the center, the sultan, was not to take away the excessive rights and privileges of his fief-holders but to prevent them from developing such rights in the first place -- i.e. to obstruct and delay those tendencies of privatization and hereditization that make such headway in Medieval Europe. So here, perhaps, we cannot say that Absolutism develops against Feudalism. In a sense, Ottoman Absolutism is there from an early stage. Perhaps this is what creates the essentialistic illusion of a timeless Oriental Despotism.
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In any case, in the next two chapters we trace first the rise of the modern state, and overlapping with it the formation of nationalism. Chapter IV is devoted to the question of the Military Revolution and its impact on the birth of the Modern State. This is a topic that has developed over the last seventy years, promoted by some famous historians like Michael Roberts (1955) and Geoffrey Parker (1988). It is argued that in the 16th and 17th centuries, a series of developments in military tactics, training and discipline changed the nature of warfare, which in turn necessitated a corresponding change in state organization, involving especially the spread of universal taxation and modern bureaucracies. We shall summarize the basic ideas of this Military Revolution literature, including how and to what extent it also impacted on the Ottomans in their rivalry with Early Modern European powers.
This brings us to the question of how nationalism and the modern state may be combined in order to understand the formation of nation-states. For purposes of comparison, we may conceive of the Modern State as a form, a structure, a mold -- if you want a “bottle” but without ideological content. We may refer to this ideological content as a principle of authority and legitimation. Its simplest form is subjection and loyalty to a monarch. But why and on what basis? After Europe’s Wars of Religion came to an end in 1648, it was no longer possible to define the relationship between kings and people on the basis of religious or confessional identity. It had to be accepted that now, not only Catholics but Protestants, too, could be equally good and loyal subjects of the King of France. This was also true in countries that had become predominantly Protestant. This partial ideological vacuum was to a large extent filled or repaired by the new ideology of nationalism. In a metaphor that I shall be repeating, it became like “new wine in an existing bottle,” creating a combination now commonly called the nation-state.
In all processes of state-formation, there is a question of land and population. What is going to be the demography of the (new) state? What is going to be the territory of the (new) state? According to Miroslav Hroch (1968, 2015), in European history there have been three paths to achieving this territory and demography of the nation-state:
(1) Continuity and régime change on the basis of already consolidated boundaries in going from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era. In France and England, for example, a compact territory and demography for the future nation-state had already emerged by the end of the Middle Ages. It was on this basis that there took place further political changes (such as the English Civil War of
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1640-48, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, or the French Revolution) that further created and defined the institutions of the modern nation-state.
(2) From medieval fragmentation to modern unification. This second path suggests that some nation-states grew out of a struggle to ameliorate the failures of the Middle Ages regarding the need or the pressure to unite communities with similar linguistic, cultural or territorial characteristics or propensities. It was the struggle to formulate a common destiny that prompted the development of nationalist ideas and the subsequent nation-state. Examples can be found in the German and Italian unifications of the second half of the 19th century.
(3) From large traditional multi-ethnic empires into smaller modern nation-states. This has to with the breakup of Tsarist Russia, Austria-Hungary or the Ottoman Empire as a result of oppositional nationalist movements, culminating with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia as well as the Paris Peace Conference and the various treaties that formally concluded World War I.
These paths were mostly peculiar to the Europe. In particular, the third path had to do with the breakup of three major traditional empires inside Europe. These were not colonial empires. But from the late-19th century onward, there emerged a new wave of overseas imperialism by a number of Western powers. Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands held on to their much diminished holdings. At the other end of the scale, Great Britain and France built or re-built the biggest colonial empires of all. Germany and Italy tried to join them as relative latecomers. On land, Russia expanded eastward across Asia, while the US expanded westward across North America, both at the cost of native peoples and their homelands. In East Asia, Japan arose as the first modern non-European imperialism, expanding especially against China but also Russia. Crucial in this regard was the Scramble for Africa. By around 1900, the territorial division of the world was complete, and most African, Middle Eastern or other Asian countries had been incorporated into these massive colonial empires.
I shall address questions of the relationship and the conceptual difference between imperialism and colonialism in Chapter VI. But what matters is that while in the 19th and early-20th centuries many European nationalisms developed in search of identity and independence in the context of the three major intra-European empires, for most of the 20th and early-21st centuries it was European powers’ overseas colonial empires that framed the rise of nationalist movements and
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ambitions. As a substantial portion of the non-European world became colonized, their path to nation-statehood was linked to their relationship with colonial rulers. This developed into several ideologies of empire and anti-empire which often culminated in anti-colonial struggles. These anti-colonial reactions or struggles developed on combinations of the psychological level, the mental-intellectual level, the political level, and sometimes also the military level (in the form of armed struggle).
In all these ways, whether in 19th century Europe or 20th century non-Europe, the meaning of nation, nationalism, and nation-state became major political and intellectual issues. These questions will all be addressed in Chapter V on Nationalism. What is a nation? What is nationalism? And which comes first? Is it the “objective” presence of the nation that calls forth nationalism as its ideological reflection or superstructure? Or is it nationalism that evolves in the hands of intellectuals, artists, folklorists, ethnographers and historians, and then plays a decisive role in fashioning the nation? As Hobsbawm (1990:4-8) notes, in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, it was the first view or the so-called “objective approach” that prevailed. Studies focused on how to define a nation. Criteria like a common language, a common territory, a common religion, a common economy etc were promoted. Ernest Renan (1882) goes down the whole list, and also shows why it is not satisfactory. Still, the key question was: which peoples can be identified as nations, so that they can be accorded the right to self-determination? Again as Hobsbawm (1990:14-45) demonstrates in an exhaustive treatment of nationalism in a great ge of liberalism, on both the Right and the Left, for Woodrow Wilson as well as Lenin and Stalin, this question of self-determination was central, and that is why the “objective approach” gained such prominence.
Since 1983, however, it is the second or “subjective approach” that has gained ascendancy in nationalism studies. This has developed in the hands of a new generation of scholars, including Benedict Anderson (1983), Ernest Gellner (1983), Hobsbawm and Ranger eds (1983), Eric Hobsbawm (1990) and many others. Gellner, in particular, has been so influential that many edited compilations have been dedicated to exploring his theory.6 In this context, Ernest Renan’s famous 1882 lecture titled “What is a nation?” has also come to be re-interpreted as belonging not really
6 See, for example, John Hall ed (1998).
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to the old objective approach, but through its emphasis on “common experience” as a constructed dimension prefiguring the new subjective approach.
As part of this question of common experience, Chapter VI will return to the question of empires as framing nationalisms and nationalist struggles. Beyond differentiating between intra-European and colonial empires, this is now a matter of looking at empires in general, and not only with a view to anti-imperialism but also with regard to certain practices, patterns, institutions incorporating various smaller units: other tribes, kingdoms, ethno-religious groups gathered by expansion and conquest into a “big unit” which is also a “composite unit.” Up top, at the helm there is a core power -- a country, kingdom or chiefdom. Correspondingly there is an emperor sitting over subsidiary kings, chiefs, or rajas. It is a reminder that there is no empire without intermediaries or collaborators. It also raises questions about the nature and extent of that collaboration. For example, how much territory and control is surrendered by the subsidiary and how familiar is the core to the subsidiary? As Chris Bayly (1996) has argued, empire depends on intelligence and information gathering -- on knowing the country. This is a matter of not only roads and geography, but also of peoples, languages, and culture. To put it the other way round, there can be problems of not knowing the country, resulting in problems of control such as who to rely on and who to promote (or not to promote). Once they grew too large, ancient empires were always based on at least a two-belt system consisting of directly governed provinces and subsidiary vassalages. The Neo-Assyrian Empire was built on such a two-belt system. The Ottoman Empire had to raise this to three belts in order to be able to control vaster territories: (a) the inner provinces where the timar system was implemented; (b) a second ring of provinces subjected to an annual tribute (saliyâne) payment; and (c) the vassal statelets. With modern colonial empires, this became more and more complex and sophisticated, as exemplified by the way the British Empire ran India. The (British) Army of India comprised some crack English and Irish regiments, but the vast majority of the soldiers were native Indian sepoys trained by British officers and native Indian petty officers. The top commanding ranks consisted of British officers, with native subadars and jemadars under them. Furthermore, introduced over time (as also in British and French colonial Africa) were not only material-technical infrastructure (roads, railroads, telegraph lines, port facilities) or economic enterprises (mines, plantations, factories), but also legal systems (courts, lawyers, judges, procurators) and education (schools at the primary and secondary levels, leading for a small minority of the best students to Paris or London). If for no other reason than that of
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exploitation, colonial empires had to have all kinds of trained staff including clerks, managers, interpreters, skilled workers, native officials of all kinds. In every which way, they had to introduce some form of modernity.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848) had spoken of capitalism creating its own gravediggers (i.e. the industrial working class, which he expected would eventually overthrow capitalism). If there is a sphere where this has really happened, it is colonial empires for it is the imperial introduction of modernity that has frequently paved the way for nationalism. My thesis will conclude with comparative observations how this has happened in the modern world.
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CHAPTER TWO
THE QUESTION OF “FEUDALISM”: FIEF-BASED STATES
AND POWER CONFIGURATIONS IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
2.1. Introduction
Charles Tilly (1975) has observed that in the late-1500s, at the end of the Middle Ages, Europe contained around 500 political units. By the turn of the 18th century, however, this number had drastically fallen to around twenty-five. What caused this remarkable transformation? What distinguished these few enduring political groups from those that were short-lived, and those others that, like the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, endured for a long time but ultimately failed?
There is no single answer to these questions. In fact, the answers given by political scientists and by historians tend to be somewhat different. The first are more general and theoretical, while the second are more concrete and detailed. In the first group, Rokkan (1973, 1975, 1980) argues that the chances for survival were maximized if a political organization spanned a territory with an abundance of land holdings. Michael Hechter and William Brustein (1980) have claimed that exogenous elements, such as the territory's geopolitics and position in the international division of labor, were also significant determinants. Tilly (1975) himself, on the interface between history and political science, has held that cultural homogeneity, the availability of extractable resources, and a steady supply of political entrepreneurs facilitated survival.
But trying to explain who survived (and why) out of so many is not an adequate answer to the question of why there were so many rival units in the first place. This has to do with specific historical processes rooted in space and time. It has to do with how history has actually happened, through many accidental twists and turns, in the concrete space of what eventually became Europe.
2.2. A peculiar sequence: First Rome, and then Medieval Europe
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Crucial in this regard, before we come to the Middle Ages, is the central fact and historical significance of Rome. Our conventional textbook periodization of history goes in terms of (1) Prehistory (or tribal society); (2) Antiquity (or Ancient History); (3) the Middle Ages (or Medieval History); (4) the Early Modern Era; and (5) the Modern Era (or Industrial Modernity). In this scheme, the rise of the first civilizations (or state societies) around 3000 BC is also taken as the beginning of Antiquity, which is said to have come to an end with the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West in AD 476 (or let’s say around 500). This is then taken as the start of the Middle Ages, roughly dated as 500 – 1500 (supposed to be ending with either the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, or Columbus’s first voyage in 1492, or Martin Luther’s 1517 attack on the Catholic Church.
Let’s leave the rest aside. Just from this much, it is clear how Eurocentric this scheme is. Clearly, the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 marks a significant change in the history of Europe (as I shall summarize below). But why should it mean any significant change for the rest of Eurasia -- or Africa, or the Americas, or any part of the rest of the world? It doesn’t, and this points to a bigger problem: this whole division between Ancient and Medieval History is relevant only to the history of Europe. This kind of massive break and then a re-start through fresh migrations does not occur anywhere else. And it is because here a Medieval civilization characterized a peasant economy and fief-based dynastic states follows upon first the rise and then the collapse of the Roman Empire, that it becomes so important for Europe.
2.2.1. Rome and the Mediterranean
Legends of Trojan and Hellenistic origins aside, Rome was founded by a branch of the Italic peoples that in turn were part of the Indo-European diaspora. They entered Italy from the north perhaps around 2000 BC, and one group among them, called the Latins, settled in what came to be called Latium. They established a series of closely related villages, one among which grew to become first a city-state and then a huge empire. It pursued a policy of relentless war and military conquest. Rome's position towards other states or non-state groups (tribes or chiefdoms) was extremely aggressive and violent. Rome could be likened to a vicious and voracious predator, a
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revolutionary or limitlessly revisionist state, in the ongoing and expanding political systems in which it participated. The other Italian and Mediterranean political units fell victim to Roman military aggression (Rorh, 2009). First came the unification of Italy, and then, through the Punic Wars, the unification of the Western Mediterranean. The next step was moving into the Balkans, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. After 207 BC the regional state system of the Eastern Mediterranean, shaped during the Hellenistic Age, descended into a power transition crisis due to the unprecedented collapse of Ptolemaic Egypt. In 201-200 BC, when the Roman Republic had just risen to dominance in the western Mediterranean, Roman imperialism further embarked upon an aggressive intervention in the Greek East. In time, Rome came to possess the entire Mediterranean, which they came to call Our Sea (Mare Nostrum), and on which they imposed the Roman Peace (Pax Romana).
So Rome evolved as a power in Europe and the Mediterranean. What we today know as Europe was divided between the Germanic (tribal) north and the Roman (civilized) south. The south (below the Rhine-Danube line) was united into a single empire. The world appeared relatively universal. It embodied a Roman (or Greco-Roman) pattern of peoples, languages, and culture. This was later transferred to Christianity for leadership and protection. This Roman-Christian synthesis would eventually be shattered through the Germanic and Slavic invasions, or the Migrations of the Peoples.
2.2.2. Complexity and impending collapse
The transitional period of what Peter Brown (1989) and other historians call Late Antiquity extended from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Near East, and Africa. The intended time limit was between the AD 3rd and 8th centuries. It was a time when the Roman Empire was reconfigured. The Roman Empire of Late Antiquity was substantially different from the initial empire of its founder Augustus, and similarly different from the 2nd century empire of Marcus Aurelius. In the 3rd century, the emperor who had formerly been referred to as princeps, meaning first citizen, and then dominus to imply lord, was now addressed with the title divus meaning divine. The profound religious overtones of the imperial
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office were accepted, even by usurpers of the imperial throne, backed by their troops, who then governed autocratically at the head of a large bureaucratic and military apparatus (Peter Brown, 1989).
Jared Diamond (2011) sees the failure of rule enforcement and the splitting of the region into multiple successor polities as having played a major role in the decline of the Roman Empire in the West. After 285 the Empire was divided into Eastern and Western subcomponents as a result of internal and external crises during the 3rd and 4th centuries. In 293 Diocletian introduced a Tetrarchy system of a senior emperor (augustus) and a junior emperor (caesar) in both the west and the east. This was intended to make the vast territories of the empire more governable and defensible from four different tetrarchic capitals in the provinces. Then in the east, in 324 the emperor Constantine established a thriving capital that was initially called New Rome and then in 330 renamed Constantinople. In these and other ways, the entire empire's administration was repeatedly restructured to provide financial backing for enormous military spending. The provincial economy was driven and constructed to meet the requirements of the enormous military posts located near the frontiers. Modern historians also note that armies kept growing in size (though with declining effectiveness). Emperors provided less and less competent leadership. Internal power struggles took their toll, as did religious transformations and strife. The civil administration turned more and more inefficient (Neil Christie, 2011). In the end, from the second half of the 4th century, none of the military and administrative measures proved enough to stop the “barbarians” north of the Rhine-Danube line. Nevertheless, today a new literature on the phenomenon of state collapse sees the increasing complexity and dead weight of the Late Roman Empire as the principal cause driving Rome into eventual collapse.
2.3. People's condition in Late Antiquity
(the beginnings of a transition to feudalism)
Political change inevitably impacted on social change. As the state became more and more costly, it started weighing more heavily on the rest of society, increasing the tax burden on all landowners. Simultaneously, as the Pax Romana crumbled under external pressure, this adversely affected the
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safety and security of the Mediterranean-wide trade routes on which the slave economy depended. A number of specialists have explained the conditions for the existence of a slave economy (as distinct from slavery as a legal status). As Keith Hopkins (1978) has demonstrated, widespread slavery can come into existence through successful warfare. But for a slave economy to form and to be sustainable, there have to be (a) slave markets (since the slave work-force does not reproduce itself), and (b) export markets (since the same slave work-force on an estate or in a mine has no purchasing power, and hence does not enter into effective demand).
So when these two markets began to shrink in line with Rome’s general decline, slave prices began to soar while villa (estate) owners found it more and more difficult to sell all the grain, wine and olive oil that they were producing. Hence, they started settling their slaves on the land as servi casati (hutted slaves), taking the first step in transforming them into slave-sharecroppers on the way to becoming medieval serfs. After the 3rd century, there was a significant decline in the number of domestic slaves, possibly because it became more cost-effective to reduce expenses on slaves and switch to free servants. Meanwhile, freedmen and coloni (tenant farmers) also began to surrender their independence to big landowners in exchange for protection from imperial tax collectors or military conscription. As a result, these big landowners began to create private armies and also to bargain with imperial officials on behalf of their subordinates. Rome remained a cash-based state to the end, collecting (diminishing) taxes and paying (with increasing difficulty) cash salaries to its entire administrative machinery. It never reverted to fief distribution. Yet, beneath the umbrella of that centralized, cash-based state, here and there big mn were emerging, and around them relations of personal dependence that, like the servi casati and the coloni, were harbingers of a new age.
2.4. The Age of Migrations
On top of all these there came the Germanic and Slavic invasions or migrations, a massive population movement known in German as the Völkerwanderungen (the Migrations of the Peoples). After centuries of increasing pressure from the north on the Rhine-Danube line, the dam finally burst with the battle of Adrianople in 378, when the Goths and related or allied tribes heavily defeated a Byzantine army and entered Roman territory, never to be pushed out again.
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Although some historians describe the actions of the so-called barbarians as invasions, they were not merely or purely military conflicts. Instead, they were migrations of entire populations into the Empire, which were largely facilitated by the refusal of Western Roman elites to support the army or pay taxes (McKitterick, 1983; Riché, 1993; McCormick, 2001). But in any case, from then on the Empire went into a downward spiral of violence. After winning two catastrophic civil wars in 396, Theodosius I passed away, leaving behind two rival, bickering sons who were unable to reinforce Rome’s withering field army. Taking advantage of a weakening fortress, further barbarian tribes crossed the Rhine and other frontiers with success. The Western Empire's army shrank and became less effective, and despite brief recoveries under good leaders, the central government was never cemented (Christie, 2011:308). Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Lombards arrived in Italy; Burgundians, Franks, and Visigoths conquered wide areas of Gaul and Spain; Vandals reached North Africa. The Alamanni settled between the Rhine and the Alps, while the Jutes encountered the Danes in Denmark, and the Geats and Gutes amalgamated with the Swedes (Christie, 2011). In England, the Angles merged with the Saxons and Jutes to produce the contemporary Anglo-Saxons. A number of Germanic nomads migrated as far north as the former Roman province of Britannia (the Angles and The Saxons), and as far south as the Mediterranean and North Africa (the Vandals and Visigoths).
In the process, what remained of Roman civilization was essentially destroyed. This was largely due to deterioration and insecurity along the lines of transport and communications, leading to de-commercialization and de-urbanization, and further reflected in low levels of productivity, literacy, nutrition, health, and life expectancy. The massive displacement of populations during the Völkerwanderungen and the Great Famine resulted in a great deal of human suffering. Trade routes also shifted from the Mediterranean to the north, resulting initially in a much less open, much less commercialized, more barter-reliant kind of economy (Poggi, 1978).
2.5. The Dark Ages
Historians commonly define the Middle Ages as a thousand-year time period between the late-5th and 15th centuries (see, for example, Burckhardt, 1943; Dougherty, 2021). Just this term by itself reflects a certain degree of deprecation or disdain. It is an intellectual product of the Renaissance.
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Italian and also Northern Humanists of the 16th and 17th centuries began to conceive of themselves as “we Moderns.” They perceived a spiritual and aesthetic affinity between themselves and the Romans (and behind them the Greeks), both of whom they referred to as “the Ancients.” These were seen as two peaks, between which there stretched a trough or gully which they did not like. They thought of it as a time of decline, darkness, backwardness and barbarism, which did not have a distinctive (positive) character of its own (Dougherty, 2021). In time, this negative view extended from Renaissance to Enlightenment thinkers, who added their dislike of what they regarded as excessive religiosity into the equation. Hence this became what they all agreed to call the Middle Ages (Dougherty, 2021).
For a time, it was also called (or regarded as) the Dark Ages. This was a second term that came into use together with the Middle Ages, and that was the Dark Ages. Originally, the two overlapped to a considerable extent. Numerous political and social shifts in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire prompted many historians to also use this label for the Middle Ages. It was a biased designation. The fragmentation of the Roman Empire into "barbarian kingdoms" was key in this regard (Dougherty, 2021). The use of the term “dark” implied that the period in question was markedly inferior to other eras or exceptionally savage. Nevertheless, not all historians concurred with this approach even in the 19th century. With regard to religiosity or piety, Jacob Burckhardt (1943) and Leopold von Ranke (1981), for example, held that every generation is equally distant from God. Every period has its own significance and contribution to human history as a whole. Burckhardt further argued that history should not overlook the voids that each age has left for civilizations to chronicle. Furthermore, historians have no right to create fancy notions about certain eras, such as golden ages or dark ages. Instead, history must be a comprehensive chronicle of the existence and suffering of humanity.
In time, a further, perhaps partially corrective shift took place as “darkness” came to be applied not to the entire Middle Ages but just to its earliest phase, or the Age of Migrations, or the transition from Ancient to Medieval History. It was factually, empirically true that with the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Germanic invasions or migrations, there had been a significant decline in material culture as well as in political organization. In Late Antiquity, a period of deurbanization, depopulation, and barbarian invasions began, which continued into the Early Middle Ages.
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Invading barbarians shattered the remnants of the Western Roman Empire into numerous kingdoms. After the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East, which had been part of the Roman Empire under Byzantine authority, were overrun by Muslim Arabs and incorporated into the Islamic Empire. Further north, the Visigothic kindom of Spain, the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy, and the Frankish kingdom in France all embodied levels of material and political development inferior what Rome had been up to the end of the 4th century.
Even so, this was a Romanist, especially Western Romanist kind of view for two reasons. First, the break with Antiquity was not complete and universal. The Roman Empire in the East (which came to be called Byzantium in the 16th and 17th centuries, with the term “Byzantine Empire” coming to be universally accepted and used in the 19th century), survived, remained vast, and retained considerable power. Secondly, any darkness may be said to have descended only on Rome and its former territories, but not on the Germanic tribes or chiefdoms, and what became of them.
For in what was a decline for Rome, these Germanic groups were going their own processes of state-formation, which meant a considerable degree of economic and social development. Chiefs or war-leaders went on to become hereditary kings, founders of dynasties. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the centralized Roman rulers (of a cash-based state) were supplanted by new and in their way increasingly powerful monarchs (of fief-based states). New, peasant-based agrarian economies gradually took shape, as did fief-based systems of taxation (see below). Insofar as this was within the limits of the possible, the majority of these Western kingdoms also adopted (or tried to adopt) Roman institutions. The Franks, descended from the Carolingian dynasty, founded the Carolingian Empire, which spanned most of Western Europe. The Carolingian Empire lasted until the 9th century, when it collapsed under the pressures generated by the Second Wave of the Invasions by the Vikings, Magyars, and Muslim Arabs (Wenner, 1980:59-79). These invaders conducted raids deep within the interior, while the Magyars reached as far as Western France (Barraclough, 1976). As a result of these invasions or migrations, new groups settled in vast parts of Europe, and Latin gave way to what became known as the Romance languages, although Greek remained the official language of the Byzantine Empire.
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2.6. The Middle Ages and the new peasant economy
So all in all, this was not just a retrogression or descent into darkness. Simultanously, it also constituted the complex, fluid setting for the rise of a new civilization. There were four axes of contrast and comparison between Antiquity and the Middle Ages -- or four main dimensions of passage from the first to the second. (1) One is religious: the contrast between (or the passage from) an Antiquity in which Christianity was present but was nevertheless strongly marked by mostly polytheistic belief systems, to a Middle Ages marked by the comprehensive victory of Christianity. (2) The next is political: the contrast between (or the passage from) the one big state of the Roman Empire to a multiplicity of new Germanic (or so-called barbarian) kingdoms. (3) The third, related, is the contrast between (or the passage from) a cash-based state to these several fief-based states. (4) Last but not least, the fourth has to do with the contrast between (or the passage from) a slave economy (as seen in the core provinces of the Roman Empire) to the Medieval peasant economy (Keith Hopkins, 1978).
Let us begin with this fourth contrast or passage, which, because it is so overwhelmingly economic and social, perhaps lies at the bottom of everything else. This is the question of the overall peasantization of the Europan economy. Antiquity was relatively heterogenous in this regard. It represented an early stage in the transition from tribal to state-organized societies. Because of the uneven nature of this transition, in various corners of Eurasia, along with sedentarized communities, villages and peasant agriculture, there were also significant groups of non-state (or pre-state) hunter-gatherers and nomadic pastoralists. Secondly, within the already existing states or empires the same heterogeneity persisted, with rulers and ruling classes sitting on top of the same mixture. Thirdly, in a few very exceptional states (like Ancient Greece in the Aegean and Rome in the entire Mediterranean), alongside the traditional peasant agriculture arising with the Neolithic Revolution there also emerged a new slave economy, i.e. not small production but large-scale production carried out in huge commercial estates worked through methods of gang slavery (Keith Hopkins, 1978). As indicated, especially in the core provinces of the Roman Empire (i.e. Italy, Sicily, North Africa, and parts of southern Gaul), this new sector became dominant to the point of coloring the entire economy.
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Then, however, a significant transformation took place in going from Antiquity, through Late Antiquity or the Germanic Dark Ages, so-called, into the Middle Ages proper. New classes emerged at both the top and the bottom of society. Up top, there was a fusion of the previous Gallo-Roman chiefs and the Roman senatorial class with the incoming German warrior nobility (Marc Bloch, 1931). Down below, there were several passages into the Medieval peasantry. The slave-to-serf transition, already described in Chapter I, was only one of them. Simultaneously, whatever was left of Rome’s original citizen-farmers, as well as former prisoners of war settled on the land as coloni, also “commended” themselves to big landowners in the countryside to come under their domination (Bloch, 1961, 1964), while free peasants of Germanic origin also found themselves pushed further and further down under the increasing weight of lordship as social distance increased and class differences deepened over these transitional centuries. Compared with Antiquity, this meant a much greater degree of peasant-based agricultural homogeneity.
2.6.1. Medieval agriculture
When everything settled down a bit, what was the picture that emerged by around AD 1000, which we can count as the beginning of the High Middle Ages? It was an overwhelmingly agrarian, peasant-based economy and society. At bottom was a massive small-producing peasantry. The majority of people throughout the Middle Ages were peasants. In a general way, they were all subject peasants. In Medieval lawyers’ eyes, they were further subdivided into “free” and “unfree” peasants. This was and is rather confusing, as Marc Bloch (1931) has pointed out. All this meant was whether they were considered to be descendants of Roman slaves, or descendants of Germanic tribesmen. The former were subjected to somewhat greater burdens and legal disempowerments, while the latter were generally a notch higher in social and economic status. Still, they were not free in the modern sense, but under lordship. This meant that all of them had to be abide with various restrictions on their movement, production, property or other rights. All of them produced surplus, which was taken away from them as tax or rent (Halil Berktay, 1987).
This surplus extraction or transfer could take the form of labor rent (i.e. unpaid labor services), produce rent (or rent in kind), and cash payments (or money rent). It happened within the
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framework of manorial organization (Ellis and Esler, 2003:186). In the Middle Ages, peasant villages under lordship were called manors. This meant that the presence of lordship at the village level was reflected in the internal organization of the village. Manors were economic and political units, usually comprising blocs of farmland, that provided the base on which the whole fief-system was founded. The entire manor was regarded as belonging, in some superior sense, to the lord of the fief within which the manor fell. A manor was defined by the fact that it was "kept in the hand" by a lord, who could be a secular lord such as a knight or baron or a religious lord such as a bishop, church, or monastery. Whoever or whatever the ruler was, he or it ruled over the land and its inhabitants. This included economic, judicial, administrative, and military power, as the lord had the right to a portion of the labor or income of his people. The residents of the manor were subject to the manorial court, presided over by the lord or his representative, which governed their life, and the men of the manor were at risk of being selected to follow their lord to war and fight under his instructions (North and Thomas, 1971:777-803).
As previously said, manors evolved in response to an unreliable, expensive supply of slaves and the harsh taxes imposed on free peasants, which compelled them to sell off or turn over (commend) their property and become dependent tenants for larger landlords. In this manner, estates rose in size, and slave gangs were replaced by peasant masses with ancestral ties to the estate. These units were significantly more economically independent than their predecessors (for example, Roman slave-worked estates, villae or latifundia). For instance, workshops enabled for the upkeep of agricultural machinery, while more food was produced for domestic consumption. Manors (or manorially organized villages) became less dependent on the urban market economy, which was rapidly contracting due to the disruption of trade channels. The manors became the dominating social and economic unit, and their owners intermarried to produce a new elite, or a new landed aristocracy, over time. Later, as we covered in the 9th and 10th centuries, these massive estates would eventually fragment to support the warrior knights whose expenses were too great for the lordship, thereby distributing smaller sections to the warriors to manage their expenses (Henri Sée, 2004).
In terms of actual possession and cultivation, the agricultural lands (the great open fields) around the village were divided into two. Historians call this type of arrangement a bipartite manor. A major part (perhaps most) of it consisted of the peasants’ small farms or holdings. Another part
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comprised the lord’s big farm or demesne -- in Turkish, hassa çiflik, bey çiftliği or bey toprağı (Berktay, 1987, 1990, 1992). Peasants cultivated their own holdings, and they paid a portion of their harvest to the lord. This was rent-in-kind or produce rent. Many (sometimes all) of them were also responsible for all work on the lord’s demesne. Thus they worked on their own holdings part (perhaps most) of the week and on the lord’s demesne for the rest of the week. The latter were called labor services. It was essentially unpaid labor, since the lord provided only a breakfast and lunch to sustain them through the day. At the end of the agricultural year, the entire produce harvested from the lord’s demesne (again through unpaid labor) went into the lord’s barn. It represented the final outcome, the materialized form of labor rent paid (performed) continuously throughout the year. In addition, lords had the authority to coerce fees for using the manor's mill, bakery, and wine press (Notrth and Thomas, 1971).
At this point it should also be noted that manors did not have to be bipartite (.e. both demesne and peasant holdings). The could also be monopartite, that is to say, with only peasant holdings and no demesne. This happened in lands where a previous Roman system of estates based on gang slavery (villae or latifundia) was not widespread (Bloch, 1931). Hence, when Germanic kinship units (clans or tribes) settled on the land to form villages, and then came under lordship, what emerged was likely to be a monopartite manor. In contrast, whenever the Roman slave-estate system had been widespread, in the process of settling thir slaves on the land as, now, “hutted slaves” or servi casati, the owner-landlords were more likely to retain for themselves a much reduced portion of the previously undivided villa, which now became their home farm, big farm, or demesne as a constituent part of a bipartite manor (Bloch, 1931).
2.6.2. From fiefs to (European) feudalism
Subject peasants and manors made up the two most basic levels, the foundations of the new Medieval civilization emerging over the ruins of Rome. Enclosing them, on top of them, there came a system of political organization that not at that time, but after the passage of centuries would be called feudalism. Its usage, too, has developed and expanded over time. In this regard,
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consider Marc Bloch’s famous work Feudal Society.7 In its time, leaving aside Marxist interpretations outside academia, it was the first scholarly work of its kind, by a professional, trained, established Medieval history specialist, to conceive of the European Middle Ages as a whole: a “feudal” type of society or social formation. Over the past eighty years or more, it is this broad understanding that has taken root in Medieval Studies. But earlier, and for some time even after Bloch, this was not so. The English term feudalism (or the French féodalité) was used in a much narrower sense. It did not mean an entire society, but only the relations within the ruling class in Medieval society. It did not cover subject peasants or manors. It designated a political system in which knights and lower-ranking nobility exchanged military service for the ability to receive fiefs (comprising a number of manors) from their masters or superiors (Ellis and Esler, 2003:186).
It was, in other words, equivalent to what is today meant by the more specific term of vassalage. Even more, it indicated a specific kind of vassalage, i.e. contractual vassalage.8 This can be seen very clearly in earlier generations of textbooks or general treatises, such as classical works, now found in their reprints, by Ganshof (1964), Strayer (1965) or Stephenson (1967). In this tradition, first, feudalism is taken as a purely European or Medieval European phenomenon. There is no question of it (or of systems somewhat similar to it) having existed anywhere else.9 Second, its elements or sub-components are described purely on the basis of that one European example or model. This leads to a confusion of general with specific elements, or an inability to separate these two aspects.
Thus in this feudal system, a fief is said to be a piece of property granted to a person on the condition that they perform certain conditions or services in exchange. As we shall see, this word “property” is much too specific; peculiar to Europe, it excludes other possibilities elsewhere in the world.) The giver or offerer is referred to as the lord (or the suzerain), while the recipient is referred to as the vassal. Depending on the amount of land granted, the narrative continues, the vassal was
7 The French original, La Société Féodale, was published in two volumes in 1939-1940. The English translation appeared in 1961-1962, with a second edition following in 1962.
8 I use this term to highlight the difference between it and other kinds of fief-systems, such as the Ottoman timar system, where the entire hierarchy is cınstructed through one-sided appointment from above.
9 Ganshof rejects this explicitly.
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expected to perform certain duties, including military duty, for a specified amount of time each year. Commonly, forty days of service per year were required of a small fief (a knight’s fee, so-called) sufficient to support at least one knight and his squire (or man-at-arms).10 A vassal was obligated to do additional duties for their lord, such as supporting the lord in times of need or helping to rescue him (by contributing to his ransom fee) if and when captured by the enemy in combat. In exchange, the lord would undertake to defend his vassal and assist them in obtaining justice, such as in court, when necessary.11 These ties were symbolized by a succession of vows, and originally, the oaths carried symbolic weight because they originated from a strong religious context that anchored community action.12
2.6.3. From a semi-tribal free-for-all, to a semblance of order
So on the one hand; it was clearly a hierarchical structure from the top down. But on the other hand, it was a very peculiar kind of hierarchy -- not linearly vertical, with all authority emanating from a single center (king), but with authority fragmented and parcellized at each level between various lords as well as between the king and these lords. This was because of the principle of subinfeudation (Lat. subinfeodare) that allowed lords to grant fiefs out of their own fiefs to their (eventual) vassals.13 In this way, power was shared with and distributed down to the smallest units. For example, a powerful vassal to a monarch would grant some of his holdings to other vassals, with the subdivision based on the smallest unit, typically one knight's fee. The outcome involved clusters of vassals “hanging down” from each superior lord. As a result, society grew to resemble a pyramid of fiefs ascending in size. The majority of fief holders were both lords and vassals, as everyone had a lord except the king, who sat atop the pyramid (Ganshof, 1964). That is why, again for Ganshof, feudalism was a system of reciprocal legal and military responsibilities that existed
10 Here, too, this can be seen as a general arrangement which however is overloaded with excessive Eurospecific details (such as forty days).
11 As we shall see further in this chapter and the next, all these bilateral relations are once more specific to Euopean feudalism.
12 As yet another example of Eurocentric thinking, these mutual oaths or vows, or ceremonies of fealty, homage or knighting, have no counterpart in the Ottoman timar system.
13 As we shall see in Chapter III, this was not allowed in the Ottoman timar system, where all fiefs, large or small, could be granted, and all fief-holders from the lowliest sipahis all the way up to provincial governors (beylerbeyis) and viziers, appointed, only and only by the sultan.
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among the warrior nobles, and fiefs embodied this peculiar contractual relationship between lords and vassals.
It was these ties which characterized Medieval Europe that came to be known as feudal. It was this understanding of feudal that came to be built into the notion of Eurospecific feudalism. And again, it was this notion that resulted in such feudalism being regarded negatively as retrogression and decline -- because it seemed to represent decentralization, even disorder, chaos and anarchy, compared with the centralize exercise of power and authority by the cash-based Roman state.
This, again, is a comprehensive misconception allied to the previously criticized concepts of darkness or dark ages. In actual fact, compared with previous centuries of Germanic tribal organization or chiefdoms, the institution of feudalism was a major advance in statecraft. Early in the Age of Migrations, when the various Germanic tribes were still moving around in unsettled fashion, lack of organization and an extreme of violence went hand in hand. All warrior nobilities and war leaders were on their own (similar to the situation in Central Asia with the mounted peoples, and also in the centuries of the rise of the first Turkish-Islamic polities). There were as yet no fixed territories, and no fixed relations of loyalty or subjecthood. From this relatively shapeless mass, with the beginnings of fief-distribution, gradually somewhat more stable arrangements and relationships of loyalty and obedience began to emerge. Feudalism was this initial attempt to create a stable and functional structure of authority. It simultaneously granted extra military powers and prerogatives to a distant warrior class, and also gradually instilled in them relatively more responsible practices. Later, the European nobility evolved from this group. This class evolved into an estate of men with leadership and governance capabilities (Vasiliu, 2019).
2.6.4. Separating the general from the specific
So basically, we have semi-tribal units or chiefdoms gradually acquiring a greater degree of social differentiation and organization in a process of state-formation, and the first condition or constraint was that this organization had to be based on giving and receiving fiefs; in other words, if there
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was going to be a state, it had to be a fief-based state. This was because a cash-based state was not possible at the time. In turn, this was because the collapse of Roman power in and around the Mediterranean led to a parallel collapse of the region’s money economy, making it impossible to collect cash taxes and pay cash salaries. So the ruling elites of the new Germanic polities, such as the Vandals in North Africa, the Visigoths in Spain, the Ostrogoths in Italy, or the Franks in northern France, had no other option than to grope their way to fiefs and feudalism. The second condition or constraint facing them was that they had to do this without the benefit of any previous experience, models, or advice. It is especially this context that had an enormous impact on what happened to their fief-system or fief-based states: why and how it ended up as a power configuration involving weak kings and powerful fief-holders.
Here we have to explain a bit further the difference between the general and the specific when it comes to fiefs and fief-systems. What is a fief or timar? If we take historical development over subsequent centuries and various geographies, and look at it in comparative fashion, we can evolve a Weberian ideal type of this institution. For the German historial sociologist Max Weber, an ideal type is formed from characteristics and elements of the given phenomena, but it is not meant to correspond to all of the characteristics of any one particular case. It is not meant to refer to perfect things, moral ideals nor to statistical averages, but rather to stress certain elements common to most cases of the given phenomenon. As Weber (1903-1917:90) himself wrote:
An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct…
Given this approach, a fief or timar can be defined as a kind of land grant (or a grant of land with peasants living on it and cultivating it) that is conditional upon service (mostly military service); better yet, it is a conditional grant of the right to collect certain taxes (in practice: mostly the basic agrarian taxes) from the peasantry in a given area comprising one or more villages. Hence it functions as a substitute for a cash salary under circumstances when collecting cash taxes and paying cash salaries are impossible (or not practicable on a large scale).
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2.7. The historical context of Dark Ages fief-distribution
But as we have said, this is a Weberian ideal type, whereas actual historical reality comprises a wide variety of differences woven around it. In particular, there can be strong tendencies for fief-recipients to try and privatize, then hereditize their land-grants, so that they become a family patrimony that is passed on from one generation to the next in the same household. As we saw in Chapter I, Clive Ponting speaks of this as a universal propensity among all Eurasian early empires. This is because while a fief was a substitute for a cash salary, it was not the same as a cash salary. The lord was giving away land, however conditionally, and this gave rise to the possibility of increasing territorial control autonomously of the original donor. So the same conditions that necessitated fief-distribution (such as a low level of development of money economy, plus primitive transport and communication technology) also made it very difficult for the giving king (or lord) to exercise tight control over his receiving subordinates (or vassals). The result was a tug of war between centrifugal and centripetal forces as fief-holders tried to privatize and hereditize their land-grants as much as possible, and lords (or kings or sultans) tried to prevent them from doing so as much as possible.
This oscillation between potential centralization and potential decentralization may be said to have been present in virtually all fief-systems and fief-based states. In which direction it would go, where the pendulum might come to rest, and what kind of concrete power configuration might result from it, all depended on various cultural and historical factors. It could go in the direction of relative decentralization or the opposite. The fief-holders might win out, succeeding (at the limit) in transforming their lands into full-fledged family patrimonies, and transforming themselves into a powerful hereditary nobility. This would mean more of an “aristocratic” power configuration. Alternatively, the fief-distributing center (king or sultan) might win out, succeeding (at the limit) in comprehensively blocking privatization and hereditization, and therefore maintaining his subordinates not as vassals but as dignitaries whose fiefs or revenue-units remained prebendal (instead of becoming patrimonial) because they depended on their continuing in their appointed positions. Overall, this would mean a more “bureaucratic” power configuration.
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Once more we owe this whole terminology of patrimonial or prebendal grants, and of aristocratic vs bureau-cratic power configurations to Max Weber, who used these concepts (instead of Oriental Despotism or the Asiatic Mode of Production) to describe India and China in the early Middle Ages in his 1915 book, The Religion of China and his 1916 book, The Religion of India. At one point, this is what he wrote:
The occidental seigneurie, like the oriental Indian, developed through the disintegration of the central authority of the patrimonial state power -- the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire in the Occident, the disintegration of the Caliphs and the Maharadja or Great Moguls in India. In the Carolingian Empire, however, the new stratum developed on the basis of a rural subsistence economy. Through oath-bound vassalage, patterned after the war following, the stratum of lords was joined to the king and interposed itself between the freemen and the king. Feudal relations were also to be found in India, but they were not decisive for the formation either of a nobility or landlordism. In India, as in the Orient generally, a characteristic seigniory developed rather out of tax farming and the military and tax prebends of a far more bureaucratic state. The oriental seigniory therefore remained in essence, a "prebend" and did not become a "fief"; not feudalization, but prebendalization of the patrimonial state occurred. The comparable, though undeveloped, occidental parallel is not the medieval fief but the purchase of offices and prebends during the papal seicento or during the days of the French Noblesse de Robe.14
This distinction or analysis is very useful for this thesis, too, which focuses not on China or India but on the Ottoman Empire (and its subsequent modernization) as a comparative alternative to Medieval Europe (and its subsequent modernization). It also brings us up against just why Early Medieval Europe developed this way while the Ottoman Empire developed that way.
2.7.1. How these Germanic fief-systems were shaped
It is important to note that these were first-ever experiments because there were no previous models from which to learn or compare. The Germanic (or the Slavic) peoples did not have any previous state experience. They were going from semi-tribal chiefdoms to what would become state-
14 Max Weber, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism (Free Press, 1958), pp 70–71, as quoted by Immanuel Wallerstein in The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (University of California Press, 2011).
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organized societies for the first time. Furthermore, they did not have any examples or models to look up to, or sources of advice and counseling. This was because Rome had not been a fief-based state but a cash-based state. Based on the exceptional commercialization and monetization of the Ancient Mediterranean, it had been able to collect cash taxes and pay cash salaries.
Now, however, these conditions no longer existed, so that it was both impossible to repeat Rome, and also to learn from it. With the collapse of the Roman money economy, it became impossible to collect cash taxes already in the Age of Migrations, and long before the further depredations of Muslim-Arab pirates in the Western Mediterranean. Germanic kings did have coinage struck in their own name. But this was more of a political gesture in the way of symbolically emulating Roman emperors. It was not economically meaningful since it was not backed up by enough gold and silver to put a significant amount of coinage into circulation. So these early Germanic kings, whether in England or on the continent, had no other course open to them except to start handing out land in order to reward their followers, control territory, and build and maintain an army. Moreover, as they did so, they could not learn from anybody. There had been no previous states in Western Europe before Rome. And Rome had not been a fief-based state, nor had it left behind a literate elite (including Christian churchmen) capable of transmitting advice to kings about how to build a fief-based state --meaning, what to watch out for in building a fief-based state.
This resulted in early Germanic kings committing huge “mistakes” in fief distribution. It must be emphasized that these were “mistakes” only from the short- or medium-run vantage point of kingship, and not from the perspective of their subordinates (who eventually became their vassals), nor with a view to long-term historical consequences (such as the eventual costs or benefits of ending up ith a relatively decentralized versus a relatively centralized fief-based state). In other words, we are looking at royal acts and policies that were detrimental to rulers’ own interests in maintaining strict control of the lands that they were giving out, as well as the people that they were giving them to. In principle, as with all agrarian states, at some initial, primordial beginning point the whole kingdom, the entire realm belonged to the king. He exercised a superior (but not exclusive) level of rights over all land. This is usually called royal domain, or royal eminent rights; as Halil İnalcık (1994) has noted, it is a universal category which also includes (or corresponds to) the sultan’s rakabe in the Ottoman case. In fact, if it were not for this level of royal rights, logically speaking the king would not have been able to give any of it away.
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2.7.2. Warfare, knights, fiefs
So the question becomes: just how did they do it? How did the practice of fief-giving develop, more or less spontaneously, without any conscious thought and planning going into it, especially in the Kingdom of the Franks from the 5th century on? In this regard, always for the kings two questions may be said to have been of key importance: (1) Giving away too much, and not keeping enough for themselves; and (2) giving too much of the land away as gifts, and not as strictly conditional upon service. With regard to the second, we can actually see this “mistake” happening because of the existence of two different forms of land-grants: fiefs (Lat. feodum) and benefices (Lat. beneficium).15 The key difference between them was whether, in return for the land-grant, services or other obligations would be involved. This was the case with the feodum, or what would come to be called fiefs in general. It was understood that they would be given out only as conditional upon service plus continued loyalty (Ganshof, 1964; Strayer, 1965; Stephenson, 1967). If these conditions were not met by the vassal, in principle the land could escheat back to the lord. This was easier said than done, because the legal mechanisms for it (such as courts and court decisions) did not exist, which meant that in practice it could be achieved only through force (or the threat of force).
Even then, it was only arrived at through trial-and-error methods in time. Crucial in this regard was warfare. To repeat: feudalism was basically a matter of finding a way to feed and maintain an army, or to transform semi-tribal warriors into a sustainable institution. This is shown by the fact that the whole notion of a fief, including its size, was based on customary estimates of the upkeep of a knight. (Strikingly, this was also the case with the notion and size of an Ottoman timar.) Research has shown that by the 10th century, a new type of warrior dominated medieval warfare. In France, they were referred to as chevaliers, in Italy as cavalieri, in England as knights, and in Spain as caballeros. These warriors differed from ordinary combatants in that they were mounted (Wickham, 2016). Such mounted warriors had an advantage over their footed counterparts due to the iron stirrup, which gave them access to and the ability to use additional weapons. They also stood higher since they fought on horseback. Thus, they had greater superiority over their contemporary foot soldiers. To become a knight, one had to undergo extensive training and maintain expensive military equipment, among other costs. They frequently began as squires or
15 Note the interesting etymological similarities with the Ottoman concepts of dirlik or timar.
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retainers of their lords, but as their expenses grew, the lords were forced to grant them fiefs in order to cover their costs. As warrior knights acquired more land, they would also earn a place in society. These knights typically left their homes at age 17 to live with a lord and receive military training. Due to this training, it was anticipated that the knight would remain in service for life. Knights were expected to be loyal to both the lord and the church, and to play a crucial role in ensuring that justice was served and the community was safeguarded. They established a distinct way of life that included learning how to interact professionally with lords, women, and other members of society.
So on the one hand, there were these developments in warfare, and at the same time, a security gap or vacuum was emerging. Military and political factors came together. As Chris Wickham (2016) notes, the Frankish empire was in decline. During these major land grabs, royal family members fought amongst themselves. The constant civil conflicts created a disorganized and fragmented civilization that would have been ineffectual against the marauding Vikings even during Charlemagne’s golden age. In the chaos of the 9th and 10th centuries, the realm was incapable of protecting its people (Wickham, 2016). The local lords immediately filled the power void and organized resistance against the invaders. These vassal lords gradually seized control of the royal power as a result of this fragmentation, while they themselves were fragmented at the lower ranks. The government's functions were handed to the local vassals as part of the disintegration of authority (Wickham, 2016).
In this context, it was not as if kings sat down and thought systematically about how to build a fief-based state. Instead, what we call fief-distribution, or the creation of a lord-vassal relationship, frequently involved the formalization of an existing reality. In many cases, fiefs were not actually given out; instead, a de facto land grab was recognized as a fief (Susan Reynolds, 1994). Here it is noteworthy that initially, it was the benefice or beneficium (compared with the feodum) that was more common. As the name indicates, it was something that (in the absence of a salary) “benefited” (or rewarded) the person receiving it, comprising rights to the land and its inhabitants (slaves, serfs or freemen).
Crucially, it did not entail carefully defined military service in return. Hence it was probably more suitable to this practice of formalizing de facto situations. It was also more like the early Ottoman practice of giving something as mülk or freehold rather than as timar. But it also had a feature that
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was never part of Ottoman land tenure: the vassal receiving a benefice also had the authority to sub-lease the land, a procedure which, as we have seen, is known as subinfeudation. On top of this there could also come an additional privilege of immunitas, which meant that the household or property of the grantee (including his land-grants) were rendered immune from the normal state powers exercised on that region.
All this has to do with what I have called “mistake” (2), that is to say giving away (or recognizing) too much in gift, and as not conditional upon service. As for “mistake” (1), that is to say giving away too much and not keeping enough for themselves, it appears that they did not do this because retrospectively, it becomes clear that they did not build or retain enough of a power base for themselves since many of their barons end up wealthier and more powerful than the kings who are nominally their lords. This is already the case with the Merovingians, whose later monarchs come to be known as the do-nothing kings or useless kings (les rois fainéants) because of this weakness and vulnerability, and who are eventually overthrown and replaced by the Carolingians.
2.7.3. The further impact of civil wars and succession crises
All of it added up to a huge and growing set of powers and prerogatives passing from the hands of kings to their vassals. It allowed the latter to gradually secure their autonomy, even virtual independence, on their huge holdings. In the early phase of their expansion in the Balkans, the Ottomans, too, had been granting large numbers of fiefs in mülk (freehold), in a way comparable to benefices, to their leading warlords (as we shall see in the next chapter). Hence in time, the great beys of Rumelia, too, began to acquire a degree of autonomy for themselves. On the frontier marches beyond Edirne in the first half of the 15th century, they were frequently operating for themselves, so much so that as Halil İnalcık (1954) has shown, during the critical campaigns of 1442-1443 Murad II came to suspect them of treason. But then, with the additional charisma Mehmed II obtained through the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, he was able to re-assert his royal eminent rights over all these early mülk grants, and even over the wakfs created out of them, thereby halting and reversing these embryonic trends of privatization, hereditization and autonomization.
In Western Europe, on the other hand, this kind of reversal and consequent resurgence for royal fortunes did not happen in the so-called Dark Ages. One reason was wave upon wave of civil wars
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between successive generations of crown princes with a claim to all or part of the realm (Wickham, 2016). In turn, this depended on the prevailing idea that the kingdom, the realm was a patrimony of the entire ruling family, from which no (male) member of the dynasty could be excluded. This was also the case with many tribe-to-state transitions in other geographies. In particular, it was also the case with the Greater Seljuks and Rum Seljuks, or the Sultanate of Konya. Crown princes (meliks) were all granted large apanages, which then became their autonomous power bases from which they were very difficult to dislodge (Cahen, 1968). To such propensities for fragmentation, the Ottomans finally put a stop by prohibiting the division of the realm, instituting a winner-takes-all rule, and also legalizing fratricide.16
In Western Europe, it was some centuries before states were consolidates, definite rules of succession (such as primogeniture or seniority) were adopted, and such intra-dynastic strife was dampened down. Until then, civil wars played into the hands of the emerging nobilities by increasing their bargaining power as rival princes, in order to attract more lords to their side, found themselves forced to make more and more concessions to such potential vassals. So what happened with Clovis and his successors, also happened with Charlemagne and his successors. By the time Charlemagne ascended to the throne, the Frankish kingdom had already become largely “feudalized” in the Weberian sense. Charlemagne made an neffort to reverse this descent into decentralization by creating new administrative units called counties, and appointing governors called counts to administer them. This system was imposed on the existing fiefs, which had become largely privatized and hereditized. In this way Charlemagne hoped to bring his fief-holding vassals under a revived central authority. Due to his military-charismatic leadership, he partially succeeded in his lifetime, though in further rounds of civil wars and partitions after his death, these counts and counties, too, sank into the existing networks of the hereditary nobility, losing their state-appointed character and becoming “feudalized.”
2.7.4. Feudal monarchies
Such complex and interacting developments through the Age of Migrations, the Dark Ages, and the Early Middle Ages had led, by the late-10th century, to a fully hereditary fief-system where, when a lord died, his holdings automatically passed to his successor, with the king, too, accepting
16 Cemal Kafadar (1995) has argued that it was this measure and policy that was decisive in the longevity of the House of Osman and the durability of the empire.
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and legitimizing this transition. that was reflected in the power arrangements of what Medieval history specialists have called a feudal monarchy. They distinguish between three stages of state development in the Middle Ages: feudal monarchy; national monarchy; absolutism. Eventually it was only in this process (in the direction of a modern state) that there would be a revival of royal power, with initially weak kings growing into stronger kings trying to cut into the privileges of an established and entrenched hereditary nobility.
Long before that, what was a feudal monarchy like? It was a loose, complicated, overlapping and intersecting network of lord-and-vassal, or overlord-and-underlord relationships. It could be likened to a pyramid, but not a very steep, instead a rather flattened out kind of pyramid. This made for a wide distribution of authority within the ruling class -- or as some scholars have put it, even a parcellization of sovereignty. At the apex was the king, who was more like a first-among-equals with regard to the nobility surrounding him. Some very big magnates were the king's direct vassals, followed by lesser barons, descending by degrees down to individual knights and knight's fees.17 He wielded control, and was able to govern and exercise a degree of authority, through this vast web of vassals -- even though some of whom, as already indicated, were probably wealthier and had a greater personal power base than him.
What saved the king was the legitimacy of kingship. This had deep religious and ideological roots. In practice, it meant that the monarch was not easy to overthrow just through force. It was quite possible that such attempts, especially if the challenger was perceived as potentially a much stronger king than the previous ruler, to be resisted as a usurper by the rest of the nobility. There were other dimensions to royal power. Armed with this cloak or aura of legitimacy, the monarch presided over his magnates in the royal council. But the crucial dimension was warfare. The feudal king could mobilize his army by ordering his immediate vassals, the magnates, to provide him with warriors, who in turn would command their vassals to do the same. This is how a Medieval army of knights (or heavy cavalry) came together. The vassals and sub-vassals came in with their knights to join their immediate overlord. At the same time, this was a precarious arrangement. For as a result of the complexity of vassalage arrangements, they could also come together under their
17 In time, between barons and knights there would evolve an elaborate chain of intermediate ranks and titles comprising dukes, marquesses, earls, counts, viscounts and others, which one can see most clearly today in the unique traditions of the British aristocracy.
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lords to oppose the king. A vassal of one lord might marry the heiress of the vassal of another lord, thus acquiring duties to a separate ruler. What transpired if these lords turned hostile? This was not an uncommon occurrence. In the 15th century, the dukes of Burgundy held territory from both the French monarch and the German emperor, who were hereditary rivals. Several nearby fiefs, notably Aquitaine and Normandy, were obtained by the counts of Anjou, who were vassals of the French king, through marriage, inheritance, and a fair amount of deception. Thus, they came to rule more of France than his nominal superior, the king, prior to his accession to the English throne as King Henry II (reigned 1153–89) (Vasiliu, 2019).
2.7.5. From feudal to national monarchies
In purely and truly feudal monarchies, all human relations, including ties of dependence, were direct, local, and personal. So was identity. People adhered to and were proud of their local identities. There was no sense of belonging to a country or nation -- of being English, French, German or Turkish. Instead, what mattered was where you were born and belonged: your village, town or city. Simultaneously, loyalty was something owed mostly to the lord, and perhaps also to the king.
This was a reflection of the fragmented nature of Medieval European society where, with the breakdown of the one big unit of the Roman Empire, economic life had reverted to small, semi-enclosed, self-sufficient units, which in the political sphere (as we have seen) enjoyed a high degree of autonomy and immunity. But then, with further economic growth and development, things began to change. The Middle Ages were never static or stagnant, as Renaissance Humanists believed. Instead, it was characterized by economic and territorial expansion, urbanization, and the secular and ecclesiastical reform of institutions. This became more striking from around the year 1000, which is taken by many Medieval historians as marking the beginning of the High Middle Ages. Europe experienced a population explosion during this time period as a result of technological and agricultural innovations that made trade lucrative, and increased agricultural yields substantially compared to earlier periods. This new vitality and increasing self-confidence produced the Crusades18, Gothic art and architecture, the Papal monarchy, and the founding of universities. Intellectually, also crucial was the European resurrection of ancient Greek philosophy
18 Asbridge (2012) argues that the Crusades gave rise to or reinforced a “Western” life-consciousness.
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(Wickham, 2016). This was facilitated through the Crusades and contact with the Muslim Arab “translation movement.”
It all began with increasing stability, which enabled trade and commerce to recover after their Dark Age collapse. This is a process that scholars have comprehensively described and analyzed from Henri Pirenne onward. Long distance trade in luxuries expanded; merchants proliferated, connected, and accumulated great wealth; in parallel, towns and cities, too, grew in numbers, size, and affluence. At a sheer economic level, this benefited kings more than any other members of the ruling class because kings could rely on their legitimacy and apex position to borrow from this new merchant class. On the basis of economic development, they could also increase taxation. In both ways, they kept increasing their revenues and reinforced their personal power base. The growth trade and urbanization also had a cultural impact. People’s mental horizons expanded beyond the narrowly local; instead, they became more aware of the wide outside world. Not domestic (civil) warfare but international wars also helped in this regard. In particular, the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) between England and France promoted a proto-nationalist consciousness of Englishness versus Frenchness, including a new emphasis on English and French as national languages, on both sides.
So the Central or High Middle Ages became a time of not only economic and territorial development, but also the emergence of national identity. Increasingly, instead of being only a first-among-equals, kings rose more powerful both against their own nobilities, and also against the Church (the Papacy in Rome). From heads of a purely dynastic institution, they grew into symbols of proto-national unity. In this new role as “father of the nation,” the king’s popularity extended beyond the narrow aristocratic and bourgeois circles that promoted the cult of the monarchy, to significant sectors of especially urban society.
2.7.6. The special position of Medieval towns and cities
As indicated above, towns and cities played a key role in the transition from feudal to national monarchies. This was largely due to their degree of autonomy from the feudal nobility. This nobility was originally and for a long time rural in character. Fiefs and manors were essentially
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parcels of land from which income may be derived in the form of a share of the peasantry, their produce from the land, or monetary income derived from these. After the fall of Rome, towns were few and far between, and the ones that remained were small. Many early rural settlements were situated between manors (Padrino, 2005). Their citizens did not easily fit into the feudal structure of things. In fact, they did not belong to any fief and reported directly to the monarch, unlike other towns developed within existing fiefs. In either instance, it was difficult for a monarch or a great lord to interact with every person in a community. Therefore, they dealt with communities as a whole, which in fact meant dealing with the leaders of the communities.
The administration of towns was relatively unfettered, and townspeople were free of feudal duties. This was most clearly expressed in the Medieval adage stadtluft macht frei (city air makes one free). If a serf arrived in a town and remained there for a year and one day without being caught and sent back to his master's estate, he became a free citizen of that citizen (Padrino, 2005).
As the medieval economy grew and towns became more prosperous, their leaders acquired more authority. They were able to negotiate for greater autonomy with their kings and lords. Large towns and cities were now able to conduct their affairs with minimum disruption from monarchs and other rulers, and the cash they created bought additional autonomy (Hilton, 1990:102-113). London and Paris were treated with great deference by their respective kings, whereas smaller cities enjoyed a great deal of independence from royal or feudal interference. The cities of Spain were granted the right to self-governance, while those of central Italy, which were part of the Papal States, owed the pope only loose obedience, which they frequently disregarded (Hilton, 1990:102-113). In certain regions of Europe, it was common for several cities to become de facto sovereign states. Due to the difficulties the Holy Roman emperors had in imposing their authority across their kingdoms, even relatively tiny cities in Germany attained a significant degree of autonomy. In northern Italy, cities such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, and Florence produced some of Europe's most influential politicians while their prosperity paved the way for the Renaissance (Padrino, 2005).
2.8. The emergence of representative assemblies
From here, we come to two or three dimensions of subsequent development that are derivatives of European feudalism, and are therefore as Eurospecific in their way as European feudalism itself.
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These have to do with Representative Assemblies, Estate systems, and Absolutism. As should be clear from this entire hictorical development, they are unthinkable without the common background of European feudalism.
Part of the transition from feudal to national monarchies had to do with the emergence of representative assemblies. The heart of European feudalism was contractual vassalage, which entailed mutual interactions between lords and their vassals, with both parties having rights and responsibilities. The feudal lords lacked dictatorial authority over their vassals. For instance, a lord had no authority over his vassal's possessions. Indeed, Western European feudalism was founded on the notion that a lord could not tax his subjects without their permission (Vasiliu, 2019).
The key to kings getting the assent of their most influential subjects was to seek their advice and collaboration. Lords cared for their subjects, heeded their concerns, and adjusted their policies accordingly. As we have seen, one of the responsibilities of a vassal to his lord was to offer him with advice, and vassals viewed this responsibility as one of their most prized privileges, i.e. their ruler should confer with them on significant subjects. Each ruler had his own vassal council, which served as a forum for consultation (Myers, 1975).
Eventually, as towns and cities grew more prosperous, the “great councils” of monarchs grew to include not just notable nobles and churchmen, but also representatives from the major towns. The great councils grew into assemblies that represented the principal "estates" of the medieval realm: the aristocracy, the church, and the commoners (Myers, 1975).
In Spain, they were known as the Cortes, in France as the Estates-General, in Germany as the Landtag, in Scandinavia as the Rigstag or Riksdag, and in England, Scotland, Ireland, Sicily, the Papal States, and the Kingdom of Naples as Parliaments. They all shared a common ancestor or premiss, namely that the monarchs were required to consult with their prominent vassals.
One of the fundamental ideas underlying this evolution was that one individual represented many. This entailed not only expressing their opinions, but also committing them to action (such as paying a tax). Given the responsibility of this position, the representative must command the trust of the majority of individuals he represents. Thus, the practice of electing representatives by majority vote took root and grew to become a cornerstone of modern democracy (Myers, 1975).
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2.9. The demise of feudalism as a variety of the fief-based state
In the centuries after AD 1000, Western Europe's population and economy grew dramatically. The circulation of coins increased, and a money economy gained ground. The limitations of feudalism as a method of recruiting soldiers and maintaining armies became apparent. The rising economics of their kingdoms permitted rulers (often in collaboration with legislative assemblies) to levy taxes and command permanent professional warriors. Obviously, this growth strengthened the significance of representative assemblies. It also struck at the very heart of feudalism, transforming nobles and knights into landed aristocrats rather than combatants (Vasiliu, 2019).
The mid-14th century Black Death and subsequent local outbreaks of plague reduced the population of Western Europe. Due to the decrease in population, the value of labor increased as a result of the labor shortage. Thus, the labour services owed by serfs became less advantageous for their lords, who began to demand cash rentals instead.
The feudal system and its hierarchical structure had ceased by the end of the 16th century, although vestiges of feudalism persisted in many parts of Western Europe until the 18th and 19th centuries. In areas where this process had progressed the furthest, fiefdoms had transformed into landed estates, which were merely economic units (Holton, 1975).
2.10. Estates and aftermath
Following the emergence of towns in the Medieval West, the Standestaat, often known as the "polity of the Estates," emerged. The towns evolved into autonomous governmental entities as well as dense urban centers of productive and commercial endeavors. The municipality obtained corporate rights. Thus, the emergence of towns indicated the entrance of a new political power adding to the lord–vassal connection. The interventionist state was a result of the social problems caused by population growth, economic transformation, and urbanization (Padrino, 2005).
An estate can be defined as a group of people with comparable social standing. The political relevance of this type of group is derived from either the advantages or disadvantages of their standing (Myers, 1975). The nature of economic activity determined class differences (Cox, 2010).
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Typically, in France the first order consisted of the clergy. The second order was the nobles. The remaining third comprised everybody else, including the new professional classes, the bourgeoisie, and especially the peasantry.
A number of groups within the estate were set up to either support or challenge the king. The standestaats presented a more institutionalized challenge to the sovereign than the feudal order (Poggi, 1978).
Meetings between influential citizens and the ruler's representatives were commonplace in standestaats. All the Estates were supposed to work together to achieve their goals, yet their constituent parts were all powerful in their own right. The Estates were much more structured than feudal barons’ meetings, which tended to be ad hoc affairs. The Estates were the ruler's partners in power, although the sovereign, often holding a formal title such as king, duke, or prince, was seen as superior to the Estates.
In the future, the king would try to sidestep the Estates by having administrative funds sent directly into his personal bank account. With a permanent military force at his disposal, he could do without the Estates' support and ignore public opposition. The other side of the coin was that within the outer integument of the Estates, new social classes were developing, for which the old Estates organization proved too much of a straitjacket. It was a case of new wine that could no longer fit into the old bottles.
Absolutism
This portion of European political developments cannot really be understood without the Military Revolution, so-called, and its impact on the Genesis of the Modern State. This will be dealt with in Chapter IV. Nevertheless, below is a short summary, introduced here for the sake of completeness.
More or less the same socio-economic developments that contributed to the transition from feudal to national monarchies, also provided the underpinnings of what is called absolutism. This had to do with the relationships between Early Modern merchant capitalism (or commercial capitalism), and the continued growth of royal power. Simply put, coming out of the European feudal kind of fief-system, kings kept encroaching more and more on their entrenched, established aristocracies.
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This development would have been impossible and incomprehensible without a foundation of Europan feudalism.
In concrete terms, the strengthening of territorial rule and the incorporation of smaller and weaker regions in the standestaat led to the emergence of a very small number of sovereign states. Each state viewed itself as sovereign and engaged in an inherently competitive, risk-laden struggle for power. If a state wanted to enhance its position vis-à-vis other states, it would have to centralize power in one central location, monopolize control over its area, and rapidly mobilize resources for the territory. These heightened the ruler’s drive to consolidate into himself all powers of authority engendering absolutism (Wilson, 2000).
The Standestaat was noticeable especially in Holland and England, where Estates existed with tremendous hardship. This was predominantly the case in Austria, too, at the beginning of the 17th century. In some countries, the Estate system had already been undermined by the 17th century, and their monarchs were on the verge of absolute power (Hillay, 2001).
At the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), the Estate system ceased to exist in real terms, and became a mere formality. People began adoring and imitating the prince's sultanism (Halil İnalcık, 1973, 1994), resulting in the emergence of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great type of princely models (Southerland, 1992).
Apart from Holland and England, the prevailing opinion then was that only absolutism could give strength to the state. It implied that only the absolute could govern. When governments shifted en masse to absolutism, Denmark became an absolute state out of disgust towards the dominance of the nobles.
It was in Denmark that absolutism was supported by a written constitution for the first time in Europe. As rsearched by Ernest Ekma (1957), in 1665, Kongeloven, often known as the "King's Law" of Denmark–Norway, mandated that:
The Monarch shall from this day forth be revered and considered the most perfect and supreme person on the Earth by all his subjects, standing above all human laws and having no judge above his person, neither in spiritual nor temporal matters, except God alone. This
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law consequently authorised the king to abolish all other centres of power. Most important was the abolition of the Council of the Realm in Denmark.
In Poland, all misfortunes and political weaknesses were attributed to the aristocratic government, and with the exception of Venice, the entire country of Italy adopted varieties of absolute monarchy.
The absolute king and his adherents asserted that their authority, the Divine Rights of Kings, originated from God. This prerogative to act as God's agent on earth conferred these individuals with vast authority and limited accountability. There were many glorious examples of states progressing under absolutism, which provided the impetus for expansion. Spain under Phillip II, France under Louis XIV and Russia under Peter the Great, says Morton (2005), used absolute powers to modernize their countries and set an example for the rest of Europe.
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CHAPTER THREE
THE QUESTION OF OTTOMAN “NON-FEUDALISM”:
THE TIMAR SYSTEM AND THE SULTANIC STATE
3.1. Introduction
In this chapter, we shall be turning our attention to the Ottoman Empire. This was yet another military-agrarianate socio-political formation based on a peasant economy. It also forged a fief-system of its own, which is known as the timar system. This has attracted great attention, and become the subject of some major debates, both in Turkish and European history and historiography. Indeed, there has emerged a large body of scholarly literature comparing the two, and trying to assess whether they were basically similar or different (or to what extent). These can collectively be referred to as debates over the feudal or non-feudal nature of Ottoman land tenure (Berktay and Faroqhi eds 1992).
This is a peculiar development that needs to be explained. Many other dynastic states based on a peasant economy and society, including the early land empires of Antiquity, as well as, in more recent centuries, China, India and the lands of the Middle East, have also developed fief-systems over some thousands of years. Of course they have been studied by specialists, but (with the possible exception of India) they have not created the same kind of comparative interest in both European and non-European scholarship.
Why? Or why has the Ottoman timar system come to be so much better known, and to attract such attention? The answer should be rather obvious: It is basically a matter of geographical proximity leading to a long-standing political rivalry. South or East Asia were too far away, and not directly engaged with the West -- until that West expanded into what had been their traditional space and came knocking on their door. In contrast, the Ottoman principality was born right next to what was becoming Europe, and in its process of state-formation and imperial expansion, grew territorially from the Balkans all the way into Central Europe. Furthermore, there it managed to hold on, despite
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operating at its maximum outreach, for more than a century and a half, while its long retreat spanned another two hundred years or more. In other words, it quickly became a contemporary, hence a major trading partner and also a menacing rival of Late Medieval European kingdoms. It thus entered the field of vision, and attracted not only the political but also the intellectual attention of European elites from an early stage onward.
3.2. Ethnogenesis
And it had all the more claim to attracting attention to itself because in a literal, physical sense it was coming into Europe from the outside, which meant that its origins and cultural background were different. While the ethnogenesis of Medieval Europe19 was based on the Germanic and Slavonic tribes of the Migrations of the Peoples, and their eventual mixture and fusion with the former populations of the Roman Empire, the ethnogenesis of the Ottoman Empire was based on the movement of Islamicized Turkic tribal groups out of Central and West Asia.
In the second millennium BCE, the ancestors of the Ottomans arose from the region between the Siberian forests and the Mongolian steppes. They are claimed to have traveled frequently, fighting the Chinese along the way and splitting into many branches. Emerging as the Oghuz, they moved into Turkestan, the Caucasus, Iran, northern India, the Middle East, and Armenia. This is known as the coming of the Turks, or the Turkish irruption, within the overall context of Islamic history. Masses of Oghuz or Turcoman tribes under two princes from the House of Seljuk as their war-leaders first overthrew their Ghaznavid overlords with the Battle of Dandanakan in 1040, and established the Greater Seljukid Empire, bringing the Baghdad Caliphate, too, under their protectorship. They soon started encroaching upon Byzantium to the west, inflicting another catastrophic defeat, this time on Emperor Romanus Diogenes IV, at the Battle of Malazgirt/Manzikert in 1071. Although the victorious Seljukid sultan Alp Arslan did not stay but went back to his preferred power base of Iran and Mesopotamia, the collapse of Byzantium’s eastern defences enabled a further wave of Turcoman tribes to enter Asia Minor. Like the first wave of the Germanic invasions in Europe, they too set up a number of independent principalities, one of which, led by a cadet branch of the Seljukid line, rose above the rest as the Rum Seljuks or
19 For the twin concepts of ethnogenesis and sociogenesis, see Norbert Elias (1939/1982).
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the Sultanate of Konya (ancient Iconium).20 But things did not develop in linear fashion. There were all kinds of contrary shocks and zigzags. Thus at this moment, in came the Crusades from the west, amounting to a major earthquake, and it was only after the passing of that wave that the Rum Seljuks enjoyed a brief efflorescence in the early-13th century -- before being hit yet again, this time from the east by the Mongols. Their 1243 defeat at the Battle of Kösedağ allowed a fresh wave of Turcoman tribes, swept along by the Mongols, to burst in and set up a second generation of Anatolian Emirates, such as Menteshe, Karesi, Sarukhan or Aydın, especially in coastal zones to the north, northwest, west and south, away from the Central Anatolian plain in territories no longer firmly controlled by Konya.
Among such borderlands was a belt stretching south of the Marmara Sea, along the interface between a much-shrunken Byzantium and similarly weakened Seljuk Sultanate, where a few initially small and marginal-looking semi-tribal war-leaders grabbed land and tried to hold on as marcher lords (Kafadar, 1995). One of these was perhaps the smallest of all: the Ottoman principality, with a certain Osman (or Othman, or Uthman) Gazi as its eponymous founder, an obscure character on his own. Was he really part of an established tribal nobility, with an indisputable Kayı genealogy -- as Fuat Köprülü once insisted, unfortunately not on the basis of hard documentary evidence, but on rather speculative it-could-not-have-been-otherwise grounds? Or was he a soldier of fortune, a free-wheeling warrior, a robber baron who, through daring, cunning, clever marriages, and religious alliances, managed to make his own fortune (Finkel, 2013) -- and have his personal and family history rewritten (albeit posthumously) in the process? The problem for the Köprülü type of argument, as pointed out by Paul Wittek (1958), and in recent scholarship further elaborated and developed into a “state technology” approach by Cemal Kafadar (1995), is that (a) there is no contemporary, 14th century evidence of any sort, and that (b) this Kayı tribe story is one presented in chronicles written only more than a century later -- in the early-15th century, hence in the shadow of established Ottoman power.
3.3. Sociogenesis
20 For comparisons with the Germanic invasions, see: Halil Berktay (1987, 1990, 1992).
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Be that as it may; one way or the other, it was around 1300 that this small Ottoman principality began to make its presence felt on the stage of history, in the borderlands or buffer zone between Byzantium and Turkish-Muslim Anatolia. The traditional account is that by grabbing and holding on to the vicinity of Söğüt and Domaniç in Bithynia, or in other words simply by surviving in this environment, Osman laid the groundwork for the establishment of the Ottoman state. His son Orhan took Bursa in 1326, Iznik in 1336, and Ulubat and Izmit in 1337. By seizing Gallipoli, Orhan stretched the new empire into Europe, and began to rise above other nomadic groups in the process. During dynastic struggles and civil wars in Byzantium, he may have been initially invited into Gallipoli and north of the Marmara Sea. But once there, his warriors remained and settled. Between 1375 and 1380, his son Murad I (1362–1389) focused on the western and Anatolian beyliks, capturing Hamid, Teke, Germiyan, and Karaman (İnalcık 1973).
But crucially, more land also meant internal, organizational change. As the borders receded into the distance, new means were needed to control the growing space between them, and also to feed nd maintain the fighting force (that was on the way to becoming an army) for longer and longer in the field over longer and longer distances. This brings us to the sociogenesis of the Ottoman sultanate (as well as all its contemporaries in Asia Minor). Very broadly speaking, they were tribal or semi-tribal principalities evolving their own transition to an agrarian state if successful, or disappearing if not. This much may be said to have been similar to what the Germanic peoples went through. There, too, expansion, unification (of larger population groups), and state-formation went hand in hand. But compared with the birth of Medieval Europe, the overall context was different in at least three major ways.
(1) It was not post-Roman. In particular, here there had been no Roman slave economy (it had not extended this far east)21, and therefore no legacy of slave-worked estates continuing into the subsequent peasant economy.22 Instead, it had always been small production through the ages, mostly without demesnes, with the peasants cultivating their own holdings, and eventually paying
21 Keith Hopkins (1978).
22 Marc Bloch (1931).
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rent-in-kind out of their harvest. Compulsory labor services (or labor-rent) were not entirely unknown, but rather limited to non-agricultural work.23
(2) The time-frame was not the 5th – 8th centuries, but the 13th – 15th centuries, and the geography was the Eastern Mediterranean, where the money economy of the Pax Romana had never really collapsed. Instead, there had always been some cash in circulation, and this facilitated state-building in ways that were no available to the so-called barbarian kingdoms in the West in earlier centuries.24 In particular, it enabled the Ottomans to develop, if not an entirely cash-based state, at least a cash-based arm or component to their military machine and empire.
(3) This was no longer a nomadic or semi-nomadic environment. The Inner Asian or West Asian world of nomadism had extended into Anatolia from the 11th century. The Balkans had long been settled and agricultural. After crossing the Dardanelles, this different socio-economic setting opened before the Ottomans. Here they learned to tax sedentary peasantries (and to organize them into their own fief-system) as they went along (Berktay 1987, 1990, 1992).
3.4. Expansion into Southeast Europe
Unsurprisingly, therefore, there is a general agreement among historians that (over and above the material possibilities) what made the political fortune of the early Ottoman emirate was first, its position on the borderlands with Byzantium, and second, its resulting ability, after swallowing the Karesi principality to its west, to cross over to and expand in the Balkans from around the mid-14th century onward. This presented huge ideological and territorial advantages. Back in Anatolia, most other Turcoman emirates were stuck in the same space with others over whom they could claim no religious pre-eminence, since they all belonged equally to the Abode of Islam. In contrast, the Ottomans were able to target (or to claim that they were targeting) the infidels’ lands, the Abode of War, in their forays into Byzantium and the Balkans. Hence they could self-righteously position themselves above the others in their calls for gaza (Kafadar, 1995). This, together with the promise of the fertile agricultural lands of Thrace (the Maritsa plain) and beyond, helped attract
23 Halil İnalcık (1973, 1994).
24 Comprehensively argued in Halil Berktay (1987, 1990, 1992).
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growing numbers of footloose warriors, colonizing dervishes, mystics, landless peasants and all other kinds of vagrant elements to the Ottoman cause.
From the period’s Byzantine and Balkan Christian chronicles, it is possible get vivid accounts of how this human potential was converted into what som authors have been fond of romanticizing as “the swirling tide of Ottoman conquest.” It is exaggerated because it refers not to the subsequent consolidation25, but only to the first softening-up phase of raiding activity, such as described in the following paragraph:
The Turkish raiders are called in their language akandye [sic. akıncı], which means ‘those who flow’, and they are like torrential rains that fall from the clouds. From these storms come great floods until the streams leave their banks and overflow, and everything this water strikes, it takes, carries away, and destroys, so that in some places they cannot quickly make repairs. But such sudden downpours do not last long. Thus, also the Turkish raiders, or ‘those who flow’ like rainstorms, do not linger long, but whatever they strike they burn, plunder, kill, and destroy everything so that for many years the cock will not crow there.26
In these and other ways, in 1362 the Ottomans seized Adrianople (Edirne) in Europe, which became their second capital and their first in Europe. It was also a crucial junction of three main arteries of further expansion: the old Roman-Byzantine Via Militaris in the center, leading all the way up to Belgrade; the Via Egnatia to the west (what became the Ottomans’ Sol Kol, Left Flank, cutting across the Balkans to the Adriatic), and their Sağ Kol, Right Flank, to the east, creeping up the Black Sea coast to Romanian ports with their vast hinterland that would become a major supply of meat and grain to Istanbul. Maintaining the strategic initiative, Murad also seized Philippopolis as well as a large portion of Bulgaria, plus and Nis and Thessaloniki on the way to defeating the Serbs at Kossovo Polje in 1389. Bayezid I, his son, advanced on to fronts: both to the Danube in the north, and further into beylik territory in Anatolia, putting an end to the beyliks of Menteshe, Aydin, Saruhan, Germiyan, and Hamidili (1389–1390), while Karaman capitulated outright. The incorporation of major cities including Erzincan, Sivas, and Kastamonu ensured that the northern
25 As underlined by Halil İnalcık, in his early and yet seminal “Ottoman Methods of Conquest” article in Studia Islamica, 1954/2.
26 Quoted in Heath W. Lowry (2003:47).
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ports on the Black Sea were fully within the new political entity. When Bayezid shifted his attention back to Europe, the threat posed by the Turks was already widely known. Despite a hitch and interregnum caused by Timur’s 1402 attack, these expeditions lasted until the entire Balkans were ruled by the Ottomans. In 1451, Mehmed II became the Sultan of a revived empire, and in 1453, after capturing Byzantine Constantinople, he was dubbed "the Conqueror" (Barkey, 2008:1-2).
3.5. Secrets of Ottoman success
While the fact of initial Ottoman attack and devastation, as described in Lowry’s chronicle and many others, is all too real, it is also clear that there were, there had to have been, other sides to this drawn-out process. Once more, many historians have noted (or argued) that especially by protecting Eastern Orthodox majorities against Rome’s Catholicization attempts, the Ottomans brought a modicum of religious tolerance into the Balkans (İnalcık, 1973). They also did not touch most of the lower nobility, frequently to the extent of leaving them in their places as local fief-holders, now re-instating or re-defining them (even without requiring any conversion to Islam) as Christian timar-holders (İnalcık 1973, 1994). Last but not least, at least initially they arrived as a lighter, less expensive state, not requiring very high levels of taxation, which is what enabled them to lower peasant burdens. Since they were coming out of a non-Roman background that was not familiar with the legacy of a slave economy, and hence not familiar with demesnes or compulsory labor services, this revolved to a large extent around the conversion of any such labor services they found in Southeast Europe into rents (meaning rent-in-kind or labor-rent). All in all, says Halil İnalcık, it was as a “dynamic unifying force” that they arrived in the previous chaos and anarchy of the Balkans.
Looking into this takeover and subsequent recovery in greater detail, we can pose the question of what had the Turks found or learned as they fought against the Byzantines. Continuous conflict on land and water for roughly two centuries created a trail of destruction. This was aggravated by previous demographic problems, the Black Death, and excessive soil loss. Therefore, by the 15th century, the population had returned only to its level in the 12th century. It is possible that the limited number of remaining Christians facilitated the rapid Islamization and renaming of communities to Turkish. Even in cities, the situation was inconsistent, with certain areas lacking established communities or commercial activity, which made incorporation easier. In the
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borderlands, trade and chances for resource mobilization aided the Ottomans. This featured wartime alliances and struggle for booty. With Byzantine Christians, Latins, and Seljuk principalities, trade was conducted. The Ottoman merchants traded with both the western and eastern frontiers. Due to need, the Byzantines also dealt with the Ottomans, and many of them eventually adopted the Ottoman system following the capture of Constantinople.27
Early Ottoman state formation was aided by international trade because, as the new state expanded, it included vital trading ports, thereby gaining control of the majority of cities along trade routes. Halil İnalcık has provided us with massive empirical information in this regard. This reinforces my previous point about the relative continuity and vigor of money economy. For example, the capture of Bursa, a center of the silk trade and the northern Black Sea, fostered the growth of trading contacts with the West, such as Venetian and Genoese merchants. This trade fostered the development of a significantly multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and generally diversified civilization. Social ties are formed through physical contact. Nomads and sedentary agriculturalists co-existed in a symbiotic relationship characterized by exchange, cooperation, and conquests between the Turkic yürüks and the Christian nomadic elements of the Balkans. Sharing religious ceremonies, such as fertility rites for land and animals, was evidence of their connection, but they also raided and stole from one another. They gained knowledge from one another and got closer as a result. Even when they assaulted each other, there was a sense that the damage was minimal due to their extensive teamwork. To guarantee peace, Muslim leaders granted Christians significant autonomy in conquered territories. The partnerships endeared many Christians to Muslim leaders, many of whom became their allies (İnalcık, 1973, 2001).
3.6. Coinage in the Eastern Mediterranean
This hybrid culture arose from the fusion of various concepts and practices. Many Sufi dervishes were housed and nourished by both Christian and Muslim people. During the thirteenth century, Sufi groups proliferated across Anatolia, bringing with them heterodox Islam to various social classes. These complemented organizations organized around trades and crafts, which served as repository for ideas that traveled to other places. The leaders would travel the frontier territories, where they would be warmly greeted by the Muslim and Christian inhabitants, who would swarm
27 For the extent to which Ottoman trade laws and practices, including customs divisions, followed Byzantine precedent, see İnalcık (1994).
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to observe the rites and participate in the Sufi leaders' teachings. There was finally a growing Turkification of popular narratives, and the stories conveyed progressively reflected a rising Turkish narrative dominance.
From Persia in the east to Western Europe, including the Mediterranean basin, a vast geographical territory had been covered by metal coins since their introduction. Frequently serving as a crucial contact conduit, the entire area has witnessed some of the liveliest currency exchanges throughout history. The driving force behind these exchanges was the maintaining of trade links within and between these regions. Due to the centuries-long preservation of Mediterranean and Indian minting methods, at the time of the European Middle Ages these two regions continued to influence one another. While East and Southeast Asian coins were minted in a similar fashion, paper money was used intermittently in China between the 11th and 14th centuries, and it became largely autonomous between the 13th and 14th centuries, having first appeared a century earlier. When the Mongols conquered Iran in the 13th century, paper money was introduced. Marco Polo noted, for instance, that the Mongolians utilized paper money, which did not exist in Europe at the time.
Prior to the 17th century, this was the situation. Earlier, the Germanic invasions had divided the monetary norms, economics, and trade of the Mediterranean basin into two streams. In the western provinces of the Roman Empire, the population, commerce, and urban economy all saw significant decreases. It is this that led to the Dark Ages (as discussed in my Chapter II on Europe). Europe's mintage was dominated by small silver pennies after gold disappeared. Over time, payments in kind or in terms of work became more prevalent. Occasionally they were coins, but more often they were other commodities and primitive money, such as food, spices, cloth, and animals. Additionally, barter and other forms of non-monetary trades grew common. In many ways, the coins were no more valuable than other items. Only in international commerce were they still chosen over any other medium of exchange (Akkaya, 1999). The minting situation was also chaotically fragmented. In Medieval European feudalism (the relative decentralization of which I have tried to explain in Chapter II), monopoly through territorial seizure was the law. Multiple jurisdictions and their respective holders conducted the minting function. The right to manufacture money should have been strictly held for the monarch or emperor, while the actual sorting of coins was performed by a group of artisans (Akkaya, 1999). But even that began to pass into the hands of private lordship. So here and there the minting industry became the responsibility of the lord of
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individual coinage, who began to make a revenue through coinage fees. It was only in the 11th century that Europe began to undergo a significant transition. During the subsequent two centuries, global population grew rapidly. Due to the increasing significance of taxation as a source of revenue, there was a new demand for consistent currency supply. Trade and monetization were enabled by coinage and silver's spread. Copper returned to a three-tiered system of gold, silver, and bronze when gold was reintroduced in Europe around the 13th century. Later on, money and commerce came to be tightly linked. The prosperous Italian city-states began to dominate Mediterranean European trade, which was booming. There was uniform competition between city-state gold coins. During the second part of the 14th century, the Venetian ducat acquired prominence as the principal currency and standard for commercial payments throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. To facilitate commerce, numerous mintings were conducted (Kelleher, 2015). The development of public spending and budget deficits, which have gradually increased with the unification of authoritarian nations and the rising costs of war, has resulted in an even bigger pattern of deterioration and rising military expenditures, especially in the 14th century.
But if we go back from all these post-1000 revivals, the Dark Ages or Early Medieval scarcity of cash was why, again as I have argued in Chapter II, while Rome collapsing and the first Germanic kingdoms were taking shape, and even for a long time after that, there was no possibility of a cash-based state. Instead, it was the fief-based state, and more or less the “pure” form of the fief-based state, that had to be the rule. In contrast, the urban economy and economic activity remained stronger in the Eastern Mediterranean. This meant that the Roman traditions of gold, silver and copper coinage also survived. In Byzantine times, coinage flourished until the 11th century (Akkaya, 1999). In Islam, coinage continued from early to later states. These two traditions continued to interact throughout the Middle Ages as a result of the Mediterranean's robust commercial connections. In the 12th and 13th centuries, during the Late Roman Empire, Islamic gold dinars and Byzantine coinage were recognized as an internationally accepted payment standard. Additionally, shares were traded around the Mediterranean. The commenda, for example, the most popular sort of trade association in Medieval Europe, owes its beginnings to the transformations of Islamic civilizations in the Middle Ages, and spread to Western Europe via commerce across the Mediterranean. It is the subject of heated debate whether the European bill of exchange, too, originated with the hawala.
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3.7. The money economy in later Ottoman centuries
So from the outset, not just a single big capital but also a number of lesser provincial towns and cities, as well as both local and regional trade, plus some coinage in circulation, were part and parcel of the economic fabric that the Ottoman state inherited from its predecessors. Additionally, in the course of its 15th century expansion, it came to straddle the great long-distance trade routes of the Ancient and Medieval world. Up till then, this trade had come under the hegemony of Italian maritime city-states, and Venice in particular had built its seaborne empire of island and coastal fortresses (stretching from Cyprus and Crete up the Adriatic to the Serenissima) in such a way as to protect its key commercial connections with the Eastern Mediterranean termini of the Silk Rote and the Spice Route such as Aleppo, Latakia, Damascus, and Alexandria. It was this entrenched network, and its share of the Levant trade, that the Ottomans began to target very consciously and deliberately from the time of Mehmet II, who, immediately after capturing Constantinople, turned his attention to Trebizond in the east, on the Black Sea, as well as Euboea in the west, on the Aegean. Over a long series of wars with Venice, stretching from the 15th to the early-18th centuries (by which time both sides were on the wane), they did succeed in eating enough into that prize to to further expand the foundations of the cash-based component of their state.
In order to facilitate all this local, regional, and international trade, and to keep their urban and rural sectors (markets) connected with each other, of course the Ottomans issued coins. Not only did they issue their own coins, but they also allowed the free circulation of foreign (especially Italian but also German) coins through their territories, relying on money changers (sarraf) to keep such exchanges flowing. Predictably, there were different levels of monetization. Most of the available cash circulated in urban, elite, and commercial networks. But significant portions of the provincial populace, too, adopted the use of coins. The silver and copper groups were the most modest. The state imposed fees on a vast range of monetary activity, which included tiny but extensive credit networks. In class terms, workers, and in geographical terms, locals also participated in these cash transactions. On the basis of this evidence, there is no doubt that a substantial portion of the Ottoman economy, as well as the state, was dependent on or accounted for by cash.
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Hence the administration tried to control and regulate these financial markets, though not very effectively. The underlying problem was that unlike their West European contemporaries, they did not really acquire a cash-oriented, mercantilistic outlook. In particular, they did not turn bullionist. That is to say, they did not prioritize creating an export surplus in order to make sure that more money kept coming in than was going out of the country.
The late Mehmet Genç (1994, 2009) did some famous work on the Ottoman economic mind and its policy consequences. He analyzed the economy and the priorities of the central bureaucracy in papers based on years of research into the Ottoman government’s central records. His work was initially cast in a purely economic context, but came to be closely connected to politics, religious concerns, and military, administrative, and fiscal issues. He asserted that it was possible to reduce Ottoman economic objctives to three basic notions: Provisionism, Fiscalism, and Distributionism. These were very far from free market principles. Provisionism meant ensuring an adequate supply of goods. Priority was given to supplying the urban economy, which included the army and the palace as well as (staples for) the entire urban population. The government desired to assure a steady supply of products for the urban economy, and particularly the capital. The administration was acutely aware of the crucial role performed by merchants in this regard. With territorial expansion and the acquisition of Syria and Egypt in the 16th century, long-distance trade and control of intercontinental trade routes became increasingly vital, and standardized methods were required. Foreign merchants were especially welcomed because they brought goods that were unavailable at home. To that end, various advantages were granted to European merchants. Capitulations and concessions date back to the 16th century. There is no other way to comprehend it. Exports, on the other hand, were frowned at because they could aggravate domestic shortages. Hence, while imports were promoted, exports were permitted only when domestic economic demands appeared to have been addressed, and as soon as shortage became imminent the administration intervened to impose export restrictions especially of essentials like raw materials or food. Merchants and domestic producers were the primary supporters of mercantilist policies in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. But in the Ottoman Empire, they were never able to exert sufficient pressure on the government to reform such long-standing policies. Secondly there was Fiscalism, which meant a constant search for more revenue. Particularly during times of crisis, the government did not hesitate to hike taxes. Thirdly there was Distributionism, which was intended to maintain a sense of relative equality and social justice. At bottom, all three policies
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were intended to maintain the established order, where all individuals and groups were expected to know their hâd, their place and limits within the empire.
This statist, centralist outlook may be said to have been present throughout Ottoman history, but once more, it was perhaps most clearly expressed in Mehmedian times. Mehmed II was a true architect of Ottoman absolutism. He was the quintessential warlord, focused on raising the efficacy of the Ottoman military machine to a maximum. His great victory of conquering Constantinople provided him with the immense charismatic authority to push his vision of a seamless, relatively highly centralized empire. On the one hand, in order to break the initial power that fief-holders especially in Rumelia had accumulated roughly over 1300-1450 (see below on the timar system), he increasingly relied on Christian prisoners of war as well as the child levy (devşirme) system to surround himself with officials of slave (kul) origin or status. On the other hand, he utilized every possible means to take as much cash into his treasury as possible. Thus in his time the Ottoman Empire imposed the following annual tribute payments on their vassal states (before annexing some of them outright): 18,000 ducats for Bosnia and Herzegovina; 17,000 ducats for Wallachia; 6,000 ducats for Moldova; 3,000 ducats for Trabzon; 3,000 ducats for Kava; 14,000 ducats for Amasra and Sinop. However, all these new revenues were not spent immediately. Mehmed's entire reasoning revolved around a tool of power: the ruler's independence. Hence the government's primary strategy was to amass vast supplies. At the time of the Conqueror’s death in 1481, the sultan’s treasury, the Hazine-i Amire, is said to have been overflowing with 240 million akçes plus an additional 104 million ducats.
3.8. A new cultural, political, organizational synthesis
I have already cited Halil İnalcık’s comments on how the Ottomans arrived as a “dynamic unifying force” amidst the chaos and anarchy of the Balkans. More recently, other historians of subsequent generations have taken such observations to a new level. How did the early Ottoman state, as it was becoming a state, generate social structures and adherents? In her Empire of Difference, Karen Barkey (2012), while concentrating on the Ottoman capacity for adaptation after c.1600 (i.e. in the 17th and 18th centuries), takes the story of such flexibility back to the foundation era. The above-mentioned consequent force, she argues, was frequently a process that involved a formidable political organization of authority and control. It was the product of inter-community brokering
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that combined disparate religious groupings with socio-economic systems to create new social interactions and identities. According to Barkey, key leaders frequently begin with existing relationships and expand them. Osman was able to connect previously unconnected pieces and construct new networks from existing ones. However, since everyone of Osman's competitors had access to the same social and cultural networks, why did only the Ottomans thrive while others failed? Barkey claims that the Ottomans were able to combine brokerages across networks with effective methods. The new Ottoman state arose at the boundary of empires, principalities, and small-scale territorial powers (Barkey, 2012:30). As a result of the disintegration of the Rum Seljuks, an opportunity arose for the establishment of an intermediate boundary zone. Such frontier zones provide their actors with a variety of options, prospects for different and shifting alliances in war and peace, and possibilities of brokering. Then, over time, they re-develop a shared grasp of local customs and cultural norms that aid daily life.
In the case of the Ottomans, the frontiers spanned huge expanses between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk realm. These were regions in which communities might access each other's territory with relative ease and assert control over resources (Barkey, 2012:36). It was their bilateral (or even multilateral?) “frontier society” niche and identity that got the Ottomans going, and which they retained for centuries. The Ottoman Empire lasted so long, insists Barkey, because, from its inception, it mastered the capacity to handle its most prized assets: diversity -- clever adaptability and tenacity. After World War I, while they tried to save the empire and establish a modern nation, they sadly lost these things. It was because of their “intrinsic flexibility” and “capacity to adapt” that the Ottomans were able to maintain their dominance for centuries.
Barkey notes the contrast between this, and the obsolete perception (once) held among Western scholars of barbarians who governed and introduced Asiatic types of despotism. Yes, the Ottomans were frequently cruel warriors (in ages and wars that were generally cruel). But battle was just a small element of their prosperity. In a feat that evaded European rulers at the time, they successfully assimilated various populations, who participated in building new institutions, including a composite new elite, that contributed to the empire's success (Barkey, 2012:7). The Ottoman Empire encompassed varied cultures, languages, socio-economic and political structures, and peoples over three continents. They controlled the contradictory and complimentary organizational structures of nomads and settlers, urban and rural, Islamic and non-Muslim, Sunni
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and Shia, peasants and peddlers, artisans and merchants, bandits and bureaucrats. They were able to establish governmental institutions while being adaptable and cognizant of the empire's expansive reach. Hence it should not be surprising for the Ottomans to have been viewed and to have proclaimed themselves as the successors of Rome. By necessity, the Ottomans created a hybrid civilization and a new culture that was both diverse and unified. Barkey suggests at least three necessary elements for imperial dominance and longevity:
1. Maintaining dominance over the peoples of the empire by legitimizing a supra-national ideology, such as a claim to be custodians of Christendom or Islamdom, as well as an elaborate philosophy of genealogy and lineage.
2. Maintaining control over a multi-religious and multi- ethnic variety of communities through policies such as "tolerating" diversity while also allowing for assimilation as opposed to forceful conversion. Actually, all empires must find a variety solution.
3. Maintaining political and economic influence over a diverse group of peripheral elites. In traditional empires, successful challenges almost always arise from the periphery. Revolts start from the periphery. Ruling dynasties are very frequently taken down by new dynastiesarising in the periphery. So sustained control of peripheral elites becomes crucial. This may involve “divide and conquer” techniques that keep elites apart and also dependent on the central government.28
3.9. The Ottomans’ hybrid timar-based state
This brings us to the heart of the successful system that the Ottomans were able to put together at the intersection of all these diversities: the hybrid yet fundamentally timar-based nature of the Ottoman state. When I speak of the hybrid nature of the Ottoman state, what I mean is that unlike Early Medieval European kingdoms, it was not only and wholly fief-based. At the same time,
28 Similar concepts have been elaborated by Richard Lachmann (2003), where he argues that emerging leaders in state-building maintain relationships across the boundaries of many systems, allowing them to communicate across these groupings and formations. The resulting structure incorporates both centralism and regionalism, as well as tolerance for diversity. He cites the Ottomans as having constructed a network system with themselves at the hub.
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unlike modern states, neither was it only and wholly cash-based. Instead, it had two legs: one cash-based and the other fief-based. At the same time, these were not like two disconnected sectors. Instead, the cash-based sector nestled within the fief-system. Otherwise put, it was the fief-system that was basic and primary, and the cash-based component that while more powerful in military terms, was ultimately secondary in this sense. That is why I have used this phrase of the “yet fundamentally timar-based” nature of the Ottoman state.
This is important because many historians tend to describe these two wholly separately. Thus we are usually told that the Ottomans had an elite infantry corps called the janissaries, who were salaried soldiers of (legally) military slave or kul status. Side by side with them (and usually before them) we are also told that there was also something called the timar system. Nothing is said about the inner connection between these two components or sub-systems. In particular, nothing is said about the fact that the sultan was, in a very strong sense, by far the biggest timar holder within the overall timar system, and that that was what he owed his immense power to.
From here, the customary narrative probably goes into a description of the characteristics of this timar system. This is what most textbook pages are spent on. As a bare minimum, it is said to be at least in some ways similar to European feudalism, and which in some ways bears comparison with it (regardless of whether the author’s ultimate verdict on this may be yes or no). This is because there are units called timars, comprising revenues legally collectible from the peasants in a (small or large) number of villages, that are regularly granted to members of a so-called military (askerî) class in return for their military or administrative services. Strictly speaking, therefore, it is not (or should not be) directly a land grant, nor even a grant of revenue, but more narrowly, a grant of the right and privilege to collect these taxes. In any case, in this way the smaller units sustain mounted warriors, called sipahis, while the larger units may be handed out to dignitaries of higher or highest standing, such as district governors (sancakbeyis), provincial governors (beylerbeyis), viziers or grand viziers. Furthermore, the timar grants of each was designed to cover not only the primary recipient’s annual revenue and expenditures, including his own arms and armor, war horse and other equipment, but also in order to enable him to maintain a number of secondary warriors at his door, as his retinue, including their arms and equipment, though these might not be on the same quality level as his own. In either case, such secondary warriors, referred
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to as men-at-arms in Medieval Europe, were called cebelus in Ottoman terminology, which means precisely the same thing. Last but not least, such secondary retinues were expected to be proportionate to the size of the timar grant. So a small sipahi might join the army camp with a few cebelus by his side, while a bey would be expected to have kept two or three hundred, and a grand vizier as many as five hundred as part of his household.
3.10. Similarities and differences
All these clearly constitute common ground with Medieval feudalism -- or indeed most any fief-system in Ancient or Medieval history. They tell us that while European feudalism and Ottoman land tenure may not have been exactly the same, they (and many other fief-systems in history) were each other’s functional equivalents. The answer to why the Frankish kingdoms developed feudalism, or to why the Ottomans developed their timar system, cannot be a matter of who took what from whom; it can only be answered by explaining what function they fulfilled.29 To paraphrase Clive Ponting as cited in Chapter I, they all enabled rulers to (i) reward their closest followers and keep them loyal to himself; (ii) build and maintain an army; and (iii) maintain law and order (including making peasants pay their taxes or rents) all over the country.
Beyond this point, differences begin to emerge. They have to do with (1) further details of how Ottoman timars were granted and held; and (2) timar holders’ powers over the peasants in their villages. Both have been set out in great detail by Halil İnalcık in numerous research articles spread over decades, as well as two major synoptic works punctuating that long career (İnalcık 1973, 1994). With regard to point (1), in the Ottoman Empire (he says, and it has become axiomatic in virtually all subsequent work) that
(1.1) timars were not given out in gift (corresponding to the earliest Medieval benefices) but as strictly conditional upon service.
29 This is where, in his ponderings about whether the Ottomans might have taken the timar system from the Byzantine pronoia system or the Seljukid ikta system, Fuat Köprülü goes wrong and falls into the trap of the fallacy of origins (or the developmental fallacy).
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Also (1.2) there was no contractual vassalage; instead, everything was through appointment from above.
(1.3) There was no subinfeudation. No fief-holder could carve fiefs out of his own fief, and grant them to people who would thereby become his vassals.
(1.4) Instead, all timars, large or small, were given by the sultan (on the basis of a charter issued by the sultan), out of state land (mirî arazi), that is to say land under the rakabe, the royal eminent rights of the sultan.
(1.5) Both small and large timars were not allowed to stay for long in the same fief. Instead, they were frequently rotated, and sometimes over quite long distances.
(1.6) Timars were not hereditary in the same family. In principle they were class-hereditary. That is to say, only those born into the military class (or descendants of several generations of sipahis) could hope to get timars. But a sipahi’s son was not allowed to take over his father’s timar. If he were to be granted a timar, it would be elsewhere, while his father’s timar would be given to another person.
These were all so many administrative measures adopted by the Ottoman state to prevent its timar-holders from privatizing and hereditizing their fiefs so as to convert themselves into an entrenched landowning nobility. They were complemented by another set of measures (as well as customs and traditions) having to do with point (2), that is to say limiting the timar holder’s authority over the peasants and production processes in his timar.
(2.1) Unlike Medieval European bi-partite manors (discussed in Chapter II), Ottoman villages usually did not have demesnes, that is to say land set aside as a separate home farm for the lord of the timar. Instead, they generally consisted only of peasants’ small farms, household-holding units.30
(2.2) Peasant families had a hereditary and permanent right of possession and usufruct over their small farms, from which they could not be evicted.
30 As previously indicated: because this is not a post-Roman context bearing the heavy legacy of a previous slave economy.
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(2.3) Peasants carried out their production by themselves, using their household labor to cultivate their small farm. At the end of the agricultural year, they paid a portion of their harvest to their timar-holder as rent-in-kind or produce-rent.
(2.4) These had to be in conformity with the amounts or proportions written down in the agrarian law books (arazi kanunnameleri) and land registers (tahrir defterleri) for that county or district (sancak, liva). Timar holders were forbidden to exceed those limits. Doing so would be tantamount to arbitrary oppression and exploitation (zulüm ve teaddi).
(2.5) In particular, timar holders could not impose compulsory labor services in the actual course of agricultural production on the peasants in the villages given to them as timar. They could impose a limited amount of services outside of agricultural production, such as building (a barn), carting, and storage. Superior authorities could also order labor services for public works, or for the passing army. But as demesnes (hassa çiftlik) were exceptional, so was regular unpaid labor for so many days a week on a particular plot of land belonging to the sipahi.31
How did all this develop?
At this point, three questions arise. First, even if these empirical descriptions are entirely correct, what is the ultimate conclusion with regard to comparing the timar system with European feudalism? Was it feudal or not? Do the similarities outweigh the differences, or vice versa?
Second, was it always like that, from the beginning to the very end? Or was it the product of a historical development involving shifts, changes, or adaptations?
Third, what were the underpinnings of the sultan’s exceptional power? How was he able to bring that cash-based arm of the state to bear on his fief-holders so as to curb their privileges and ambitions of self-aggrandizement?
31 For all of it: once more, İnalcık (1973, 1994).
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On the first question, it is interesting to note that no less an authority than Halil İnalcık changed his opinion over time. In his 1973 textbook, he argued that the two systems were “superficially similar” but “fundamentally different.” More than twenty years later, in a massive book-length chapter that he contributed to An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, he wrote the following:
… the fact remains that under the Ottoman timar regime, in which sipahis lived in the village and actually controlled the land and taxation, th basic characteristics of a feudal society persisted.32
On the second question, not everything can be pigeonholed so neatly as the previous enumeration indicates. For yes, there were constant shifts and changes over centuries. For example, is it true that demesnes never really existed in Ottoman agriculture? İnalcık (1994:117-118) notes that hassa çiftliks were recognizably present before Süleyman I (1520-1566), but that they seem to have disappeared because of the difficulties of direct management. Again, is it true that timars were always given out as strictly conditional upon service? Murad I (r.1359–1389) appears to have been the first Ottoman ruler to offer property rights to his military officers in exchange for their service to the kingdom (Lowry, 2003:153). Initially, it was a very inexpensive manner of supporting the army, as land was abundant and the sultan did not need to spend directly from his treasury. It is quite possible that at this time, even with previous examples before them and the ulema’s advice and counseling behind them, the early Ottoman sultans did give out a lot of timars in freehold (mülk or mülk timar), and that this did result in the great lords of the Rumelian frontier marches beginning to grow at least semi-autonomous from the sultan. So much is admitted by İnalcık (1954) hwhen he writes that after his 1442 defeat Murad II had come to suspect these beys of treason. Clearly, it was also as part of the same crisis of the 1440s and 1450s that after conquering Constantinople in 1453, Mehmet II felt the need to break the entrenched power of this original Turkish founding class, this incipient or embryonic nobility (İnalcık 1973, 1994). He may not have had to cut very much, for it seems that the Ottomans had not made as drastic and comprehensive “mistakes” as the Frankish kings, as a result of which privatization and hereditization had not yet proceeded to the extent that it quickly did in Early Medieval Europe. And yet, cut he did, thereby playing a crucial role in actually shaping the Ottoman imperial system (as reflected in the
32 İnalcık (1994:71).
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impression it made on contemporary European observers like Machiavelli). How much it hurt the incipient nobility is also highlighted by the partial reaction that took place under the Conqueror’s successor Bayezid II (İnalcık, 1994).
Today in advanced scholarship it is accepted that until the end of the 15th century, there was great friction in Ottoman society between the Turks' landed aristocracy of the provinces, actively involved in territorial conquests, and a central bureaucracy made up primarily of converted slaves (devşirmes), with the power balance regularly shifting between the two. In the second half of the 15th century, the pendulum swung back, this time to the right. The defeat of the landed nobility, the re-establishment of the state’s property rights (eminent domain) on privately owned land, and the consolidation of authority in the hands of the central bureaucracy all went together. The central bureaucracy prioritized constructing and recreating a traditional order dominated by itself. The prosperity of the economy, of the urban areas, long-distance trade and imports were all required for the stability of this social order (Şevket Pamuk, 2000).
But coming after the opening period of 1300-1450, this second 1450-1600 phase, too, did not turn out to be eternal. Instead, as we shall see, it produced its own departures or deviations from Mehmet II’s ideal norms. In the late-16th and early-17th centuries, as a result of the challenge of the European Military Revolution, timars progressively gave way to tax farms. The state seized timars from officers who died or who could no longer afford to send troops, and re-allocated them to local gentry and notables who contracted to collect taxes for monetary compensation (İnalcık, 1994). Why is all this important? In order to realize yet again, that when you have a fief-system, a fief-based state, depending on changing conditions it can give rise to different and changing power configurations.
3.11. The sultan as the greatest fief-holder
Also crucial is the third question above; that is to say, just how the sultan acquired the immense power that the cash-based component of the state provided? The answer, as I have already indicated, that he was able to position himself as by far the biggest fief-holder of all within the overall integument of the timar system. As Halil İnalcık (1994) has explained in great detail, in traditional societies east or west, rulers (kings, emperors, sultans) enjoyed similar rights over the land. This was called dominium eminens in Latin, which translates as royal domain or royal eminent rights into English, the counterpart of which is rakabe in Ottoman terminology. In other
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words, it is not a peculiarly Islamic-Turkish or Ottoman but actually quite a universal legal category.
This last Arabic word is sometimes rendered as “bare property” (çıplak mülkiyet) in modern Turkish. What it means is that in some primordial moment that we can take as the beginning of state-formation and the creation of a land tenure system, it is the sultan who decides what to keep and what (and how, under what conditions) to give away. All land coming under sultanic rakabe is termed mirî (belonging to the state), and in principle it “belongs” to the sultan to dispose of as he sees fit. I have already referred to Mehmet Genç’s work on the Ottoman economic mind. Of the three principles that he identifies, the second is Fiscalism. What is involved is a pre-modern state that is primarily interested in raising revenue. When the Ottoman center looks out over the realm, it doesn’t see just the land, or primarily the land. It sees the revenue that can be raised from all the land. The bureaucracy goes through a long phase of learning and systematizing its methods. By the time of Mehmet II’s absolutizing imperial drive, it is ready. In the 15th century, everything that is under rakabe, that is to say the entire mirî, including agricultural surplus as well as non-agricultural revenues, comes to be divided into a large number of revenue units (mukataas). This is the generic term, on a somewhat higher plane than timar. In fact, a military fief (timar) is only one way a mukataa can be managed. Others are tax-farming (iltizam) or trusteeship (emanet). Most direct cash-flows (such as port dues or customs taxes) are managed as emanet. Here a trusted person (emin) is appointed as a salaried official to collect the revenue in question as quickly as possible and pass all that cash into the sultan’s treasury. Timar is the very opposite. The timar-holder does not pass any of his granted revenue into the treasury. He keeps all of it, and provides military service in return. Tax-farming (iltizam) is in between. The tax-farmer (mültezim) purchases the right to collect the revenues from a given mukataa. Hence he pays some of that revenue into the treasury, and keeps some of it for himself.
One aspect of the originality of the Ottoman system, generally emphasized by Karen Barkey, was the way they developed these various management systems and melded them. Another aspect was the way they fitted all of them into the workings of their overall timar system. In any given year, let us say that there was a certain total sum of revenue that was collectible from the mirî. This was not the GNP in the modern sense; instead, it was “surplus” in the political economy sense – what was reasonably collectible as tax or rent from the immense body of the entire national income
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below the surface. Now, what did the Ottoman administration do with all that “surplus” or potential revenue? Through the sultan, under the sultan’s authority and legitimacy, how did they divide it?
Ömer Lütfi Barkan, in his studies of Ottoman “budgets” in the first half of the 16th century, has left us fairly clear answers to this question. About a fourth of the total went as small timars to large numbers of sipahis, who, together with their cebelus, their men-at-arms, made up a huge territorial cavalry. Another fourth went as medium, large and very large timars, collectively known as havass-ı ümera (the emirs’ prebends) to the higher and highest dignitaries, starting with sancakbeys and beylerbeys, and going all the way up to viziers and the grand vizier. Their numbers were small, but their grants were huge, so that they were able to maintain large retinues of cebelus as part of their household, which provided yet another addition to the cavalry army.
That left around half, and strikingly, all that was retained by the sultan (or reserved by the sultan) as his own fiefs. This is not to be confused with the mirî; instead it was a portion, the sultan’s portion, of the mirî. The technical name reflects this; it is the havass-ı hümayun, the sultan’s prebends (royal demesne in Europan terminology). It was immensely superior not only in quantity but also quality. A massive number of revenue units (mukataas) were allocated to the sultan which, additionally, comprised direct cash-flows or else thuse sources of revenue that were most easily and quickly convertible to cash. The sultan (or his subordinates) managed most of these as emanet or iltizam, thereby taking virtually only cash, and vast amounts of cash, into his treasury. This was the Hazine-i Âmire: as the name says, the treasury of the emir or âmir, the ruler. It was literally that: not a state treasury in the modern sense, not a treasury for all tax revenues arising out of the entire national economy, but a treasury for only the revenues of the fiefs of the sultan.
The next big question is: where was all that money spent? Again Barkan provides the answer. Around 30 percent went to the Topkapı Palace, including its never-ending, agglutinative construction, its repairs and maintenance, plus of course its daily expenses, given that its kitchens are variously estimated to have served four meals a day to as many as 5-7000 people (including occupants as well as externals). The rest, roughly 70 percent, went to Army of the Sultan’s Servitors (kapıkulu ordusu) by its proper name, which in generic terms was the royal guards army. Its most important components were (i) the janissaries (Yeniçeri Ocağı); (ii) the royal artillery (Topçu Ocağı); and (iii) the royal cavalry (Kapıkulu Süvarileri), plus other support units.
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So this was the arm that provided the sultan with such enormous clout against his foreign and domestic rivals. In international warfare, they constituted the crack units of the imperial army as a whole, the elite core against the stonewall and into the firepower of which the enemy should ideally be drawn. At home, this was the big stick that only the sultan wielded, and not even a fraction of which any over-ambitious fief-holding dignitary could ever hope to deploy. It was real, material power of a crushing sort which did not have to be actually exercised in order to dissuade. Just to know that it was there was enough. Hence in time, it boosted the myth of the invincible and unchallengeable sultan. It came to be converted from materiality to ideology.
I have two major points to make in this regard. First, this was an entirely salaried royal army. The cash for it came from the sultan’s own fiefs. Whatever cash revenues were available in the Ottoman economy were first impounded in liquid revenue units (mukataas), and then allocated to the sultan as havass-ı hümayun. From there they flowed into his treasury, and from there to his guards army. So as I have previously stated, the cash-based component of the Ottoman state was not entirely separated from its fief-based component. Instead, it was embedded in the timar system as a whole. Second, and by the same token, the sultan’s relationship to his royal guards army was exactly the same as any other timar-holder’s relationship to his retinue of cebelus. In a way, the janissaries, the royal artillery, and the royal cavalry were nothing but the cebelus of the sultan. Why can’t we see this clearly? Because it was a very big arm. Because there were so many of them.
3.12. Changes in warfare
Evolving from the 14th to the 15th century, this hybrid state system and the two arms of the military provided the Ottoman Empire with a double clout. In external campaigns, the sipahi timariots would range ahead, scout, raid, devastate, harass, intercept, and encircle. The janissaries and the cart artillery would be transported as safely and as freshly as possible, over some hundreds of kilometers, to a chosen battlefield. There they would take up their position, waiting for the sipahis to somehow force the enemy to come to them. Crucially, within the overall strategic initiative of the Ottomans, they mostly fought out of the tactical defensive. If all went well, and the enemy did decide to give battle, they triumphed with their numerical strength and combined firepower. This was how so many great pitched battles were won in the 15th and 16th centuries, with Mohacs in 1526 as their epitome. One such decisive battle of annihilation, and sometimes an entire realm fell to the Ottomans. In between, also very successful was Ottoman siege warfare.
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Land empires don’t jump across space. Instead, they grow in contiguous, step-by-step, province-by-province fashion. This was the case with the Roman Empire. It was also the case with the Ottoman Empire. It was not an ephemeral nomadic storm out of the steppes. It advanced carefully, methodically, feeling its way. In the conquered lands, the feudal sipahi cavalry were the immediate instruments of control. These sipahis were granted timars carved out of the new province. Once more they spread themselves out across the land, and established themselves on the backs of the peasantry. Then from this new base, they started raiding, harassing and softening up the next piece of hostile territory.
It all worked well until the second half of the 16th century. At that point, two factors started working against the Ottomans. First, the imperial paradox set in. This means that the bigger traditional land empires become, the slower they expand. In the Ottoman case, too, distances became so great that they started overextending, campaigning at the extreme end (or even beyond) their effective radius of action. Because of the difficulties presented by rain-softened roads, campaign season could begin only in mid-spring, and had to end by mid-autumn. From Istanbul to Belgrade it was at least a month and a half, and then at least another two weeks to Budapest. Allowing another two months to return, that left only two or three weeks in Central Europe -- a small window in which to bring any enemy to battle. Just consider what happened during Süleyman’s last campaign. It is a perfect example of diminishing returns. He took all his immense army out to the Habsburg frontier, and they captured only one strongpoint (Zsigetvaradin), outside which he died in his pavilion, before they had to start on the way back.
But in addition, there was a second factor that was even more decisive in tipping the scales. This was the Military Revolution that evolved in Europe from the second half of the 16th century. This is the name given to series of tactical and organizational changes that emerged in the way European armies fought (and were trained and disciplined). It manifested itself in siege warfare, infantry warfare, and naval warfare. Most crucial for the Ottomans was the development of echelon fire in infantry warfare. Through the rolling forward march and the rolling counter-march, European infantries were able to combine movement and firepower in a new way. Hence after Medieval centuries of cavalry domination, once more superiority passed to the infantry. Suddenly, the sky became the limit for infantry armies with muskets. The more the better --provided you could find the men, pay for them, and equip them. Numbers and finances became the key. Hence there were
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also social consequences. The semi-closed warrior castes of the Middle Ages became redundant, even a hindrance. Now knights’ sons did not need to be trained in fighting with edged and pointed weapons from childhood. Any young peasant could be taken from the rural areas, have a musket put in his hands, and taught to load, prime, train and fire it. Individual fighting skills became insignificant. But group training jumped in importance. War ceased to be a wartime affair. Now, large armies had to be recruited in peacetime, put in barracks, clothed and fed by the state, and subjected to close-order training for months on end before being sent in disciplined marching columns against the guns of the enemy.33
3.13. The subsequent course of power in the Ottoman Empire
For the Ottomans, this meant that first the Austrian armies that they were facing in Central Europe, and then also the Russian armies that they were beginning to face in the north and east, were beginning to fight in a much more efficient way. Distance had neutralized them; the fire discipline of these new infantries began to defeat them. They first experienced this at the battle of Hachova (or Mezsökerezstes) in 1596, where they were losing for the first two days before a desperate charge barely saved them on the third. From then on, the 17th century became a century of stalemate, while starting with 1683, their 18th century became a long string of disastrous defeats, leading into the Tanzimat modernization reforms of the 19th century.
Not that they didn’t try to cope and adapt long before that. They did draw some lessons from Hachova and other battles. They, too, started to recruit peasant soldiers and put muskets in their hands. But because they did not have the requisite kind of officer class, they could not train and discipline them the European way. There resulted a painful, protracted retreat. In the meantime, major changes began in Ottoman society. At one end, those peasant soldiers that intermittently deserted in large numbers turned brigand, and these roving bands of Celâlis devastated both Anatolia and Rumelia for the better part of a century.
In the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire still possessed a strong central authority. It began with a structure of direct state control by officials selected by the state, and subsequently moved into a phase of mixed centre-periphery control. This was largely because the effort to find the cash
33 On the Military Revolution, see the next chapter.
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needed to hire all those peasant soldiers (levend, sekban, tüfengci), to keep them in barracks, and to put firearms and ammunition in their hands, forced the state to start recalling timars, taking them back into the mirî, and then putting these revenue units (mukataas) on auction this time as short-term tax-farms (iltizam), or even as life-farms (malikâne). In turn, this accelerated those trends of privatization and hereditization that the central bureaucracy had been trying to prevent for centuries. It precipitated the rise of private estates called çiftliks, as well as the rise of a new class of gentry and notables in the countryside. Hence a system of indirect control via prominent local figures came into being. By the 18th century, many former sipahis had gained ciftlik land through inheritance. Muslim and Ottoman officials were the majority of ciftlik proprietors.
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CHAPTER FOUR
THE MILITARY REVOLUTION, AND CHANGING
POWER CONFIGURATIONS IN EUROPE AND THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
4.1. Introduction
In the previous chapter, we looked at how society in Europe and the Ottoman empire was transformed, and the gradual shift in power configurations. In this chapter, we shall discuss how military changes -- in tactics, organization, and drill and discipline, among others -- catalyzed this transformation.
The Military Revolution refers to a period of significant changes in military tactics, technology, and organization in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. These changes led to the development of modern armies and had a significant impact on the balance of power in Europe.34 The introduction of firearms, particularly the musket, and the use of pike and shot tactics, allowed for a more flexible and mobile military force. This, in turn, led to the development of standing armies and the professionalization of military leaders.35
The Ottoman Empire, which was a major power in Europe and the Middle East during this time, was also affected by these changes. The Ottomans had a powerful and well-trained military, but they were slow to adopt new weapons and tactics. As a result, they were unable to match the military capabilities of European powers, and their empire began to decline in the 18th and 19th centuries.36 The Military Revolution and the changing power configurations in Europe and the
34 Peter G Tsouras, Warriors Words. A Quotation Book, Cassell, London, 1992.
35 Geoffrey Parker, ‘In Defense of the Military Revolution’, in Clifford J Rogers (ed). The Military Revolution Debate: Readings On The Military Transformation Of Early Modern Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. Accessed October 23, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, pp 1561-1562. 36 Gábor Ágoston, “Firearms and Military Adaptation: The Ottomans and the European Military Revolution, 1450-1800” Journal of World History Vol. 25, No. 1 , pp. 85-124 , University of Hawai'i Press, 2014.
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Ottoman Empire had a significant impact on the history of the region, and continue to shape the world today.
Michael Roberts (1955) introduced the concept of the Military Revolution, and identified the years 1560 to 1660 as a period of significant change in warfare. Roberts argued that the changes in military tactics, technology, and organization during this period were a significant factor in the rise of Western European powers and the decline of other powers such as the Ottoman Empire. He argued that the introduction of firearms, particularly the musket, and the use of pike and shot tactics, led to the development of standing armies and the professionalization of military leaders. These changes in warfare allowed Western European powers to gain an advantage over other powers, which contributed to the rise of Western Europe as a center of international power.37
Michael Roberts' theory of the Military Revolution has been expanded upon and modified by other historians over the years. Geoffrey Parker (1996), for example, has extended the original time frame of the Military Revolution by more than two centuries, and focused on the role of defensive technologies and the history of naval combat in the development of warfare. He has also emphasized the role of the Spanish, Hapsburgs and French in the Military Revolution.
However, other historians such as Jeremy Black (1990) have questioned the significance of the Military Revolution, arguing that the changes in warfare during this time period were not as significant as Roberts had suggested, and that the circumstances that led to this shift were more complex than previously thought. They also argue that the term "revolution" may not be the appropriate way to describe the changes that occurred during this time period.
4.2. The characteristics that made medieval warfare distinctive
When people think of battles that took place in medieval Europe, they often imagine chivalrous knights wielding swords and lances. However, medieval armies typically relied on a variety of weapons to overcome the challenges presented by their adversaries. The popularity of a weapon 37 On the issue of the impact of the military on the changing role of the European powers in modern period the work of Brian Downing is a significant contribution. Downing main emphasis is on the significance of medieval power configurations and of military modernization in the early modern period. He holds that in late medieval times a range of constitutional arrangements made Western Europe unique by paving its way for the ultimate liberal democratic system. He then examine the shift by the military revolution of the early modern era from small, regionalized feudal armies to large standing armies. See Brian Downing, The Military Revolution and Political Change Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2020).
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was influenced by factors such as its effectiveness, status, and price. However, the most important factor in determining the effectiveness of a weapon is its ability to incapacitate an adversary. According to Kelly De Vries, a specialist in medieval warfare, medieval weapons often had difficulty penetrating metal armor, and their primary purpose was to incapacitate the enemy. Therefore, even if a weapon was not able to pierce armor, it could still be considered effective if it was able to incapacitate an opponent by breaking bones or otherwise disabling them.
Swords and spears
The sword was one of the most important weapons in the Middle-Ages. According to Kelly de Vries, the sword was a quick-moving weapon that could be used for both stabbing and slicing, allowing the user to deal the most damage possible with the least amount of effort. The sword was also an important influence on the development of more complex forms of martial arts in the centuries that followed. Military historian Mike Loades also states that when handled correctly, a sword "gives optimism that expertise can triumph over physical might."38 The spear, another popular medieval weapon, was known for its long reach, making it a good weapon for keeping an opponent at a distance. It was also used as a thrusting weapon, as well as a means of breaking an opponent's guard.
Maces, axes, and spears
In addition to swords, medieval armies also made use of other types of weapons such as maces, axes, and spears. Polearms, such as spears, were particularly popular among regular infantrymen because they were readily available, inexpensive, and easy to manufacture. This allowed armies to expand and become more efficient. The effectiveness of polearms, particularly the spear, was demonstrated in the battle of Bannockburn in 1314, where the Scottish army, armed with spears, defeated the larger and better-equipped English army. The use of spears as a defensive weapon in large formations was an effective means of fending off attacks from cavalry.
Arrows, longbows, and crossbows
Another important aspect of medieval warfare was the use of ranged weapons such as arrows, longbows, and crossbows. The presence of spearmen on the battlefield protected the archers, 38 Swords and Swordsmen (Pen and Sword Military, 2011).
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allowing them to fire their arrows without fear of being immediately engaged by the enemy. The development of recurve bows and crossbows, in addition to the longbow, significantly increased the range and killing power of archers. While arrows could penetrate metal armor only infrequently, they were still able to inflict significant damage, and could have a psychological impact on the enemy. The battle of Agincourt in 1415 is a well-known example of the effectiveness of archers in medieval warfare, where the English longbow men played a crucial role in their victory over the French.39
Recruitment
During the Middle Ages, it was common for lords to respond to a call to battle with their own personal archers and soldiers. This decentralized structure was a reflection of the established social order of the time, where lords were expected to provide soldiers for the king or feudal lord in return for the lands and privileges they held. However, this system also resulted in armies that had varying degrees of training, technological advancement, and capacity. The more powerful and wealthy the nobles were, the more capable their armies were. However, this also meant that the armies of less powerful nobles were often less well-equipped and trained. This also applied to the intelligence and espionage capabilities of the lords, the more powerful and wealthy the lords were, the more capable their intelligence and espionage capabilities were.
During the feudal period, armies were often composed of a combination of different types of soldiers. The core of the army was typically made up of highly experienced knights and their household men, who were well-equipped and trained. Alongside them were mercenaries, who were hired for the duration of the campaign and were typically well-equipped and experienced. Feudal levies, on the other hand, were composed of commoners who were obligated to serve in the army as part of their feudal duties. They were often poorly equipped and trained, and were often referred to as rabble. However, they could still be useful in certain situations, such as when traversing rough terrain. In urban areas, it was also possible for the formation of municipal militias, which were composed of citizens of the city who were trained to defend their city in case of an attack. 39 The events of the battle of Agincourt in 1415 are described in detail in the book by military historian John Keegan. See his book The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme (Bodley Head, 2014).
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The advent of centralized governments during the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era saw a resurgence of citizen and mercenary armies, similar to those of the Classical period. Centralized governments were better equipped to raise and maintain larger, more professional armies than the feudal lords of the Medieval period. The primary instrument used to recruit soldiers was central peasant levies, which were composed of commoners who were conscripted into service. Younger sons of wealthy landowners were also recruited into the army and were considered to be the best candidates for army positions, such as English archers and Swiss pikemen, as they were well-educated, disciplined, and had the resources to purchase their own equipment. This belief dates back centuries. For example, during the Late Middle Ages, England was one of the most centralized kingdoms and as a result, its armed forces during the War of the Hundred Years were almost entirely composed of salaried professionals.
Every able-bodied Englishman was required to serve in the army for a period of forty days, known as the "forty days service." However, in practice, this was not sufficient time to mount a successful campaign, especially on the continent. To overcome this, the English government established the scutage system, which allowed Englishmen to pay a fee in order to be discharged from military service. The proceeds from these payments were then used to finance the establishment of a permanent standing army, which was more professional and better equipped than the feudal levies of the past. Despite this, the vast majority of armies in Europe during the High Middle Ages still consisted of a significant number of hired core troops, and the mercenary business in Europe flourished beginning in the early 12th century. Many lords, who were not able to afford to maintain a large permanent army, hired mercenary companies to fight for them in exchange for payment.
During the Middle Ages, towns in Italy increasingly relied on mercenaries, known as condottieri, to fight instead of the militias that had previously defended the region. This trend continued throughout the entire Middle Ages, as towns found it more cost-effective to hire professional soldiers instead of maintaining their own militias. These mercenary units would be staffed by enlisted personnel who were paid according to a predetermined scale. Throughout the history of Italy, mercenaries dominated city-state armies due to their effectiveness as soldiers and the combined effectiveness of their resistance forces. This was especially true in Italy, where city-states were in constant competition with each other and needed to maintain a strong military presence. Even though they were significantly more dependable in combat than a standing army,
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they still posed a risk to the state even when there was no hostilities taking place, similar to the Praetorian Guard in ancient Rome.
These Italian condottieri were known for their innovative tactics, which included the use of indirect warfare. They chose to strike at the enemy's supply lines, economy, and capacity to wage war rather than engage in open battles. This approach resulted in campaigns that were less bloody than others and relied more on maneuvering than actual battles. This concept of indirect warfare was later popularized by military theorist Sir Basil Liddell Hart in the 20th century, but the condottieri were using it 500 years earlier. This approach to warfare was not always well received, and it was criticized by some, such as Machiavelli, who interpreted this behavior on the part of the indirect party as a sign of cowardice. He believed that the use of this strategy in warfare was a form of cowardice and was inferior to the traditional way of battle which is direct and open.
Methods of encirclement and defense
During the medieval period, besieging troops made use of a wide assortment of siege engines. These catapults came in a variety of forms, including the mangonel, onager, ballista, and trebuchet, which were all designed to hurl projectiles such as rocks and arrows at the enemy's fortifications. Other siege engines included scaling ladders, battering rams, siege towers, and various other devices that were used to breach the walls of a castle or city. Mining was another form of besieging strategy, in which tunnels were constructed beneath a section of the wall and then unexpectedly collapsed in an attempt to destabilize the wall's base. This was done in order to gain an advantage in the siege. Another tactic consisted in drilling through the enemy walls, but due to the height of the castle walls, this method was not nearly as successful as the others. These various tools and techniques were used to break through the defenses of a fortress or city, but the success of the siege would also depend on the skill of the troops and their ability to coordinate their efforts.
The growth of siege warfare tactics was a driving force behind the creation of a wide variety of defensive countermeasures. Specifically, as time went on, medieval fortifications became progressively stronger, as seen by the development of the concentric fortress during the Crusades. This trend continued throughout the Middle Ages. Additionally, as time went on, Medieval fortifications became more deadly to attackers, as indicated by the expanding use of machicolations (projecting galleries used to drop objects on attackers) and the manufacturing of
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hot or incendiary substances. Besieged resistance during this time period consisted of essential elements such as arrow slits, hidden gateways for sallies, and deep-water wells. The architects of the castle paid considerable attention to the defense and protection of the entrances, gates, retracting bridges, portcullises, and barbicans when designing the structure. In order to prevent fires from starting, wet animal skins were regularly stretched over gates. Moats and several other types of water protection, whether they were naturally occurring or man-made, were likewise an absolute necessity for the defenders. These various counter-measures were designed to protect the castle or city from an attacker's attempt to breach the walls and gain entry, but the success of the defense would also depend on the skill of the troops and their ability to coordinate their efforts.
Before the invention of gunpowder-based weaponry (and the resulting higher-velocity projectiles), the power and logistical balance was tilted in favor of the defender. When faced with a determined siege, conventional techniques of defense became progressively less effective with the introduction of gunpowder. In the light of this background information, the Military Revolution can be segmented into three primary types.
The first type is the development of firearms and artillery, which gave the attacker a significant advantage over the defender. The second type is the development of fortifications and siege warfare tactics that were specifically designed to counter the use of firearms and artillery. The third type is the development of new tactics, such as trench warfare and siege warfare, that were specifically designed to take advantage of the capabilities of firearms and artillery. The Military Revolution that took place during the Early Modern Era was a result of these three types of developments, which led to significant changes in the way wars were fought and won.
Siege warfare
The invention of gunpowder, its importation from China, and its incorporation into weapons during the 14th century was a significant turning point in siege warfare. Cannon and other gunpowder-based weapons allowed for the breaching of walls and fortifications that were previously impregnable, shifting the balance of power in favor of the attacker. This led to the development of new fortification techniques, such as the trace italienne, which incorporated angled bastions and ravelins to better defend against artillery fire. The use of gunpowder also led to the development of mobile siege artillery, such as the bombard, which could be transported and set up quickly on
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the battlefield. The widespread use of gunpowder and its incorporation into siege warfare marked the end of the medieval period and the beginning of the early modern period.
City and castle
During the 13th and 14th centuries, the concentric castle design became increasingly popular, which featured multiple rings of walls and towers. This design allowed for better protection against siege engines and provided multiple lines of defense for the defenders. Additionally, castles began to incorporate features such as arrow slits, crenellations, and machicolations, which allowed defenders to fire upon attackers while being protected by the walls. As a result, the castle became an integral part of Medieval warfare and played a critical role in both defense and offense. The fortifications of Medieval cities also underwent similar developments, with walls and towers being added and improved upon to better protect against siege. These fortifications, along with the castles, played a significant role in shaping the way Medieval warfare was conducted, with sieges becoming a common and important aspect of the conflicts.
Medieval siege
In addition to the fortifications of the castle and the city, siege warfare also involved the use of various siege engines, such as catapults, battering rams, and siege towers. These machines were used to breach the walls and defenses of the castle or city, and were often the key to successfully capturing a fortress. Techniques such as mining and drilling through walls were also used during sieges. Furthermore, the use of indirect warfare tactics, such as cutting off supplies and striking at the enemy's economy, became increasingly popular during the medieval period. Overall, siege warfare was an important aspect of Medieval warfare and greatly influenced the development of defensive architecture and technology.
These innovations in siege warfare and fortification design were crucial in allowing castles and cities to better defend themselves against enemy attacks. The use of concentric walls, moats, towers, and other defensive structures made it more difficult for attackers to breach the defenses and gave the defenders an advantage in repelling invaders. The use of round towers instead of square towers, for example, eliminated a blind spot in the defenses and made it harder for attackers to undermine the walls. These innovations in fortification design continued to evolve throughout the Middle Ages and played a significant role in shaping Medieval warfare.
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The tower keep, also known as a donjon or great tower, was a large and heavily fortified structure that served as the final stronghold of the castle. It was typically located at the center of the castle, and was designed to withstand prolonged siege. The tower keep was equipped with its own wells, storage rooms, and living quarters, allowing the defenders to hold out for long periods of time. It also had its own defensive features such as arrow slits, battlements, and machicolations, which allowed the defenders to continue to fight even if the outer walls had been breached. The tower keep was the ultimate line of defense in a Medieval castle, and its presence made it extremely difficult for an attacker to take full control of the castle.
Siege warfare and the fortification of castles and cities were significant aspects of Medieval warfare. The development of new weapons, siege engines, and defensive strategies led to the evolution of castle design, with the incorporation of concentric walls, moats, towers, and other features. The use of mercenaries also played a significant role in medieval warfare. The use of indirect warfare and tactics like mining and drilling through walls were also prevalent during this time period. Overall, the Medieval period saw a significant advancement in the art of warfare and fortification, which had a lasting impact on the development of military technology and strategy in the years to come.
This often resulted in conflicts between the lord of the castle and the local population, as the lord would often use his power to extract more resources and labor from the locals. Additionally, the presence of a castle could also lead to the displacement of local populations as the land around the castle was cleared for the purpose of creating a clear field of fire for the defenders. This led to resentment towards the lord and the castle, and in some cases, local populations would actively aid and assist in the siege of their own castle. This could be seen in some of the castle sieges during the Hundred Years War in France. Overall, castles and fortifications played a crucial role in medieval warfare, but their presence also had significant social and economic consequences for the surrounding communities.
Overall, the Middle Ages saw a wide variety of weapons, tactics, and fortifications being used in warfare. The sword and spear were popular weapons for knights and infantrymen, while archers and crossbowmen were also important for ranged combat. Siege warfare was a significant aspect of medieval warfare, with various siege engines and defensive countermeasures being developed over time. The feudal system also played a role in the composition of armies, with lords responding
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to a call to battle with their own personal soldiers and mercenaries being commonly used. The advent of centralized governments and the use of citizen and mercenary armies also became more prevalent during the Middle Ages. The growth of gunpowder-based weaponry and the resulting shift in the power balance between attackers and defenders led to changes in military tactics and the development of new fortifications.
During the Medieval period, siege warfare was an important aspect of Medieval warfare, with castles and walled towns serving as key defensive structures. Siege engines such as catapults, scaling ladders, and battering rams were used to attack these structures, while defensive countermeasures such as moats, machicolations, and hot or incendiary substances were used to defend them. As gunpowder-based weaponry was developed, the power balance shifted in favor of the attackers, leading to the development of new fortification designs such as the concentric fortress. Additionally, the defenders themselves were a force to be reckoned with, as they could launch surprise attacks on the besiegers through hidden postern gates, and archers and crossbowmen could fire missiles from behind the walls. Overall, siege warfare played a significant role in shaping medieval warfare and fortification design.
Naval warfare
In summary, naval warfare has evolved throughout history, starting with simple raids and progressing to more complex tactics and technology. Galleys were the first vessels used for military purposes, and they were later replaced by sail-driven warships with mounted cannons. With the development of steam propulsion and ironclads, ships became more protected and destructive. In the 20th century, aircraft carriers and submarines became essential components of naval warfare, and airpower became the dominant form of weapons used by fleets worldwide.
During the Middle Ages, naval warfare in the Mediterranean was dominated by the use of galley fleets. These ships were powered by both sail and oars, and were primarily used for transport and boarding actions. The Battle of Lepanto in 1571, in which a Christian coalition defeated the Ottoman fleet, was one of the last major engagements fought in this style of naval warfare. Famous admirals of the medieval period, such as Roger of Lauria, Andrea Doria, and Hayreddin Barbarossa, were known for their skill and strategic prowess in this type of warfare. However, as time went on, advances in shipbuilding technology and the use of firearms on ships began to
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change the nature of naval warfare, leading to the development of larger sailing ships and eventually the battleship in the early modern period.
From smaller boats to larger galleons
In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, larger galleons began to replace galleys as the primary type of ship used in naval warfare. These ships were equipped with both sails and oars, and they were able to carry a larger number of guns. This allowed for a more effective use of artillery in naval battles, and it marked the beginning of the end for the use of galleys in warfare. The larger galleons also had a deeper keel, which made them more stable in rough seas and allowed them to travel farther out to sea. This shift in ship design and tactics marked a significant change in the way naval warfare was conducted, and it paved the way for the development of even larger and more powerful ships in the centuries to come.
As a result of these developments, galleys were able to engage in naval battles at a distance, which was a significant shift from the close-quarters combat that was typical of the earlier era. The increasing firepower of galleys led to the development of larger ships, such as galleons, which were better suited to carry the weight of the larger cannons. This marked the beginning of the transition from galley warfare to the sailing ship warfare that dominated the early modern period. The galleon, which was a larger and more heavily armed ship, was able to engage in naval battles at a greater distance and with more firepower than the galley, which led to a shift in naval tactics and strategies.
The oarsmen were typically slaves, prisoners of war, or criminals who were forced to row the ships. The use of oarsmen as a form of propulsion allowed the galleys to have a smaller crew and to maneuver more easily in comparison to the larger sailing ships of the time. However, the reliance on oarsmen also made the galleys more vulnerable to boarding by the enemy and to attacks from other ships. As the technology of shipbuilding advanced and the use of cannons became more widespread, the galley began to fall out of favor and was eventually replaced by the larger, more heavily armed sailing ships. Despite this, galleys continued to be used in the Mediterranean and other regions well into the 17th century.
The introduction of the galleon marked a significant shift in naval warfare, as these ships were not only faster and more maneuverable than galleys but also had a much larger cargo capacity, which
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made them more suitable for long voyages and exploration. They were also equipped with a larger number of heavy guns, which made them more powerful in battle. The galleon's design allowed them to be outfitted with a greater number of heavy guns, which made them more powerful in battle. These advancements in ship design and armament led to a change in the tactics used in naval warfare, as ships could now engage in long-range artillery duels rather than relying on boarding and hand-to-hand combat. The galleon played a crucial role in the Age of Exploration and the colonization of the Americas by European powers.
In summary, galleons were a type of sailing ship that emerged in the 16th century, characterized by their combination of square and fore-and-aft rigging, which allowed for greater maneuverability. They were heavily armed and were used for both trade and warfare, and were a significant advancement in naval technology of the time. The galleons were a major player in the age of sail, and helped to establish the square rig and tall central mainmast as the standard for ships of that era. The ships were able to sail closer to the wind due to the lateen rig, which was an advantage in both confined seas and long journeys.
However, by the 18th century, advances in shipbuilding technology and naval tactics had led to the development of new types of ships, such as the fluyt, the brig, and the full-rigged ship, which were better suited for trade and combat than the galleon. These new ships were faster, more maneuverable, and could carry more cargo or armaments. As a result, the galleon gradually fell out of use and was eventually phased out of service. Despite this, the galleon had a significant impact on the history of naval warfare and trade, and it is considered to be an important part of maritime history.
Strengthening of the navy's capabilities
During the Early Modern Era, there were significant developments in naval combat, including the incorporation of cannons into ship designs as part of a rethinking of ship construction in response to the growing threat. Major powers began building specialized warships, such as warships, rather than using weaponry and commerce galleys. Marine battle strategies were also developed, with ships adopting a line-ahead configuration, which brought an outer gun line to devastating effect, rather than engaging in a rapid exchange of cannon fire followed by ramming and grappling to facilitate boarding. This allowed for greater firepower and increased the chances of victory in naval
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battles. The Dutch were particularly successful in this regard, as they employed this strategy for the first time in European waters during the Battle of the Downs in 1639, and successfully defeated the Spanish.
The shift in naval capabilities during the Early Modern Era was driven by both economic opportunities presented by the New World and a change in strategic goals of the state. The technical advances in shipbuilding, such as the development of more sophisticated methods of shipbuilding in the 16th century, provided the means for maritime powers to expand their colonization of the New World and increase their profits there. This change in focus from dominating the Mediterranean to using force to cross the ocean in order to acquire the economic rewards of trading with and collecting products from the New World, India, and the East Indies, caused a shift in Europe's position in the world's political system. This change in naval strategy allowed European powers to gain control over trade routes, and extract resources and labor from colonized lands, which in turn led to a significant increase in their wealth and power.
The increased focus on colonization and trade in the New World, India, and the East Indies led to a heightened level of commercial competition among European powers, as well as an increased risk of violent conflict in key trade areas such as the Channel, off the coast of the Spanish Main, and in the Indian Ocean between European navies, Barbary corsairs, and Ottoman galley fleets. This competition led to trade conflicts between countries such as England and Spain and England and the Netherlands, which in turn led to multiple Anglo-Spanish Wars and three Anglo-Dutch Wars, including naval battles. The construction of specialized vessels and the adoption of innovative naval strategy were both a direct result of these economic and strategic opportunities. The competition for resources and trade routes led to a military buildup and naval innovations as a means of gaining an advantage over rivals.
As a result of the rising cost of defending themselves against the economic threat posed by other nations, many nations responded by increasing the size of their centralized royal navies' fleets. For example, during the conflict between Henry VIII and Philip II, the size of the Spanish galleon fleet increased to 146 ships by 1574, a threefold increase in size, under Philip II's direction. This was a logical response to the economic and strategic challenges posed by other nations and mirrored the centralized power of states in land warfare. The state's monopoly on violence and control of the
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economy was also reflected in their control of naval power and resources, as countries sought to gain an advantage over rivals in trade and colonization.
Between the 16th and 17th centuries, there was a significant shift in the way that war was fought. Despite Western Europe's nearly constant involvement in the conflict, the factors that contributed to these shifts did not center solely on advances in military technology. Rather, the factors that contributed to these shifts were more complex. Despite the exciting tactical uses, this was a turning point in the history of warfare. It ushered in such innovations as the professional military, the standing army, the expansion of war, and the establishment of the state (or the Crown) as the exclusive proprietor of violence. Despite the exciting tactical uses, this was a turning point in the history of warfare. In spite of the modifications, this was not even close to being a revolution. The conflict continued for over two centuries without reaching a meaningful conclusion of any kind. Nevertheless, this was an abrupt shift, a rise in intensity just like in a battle.
Recoil force
The recoil force, or the rearward force that is exerted on a firearm upon firing, is a natural phenomenon that has always existed. The concept of harnessing this force through the use of a recoil spring to aid in the reloading process is what was proposed in 1663, but it is unlikely that this idea was fully developed or put into practice at that time. The development and implementation of recoil systems in firearms continued to evolve throughout history, with significant advancements being made in the 19th century.
Recoil force is the force exerted on a firearm in the opposite direction of the bullet's travel upon discharge. It is caused by the action-reaction principle, where the bullet being expelled from the gun creates a force in the opposite direction. The invention of a mechanism to harness and utilize the recoil force to automatically reload a firearm is credited to a man named Palmer in 1663. This is considered to be the first recorded use of a recoil spring in the loading process of firearms. However, it is unclear if there is another similar invention from the same time period, as there is no definitive evidence to support this claim.
However, the use of recoil spring gasses and other mechanisms to control and manage the recoil force in firearms is a more recent development in the history of firearms technology. The invention of the disposable cartridge in the 19th century made it possible for these types of recoil-
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management systems to be implemented in firearms. While Joseph Whitworth and Regulus Pilon were among the early inventors to patent designs related to recoil management, it was not until later in the 19th century that these types of systems began to be widely used in firearms.
The use of close-quarters infantry fighting
During the Medieval period, the infantry was primarily composed of spearmen and archers, who were supported by heavy infantry armed with swords, shields, and body armor. The development of firearms in the 15th century led to the formation of specialized musketeer and pikeman units. Close-quarters infantry fighting was an essential aspect of warfare during this time, as soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat using swords, pikes, and other melee weapons. With the advent of the bayonet in the 17th century, infantry soldiers were able to use their muskets as a close-quarters weapon, greatly enhancing their ability to engage in close-quarters combat. Today, close-quarters combat is still an important aspect of modern warfare, as infantry units are often called upon to engage in urban warfare and other operations in confined spaces. In these situations, soldiers are trained to use a variety of weapons, including rifles, pistols, and hand grenades, as well as unarmed combat techniques, to engage in close-quarters fighting effectively.
Muskets (muzzle loading)
Muskets were widely used in the 17th and 18th centuries, and were the primary weapon of infantry soldiers during this time period. They were characterized by their long barrels and smoothbore design, which made them less accurate than the rifles that would eventually replace them. However, muskets were still effective in massed volleys at close range, and were often used in conjunction with bayonets for close-quarters combat. The use of muskets in warfare declined with the advent of the rifle and the introduction of more accurate and reliable firearms in the 19th century.
By the 18th century, muskets had become the standard weapon for infantry soldiers. They were used in combination with bayonets, which allowed soldiers to engage in close combat in addition to long-range shooting. The musket's accuracy and range were improved through the use of rifled barrels, which gave bullets a spinning motion and made them more stable in flight. The introduction of the cartridge, which combined the bullet and the propellant into a single unit, also made the musket more efficient and easier to reload. The musket played a crucial role in the
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warfare of the 18th and 19th centuries, and was used in many significant battles such as the American Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars, and the American Civil War.
Rifled muskets were more accurate than smoothbore muskets due to their rifled barrels, which imparted a spin on the bullet as it was fired, providing greater stability and accuracy. These weapons were used extensively during the American Civil War, with both Union and Confederate forces using them. Rifled muskets were also used during the Franco-Prussian War, the Boer War, and other conflicts of the late 19th century. The rifled musket was eventually replaced by the bolt-action rifle in the early 20th century, which was more accurate and had a greater range. However, the rifled musket played a significant role in the evolution of firearms and military tactics during the 19th century.
It's worth noting that while many firearms produced in the 19th and early 20th centuries used breechloading as their primary method of loading, there were still some firearms that used muzzle loading, particularly in certain regions and for specific purposes, such as hunting or sport shooting. Additionally, some modern firearms, such as certain types of artillery, still use muzzle loading. The terms "muzzleloading" and "breechloading" refer to the method by which ammunition is inserted into the firearm, with muzzleloading referring to loading through the front end of the barrel and breechloading referring to loading through the rear of the barrel.
Breech loading also allowed for the development of more advanced mechanisms such as the drop block, sliding block, and interrupted screw breech mechanisms, which improved the safety and reliability of firearms. With the ability to reload quickly and efficiently, breech loading firearms became essential for military and hunting applications. The advent of breech loading firearms marked a significant step forward in the development of modern firearms and their widespread use continues to this day.
Breechloading also allowed for the development of more complex mechanisms, such as recoil systems, which further improved the accuracy and efficiency of firearms. Furthermore, it allowed for the development of magazine-fed firearms, which greatly increased the rate of fire and the number of rounds that could be fired before reloading was necessary. Overall, breechloading was a significant advancement in firearms technology that greatly improved the capabilities of military and civilian firearms.
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In summary, breech loading was an important innovation in firearms technology that emerged in the 19th century. It allowed for faster and more efficient reloading of weapons, as well as increased accuracy and reduced exposure of the crew to enemy fire. The technology was implemented in a variety of different types of firearms, including rifles and field artillery, and led to the development of new features such as armored shields for protection.
4.3. From medieval to pre-modern warfare
During the pre-modern era, there was a shift away from heavily-armored cavalry and towards the use of firearms. The introduction of gunpowder in the 14th and 15th centuries led to the development of muskets and cannons, which allowed for greater firepower and mobility. Armies also began to adopt new formations, such as the square formation, which was able to withstand the charge of cavalry and allowed for a high rate of fire from muskets. Siege warfare also changed, with armies using cannon to breach fortifications rather than siege engines.
Another major change during the pre-modern era was the shift from feudal warfare to standing armies. This led to a professionalization of the military and an increased need for state funding to support the new armies. This had a significant effect on the economy and society, as taxation and conscription became more common.
Clausewitz’s contribution
Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries in Western Europe, a significant shift occurred in the manner in which battle was conducted. This shift was affected by significant military, political-strategic, and sociological factors. The changes that occurred in warfare during the 16th and 17th centuries in Western Europe were the result of a complex interplay of military, political-strategic, and sociological factors. They were part of a larger, ongoing evolution in warfare, and should be understood in that context.
Clausewitz's theory of war is based on the idea that it is a combination of various factors, including passions, "primordial violence, hatred, and enmity," an element of chance and unpredictability that required creative adaptation, and the subordination of the act to reason supplied by political strategy. He also believed that war was a continuation of politics by other means.
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To understand the complexity of war, Clausewitz proposed the concept of the "trinity" which consists of three essential elements: the commander, his army (the military), and the people. The commander represents the creative aspect of war, the ability to deal with chance, and the ability to adapt to changing conditions. The army represents the rational government policy and strategy, the ability to plan and execute military operations. The people represent the passions of the people and the emotional element of war. Clausewitz believed that these three elements are interdependent and that changes in one element can have a significant impact on the others. He believed that the trinity was in a state of constant flux, and that the balance between these elements would change depending on the circumstances of the war. Clausewitz's theory of the "trinity" can be applied to analyze the complex interplay of factors that contributed to the changes in warfare during the 16th and 17th centuries in Western Europe.
Any change made to one aspect -- whether it be a policy, strategy, or society reform -- will invariably have an effect on the others. This is true whether the facet being modified is a policy, strategy, or societal reform. The intricate interplay that exists between military inventiveness (organization, adaptable technology, and tactics), government (strategy, policy, economy, and geography), and people will be utilized in order to investigate some of the defining features of combat that occurred throughout this time period (social changes, demographics and attitudes to military affairs). Clausewitz's theory of the trinity highlights the interdependence of military, political, and societal factors in shaping war, and emphasizes that any changes made to one aspect will have an impact on the others. The intricate interplay between military innovation (organization, adaptable technology, and tactics), government (strategy, policy, economy, and geography), and the people can be used to examine some of the defining features of warfare that occurred during the Military Revolution, such as social changes, demographics, and attitudes towards military affairs.
This interplay of factors can be seen in the way that the development of new weapons and tactics led to changes in the size and organization of armies, which in turn had an impact on government strategy and policy. The changing attitudes of society towards military affairs and the role of the military in society also played a role in shaping the nature of warfare during this time period.
4.4. The rise and spread of the Military Revolution
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Technological advancements, particularly in the field of weapons and tactics, are often considered to be the primary driver of change in warfare during the Military Revolution and other periods in history. Both Geoffrey Parker and Clifford Rogers place a significant emphasis on the role those technological advancements, such as improvements to gunpowder and the use of trace italienne fortifications, played in shaping the nature of warfare during the 16th and 17th centuries. Technological advancements in firearms, for example, made it possible for armies to engage in battles at a greater distance and with more accuracy, which led to changes in the size and organization of armies. Additionally, the use of trace italienne fortifications, which were a new type of fortification characterized by low walls and angled bastions, made it more difficult for attackers to breach the defenses and forced them to rely on siege warfare tactics.
These innovations were subsequently discovered and utilized in other regions of the world, albeit with varying degrees of success. The Ottomans, who constituted a continual threat to Europe at the time, as well as the bulk of Asian countries, owned a considerable stockpile of artillery and gunpowder weaponry.
The Ottomans were known to be skilled in the use of artillery and gunpowder weapons, which helped them to maintain a strong military presence in Europe and Asia. They were able to acquire and utilize these weapons through trade and diplomatic relations with Europe and Asia. Other countries in Asia also adopted and adapted these innovations, although the level of success varied depending on the resources and expertise available to them. The widespread use of these technologies in the Ottoman Empire and other parts of Asia contributed to the increased threat to Europe during the Renaissance period.
The development of new technologies always brings with it a slew of fresh challenges and difficulties that were not there before. Because they were difficult to control and put a tremendous strain on the logistics system, expensive weapons such as muskets, arquebuses, and artillery required a "long tail" to be maneuvered and maintained. This was necessary because of their high cost. It is the manner in which technology is embraced by the tactics, organization, and systems of the military that will determine the value of the contribution that technology makes to the performance of the military. Technology on its own will not be enough to bring about change in the military.
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The role of Sweden and Gustavus Adolphus
One of the key figures in the development of professional armies in Europe was Gustavus Adolphus, the king of Sweden from 1611 to 1632. He is known for his innovative military tactics and his development of a professional, well-trained and well-disciplined army. He introduced the use of linear tactics, which involved the use of linear formations that could move and fire in unison, and he also introduced the use of light artillery, which allowed his army to move and fight more quickly and effectively.
He is widely considered to be one of the greatest military leaders of the 17th century and is known for his innovative tactics and reforms that modernized the Swedish army. During his reign, he led Sweden in the Thirty Years' War, a conflict that lasted from 1618 to 1648, and is known for his victories at the Battle of Breitenfeld and the Battle of Lützen. He also introduced the use of light infantry and cavalry, as well as mobile artillery, which greatly improved the effectiveness of the Swedish army. His contributions to the Swedish military, as well as his political and economic reforms, have had a lasting impact on Sweden and Europe. He is considered as one of the most important figures in Swedish history. One of the fundamental changes were the abilities to adapt army organization, systems, and tactics to the new weapon technology and expanded strength of forces. They were able to harness the mass effect of musket and arquebus fire by adopting linear formations that allowed for successful line storeload, and they were supported in close combat by pike to guard against cavalry and provide additional firepower. This allowed them to be more effective in battle and to achieve greater success in their military campaigns. Additionally, they also made changes to the organizational structure of their armies, such as increasing the size of their armies and creating more specialized units like musketeers. This allowed them to better utilize the new technology and to create a more flexible and adaptable fighting force.
These more manageable organizations improved their tactical maneuvers and gave for better control over more complex training scenarios. The cavalry was also reformed and outfitted with pistols and swords as means for shock action, even though its employment had decreased. This was done to compensate for the cavalry's lack of effectiveness, as the new weapon technology such as muskets and arquebuses made it more difficult for cavalry to charge and break through infantry formations. By equipping the cavalry with pistols and swords, they were able to engage in close combat and support the infantry.
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By equipping the cavalry with pistols and swords, they were able to make better use of their speed and firepower than the traditional caracole tactic, which involved cavalry charging and firing their pistols, and then fleeing, before repeating the process. This new tactic allowed the cavalry to engage in close combat and support the infantry, which proved to be more effective in battle.
Additionally, Gustavus Adolphus, also started to merge lighter artillery with the infantry, which contributed to the development of a coordinated combined weapons impact. This allowed for a more efficient use of artillery and infantry in battle, as the artillery could provide support for the infantry and the infantry could protect the artillery from enemy attacks. This adjustment proved to be effective during the combat that took place at Breitenfeld in 1631 and the ensuing war that took place in Germany, and it became a key aspect of Gustavus's military tactics and strategy.
4.5. Changes in training
These changes had a potential to have a greater influence not just on the state but also on the process of professionalizing the armed forces. Due to the increased complexity of the strategies, disciplines, and coordination, it was necessary to have extra training facilities as well as noncommissioned officers and subalterns in order to attend to and command the smaller units while they were engaged in combat. This shift required soldiers and officers to have a high level of skill and training, which was different from the past where nobility could rely on their social status and family connections to prepare them for battle.
To address this need, institutions dedicated to military training started to appear, such as the Military Training Academy in Sedan founded by the Duc de Boullon in 1606, and the Kriegsund Ritterschule in Siegen constructed by Johan of Nassau in 1617. These institutions were focused on providing training to soldiers and officers in the latest tactics, weapons, and strategies. The establishment of a permanent army also made it possible to conduct training, drills, and deployment of occupying forces throughout the whole year, which helped to maintain a high level of readiness and capability.
As a result of the implementation of the new strategies, tactics, and technology, the level of professionalism within the armed forces increased significantly. The new identity established in the national armed forces demoted the role of the individual and emphasized the importance of the collective, which was necessary to make the most of the new tactics and technology. The need for
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permanent barracks, rules and discipline, regular pay, and a career path for non-commissioned officers and officers, helped to lay the foundation for the modern professional military. This was the case with the English New Model Army in 1645.
It is possible to argue that the state also benefited from these changes, as the increased professionalism and organization of the military helped to support the growing political trend of absolute monarchy in Europe. The military was able to play a more active role in politics, as the state was able to rely on a more capable and reliable military force to support its interests. Additionally, the changes in society taking place in large militaries could be analogous to those taking place in broader society, as the military served as a model for other organizations and institutions to emulate.
There was an increasing movement in the lower classes of Western European society away from the system of serfdom and towards greater rights and opportunities, which had been seen over a period of time. The less powerful members of the aristocracy were no longer able to enjoy a monopoly on military duty, and they were subjected to a significant increase in the Crown's authority. This created opportunities for those from lower socioeconomic levels to advance their careers and potentially earn more money by serving in the standing army or mercenary groups.
4.6. The death of knighthood
Additionally, the increasing use of muskets and artillery made it easier for individuals from lower social classes to serve in the military, as these types of weapons required less training and skill to use compared to traditional weapons such as swords and pikes. This was particularly true for artillery and the cavalry, which became more accessible to these individuals. The need for larger numbers of forces to be maintained for longer periods of time also met the desire of many Europeans of lower social levels to serve, as it provided them with a stable source of income and the possibility of upward mobility.
The result was a transformation in society as it was known. One of those victims was the knighthood. The decline of knighthood in Europe can be traced back to the late Middle Ages and early Modern Period, as a result of various factors such as the rise of professional armies, the emergence of new forms of warfare, and the decline of feudalism. It was also accelerated by the emergence of new technologies, such as the invention of the firearm and the development of siege
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warfare, which made heavy armor and traditional forms of mounted combat obsolete. Additionally, the rise of centralized states and the decline of feudal lords also contributed to the decline of knighthood, as the role of the knight as a warrior and defender of the realm became less important. The decline of knighthood also had a significant impact on the social and economic structure of European society, as the traditional feudal system and the social hierarchy based on nobility began to break down.
Beginning in the early 17th century, large, permanent armies and centralized regimes started to come into existence. This was one of the distinguishing features of warfare during this historical period, as it marked a shift away from the use of small, temporary armies made up of feudal levies or mercenaries.
The growing monopoly on violence held by the state, representing the Crown, was another distinguishing feature of this period. This led to a significant rise in the overall military power of states, as demonstrated by the numbers of troops that were mobilized during the Thirty Years War. At the beginning of the war, the Imperial army totaled 20,000, while the Protestant opposition was just 12,000. By the end of the war, there were approximately 150,000 Catholic men serving under command, and the Swedish army was significantly larger.
This progression was influenced by a number of factors, including the growth of bureaucracy, the rising expense of war, changes in strategic goals, and tactical upgrades to defensive positions, among others. These changes in military organization and power had a significant impact on the way wars were fought and the outcome of conflicts during this period.
The emergence of professional armies also led to changes in the way wars were fought, with longer and more drawn-out conflicts becoming more common. The use of trenches, fortifications, and siege warfare became more prevalent, and the development of new weapons and technologies, such as rifled muskets and breech-loading guns, led to a significant increase in the firepower of armies.
Fortress towns
According to historian Geoffrey Parker, a significant portion of the growth in military power during this period can be attributed to the highly sophisticated fortress towns that were built as a
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direct response to advancements in artillery and infantry tactics. These fortresses were designed to be nearly impregnable, which meant that large forces were required to besiege them, while other forces observed and cut off their supplies. Because these fortified towns were too large to traverse without posing a threat to the flanks and rear, the size of armies had to grow to match this new form of warfare.
Fortress towns required not just large numbers of troops to besiege them but also a great deal of resources, such as artillery and food supplies, to keep the troops sustained throughout a prolonged siege. This put a significant strain on the logistics system and required a great deal of organization and coordination to effectively siege a fortress town. Additionally, the fortress towns also required a strong garrison to defend them, which meant that a significant number of troops had to be stationed there on a permanent basis. All of these factors contributed to the growth of military power and the size of armies during this period.
In addition to large numbers of troops, fortress towns also required large amounts of artillery to be effectively defended. This further increased the size and expense of armies. Additionally, nations that chose to implement the Trace Italienne, a system of fortification characterized by low and wide bastions, were taken aback when they discovered that the majority of their forces had already been assigned to garrison tasks rather than participating in maneuver warfare. This is because the fortresses were so large and complex that they required a significant number of troops to be stationed there on a permanent basis to protect them.
The costs associated with construction and garrisoning of fortress towns were also a significant factor that prevented many nations, both large and small, from expanding their fortress cities. These nations either chose not to or were unable to develop their fortress towns, due to financial constraints. This highlights the fact that the rise in military expenditures was not just due to the growth of military power and size of armies, but also the costs associated with the construction and maintenance of fortress towns.
4.7. Early cases of modern warfare
The Dutch War of Independence against Spain (1568–1648)
The Dutch War of Independence, also known as the Eighty Years' Struggle, began as an uprising by the Seven Provinces against Philip II of Spain in 1568. The provinces encompassed the counties
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that are today known as the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. William of Orange, who was exiled, led the uprising from a distance, but Philip II deployed his troops and regained control over the majority of the rebellious regions. The conflict in the northern provinces continued for some time, however, the Dutch were successful in creating the Seven Provinces that would eventually become the Republic of the United Netherlands in 1581 and driving out the Habsburg soldiers from their territory. Despite the establishment of the republic, unrest persisted in other locations. The war officially ended in 1648 with the Treaty of Munster.
The establishment of the United Netherlands was the starting point for the expansion of the Dutch colonial empire. The Dutch initially launched attacks on Portugal's outlying regions and territories, which led to the beginning of the first global wars. This event was misunderstood as a declaration of war against the Spanish Empire because of a dynastic marriage that took place between Portugal and Spain. After the Dutch and the Spanish had reached an agreement in 1609 for a truce that would last for twelve years, hostilities between the two nations continued for another thirty years. The peace treaty of Münster was finally ratified in 1648, at which point Spain acknowledged the Dutch Republic to be an independent state. The treaty is recognized, both historically and in modern times, as marking the beginning of the Golden Age in Dutch history. However, despite achieving independence from the war patchwork in 1648, the Treaty of Münster has been met with widespread opposition within the States trending Dutch due to the fact that the treaty authorized Spanish control over the Southern Provinces and granted religious freedom to Catholics.
During the Dutch War of Independence (1568-1648) against Spain, the Dutch Republic employed various military tactics and formations to defeat the larger and more powerful Spanish Empire. One of the key tactics used by the Dutch was the use of a defensive strategy known as the "Water Line." This involved the construction of a network of defensive fortifications, dams, and canals along the low-lying areas of the Netherlands, making it difficult for the Spanish army to advance. This allowed the Dutch to control the movement of the Spanish army and to launch surprise attacks.
Another tactic employed by the Dutch was the use of hit-and-run tactics. The Dutch army was composed mainly of small, mobile units that were able to move quickly and strike at the Spanish army where it was vulnerable. They also made use of the waterways, which allowed them to strike at the Spanish army from unexpected directions. The Dutch also made use of a formation known
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as the "Dutch Brigade." This was a square formation that was made up of small groups of soldiers armed with muskets and pikes. This formation was able to withstand the charge of the Spanish cavalry and also allowed for a high rate of fire from the muskets. The Dutch also had a powerful navy, which played a vital role in the war. The Dutch navy was able to control the seas, preventing the Spanish from receiving reinforcements and supplies. They also used their naval power to launch raids on Spanish ports and to protect Dutch trade routes.
In summary, during the Dutch War of Independence, the Dutch Republic employed a combination of defensive fortifications, hit-and-run tactics, and specialized military formations such as the "Dutch Brigade" and a powerful navy to successfully defeat the larger and more powerful Spanish Empire.
Conflicts that occurred during the time of Napoleon (1803–1815)
During the Napoleonic Wars, which lasted from 1803 through 1815, the French Empire and its allies fought against the European countries that had come together to oppose the hegemonic sway of the French Empire. These European governments were known as the Coalition of European States. The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts fought between 1803 and 1815, primarily in Europe, but with some campaigns in Egypt and North America. The wars were fought between the French Empire, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, and various European nations that had formed the Coalition of European States to oppose the expansion and hegemony of the French Empire. The wars resulted in significant territorial changes and the reorganization of European politics, with the eventual defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of many pre-war monarchies.
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts fought primarily in Europe between 1803 and 1815, with the goal of expanding the French Empire and spreading the ideas of the Revolution. It is common practice to divide the Napoleonic Wars into five distinct sub-periods, each of which is designated by the name of a different coalition that took part in the war: the Third Coalition (1803–1806), the Fourth Coalition (1806–1807), the Fifth Coalition (1809), and the Sixth Coalition (1813–1814). The final sub-period is the Seventh Coalition (1815), with the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo and the end of the wars.
During the course of the French Revolution, disagreements arose, which ultimately resulted in the outbreak of two wars: the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the War of the Second
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Coalition (1793–1799). (1798–1802). It is common practice to divide the Napoleonic Wars into five distinct sub-periods, each of which is designated by the name of a different coalition that took part in the war: the Third Coalition (1803–1806), the Fourth Coalition (1806–1807), the Fifth Coalition (1809), and the Sixth Coalition (1813–1814). The Seventh Coalition (1815–1817) is the final sub-period of the Napoleonic Wars (1815). (1812).
In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte was appointed First Consul of France and took over a government that was in a state of chaos. He established a strong, affluent and cohesive nation with a powerful bureaucracy and well-trained and equipped army. One of Napoleon's greatest triumphs was the Battle of Austerlitz in December of 1805, where he soundly defeated an alliance of Russian and Austrian forces. However, the British navy prevailed over a combined fleet of ships from France and Spain in the Battle of Trafalgar in October of 1805, which helped them to maintain control of the seas and ward off an invasion. Concerned about the growing influence of France, Prussia along with Russia, Saxony, and Sweden established the Fourth Coalition in October of 1806 and started hostilities. Napoleon quickly defeated the Prussians in Jena and the Russians in Friedland and then brought about an uneasy calm across the continent as a result of his victories. In 1809, another conflict broke out, this time led by Austria and a coalition known as the Fifth Coalition. The Austrians had an early victory at Aspern-Essling but were ultimately defeated at Wagram. This marked an end of one of the most significant conflicts of the early 19th century, the Napoleonic Wars.
As part of his economic warfare against Britain, Napoleon sought to destroy its last ally in continental Europe, Portugal, and imposed his Continental System on the country. In 1807, French forces captured Lisbon and Napoleon stationed the majority of his troops in Spain. He then proceeded to depose the ruling Spanish royal family and install his brother, José I, as king in 1808. This led to a prolonged conflict known as the Peninsular War, which lasted for six years. The British, along with the Spanish, eventually expelled the French from Iberia in 1814 as a result of the Peninsular War.
Russia, which was unwilling to face the economic repercussions of reduced trade under the Continental System, habitually breached it, which ultimately led to Napoleon's decision to invade Russia in 1812. The resulting conflict, known as the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, resulted in the destruction of almost the entire Grande Armée, Napoleon's main army, and was a major turning
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point in the Napoleonic Wars. The Russian campaign was a catastrophic failure for the French Empire, and it had a profound impact on the outcome of the Wars and the eventual defeat of Napoleon.
After the setback in Russia, a coalition of European powers, including Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Russia, formed the Sixth Coalition and began a campaign of aggression against France. These actions ultimately led to Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813 and the victory of the coalition forces in the Battle of Paris in March 1814, which resulted in Napoleon's resignation as ruler of France. The Bourbon monarchy, which had been deposed during the French Revolution, was restored to power. In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a daring breakout from exile on the island of Elba and regained power for a period of 100 days, but was eventually defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815 and was exiled again, this time to the island of Saint Helena where he died in 1821.
The Congress of Vienna was held to redraw the boundaries of Europe and bring an era of relative peace. The Napoleonic Wars had a profound impact on European politics and society, it disseminated ideas such as nationalism and liberalism and catapulted Britain to the top of the world's naval and economic powers. Additionally, it led to the fundamental reorganization of German and Italian territories into larger states, the introduction of new methods of warfare and civil law, and the end of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires in Latin America. After the Napoleonic Wars, there was a period of peace in continental Europe that lasted until the Crimean War broke out in 1853.
4.8. The Battle of Trafalgar and British naval supremacy.
The British fleet, led by Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, engaged the combined French and Spanish fleet, led by Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, off the southwest coast of Spain near Cape Trafalgar. The British were victorious, but Nelson was killed during the battle. The victory secured British naval supremacy for the rest of the war and effectively ended the threat of invasion by Napoleon's forces. The Battle of Trafalgar is considered one of the most significant naval battles in history and solidified Britain's naval dominance for the next century.
The battle was fought on October 21, 1805, and resulted in a decisive victory for the British, with the French and Spanish losing 22 ships and the British losing none. Despite being slightly
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outnumbered, the British fleet under Nelson's command was able to secure a decisive victory, thanks to his innovative tactics and leadership. He ordered his ships to divide and attack the enemy line in two different places, causing confusion and disarray among the French and Spanish ships. This allowed the British to capture or destroy many of the enemy ships, while suffering minimal losses of their own. The Battle of Trafalgar effectively ended any hopes of a French invasion of England and secured British naval dominance for the rest of the Napoleonic Wars. Furthermore, it was a significant blow to the French navy and marked the end of French naval power in the Mediterranean. The Battle of Trafalgar was a pivotal moment in naval history and solidified Britain's naval power for the next century.
The victory reaffirmed Britain's naval superiority, which had been established in the 18th century and had been accomplished in part because of Nelson's deviation from the prevalent naval tactical orthodoxy of the time. The victory also reaffirmed Britain's dominance of the world's oceans, which had been established in the 18th century. The victory also cemented Lord Nelson's legacy as one of the greatest naval commanders in history and his tactics and strategies continue to be studied and admired to this day.
The overall impact of the Military Revolution
Socio-cultural impact
The social impact of military warfare changes in Europe during the past centuries has been significant. As technology and tactics have evolved, the nature of warfare has changed, and this has had a profound effect on society.
One of the most notable changes was the shift from feudal warfare to standing armies. This led to a professionalization of the military and an increased need for state funding to support the new armies. This had a significant effect on the economy and society, as taxation and conscription became more common.
The introduction of gunpowder and firearms in the 14th and 15th centuries also had a significant impact on warfare and society. These weapons allowed for greater firepower and mobility, leading to larger and more complex battles. This had a direct impact on the way wars were fought and the number of casualties.
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Economic impact
The economic impact of the Military Revolution was significant as it led to an increase in government spending, which in turn led to inflation. The war also led to the development of new technologies and innovations in the form of new weapons and siege systems. Additionally, the war led to the creation of a large standing army, which required the government to provide for the soldiers' needs, including food, uniforms, and equipment. This also led to the creation of new government institutions such as provisioning commissariats to manage and supply the troops. Overall, the war had a profound impact on the economy and society, leading to the development of new technologies and institutions, as well as changes in social structures and class dynamics.
Centralization and consolidation of power
During the early modern period in Western Europe, there was a process of centralization and consolidation of power by the monarchies, which led to the weakening of local nobility and the emergence of nation-states. This resulted in a smaller number of countries in Western Europe but with stronger and more centralized governments, which led to increased competition and a focus on border security. As Western European countries expanded their focus to include overseas territories and colonies, they also had to pay more attention to their military capabilities and border security. This led to the formation of large, permanent standing armies, which were necessary to compete with other powers in the region. The shift towards larger armies also led to a focus on quantity over quality of troops, and the abolition of feudal contracts allowed monarchs to conscript large numbers of soldiers for extended periods of time. This ultimately led to a significant increase in the scale and duration of warfare and significant loss of life.
The effects of these massive and expensive forces proved to be more significant over the course of time. It was significantly more expensive to sustain a big number of artillery, cavalry, and supporting logistical units than it was to keep a large number of soldiers alive and well.
The maintenance of large standing armies proved to be costly over time, not only in terms of the lives lost in battle, but also in terms of the financial resources required to sustain them. The expenses for the artillery, cavalry, and logistical units were significant, and maintaining a high number of soldiers required a significant investment in food, equipment, and medical care. This
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put a heavy financial burden on the states and forced them to increase taxes and borrow large sums of money, which in turn led to further political and economic instability.
During the Early Modern Era, the state was the primary source of funding for military activities. To support the cost of maintaining large standing armies, states had to introduce bureaucracy into military administration and integrate the military with the economy. This was seen in countries such as Spain, Sweden, France, and other major nations throughout the century. Governments developed revenue mechanisms, including regulations for contributions from both the home country and occupied territories, and began to link military planning to the state of the economy. Securing territories also helped relieve some of the financial strain on the military at home. The military became an essential component of the bureaucracy of various governments, with the state playing a central role in financing and managing military operations.
The strain placed on logistics networks during this period led to military operations being determined more by a force's ability to sustain itself than by political objectives. The military was also expected to run their own nations, which further incentivized the formation of larger forces under the Crown. This led to the imposition of additional taxes and required payments, which placed a heavy financial burden on the population. By the end of the 17th century, it was clear that Western European states had monopolized both military activity and the economy, which paved the way for the development of absolute monarchies. The communities of Western Europe had to adapt to meet the growing demands of the state and military, with individuals being conscripted and resources being requisitioned to support the war effort.
Conscription and military service became more appealing to people from lower social classes as a result of the increased opportunities for social advancement and financial gain. This was partly due to the increased pay and benefits for soldiers, and partly due to the increased accessibility of military service. The improved health and prosperity of Europeans also resulted in a larger pool of potential fighters, which made it easier for countries to conquer additional territories. The religious conflicts of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation further fueled the desire for violence and division among Europeans, which kept them fervently supportive of the war in spite of onerous taxation and acquisition policies. Alongside the development of new technology for use in land battle, these factors contributed to the increased scale and ferocity of warfare during this period.
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4.9. Conclusion
During the 16th and 17th centuries, there was a significant shift in the way that war was fought in Western Europe. This shift was characterized by increases in force strength, the use of novel methods of fighting, the professionalization of the armed forces, and the expansion of state authority. However, the factors that contributed to these shifts were more complex than just advances in military technology. This period marked a turning point in the history of warfare, with innovations such as the professional military, the standing army, the expansion of war, and the establishment of the state as the exclusive proprietor of violence.
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CHAPTER FIVE
THE RISE OF NATIONALISM
5.1. Introduction
In our first two chapters, we looked at power structures in Medieval Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the previous chapter. Then, we dealt with the impact that changes in warfare had on these power structures emerging from traditional, pre-modern agrarian economies and societies. This chapter begins to investigate the impact that nationalism had on the modern state as it was taking shape in the 17th and 18th centuries.
So now, I will be focusing on nationalism and the evolution of nationalist sentiments in the course of the Early Modern Era, as well as their differential impact on both post-Medieval Europe and the Ottoman Empire. To that end, I will draw on concrete studies of specific developments, communities and régimes in Europe, including how pioneers or leaders in nation-building helped national feelings gain popular traction in their respective countries.
I will not be discussing what Hobsbawm (1990) calls the shift in nationalism studies from the “objective” to the “subjective” approach that occurred in going from the 1970s to the 1980s. In a nutshell, this entails shifting from trying to define the nation first and then looking at nationalism as an ideological offshoot, to focusing solely on nationalism in order to understand how the nation is constructed. Miroslav Hroch (1968, 2015), Benedict Anderson (1983), Ernest Gellner (1983), and E. J. Hobsbawm (1983) have been key thinkers in this regard. While quoting extensively from their and others’ works, I will use them to sketch out my understanding of aspects of nationalism and nation-building without delving too deeply into nationalism studies debates.
5.2. Intra-Europan paths to the nation-state
Nationalism as an ideology, and the nation-state as an outcome, emerged in the wake of the Middle Ages. According to Hroch (1968), in Europe, what we might call national units were formed in three ways.
(1) Territorial and demographic continuity from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era. This occurred, for example, in France and England, where a compact territory and a corresponding
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population had already taken shape in the Medieval period. National sentiments evolved on this basis. Political transformations (régime changes including revolutions) taking place in this framework led to a modern nation-state.
(2) From Medieval fragmentation to modern unification. The second mode arose from a growing desire to overcome a state of political fragmentation that had emerged in the Middle Ages, and to achieve a desired outcome of unity for a community with similar ethno-linguistic characteristics, This trajectory is exemplified by the German unification and the Italian Risorgimento of the 1870s.
(3) Disintegration: from Medieval empires into modern nation-states. This third category includes multi-national, multi-confessional empires like Tsarist Russia, Austria-Hungary or the Ottomans, whose subject populations had begun to agitate for separation and independence in the course of the “long” 19th century. In the early-20th century, and especially after World War I, this resulted in the formation of a large number of sovereign nation-states.
Essentially, the modern state is analogous to a form, a structure, or a mold if you will -- a “bottle” that is beginning to take shape but initially lacks a new ideological content. There was an old ideological content from the medieval era, a principle of authority and legitimation: subjection and loyalty to a monarch, which we have discussed in previous chapters. Then comes nationalism, a new ideology with updated content, akin to “new wine in an old bottle”; this combination produces the nation-state.
5.3. What exactly is nationalism?
Elie Kedourie was a forerunner in the critique of nationalist politics and policies. His book on Nationalism was published in 1960. According to Kedourie (1960), the emergence of nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon. People have always had a strong attachment to their homeland, their parents' traditions, and the established territorial authorities, but it wasn't until the end of the 18th century that nationalism became a widely accepted belief that shaped both private and public life, emerging as one of modern history’s most significant factors.
The nation came to be regarded as the sole legitimate source of political authority, and thus as the natural and ideal foundation for a polity (popular sovereignty). Nationalism's core beliefs are that every nation should have the right to govern itself (also known as the right to self-determination), that a country is the most natural and ideal foundation for a polity, and that the nation is the only
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legitimate source of political authority, which is the concept of popular sovereignty (Kedourie, 1960). According to Grosby (2015), individuals who identify with or feel attached to their country are said to practice nationalism, which can be viewed as a religion, a credence, or a political philosophy.
The notion that the nation and the state should be synonymous is central to nationalism as both an ideology and as a political movement. As a political ideology, nationalism tends to advocate for the interests of a specific nation (as in a group of people), particularly in terms of achieving and sustaining the nation's sovereignty (self-government) over its territory (Axtmann, 2004). Nationalism also seeks to promote national unity or solidarity by establishing and sustaining a single national identity based on shared social characteristics such as culture, ethnicity, geographical location, language, politics (or the government), religion, traditions, and belief in a common history. This is accomplished through the formation and maintenance of a national identity based on these shared social characteristics. In recent history, cultural revivals have been linked to nationalist movements that seek to preserve and promote a nation's ancient customs and practices. Furthermore, it promotes patriotism by instilling pride in the nation's achievements. The political goals and ideals of nationalism, particularly left-wing nationalism, can be combined with those of other political systems, including socialism and conservatism (also known as national conservatism). On the connection of nationalism with other forms of ideologies Spencer and Wollman (2002) write the following:
If we want think critically about nationalism, we cannot do so in a vacuum. For better or for worse, our thinking has been shaped to a great or lessor extent by the major political ideologies and social theories of the modern era, all of which have had something to say about nationalism, whether explicitly or implicitly.
5.3.1. When and why does nationalism emerge?
There are at least three distinct perspectives that can be used to comprehend nationalism (see Llobera, 1999). Primordialism (also known as perennialism) is a theory that contends nations have always existed in the world and that nationalism is a natural phenomenon (Shilds, 1957). This theory assumes the very existence of a nation at or from the beginning of time. It is regarded as primeval. A typical example for this approach is found in the writings of the Croatian politician
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and historian Franjo Tudjman. In his very ideological, very nationalistic monograph on Nationalism in Contemporary Europe, Tudjman writes:
Nations…..grow up in a natural manner, in the objective and complex historical process, as a result of the development of all those material and spiritual forces which in a given area shape the national being of individual nations on the basis of blood, linguistic and cultural kinship, and the common vital interests and links of fate between the ethnic community and the common homeland and common historical tradition and aims.
A theoretical framework known as ethno-symbolism examines nationalism as a fluid and ever-changing phenomenon. It emphasizes the role that myths, symbols, and traditions play in the process of nationalism and the establishment of countries. Elaborating this aspect of the issue, Anthony Smith (1994) wrote the following in his “The Origin of Nations” article:
… we find aristocratic ethnies have the potential for self-perpetuation, provided they can incorporate other strata of population… ethnies survived by changing their character as … Persians, Egyptians and Ottoman Turks, while preserving a sense of common descent and some dim collective memories.
The modernization thesis regards nationalism as a relatively new sociological phenomenon that can only emerge in countries with modern socio-economic systems. Nationalism, according to subscribers of this thesis like Benedict Anderson, Elie Kedourie, and Eric Hobsbawm, can only exist in societies that have undergone the process of modernization, with nations being inventions rather than natural phenomena. For modernists, nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon that can exist only when the structural conditions of modern society are met (Grosby, 2005). The most important work representing this line of argument is based on the thesis of the imagined community. An imagined community is a concept forwarded by Benedict Anderson (1983). Anderson proposed this idea in his celebrated book Imagined Communities. Anderson (1983:7) portrays a nation as a socially-constructed group of people, imagined by the people who recognize themselves as part of a collection: …regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that
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makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings. Another and perhaps even more important modernist scholar of nationalism is Ernest Gellner. Holding that nationalism was impossible in the pre-modern societal structure, Gellner (1983: 48-9) had the following to say: Nations as a natural, God-given way of classifying men, as an inherent… political destiny, are a myth; nationalism, which sometimes takes pre-existing cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates pre-existing cultures; that is reality.
5.3.2. When and how did nationalism develop?
Nationalism is conceived from the concept of “nation,” which can be interpreted in several ways. Civic nationalism (Trautsch, 2020), for instance, describes the country in terms of shared citizenship, principles, and institutions, whereas ethnic nationalism (Brown, 1998) describes the country in terms of shared ethnicity, heritage, and culture. “The ethnic remains profoundly suspect. It is widely equated with the exclusiveness of “blood” associated with the organic version of nationalism.” (Smith, 2000:16) On the other hand there is a benign version of “civic” form of nationalism” distinguishing itself from the ethnic one. The conception of what the nation is can have implications regarding how members view others both within and without.
The term "ethnic nationalism" refers to a close bond between members of a national group who share racial, linguistic, or other cultural characteristics that have been passed down through generations. On the basis of birth, lineage, and genetics, one is considered a member of the nation and carries an identity that cannot be shed by becoming a citizen of another nation, which can be accomplished by selecting a country and filling out an application form. Ethnic Germans, for example, who have lived in what is now Russia for decades, may be able to return to their homeland and rejoin their people. This would be possible if Russia permitted such individuals to do so. They had a stronger claim to German citizenship until recently than Turkish “guest-workers,” including the offspring of Turkish "guest-workers" born in Germany (Roshwald, 2001).
Civic nationalism underpins the nation in France and the United Kingdom. It describes the shared historical connections that already exist among the people of the nation, as well as the obligations of loyalty and responsibilities that come with earning citizenship in that nation. According to the
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findings of Roshwald (2001), existing citizens of the country may have significant objections to the incorporation of a large number of new people into the country through the process of acquiring citizenship.
Nations are on the one hand considered as a “natural” or “organic” state (Conev, 2019) created through the bonding of people sharing similar characteristics, and bolstered with poetic fervor imbued with a dose of government authority. The state in this sense ensures through various national projects to promote nationalism through its cultural, social, economic and political programs (see for example Richardson, 2010). On the other hand, a nation is based on the idea of a sovereign fraternity bonded together by “blood, culture and citizenship.” This form of nationalism has been particularly central to political activism which sees popular sovereignty as a rallying call for national unity (Habermas, 1996). This viewpoint is shared across the political spectrum. In their fight against an oppressive regime, radicals will use this strategy to rally public support for their cause. People's sovereignty is mentioned in revolutionary writings such as the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789). In terms of historical progression, the adoption of a national identity has frequently been a response by powerful groups dissatisfied with traditional identities. Nationalists seek to correct this mismatch by redefining a society's identity. They attempt to preserve those aspects of its past that they consider acceptable while discarding those that they believe are incompatible with the formation of a cohesive community. This new development could be the result of internal structural issues or hostility of an existing community or groups toward other communities, particularly foreign powers that control (or are perceived to control) them (Brown, 1998). National symbols such as flags, national anthems, national languages, national mythologies, and other expressions of national identity are held in high regard by nationalists (Billig, 1995; Wiltgren, 2014).
Benedict Anderson (1983) saw nationalism as a learned quality, implying that national identity is created rather than innate. He defined a nation as
an imagined political-community, imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign...it is imagined because members of even the smallest nation will never know, meet, or even hear of most of their fellow members, yet each lives the image of their communion in their minds (Anderson, 1983:5-6).
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Despite being fictitious in nature, people develop strong feelings for their countries and are often willing to die for them. Individuals who identify with or feel attached to their country are said to practice nationalism, which can be considered a faith, credence, or political philosophy. Nationalism is defined as those who identify with or feel devoted to their country. According to the modernist viewpoint, nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon that can arise only when the structural requirements of modern society are met (Grosby, 2005). Nationalism has been recognized as both a highly successful ideology in human history, and a “dangerously emotional and irrational problem” (Billig, 1995/2004: 38). According to Kedourie (1960), the emergence of nationalism as a phenomenon is a relatively recent phenomenon. Nationalism did not become a widely accepted belief until the end of the 18th century, when it shaped both private and public life and was one of the most significant single inferring factors in modern history.
As with many other ideologies, over time nationalism develops its own worldview. What is a worldview, or Weltanschauung as it is called in German? At the simplest level, it is a vision of how things happen (or should happen) in social and political life. It is a collection of ideas and principles that somehow fit together and complement each other, though they may not be perfectly harmonious. What matters is how they function in practice. They should comprise or address the past, the present, and the future. Thus (a) they should be able to impart meaning to to this or that social group’s history. (b) They should provide an explanation for current events (or the current state of that group). (c) They should also hold a key to what lies ahead -- by suggesting or advocating what the group needs to do in order to chart a better course for itself. If these elements are somehow present, we can speak of a worldview.
Compared with many other major philosophies or ideologies in Modern times, nationalism is perhaps most capable of appealing very powerfully to people’s emotions, to the point of such emotions leading into illogical, even hysterical actions or attitudes. Nationalism does this by emphasizing an allegiance to, or identification with, the nation above all other loyalties or commitments. Nationalism and national identity are thus social constructions; they are created or imagined by people in relation to other people (Wiltgren, 2014). Despite this, people's mythology and symbolistic attachments can lead them to believe that their nations have always existed and that it is their duty to ensure that this existence continues. Patriotism is this deep love, this
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attachment to the fatherland. As a result, it is clear that this deeply felt patriotism would have both positive and negative consequences for people and communities.
Nationalism can be viewed as an ideology as well as a social movement (Goodman, 2010). Nationalism is based on the idea that the nation and the state should not be in competition with one another. A political ideology aimed at advancing the causes of a specific nation (as in a group of people), most notably the right of a nation to exercise complete control over its physical territory (also known as "sovereignty"). As a result, nationalism is rooted in the desire to advance the causes of a specific nation as a group of people (Axtmann, 2004). Thus, nationalists advocate for a state with the right to rule itself, and that a nation is the only legitimate source of political authority.
It is hoped that nationalism, in its ideal and social form, can foster national unity and solidarity by focusing on a national insight and worldview and relying on social aspects such as ethnicity, culture, language, and societal politics. This is accomplished, according to Goodman (2010), by establishing and maintaining a national identity based on these shared social characteristics. This is accomplished by developing and preserving a national identity based on these social qualities shared by the entire population.
In recent history, cultural revivals have been linked to nationalist movements that seek to preserve and promote a nation's ancient customs and practices. This link exists because nationalist movements strive to preserve and promote a country's ancient customs and practices. Furthermore, it instills a sense of national pride, which is a necessary ingredient for the development of patriotism in a society. Nationalism's political goals and ideals can be combined with those of other political systems, such as socialism and conservatism (this combination is also referred to as national conservatism).
The concept of nationalism prioritizes allegiance to one's country over any other type of political or social commitment, including the concept of patriotism. However, nationalism argues that in the event of a conflict, loyalty to the nation must take precedence over adherence to moral or religious principles, even though moral or religious ideals can take precedence over a nation's identity (Charney, 2003). Nationalism not only demands that one's political allegiance be directed toward the nation, but it also maintains that the nation alone is an appropriate foundation for organizing any kind of political activity. Nationalism, in other words, directs one's political
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allegiance toward the nation. As a result, in order to ensure the group's continued existence, the nation, which is made up of all the people who are a part of it, has been thought to have the legal right to demand any sacrifice from its members, including the giving up of property, lives, or anything else of value. This is done so that the nation can ensure the collective's survival. Natives have always had affections for their gregarious household, customs, territorial authorities, and motherland throughout history; however, the concept of nationalism did not become widely recognized until the latter part of the 18th century.
Nationalism has been credited for the establishment of modern, functioning states by providing the necessary emotional capital required to guarantee a political loyalty to the state necessary for its development (Kreuzer and Weiberg, 2005). Between civic and ethnic nationalism, scholars such as Kreuzer and Weiberg (2005) believe that civic nationalism is better designed to be capable of modernizing societies. According to Brown (2000:128), civic nationalism.
offers a vision of kinship community of equal citizens which is formed on the basis of contract, commitment, loyalty and love. Individuals of various ethnocultural backgrounds may enter this community by committing themselves to loyalty to the public institutions and way of life of their residential homeland.
This is made possible through institutionalizing the strategy of color blindness (see for example Will Kymlicka, 1997) in the public institutions of the state. This essentially means that everyone is deemed to be equal as long as they are citizens of the state and they have an obligation to “direct their political loyalty to the state, rather than to their ethnocultural groups” (Brown, 2000:128).
Kreuzer and Weiberg (2005:6) have argued that even in pre-modern times the civic vision of community was espoused to build “regimes of toleration” that, albeit undemocratic, were at times able to foster long periods of peace and tolerance. In this sense, even ethnic nationalism was able to build a positive contribution. It focuses on the belief that the community shares some profound goals, and having gone through common circumstances, develop shared values. Taken this way, ethnic nationalism does not simply exclude the “other” but may also allow for inclusion by acquiring those values:
It focuses on the belief that the community shares some distinctive racial, religious or linguistic attributes. Individuals who have not inherited such attributes, may nevertheless
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be able to acquire them (through intermarriage, religious conversion, language acquisition, etc) and this process of assimilation implies the corresponding acquisition of belief in the common history and ancestry of the adoptive community. (Brown 2000:128).
The problem, argues Kreuzer and Weiberg (2005:7) is with contemporary variants of ethnic nationalism which are intertwined with the concept of nation-state. This is because “if nation and state are deemed to be of basically similar extension, then there can be only one nation in any state.” Consequently, they conclude, this modern effort at unity and nation-statehood has been responsible for much misery.
Nationalism has received some strong condemnations for several reasons, such as enabling violent conflict, exclusion and marginalization, among other problems (Kreuzer and Weiberg, 2005). Civic nationalism, which could be considered less detrimental than ethnic nationalism, itself generally neglects providing extensive political and social rights to groups through its policy of color blindness. For Kreuzer and Weiberg (2005:8), “This can be described as a policy aimed at the disempowerment of possibly competing group identities and loyalties. They have to be converted into privately held beliefs and practices.”
Systems operating under civic nationalism often frown upon direct and political organization of ethnic or religious groups and communities. This is because it is considered that state building and national integration is possible after subordinating other identities other than that of nation- ethnic and religious- which are confined in other spaces outside the realm of public politics.
No wonder, write Kreuzer and Weiberg (2005:8), that nearly all efforts at civic-nation-building have ended in failure. This is because it often meant enforcing unity by prohibiting diversity and subjugation. It was a “hegemonic project” by which one group worked to overpower and assert primacy over the others. This often resulted in the threatened communities mobilizing on their own, and as a reaction, developing counter-identities. The result was frequent civil wars.
The same predicament is observed with ethnic nationalism. The effort at unity under this category often meant attempting homogeneity with its devastating meaning to minorities:
In an ethnic nation-state, they have by necessity to be unified – either by “ethnic cleansing” or by the cultural assimilation of the minorities. The best solution to be expected may be
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the proclamation of an ethnically homogenous nation-state with some kind of second rate citizen status to minorities. (Kreuzer and Weiberg, 2005:8)
It is therefore not surprising that such a program leads to confrontation and war. According to Kreuzer and Weiberg (2005), this need for unification and assimilation is embedded in the very nature of nation and state. We shall further discus the concept of the modern nation-state in the subsequent section. According to these authors, it is because of the global set up of the nation-state -- for example, absolute sovereignty, ownership of the state, and control over power and the benefits of power -- that dominant groups are enticed to try conquering the state;
therefore, processes of state- and nation-building are regularly accompanied by efforts at ‘state-grabbing,’ in which ethnic groups try to get into a controlling position in state and politics. Both variants of nationalism discussed so far can provide convenient ideological covers for such efforts (Kreuzer and Weiberg, 2005:9).
5.4. The age of nationalism and the rise of the modern nation-state
The nation state as we have seen is a modern creation (Calhoun, 1993; Strauss, 2006), but when or how did it come into existence, and what are its characteristics? In this section we shall explore the rise of the nation-state and discuss the changes in the military structure that enabled its rise.
Several historians (e.g. Kohn 1944, Greenfield 1991, 1992; Calhoun 1993) have argued that the discourse of nationalism has its roots in the 17th century English rebellion against the monarchy. Others trace it from the 18th century struggles of New World elites against Iberian colonialism (Anderson 1991). Yet others attribute it to the French Revolution of 1789 (Alter 1989, Best 1988), or the German reaction to the French revolution (Kedourie 1960, Breuilly 1982).
What i common to all these tracings is the element of war and violence. This perhaps is a good indicator of the role of violence, and its importance for modern nation-states. It is therefore not surprising that Collins (1975:181) attributes violence to the very nature of a state:
By ‘state’ we mean a way in which violence is organized. The state consists in individuals in possession of firearms and other weaponry and willing to put them to use: in the version of political organization found in the modern world, these individuals claim the monopoly of such use. [...] The state is, in the first instance, the army and the police.
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Poggi (2012:99) argues that from the beginning, the modern state was shaped with the intention for war-making, concerned primarily with survival and maintaining military might. The eventual map of Europe was eventually shaped by the progress or lack of it at war. That is what historian Otto Hintze (1970:53) meant with his suggestion that “all state constitution is originally war constitution, military constitution.”
De Jouvenel (1962:142) also argues that the eventual development of the state was a result of the connection between war and power in the making of European history. In the previous chapter we discussed the configuration of power in medieval Europe and how that feudalism evolved into modern statehood. De Jouvenel (1962:142) elaborates this connection; there was no choice regarding adapting to military prowess, fo once one society adopted an effective military structure, all its neighbors had to introduce it too; otherwise they would risk destruction.
The intimate tie between war and power is a constant feature of European history. [...] If a feudal monarchy succeeded in getting financial aids from the vassals at more and more frequent intervals and could thus increase the number of mercenaries in its employ, the others had to copy it. If in the end these aids were consolidated into a permanent tax for maintaining a standing army, the movement had to be followed. For, as Adam Smith remarked, “Once the system of having a standing army had been adopted by one civilized nation, all its neighbours had to introduce it; security reasons made it inevitable, for the old militias were quite incapable of resisting an army of this kind.”
This is how Downing (1991) summarizes it: Over the late-16th and 17th centuries, European armies developed a new way of fighting, and other European states were quick at adopting military ideas from neighbors to aid their maintenance of power. This started in the second half of the 16th century in the Netherlands during the Dutch independence struggle against Spain; from the 1560s, it spread very quickly through the rest of Europe, and extended through the 17th and 18th centuries, including the Napoleonic Wars, into the mid-19th century until, finally, the development of breech-loading weapons and ultimately, the invention of the machine gun, solved the problem of a rapid rate of fire. At its heart, this was not about technology as such (i.e. it was not about the sheer introduction of firearms); instead, it was about using an already existing “first generation” of (muzzle-loading) firearms in a better and much more effective way by combining firepower with mobility -- moving and firing at the same time. But in order to do all this on the battlefield,
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you had to have a new kind of organization, drill, and discipline. So, this was what the Military Revolution in the narrow sphere of warfare was mostly about: tactics-drill-discipline-organization. But it also had profound consequences outside the military sphere; it had sociological consequences, it had economic consequences, it had bureaucratic consequences; all in all, it had consequences for the formation of the modern state.
The broadest generalization suggested by writings advancing this perspective is that the military revolution makes it necessary for states, if they want to remain in business, to commandeer more resources than the arrangements inherited from the late medieval past can put at their disposal (Poggi, 2012:101).
The military change had to come with adjustments in political and other social-economic arrangements. The most prominent of these was the role of the monarch, which while in the Standestaat, was limited. But now, as a matter of national survival, he had to assume even more power, becoming an absolute monarch in the process. In the not-too-distant future, the monarch would circumvent the Estates by arranging for the monies from administrative duties to be deposited straight into his own personal bank account. Because he had a permanent military force at his disposal, he did not need the support of the Estates and was able to disregard criticism from the populace. There was only one person in control of this situation, but he was supported by his immediate family, his extended family, and his friends, all of whom derived benefits from serving him. Members of the clergy, members of the nobility who had received legal instruction, and those who did not hold independent authority but rather served as appointees of the king came into this category.
The consolidation of territorial rule and the assimilation of smaller and less powerful regions into the Standestaat were two of the primary factors that contributed to the formation of a very limited number of independent states. Each state believed itself to be sovereign, and they participated in a quest for power that was inherently competitive and fraught with danger. If a state wanted to improve its position in comparison to the positions of other states, it would have to consolidate its power in a single location, establish complete monopoly control over its territory, and rapidly mobilize resources to support the territory. These factors increased the ruler's desire to concentrate all powers of authority into his own hands, which led to the rise of absolute rule (Wilson, 2000).
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5.5. Changing loyalties
Before these changes people were more loyal to city-states, feudal fiefs and their lords, dynastic states, religious groups, or sects than to their nation's state. For much of human history, the concept of a nation-state did not exist, and when it did, it was not held up as a desirable model for very long. At the beginning of the Common Era, the goal was to establish a universal world state rather than to adhere to any particular political institution (Anderson, 2006).
Prior to the rise of nationalism, culture was not thought to be something that was determined on a national level because political loyalty was not something that was determined by nationality. Throughout the Middle Ages, religion was thought to be responsible for defining civilization. Later, during the Renaissance and Classicism periods, the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations became a global norm, applicable to all people and at all times. This was because these civilizations established the norm for how societies should function. Later, educated people from various nations and cultures across Europe came to regard the French civilization as the true civilisation (see, for example, François Guizot who emphasized that France was the epitome of civilization ).
Soon, as national sentiment grew, the idea was then put forth that people could only be instructed in their native language, and not in the languages of other civilisations and eras, whether classical languages or the literary works of other peoples who had attained a high level of civilisation. Hitherto, education and scholarly works would be instructed in Latin, English or Arabic, whatever the dominant civilization it would be at the time. But with the changes in national sentiment, there was an increased interest for instruction in the local, vernacular languages.
Consequently, education and public life, as well as states and political connections, were nationalized by the end of the 18th century. With the education and language policy projects came an increased devotion to popular national advocacy contained in works of poets and other intellectual endeavours. They reconstructed the native language, restoring it to literary prominence, and researched the nation's history. As a result, they laid the groundwork for the people instilled with nationalism to make political demands for the establishment of a national statehood (Gellner, 2009).
By the 18th century conditions were ripe for the rise of nationalism. The old order of feudal loyalties had been replaced in most of Europe by the establishment of large and centralized states
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under a now more powerful monarch. The changes had left other social institutions which could compete with the state, such as the church much weaker and in a position that would not effectively halt the march toward nationalism.
Later, when the sentiment against the monarchy increased, and in its stead there was a new fervor for individual rights and liberties, nationalism did not wane, but rather kept generally rising. The people now had as their guiding values not loyalty to the king, but rather to popular sovereignty, a people’s state- a national state which required support and defense collectively. The state had evolved into a people's state, a national state, a fatherland or a motherland, and the king no longer represented the country or the state.
5.6. One among three major ideologies
The French Revolution exemplifies this process. When the French grew agitated with their king and overthrew him, it did not stop the nationalist movement. Instead, three great modern ideologies come out of the French Revolution: Liberalism, Nationalism, and Socialism. The once-comprehensive slogan of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity could not be maintained as a totality, and came to be divided into three. Liberalism’s worldview is expressed in its key slogan of Liberty (or Freedom). Socialism’s worldview finds concentrated expression in its key slogan of equality (meaning not just legal-political but also social and economic equality). To the lot of Nationalism there falls fraternity (or brotherhood), which comes to be further transformed into unity. But whose brotherhood? Who are brothers with who? Who are supposed to be bound in unity? This is no longer all humanity, but only the nation, or “our” nation. Hence in contrast to the two other great ideologies, nationalism is not universal in its appeal. It does not address all mankind, but only “us.” There can be, and there actually are, normative books about the general principles of liberalism or socialism (such as by Adam Smith, or John Stuart Mill, or Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels). But there can be no such general, foundational texts about nationalism that all nationalists of different nations will agree upon.
There is a fundamental difference between how nationalists view their country from within and how non-nationalists or critical thinkers about nationalism view it from without. This is related to the question of how "natural" or "organic" a country is. This is regarded as one of the most crucial aspects of nationalism. The nation (their nation) is natural to nationalists. Nationalism is based on the notion that "the people" or "the nation" are a sovereign entity with a fundamental unity of
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"blood," "culture," or "citizenship." Non-nationalists and critics of nationalism believe that nations are "made" or "constructed," whether through the literary efforts of poets or through the processes of governmental authority (Eley, 1990).
What is the modern nation-state? We see it arising in relatively developed, clearcut form as a result of the late-18th century American and French revolutions. Smith (1994:44) says that it appears as “an autonomous state with a written constitution that governs in the name of a nation of equal citizens.” This was a novelty, but it is not to say that there was no state of law before the American and French revolutions. As again Smith (1994) notes, various states had already come to be ruled by distinct legal principles. But these operated within the overall framework of hereditary monarchies or dynastic states, further bolstered by religious or theocratic dimensions. When a prince's father died, the prince was entitled to take over the mantle of power. This was primogeniture. Elsewhere, it might be a principle of seniority: the oldest male member of the family took over. Before the French Revolution, French kings represented the reigning family, not France as a nation. In theocracies, religious leaders exercised power in worldly matters, too (as in Tibet and Montenegro). Ottoman and Spanish elites claimed to spread the true faith across the globe (Smith, 1994).
We have come a long way from this late-Medieval, quasi-feudal past. Democracy has developed in scope and depth. As Lisa Anderson (1991:1) puts it, “Only a few countries, especially in the Middle East, are still ruled as absolute monarchy.” The nationalist movement, one can say, has had several tremendous achievements that are felt today. Firt of all, the once revolutionary idea of equal citizenship is now widely recognized. How did this remarkable feat come about?
As Tilly (1975) notes, understanding this nationalist growth is one of the most challenging subjects in contemporary historical sociology. Why did contemporary governments evolve into nation-states as a result of the dynamics of war-making, bureaucratic centralisation, and higher taxation? To address this issue, an extensive literature has emerged, including well-known works by Gellner (1983), Anderson (1991), Smith (1994), Eley (1990), and Wimmer (2008).
This is a valuable research tradition, and yet, especially by Breuilly and Wimmer, it has been criticized on two grounds. First, there is a problem of over-generalization or over-theorization about “universal mechanisms that could account for the establishment of nation-states in the
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modern world as a whole”, while the empirical evidence remains selective or limited (Breuilly, 2008). Second, empirical research on paths of nation-state formation remains fragmented along geographies and disciplines (Wimmer and Feinstein, 2010) .
I have already spoken of how Miroslav Hroch (1968, 2015) conceptualizes the formstion of nation-states in Europe as having taken place along three lines: (a) On the basis of a relativel stable territory and demography already shaped in the Middle Ages; (b) through unification; (c) through partition and fragmentation. What follows below is to b put in this triple context.
In most of eastern and central Europe, there was often an “exogenous” ruling group dominating the other ethnic groups in the territory. Here nationalism developed as a form of national consciousness. Hroch (1993) says that it was centered on fulfilling three main demands: (1) The development of a national culture based on local language and its use in civic space, in education, and institutionally. (2) The achievement of civil rights and self-determination, initially in the form of autonomy and subsequently, independence. (3) The creation of a complete social structure from out of the ethnic group.
Michael Mann (2015) has come up with an almost similar categorization with his levels of nation-state emergence, about (1) communities that strengthened the state (France and England). France and England have had a common history from the time of the Norman conquest of 1066, to the break with Rome under Henry VIII in 1534 (Kumar, 2006:416). It is therefore of little wonder that they developed an almost similar trajectory regarding statehood. Kumar (2006:416) further notes that as an example indicating the strength of the French and English ties, under a succession of monarchs in England, both Norman and Plantagenet, French was the language used at court and in courtly culture, and the French supplied the skills and materials that built the English cathedrals such as Winchester, York and Canterbury. This relationship continued in other aspects including war, where bitter conflicts between the two such as the Hundred Years’ War “had the appearance of family quarrels, in which rival kings fought for the supremacy of France and England.” Kumar stresses that the two nations were again united, as great powers, by “competition and conflict for world domination.”
A second category for Mann (2015) is (2) communities that created the state (Germany). The nationalist movement in the German case had as its telos, the creation of a unified German state
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from the previous multiple forms of government. The “old forms,” as one historian, Johann Gustav Droysen called them (see Hewitson, 2010:1173), were breaking up by 1848 . However, this disintegration was not a cause for concern for the German nationalists. Droysen writes that it was as a consequence of “the enormous force of the increasingly heartened German people, that the enthusiastic spirit that continues “from the truth of our German being, from the ‘primordial spirit’ of the united German people, from the sovereignty of the nation” that “our new Germany is rebuilding itself” (Hewitson, 2010:1173) Despite the fact that it had “raged from palace to palace in the month of March” and had “stirred up the otherwise dumb and dull masses,” the 1848 revolution was both legal, receiving the sanction of the Bundestag and drafting its own liberal constitution, and legitimate, embodying the national will. “The magic word of German unity drowned out the wildest roar; where it rang out there was an immediate… joyful confidence, a good conscience resulting from a just desire,” wrote Droysen: “ In this spirit of unity the constitution-granting Reichstag convened” (quoted by Hewitson, 2010:1173). Such was the nature of the German nationalist movement, informed by divergent interest, yet all yearning to create a new state propelling them their goals. For instance, radical Germans “looked to found their state on the political will of free and equal citizens” (Hewitson, 2010:1174), while the Catholics sought freedoms and rights for their Church, at the same time as conservatives stressed organic traditions which they tried to tie through the monarchy, nobility and the Church to the individual states (Hewitson, 2010:1174).
Finally, also fo Mann (2015), there were (3) communities that dismantled the state. There was a third group of state-formations in Europe, and this led to a third path for the rise of nationalisms and nation-states: old multi-ethnic, multi-denominational empires such as Tsarist Russia, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were dismantled and replaced by smaller nation-states that were mostly based along ethnic lines.
Charles Tilly has grouped the processes above into simply two categories: (1) Those driven by state-led nationalism, where the ruling class demanded all citizens to self-identity with and subordinate themselves to the interests of the state; and (2) those driven by state-seeking efforts where representatives of sections of the ruled population demanded autonomy. It was a struggle to transition from the old, Medieval system to a new one, increasingly a copied idea from one neighboring society to another.
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Hroch (2015) argues that in the era of absolutism, any building of a modern state as a community of equal citizens could only become effective if it was a response to the crisis of the old legitimacies of the monarch and the religion. State policy -- domestic or foreign -- would no longer be conducted in the name of “a monarch by divine right,” but in the name of “a nation.” In England, for instance, the nation-state was pioneered by the elite to legitimize their trappings of power and prevent anti-imperial sentiments, as we shall discuss below.
From all this, including Hroch, Mann, and Tilly, we can derive three types or veins of nationalism.
1. Official Nationalism: England
At the beginning of the 18th century, the British state was formed when England and Scotland combined to form Britain. But as Welling (2002:2) notes, it was still true that England would dominate the new union with English nationalism guiding the new state. “Englishness” played a huge role in the creation of the British state and of “Britishness.” This was because England was the most powerful of the constituent parts that made up the new union, and the discourse about Britishness, or British nationalism, did not displace the English nationalism but rather fed into it. English nationalism, it is argued, was able to persist in its relations with other identities and retain, rather than lose its position, in the new British space. It was allowed to “appropriate non-English space and peoples when defining England.”
How and why did this happen? The answer, according to Welling (2002:2) lies in the origin of the British state and the tensions it had to overcome to operate and survive:
As the British state consolidated its position throughout the eighteenth century, an ideology of ‘Britishness’ (although not without certain political antecedents) developed post facto in order to legitimize the new state in the face of possible threats form social and nationalist sources.
After the union was officially declared by both the Scottish and English parliaments in 1707, the English parliament was able to continue its business without much disruption, but the opposite was happening in Scotland. The Scots, through several riots in the capital and other places, were concerned with the loss of their sovereignty because of joining the union. These fears, however, met the deaf ears of the Scottish aristocrats who were interested in joining the union for the benefit
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of a free customs regime (Healey, 1955:136). Welling (2002:2) notes that “Seen from London, the English state had become the British state almost without any disruption and very little fanfare.” The timing of the creation of the British state may explain this continuity from the Medieval era to the modern state. The state was created before industrialization began, and before the political revolutions in France and America that fundamentally altered political philosophy in Europe and elsewhere. Anglo-Britain, albeit a modern monarchical state, was governed by an aristocratic elite, and as industrialization increased these aristocrats from the constituent parts shared a common interest centered on the state. Nairn (1977:32) argues that these commonalities included the defense and expansion of empire, a degree of economic and political homogeneity between these two classes, and as industrialization progressed, a common enemy in the working classes.
But what is important about the timing of the creation of the British state in relation to industrialization, is that the state was never obliged to impose itself upon civil society in order to foster economic development to the extent that other states that followed in its wake were forced to do (Nairn, 1977:19; also see Welling, 2002:4). England’s difference was that nationalism was employed by the elite as a way to legitimize the state’s ruling elite. This elite maintained the existing state, and hence differed from other forms of nationalism, which often sprang up with a purpose of creating, not maintaining, nation-states. In the case of England, nationalism was intertwined with the processes of industrialization, commercial and imperial expansion which were all closely driven by the elite. According to Benedict Anderson (1991:83) this was “official nationalism” that was devised as a means of self-legitimation.
2a. Unification Nationalism: Germany
Nationalism in Germany took a different trajectory from that of France and England but was linked to the events in and relations with these two, especially the former. The roots of German nationalism can be traced to the occupation and hegemony of France on the German principalities and confederates. Although the growth of this national sentiment was low, and for many years limited to a tiny minority of radical nationalists, nevertheless this French experience inculcated a rare national sentiment and birthed a possibility that political unity could be achieved especially after the fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire had come to an end. Napoleon Bonaparte, had resolved, through his direct and indirect control of the German principalities, to fundamentally
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alter the structure of the Holy Roman Empire. In the Final Recess (Hauptschluss) of the Reich deputation of February 1803, the French diplomats, who oversaw the remapping of the territories, eliminated the smallest and least viable of the political components in Germany, inadvertently furthering the process of national consolidation, and starting to strike major blows at the traditional particularism, which had dominated political machinations, engendering the fragmentation of civic activity in the empire.
With Palmer and Colton (1991:51-2) one can therefore argue, following from the above, that Napoleon prepared the way for a process of centralization in Germany. The free cities, the imperial knights, and ecclesiastical territories, hangovers of the Medieval power configuration, were the primary victims of the Final Recess. They were deemed too weak to be useful allies to Napoleon. They were destroyed and taken over by their greedy German neighbors. Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Nassau were the big winners in the competition for booty that had been the main object of the negotiations. The princes in such states, owing to some benefits they accrued from allying with a foreign power, were not keen at resisting such arrangements, stalling the rapid achievement of German unification.
However, patriotic sentiments became increasingly widespread in the empire as the French occupation increasingly became burdening. The financial conditions imposed on the Germans aroused intensifying anti-French sentiments, forcing a network of secret organizations in the German states with the ambition of expelling the French invaders. Yet there were still a considerable and powerful portion of the elite that benefited from the occupation and who saw it as a guarantor of their own interests. Even among those who resisted the French occupation, major disagreements were present. There was for example no mutual agreement regarding the nature of the future structure of the nation. Some, like the liberals, preferred a united fatherland that would be in position to compete among other major powers in Europe. Others were more interested in a loose association of governments, with considerable autonomy similar to the confederation of the Rhine. Yet, the majority of peasants, uneducated and uninformed, seemed oblivious to the struggles of the elite, and remained indifferent through much of the proceedings. As a result, the nationalist movement suffered tremendously. By the end of 1820, the reform movement came to halt, overpowered by the particularism and conservative landowning nobility and conservative peasantry. In contrast to France and England, where bourgeois civic consciousness had succeeded
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at providing the impetus for representative institutions, in Germany this consciousness was relatively weak. Instead ideas for political reform in Germany were mostly a reaction to foreign occupation and imitations of foreign examples.
The two dominant powers in Germany were Prussia in Berlin and the Austrian Empire in Vienna. The leadership there was not enthusiastic about national unity and even actively participated in controlling the national sentiments. When the July revolution of 1830 in France succeeded against the bourbons, there was a sudden threat to the established order throughout Europe. The news of the bourbon defeat electrified the continent. In the wake of these events, the rulers of Brunswick, Saxony, Hanover, and Hesse-Kassel acted swiftly to grant some of the demands of the liberal nationalists, by agreeing to promulgate liberal constitutions there in a bid to forestall even more extreme demands. This did not stop the demands, however. One of the manifestations of this was that a mass meeting of radicals in southern states gathered at Hambach Castle in May 1832. There the participants called for national unification, republican government and popular sovereignty. A militant group of students attempted to seize the city of Frankfurt on the river Main to dissolve the federal Diet and proclaim a German republic.
These events triggered the princes of the German Confederation into resistance as they gradually recovered from their initial fear of the nationalist movement. They, together with close support from the Austrian government led by Prince Metternich, began to oppose plans to change the system of government with increasing vigour. When in 1848 Metternich eventually resigned from his position in the Austrian cabinet, however, the German princes were forced to hasten their plans to make peace with the opposition, as they had witnessed elsewhere, especially from France, the commitment of republican and socialist experiments. This made them appoint prominent liberals to official positions in government, introduce civic reforms, and safeguard the rights of citizens and the legislature. They even attempted to achieve political unification through a national assembly representing all of Germany. Elections were organized soon after the spring movement had relaxed, and on May 18, 1848, the Frankfurt National Assembly convened in Frankfurt am Main to prepare a national constitution for Germany. However, the buoyant mood did not last long. After the uprising, the participants started to disagree and quarrel over the nature of the political system to adopt. The democrats, for instance, continued to agitate for more radical course of action regarding the political system. Other disputes raged on, the “great German” movement
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(Grossdeutsch) wanted Austria to play a leading role in the united country while the “little German” party (Kleindeutsch) argued that the Austrian Habsburgs had too many other interests such as Italians, Slav and Magyars to look after, and would not therefore manage to dedicate the necessary attention to the united Germany.
When on January 18, 1871, the German empire was founded, it was not a result of extreme nationalist activity and outpouring of nationalist sentiment, but rather through boardroom diplomacy necessitated by wars and agreement by the leaders of the states in the North German Confederation, led by Prussia, with the hereditary rulers of Bavaria, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Württemberg. Prussia remained the dominant force in the nation until the empire’s demise at the end of another war in 1918 (Merriman, 1996:765).
Eventually the successful unification was consolidated by the brilliant calculations of the capable German leadership of Otto von Bismarck. He used the Franco-Prussian war to overcome the particularism of states south of the Main River. This was done by convincing these states to join Prussia in the war, whose victorious outcome increased patriotic fervor and forged a brotherhood in war that was too much for the French opponents to overcome. Following the defeat of France, the government in Paris was forced to cede Alsace-Lorraine to Germany, pay an indemnity of five billion francs, and to accept an army of occupation through the Treaty of Frankfurt. Bismarck used this time to negotiate with the southern states, calculatedly using patriotic fervor to build political consolidation of a new, powerful German empire.
2b. Unification Nationalism: The Italian Risorgimento
The path to Italian unification took a similar trajectory to that of the Germans. It was a product of a new world where ideas traveled much more quickly than in the past, and where activity from the neighbors hastened in favor of those more organized. So, when the French troops invaded Italy in 1796, they did not find a new and strange country, oblivious to the new ideas that had sprung up in France. Instead, they found a fertile ground for these ideas, thanks in part to the Italian newspapers and pamphlets that had taken upon them to update the Italians of the happenings in France. As the revolution unfolded in France, news reports in Italy became frequent and dramatic to an extent that the governments in Italy where incapacitated to stop the spread of revolutionary ideas.
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The Italians took a growing interest in the French Revolution, in many ways out of disappointment with the enlightened rulers of their states who failed in providing administrative and political reforms in their territories. The increasing Italian elite, with the backing of secret organization through secret societies like the Illuminati, sought for more freedoms and free thought. Although Italian governments opposed these French revolutionary ideas, seeing them as potential threats to stability, their intensified action against the conspirators proved insufficient, and many escaped and sought refuge in France where they became even more active and influential. These Italian emigrants became critical to the spread of revolutionary ideas and even helped prepare the ground for a French intervention in the country.
Soon afterwards, beginning in March 1796, led by Napoleon Bonaparte France invaded Italy. By April 1797, the French had taken control over the Po Valley including Bologna and the northern reaches of the Republic of Venice, which the Pope had ceded to them in the Peace of Tolentino signed on February 19, 1797. The French and their ideas were now firmly rooted in Italian territories. The ensuing political activities would provide grounds for the origin of the Italian consciousness, which came to be known as the Italian Risorgimento or “resurgence” of the 19th century.
Essentially, the main impetus that led to the rise of the Risorgimento came from France, first, indirectly through the ideas of their revolution, and secondly through the French invasion of the country. During this time, a number of Italian states were consolidated as satellite states of the French empire, but importantly accommodating a growing number of the Italian middle class which was allowed to take part in government.
This proved crucial because after Napoleon’s defeat, this middle class now armed with experience of government and ideas from the revolutions retreated to secret societies. This is because after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Italian states, now bolstered by the exit of a major enemy, were restored to their former rulers and took a conservative turn, erasing many of the revolutionary gains. Secret societies such as the Carbonari opposed the new developments in the 1820s and 1830s. One such group, founded by Giuseppe Mazzini in 1831, was a national group called Young Italy which hoped to educate the Italians and increase their sense of nationhood.
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The realization of such nationalist aspirations came after the failure of liberal and republican revolutions in 1848, which passed the leadership of the Italian dream to Piedmont. The Piedmontese would eventually defeat the Austrians in 1859 and go ahead to unite most of Italy under their rule by 1861, again with the help of the French. Eventually, the annexation of Venetia in 1866 and Papal Rome in 1870 marked the final unification of Italy and the triumph of the Risorgimento.
3. Breakdown Nationalism
The age of nationalism claimed, in the late-19th century and 20th centuries, key European empires, among them Tsarist Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. These imperial states had a lot in common, the most important of being that they were governing a diversity of nationalities. Welling (2002) notes that the goal of the leadership in these empires was not limited to the service of a particular ethnicity but to a maintained community of nation -- for example, in the case of the Ottoman Empire, inspired by the universal service to Islam. Therefore, unlike England the empire states could not afford to develop a nationalist movement of their own.
In these circumstances, what causes nationalism, argues Rowley (2000:38), is the appearance of a secular, particularism ideology ‘What really “causes” nationalism, he states, “is the discourse of particularism and secularism that provides a legitimating vocabulary to those who seek to rule a sovereign, territorially bounded state in opposition to an imperial rival.” These were, in the empires that broke down due to nationalist forces, prevalent as the empires ruled over vast geographical territories, inhabited by diverse nationalities which desired autonomy and independence of their own.
Austria-Hungary, 1918
One of the most powerful empires in Europe in the 19th century was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or the Dual Monarchy, which ruled Central Europe as a constitutional monarchy. It was founded in 1867 as part of the Austro-Hungarian compromise which culminated in a union between the Austrian empire and the kingdom of Hungary. Austria-Hungary became a powerful player in Central Europe, becoming the third largest empire there after the Russian and German empires. The Hungarian crown ruled over the kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia while Bosnia and Herzegovina were ruled jointly by Austria and Hungary.
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The arrangement was that the foreign, defense, and financial policies were coordinated between the two states, in exclusion of other people of the empire, who were not consulted. It was thus an unpopular arrangement in the diverse ethnic composition of the empire. The rifts within the empire and the geo-political atmosphere at the time did not allow the empire to last for long. When on July 28, 1914 the Austria-Hungarian Empire declared war against the kingdom of Serbia; World War I broke out, which the empire did not survive. By the time the military authorities signed the armistice at Villa Giustion on November 3, 1918, it was already effectively defunct. The victors in World War I acknowledged the independence of the West Slavs and South Slavs of the Ottoman Empire in 1920 as the Czechoslovak Republic, the Polish Republic, and Yugoslavia, respectively, and met most of Romania's territorial requests.
Breakdown of the Ottoman Empire
In the previous chapter we looked at the rise of the Ottoman Empire, and how it navigated through the years to create a huge empire that consisted of diverse ethnicities, languages, and religions. In this section, we shall discuss how and why the Ottoman state declined, and its eventual breakdown.
As the population of the Ottoman Empire grew exponentially during the 16th and 17th centuries its resources began to dwindle, unable to meet the increasing needs of a huge, diverse empire. The peasants who were accustomed to cultivating the land for their subsistence began to feel pressured by the increasing tax burden imposed by the tax-farmers and the timar holders. The result was more and more people abandoning cultivation altogether, in preference of a town life. Many that remained in the countryside were often lured into banditry and rebel activities, becoming, for example, levend or jelali, who became notorious for sabotaging trade and cultivation in the empire. The central authority became weakened in the process, and effective administration became harder. However, the Ottoman system allowed for a substratum including the ethno-religious communities called millets, and other social and economic guilds, too, helped to cushion the people from the worst effects of the unrest, helping in the process to prolong the empire. This can be explained by the fact that within it nationalist ideals and agitation for independence were yet to take root.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Ottoman contacts with European powers gradually increased, especially through the many military campaigns, and these powers began to intervene in the
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domestic affairs of the Ottoman Empire, through support to the non-Muslim populations there, engendering nationalist consciousness. The Ottoman army fought the armies of the Holy League from 1683 to 1699, leading to the Treaty of Carlowitz (1699); then again in 1710-11 with Russia, and in 1714-18 with Venice and Austria, culminating in a Treaty of Passarowitz (1718); again with Russia and Austria in 1736-39, 1768-74, and 1787-92, which all ended in diverse treaties: Belgrade (1739), Küçük Kaynarca (1774), and Jassy (1792). From these wars and treaties, the Ottoman Empire lost Hungary, the Banat of Temesvár region, Transylvania, and Bukovina40. The Russians and Austrians tactically fought the Ottomans by using both direct military attacks and instigating resistance in the non-Muslim communities of the empire. The Ottomans were later compelled to allow the Austrians and Russians intervene on behalf of the Christian subjects in the empire. These contacts with European powers started to alter relations within the empire between the subjects and the ruling class, and subsequently, the ruling class’s adoption of ideas from the West.
The initial reaction to changes in the Ottoman court was one of resistance. By then the Ottomans had a firm belief in the superiority of the traditional Ottoman system, and were, apart from the encounters at war, uninterested and uninformed about the changes in the social, political, and military structures taking place in Europe. Even the reforms undertaken during these centuries reflected more the traditional Ottoman practice, than ideas taken from the rest of Europe. In the 18th century, however, there was a marked increase in the direct contact of the Ottoman ruling class members with the West. Movement between the empire and the West increased, with ambassadors, travelers, and intellectuals. An example was the Tulip Period of 1717-30. Under the influence of the grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha, some Ottomans began to dress and imitate Europeans mannerisms. In one of the early signals of Westernization, people, poor and rich alike, became obsessed with growing tulips. At the top, Sultan Ahmed III (r.1703-30), for example, built several lavish summer residences, as did members of his court, who also imitated the pleasures of holding frequent garden parties following the example of Versailles in France. In the military, there were a few attempts at reform, again inspired by the influence of European renegades. There were attempts to adopt Western-style military uniforms, tactics, and weapons.
Soon more and more European ideas permeated through the population, receiving extra attention in the non-Muslim communities and nationalities in the empire. The Greeks began to revolt, with
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assistance from the European powers, and the French and British naval forces combined to defeat the Ottoman fleet at Navarino in 1827, cutting off supplies to the combined forces of Egypt and the Ottomans. This made the independence of Greece inevitable, and culminated in recognizing Greek autonomy in 1829, and eventually independence in 1832. A similar scenario happened when the Ottoman efforts to regain control of Serbia were foiled by Russian opposition, which led to the Russo-Turkish war of 1828-29. In the treaty of Edirne signed on September 14, 1829, the Ottomans ceded important territories to Russia alongside giving up a lot of privileges in Serbia and the principalities, leading to recognition of Serbian autonomy in 1829 and independence in 1833.
A string of unfortunate natural disasters, economic and political mismanagement and external pressure exacerbated social unrest in the Ottoman Empire in the later part of the 19th century, and boosted nationalist sentiment in constituent nations which culminated in the loss of more territory. Drought in 1873 and then floods in 1874, for instance, produced widespread discontent and famine in the empire, adding to the frustration that people were already facing due to high taxation. The Ottomans were heavily debt-burdened, unable to meet their debt obligations without increasing taxes on the people. By 1875 the nominal public debt was more than 200 million pounds. The Ottomans could hardly find credit to service their loans.
Discontent increased, in places like the Balkans, especially among the Christian populations, and fanned by nationalist sentiments. In the Balkans there were uprisings mainly of Christian peasants against their Muslim lords. The Christians were supported by Serbia and by émigré Slav organizations. There were uprisings in Bosnia and Herzegovina (July 1875) and in Bulgaria (August 1876). Attempts to bring down the revolts led to war with Serbia, and drew in other European powers pressuring for reforms. One such intervention, the Treaty of San Stefano (March 3, 1878), required the Ottomans to recognize the independence of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro. In addition, they were to concede autonomy to Bulgaria, and cede territory to Russia in Dobruja and eastern Asia Minor. The terms were modified at the Congress of Berlin (June–July 1878), though they still involved ceding further territory either to autonomy and independent nationalist formations or to the major European powers. For example, Austria-Hungary was given control of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the strategic Novi Pazar in Serbia, and the island of Cyprus was put under British rule.
5.7. Summary and conclusion
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In this chapter, we have looked at nationalism and traced its sociological and historical roots in Europe. We've seen how nationalism evolved from the medieval European power configuration to the age of nationalism dealt with in this chapter. The critical point here is that, following industrialization and economic modernization, the underprivileged laboring classes began to agitate for greater individual and communal liberties, thanks to the mobilization of a few educated elites. These liberal demands spread from country to country, bringing major changes to the social and political structures of the societies. States were forced to respond, either by reorganizing and consolidating traditional systems and cracking down on radical campaigners, or by instituting reforms.
The path that the nation-state took in its formation was largely determined by how the ruling elite responded to reformers' challenges and demands. In some cases, such as England, the response was to consolidate the state, whereas in others, such as Germany, the response was to create new states, often through war and diplomacy, and thirdly, in multi-ethnic empires such as the Ottoman Empire, the response was to break away from the empire, first through autonomy and later becoming independent states.
It is important to note that the state was forced to reorganize itself due to social, political, and military changes. The reforms, however, were in many ways imitations of similar actions taken elsewhere, indicating the role that state and empire relations and contact with others played in the rise of nationalism and the nation state.
As examples of how that process unfolded, this chapter used a few cases of major empires. In the following chapter, we will examine how military reorganization and revolution influenced the power structure of Europe and the Ottoman Empire. It is also worth mentioning here that in the previous chapter we saw how the adoption of new tactics and military ideas was critical for the state.
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CHAPTER SIX
IMPERIALISM AND COLONIALISM:
NATIONALISM OUTSIDE EUROPE
6.1. Introduction
In previous chapters, we looked at the power configuration in Medieval Europe and the Ottoman empire. We discussed how changes in the military set-up and power affected states, leading to some becoming more powerful over others. We also discussed the rise of nationalism and the nation-state, and how these particularist ideologies engendered the creation, or maintenance of states reflecting the nationalist, religious or ethnic compositions of that society. In this chapter, we shall show the consequence of this reflective configuration of society, seeing the self-nation as righteous and responsible not just to promote the right within borders but to “civilize” other parts of the world. This, as we shall discuss, coupled with easier means and experience of travel, promoted imperial ambitions, culminating into colonialism and later anti-colonial struggles that engulfed substantial parts of the world.
Hence now we shall look at imperialism and colonialism. On one hand, these phenomena are discussed as historical consequences of the changing power relations between Europe and the rest of the world, including the Ottoman world. On the other, they reveal a new and changed structure of civilization because of the nation-state. Civilization now looks more and more reflective of particularism -- of nationalist character instead of the universal face that it hitherto appeared. Through colonialist and anti-colonialist endeavors, the world began to look more fragmented along national lines as communications and contacts of civilizations became faster. The rise of imperialism went hand in hand with idea of it being a civilizing and enlightening assignment to self-conscious imperial states. We shall discus the key imperial actors, their motivations, and circumstances as well as the consequences that arose out of the imperial adventures.
Galtung (1971:81) defines imperialism as “a dominance relation between collectivities, particularly between nations.” Imperialism is therefore associated with power relations both within and between nations. We have seen how nationalism rose in Europe; one of the ways it happened
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was one ethnic grouping dominating others into establishing a state that reflected more a particularistic outlook of one group over the others. Horvath (1972:46) similarly defines colonialism as “domination -- the control by individuals or groups over the territory and/or behavior of other individuals or groups.” It is distinguished from other forms of domination by the size. Colonialism is known to be the domination of large groups, rather than small groups such as family, or even small clan groups. Horvath (1972:50) categorizes this domination in the following ways:
1. Control by individuals or groups over the territory of other individuals or groups.
2. Intergroup domination occurring in a culturally heterogenous society, intragroup domination in a culturally homogeneous society.
3. Colonialism involves intergroup domination where settlers in significant number migrate to the colony .
4. Imperialism involves intergroup domination where a few settlers from the imperial mainland migrate to the colony.
What causes imperialism?
The causes of imperialism can be put in four main categories,
1. Economic arguments for imperialism: the view that imperialism pays, and therefore it is beneficial for a state, or the capitalist elite within the state, to support imperial efforts so as to open up markets, acquire resources for production, among other economic reason for attaining control over territory.
2. Nature of human beings and states: this view holds that it is just in human nature to seek to dominate others, and to have control over others in a struggle for survival. Those that are stronger would survive, and therefore, the best way to survive, is to be strong enough and control as much and have as much sway as possible.
3. Strategy and security of states: like the arguments above, the argument for security also assumes competitive nations and states. Nations are urged to obtain buffer zones, security bases, strategic materials, and natural lines of communication and to prevent others, such as powerful neighbors and competitors from having them.
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4. Moral grounds and missionary responsibility: here imperialism is excused as an obligation, a responsibility for stronger, enlightened states to help other nations or peoples within them to overcome pertinent problems such as backwardness by bringing to them a superior way of life, a mission to civilize, to stop oppressive tendencies such as slavery and the slave trade, among other things considered to be negative in the eyes of the imperial nation-state actors.
Western political and moral theorists have struggled to justify colonialism with a coherent argument. Throughout history, European powers have attempted to reconcile the practice of dominating non-Western cultures with their own ideas of justice and natural law. In the 19th century, when European dominance was at its peak, the gap between liberal philosophy and colonialist practices widened.
One of the arguments that was used to justify colonialism is the “civilizing mission” theory, which held that politically dependent, or tutelage is necessary for "uncivilized" countries to develop to the point where they can support liberal institutions and self-government (Fischer, 2004). According to this argument, colonialism was seen as a necessary step in the process of helping "backward" societies to catch up to the supposed "civilized" societies of Europe, and ultimately, to become self-governing.
However, this argument is highly problematic, as it assumes the existence of a clear and objective distinction between "civilized" and "uncivilized" societies and that European societies were more civilized than others. Moreover, this argument doesn't justify the exploitation and oppression that were inherent in colonial practices. The idea of the civilizing mission has been widely criticized as a justification for colonialism, as it not only ignored the agency and autonomy of colonized peoples, but also reinforced the cultural, economic and political hegemony of colonizing powers.
The very idea of “civilizing” has been marred in controversy. Scholars such as Brett Bowden (2009) have argued that civilization has from the Crusades to the colonial era been a stage-managed account of history that legitimizes colonialism and imperialism and conformity to Western standards.
In Europe, colonialism meant a plethora of nations exploring, conquering, and exploiting substantial territories across the world. The adventures and subsequent colonial fervor came at the back of increased travel and European interest at exploring other parts of the world (see for
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example Hazard, 2013). The age of modern colonialism is believed to have begun around 1500, following European discovering of a sea route around Africa’s southern coast in 1488 and America in 1492. These discoveries shifted sea power and propelled the emerging-nation states of Spain, Portugal, the Dutch Republic, France, and England. It is worth noting at this point that this new power was a consequence of the power configuration and changes in that era. In short, Europe was largely quiet and self-contained until when it begun contacts with the rest of the world. The first of these contacts were experienced through the Crusades (for example that of 1096-99) which opened contacts with the Muslim Near East. From here commercial relations continued, especially with Italy, which appeared to be the center of European civilization at the time (see for example Jacob Burkhardt, 1943). The Italians exchanged European products with those from the east at ports such as in the Crimea, as well as Trebizond, Constantinople and Antioch.
The first European modern states to engage in substantial colonial endeavors were Spain and Portugal, but later the domination of the lucrative trade and power shifted gradually to other European countries. Following the successful first voyage of Christopher Columbus, the rulers of Portugal and Spain in 1494 negotiated the Treaty of Tordesillas which partitioned the non-Christian world between them in an imaginary line in the Atlantic west of Cape Verde islands. In the agreement, Portugal was to claim everything to the east and Spain everything to the west of the line. For more than a century, this agreement held, thanks to the superior Spanish navy. The main interest of the Portuguese at the time was not so much territorial conquests to establish an empire but rather to keep key trade posts to dominate trade. So, they were open to collaboration with other nations to fulfill this ambition. Thus, they resumed cooperation with the Arab Muslim traders, to fulfill this objective.
Gradually trade and attention shifted to the Atlantic, as did the power structure in Europe from the Mediterranean states northwards, propelling states like England and the Dutch Republic to prominence. Additionally, from the 1760s with the rise of the Industrial Revolution, there was a shift in trade relations and policy with the periphery world. The industrializing states increasingly became sellers of produced goods in search of market for the growing demand of their machine produced goods, and slaves, spices and sugar became substantially less important with the growth of industrialization. Instead, attention was to be shifted to raw materials for industry such as cotton
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and wool. The urgency to create markets and to organize sources for raw materials required policies designed to make the rest of the world adapt to the new demands.
There was need to, among others, encourage the overhaul of existing land and property management in the colonies, which could be accomplished by among others introducing private property ownership where it did not exist, and to allow for expropriation of land for use by the settlers with the purpose of plantations, creating the supply of labor that would work the plantations or other activities like mining, encourage the use of money to promote the demand of the European products, and in the case of an established industry in the colony, curtail exports and production generally by the natives. For example, in India which was a traditional exporter of cotton goods for a long time, the British Empire contained this trade by imposing stiff tariff duties to protect it domestic manufacturers.
These changes necessitated re-ordering political structures and making political and social changes in the colonies that would ensure stable environments conducive for the perpetuation of the imperial interests mentioned above. These changes included establishing of a cooperative local elite, administrative systems and peace-keeping mechanisms that would facilitate the foreign domination.
6.2. Colonialism and imperialism
Colonialism and Imperialism are related concepts but they are not identical. According to materials in Armitage ed (1998), imperialism is a more general term that refers to a variety of different forms of expansion and regimes that aim to achieve economic dominance over other countries. Imperialism can be achieved through peaceful means, such as forming alliances with local leaders, or through more aggressive means, such as using force to conquer and control other territories.
Colonialism, on the other hand, refers specifically to the establishment of colonies, which are territories where large numbers of settlers from the colonizing power are sent to live. The distinction between the two concepts is important because it highlights the different methods and goals of imperial powers. For Reinhard and Sturge (2011), while colonialism typically involves the physical settlement of colonies, imperialism can take on various forms and the ultimate goal is always to gain economic and political dominance over other countries. The two terms are often used synonymously in everyday conversation, but the distinction between the two is important in
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understanding the context and methods of expansion and domination of imperial powers. Imperialism typically manifests itself in the political and economic supremacy of an imperialist power over a colonial territory but can also be applied in other forms of domination.
According to Fichter ed (2019), colonialism typically involves the relocation of a population to a new territory, where they establish new communities while maintaining their political allegiance to their original homeland. The etymology of the term "colonial" comes from the Latin word colonia, which means colony, emphasizing the physical and territorial aspect of colonialism. On the other hand, imperialism comes from the Latin word imperium which means "to command"; it implies the extension of control, dominance, and power over other territories, countries or peoples. Imperialism involves the use of direct or indirect methods of coercion to expand the authority of a weaker country's monarch, such as through military force, economic control, political manipulation, or cultural hegemony. while colonialism often results in the creation of new settlements, those settlements being under the control of the colonizing power, imperialism has the goal of imposing control and domination over the colonized territory without necessarily creating new settlements. Both terms are related to the expansion of a power over other territories but they differ in the methods and goals of the expansion.
Modern colonialism refers to the continued influence and control of one country over another country or territory in the present day (see Armitage ed, 1998). This can take many forms, such as economic exploitation, political manipulation, and cultural hegemony. Economic colonialism is the control of a country's economy through the ownership of resources and industries, as well as the exploitation of cheap labor and raw materials. This often results in the suppression of local industries and the creation of a dependent economy. Political colonialism refers to the control of a country's government and political system, often through the use of military force, manipulation of elections, and the installation of puppet governments. This can result in the suppression of democracy and human rights. Cultural colonialism refers to the imposition of the culture and values of one country onto another, often resulting in the suppression of local languages, customs, and traditions. This can also include the manipulation of media and education to promote a certain narrative and worldview. In short, modern colonialism is the continued control of one country over another, in a variety of ways such as economy, politics and culture, that may have detrimental effects on the country's future development, democracy, and human rights.
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Colonialism is a catchall term for the European aim of political supremacy from the 16th through the 20th centuries, which peaked with the national liberation movements of the sixties. According to Benedikt Stuchtey (2011), colonialism is the "administration of one people by an alien one.” The traditional understanding of imperialism was largely abandoned due to the Leninist interpretation of imperialism as a system centered on economic exploitation. Lenin cited late capitalism's essential concentration on accumulation to substantiate his claim that imperialism was inevitable under the system. So, Lenin and other Marxists saw imperialism as a historical stage of capitalism rather than an ever-present practice of political and military domination. People virtually invariably mean the United States' economic hegemony when they talk about the United States' "imperialism" nowadays. These debates have been profoundly impacted by the Marxist viewpoint, such as to be found in Robert Young (2001).
Imperialism is considered as more dynamic, but also politically more judgmental and emotionally charged, than colonialism, which is seen as a state that imposes a foreign, colonial control. A central component of European colonial ideology was the idea that the colonies and the home country are inseparably intertwined. This ideology regulated and guided programs and policies undertaken in those colonies, sometimes establishing systems similar to those in the home country. The French for example, instituted an assimilation policy of rule which sought to integrate the colonies to the homeland. The British, on the other hand, used an indirect rule system, allowing local chiefs some powers.
Let us take the example of Britain. The British Empire distinguished itself from other empires of the period by claiming to be based on the notion of freedom. The British government presented their empire as a liberal and democratic one, arguing that its parliamentary system allowed for a measure of decentralized authority at the regional level. The extension of the franchise in the 19th century made more individuals eligible to vote and therefore forced politicians to consider the will of the people (see Mark Tunick, 2006). More recently, in an article in the London Daily Mail, Vishal Mangalwadi (1997) has listed the several positive results for India under British colonial rule. He strongly believes that “the British rule in India was a blessing. It is something in which Britons should feel pride and for which Indians should be grateful.”
However, it's important to note that this view of the empire as a liberal and democratic one is highly problematic and ahistorical. Robert Carr (2005) has argued the very opposite: that the reality
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of British colonial rule was that it was characterized by economic exploitation, political repression, and cultural hegemony. On the ultimate goal of European imperialism Headrick (1981:11) has the following to say:
The goal and the result of imperialism-one which was in fact achieved in most territories before decolonization-was the creation of colonies politically submissive and economically profitable to their European metropolis.
While Britain's form of rule did allow for some measure of decentralized authority at the regional level, this autonomy was limited, and ultimate authority remained with the British government. The extension of the franchise in the 19th century also only applied to a limited portion of the population and excluded many colonized people. The representation of the empire as a force for good was often used to justify exploitative and oppressive policies. The notion that free trade was seen as ethically acceptable and contributed to greater personal freedoms is debatable and has been widely criticized by many scholars who have shown that the British Empire's economic policies did not result in greater personal freedoms, but rather in the exploitation of resources and labor of the colonies for the benefit of the colonizing power. For Uday Mehta (1999:3-4), the support of British imperial rule by liberals like Mill is paradoxical since liberalism is associated with commitment to open-mindedness, political freedom, respecting the other sovereign states and human dignity.
6.3. The debate over reforms and good intentions
Private enterprise was important to the expansion of the British Empire, but the British parliament also sought to protect the rights of business owners if they were infringed upon. In the 18th century, inquiries conducted by British parliamentarians into the activities of the East India Company (HEIC) revealed a system of governance in India that was characterized by dictatorial and exploitative practices, with the Company's employees amassing fortunes through extortion of locals. In response to these revelations, the British Parliament passed the Regulating Act of 1773, which gave the Imperial government the power to administer British-controlled areas of India and to supervise the HEIC's activities. This was the first step in a series of measures that would lead to the Company's waning influence and eventual demise as a political institution in 1858. The British government gradually took over the governance of India from the East India Company. the
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activities of the East India company that were uncovered by these inquiries were far from being an exception, but rather were part of a pattern of exploitative and oppressive practices that were inherent in the colonial system.
In addition, slavery was abolished in the British Empire in the 19th century as a result of a substantial number of Evangelicals being elected to the House of Commons in the 1790s. The abolitionist movement, led by William Wilberforce and others, was able to gain momentum and push for the abolition of slavery through both commercial and domestic levels. In 1833, the British parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which abolished slavery throughout the British Empire. The Act provided for the gradual abolition of slavery, with full emancipation coming into effect on 1 August 1834. This was a significant step towards ending the transatlantic slave trade and forced labor of enslaved people. The House of Commons established a committee to monitor the condition of native peoples in Crown territories after the abolition of slavery. This committee, known as the Aborigines Protection Society (APS), was tasked with keeping an eye on how they were being handled and providing updates on the situation. However, while the abolition of slavery was an important step towards ending the oppression of enslaved people, it's worth noting that the treatment of native peoples in colonies remained exploitative and oppressive, and the work of the APS was limited in its ability to improve the living conditions of colonized peoples.
As an example of persistent mistreatment of locals, Lord Durham was dispatched to Canada after a string of uprisings in the 1830s, known as the Rebellions of 1837, to report on the situation and make recommendations for addressing the political discontent that had led to the uprisings. The British government recognized the risks of not allowing some degree of self-governance and wanted to avoid a repetition of the American Revolution. In 1839, Lord Durham submitted a report known as the Durham Report, in which he outlined his recommendations for addressing the political situation in Canada. He proposed the creation of a responsible government in Canada and the merging of the two colonies, Upper Canada and Lower Canada, into one colony with a single government. As a result of the Durham Report, Canada was granted self-government in 1867 within the framework of a federal system, known as the Dominion of Canada. This set a standard for other colonies, but it is worth noting that the Crown colonies and India did not gain the same level of democratic rights as the white settler dominions. The pressure on Indian state and municipal administration did lead to some political reforms, but real progress came only when
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there was a real risk of broad uprising and the Indian government made efforts to thwart any attempt to establish a democratic system.
There were similar debates and efforts against imperialism in other imperial centers as well. The American Anti-Imperialist League was founded in 1898 to protest the U.S. government's plans to turn the Philippines into an insular province following the Spanish-American War. The Anti-Imperialists believed that imperialism violated the basic principle of "consent of the governed," and therefore, they were opposed to territorial expansion and the annexation of new territories. They argued that the U.S. government's actions went against the values of self-government and non-interference contained in the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and Washington's Farewell Address.
The League of Women Voters also opposed American imperialism and saw it as a violation of the principles of democracy and self-government and argued for a non-interference foreign policy. The anti-imperialist movement, which included many intellectuals and politicians, was not limited to the League of Women voters, but it involved diverse groups, movements, and individuals of different backgrounds and ideologies. The opposition to imperialism, however, was not able to prevent the U.S. government from acquiring new territories, such as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, after the Spanish-American War.
However, the anti-imperialist movement was ultimately defeated in the years following the Spanish-American War and the early decades of the 20th century. With the passage of time, support for American territorial expansion grew, and a new crop of politicians who espoused the virtues of American territorial expansion won the fight for public opinion. Jay Wertz (2008) notes that the League itself had a short-lived existence, but it was able to rally many individuals and groups with different backgrounds and ideologies around the idea of anti-imperialism and helped to raise awareness about the negative consequences of imperialism, but the efforts couldn't prevent the United States from acquiring new territories.
6.4. Information and public opinion
The spread of information played a significant role in shaping public opinion on issues such as colonialism and imperialism. The faster dissemination of information, ideas, and opinions allowed people from a wide range of backgrounds to weigh in on these controversial matters and to
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compare the actions of different powers. This facilitated the sharing of knowledge, views, and critiques of colonialism, which helped inform the public about the consequences of colonialism and imperialism on the colonized peoples and their societies.
Some of the early instances of information spreading can be traced back to Enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Smith, Denis Diderot, and Johann Gottfried Herder. These thinkers, among many other Enlightenment authors, made important contributions to people’s understanding of colonialism and imperialism. They provided critiques of the development of colonialism and imperialism and argued for a more humane and just treatment of colonized peoples. They also desired to stake claim to regions of the world that were not centered in Europe. They provided a foundation for the anti-colonial thought and action in the following centuries. Jonathan Hart (2008) is a historian who provides a detailed and sparkling exploration of the expansion of the European empires from the 15th century. He also provides us with an explanation of the impact of the Western empires on global developments. On the issue of the beginning of anticolonial sentiment, Hart (2008:255) writes that “Decolonization may well have start with the revolutions in the British and Spanish American colonies from the 1770’s to 1830.”
6.5. Models and modalities of imperial rule
Various European colonial powers each had their own unique motivations, objectives, and methods of colonialism, but they shared a fundamental belief in the inherent superiority of their culture, religion and political institutions over those of the colonized peoples. This belief of cultural superiority led to the justification of exploitative economic and political systems, social Darwinism, and the forced assimilation of indigenous peoples. Knowledge production within the framework of colonial thinking was also developed.
Colonial knowledge both enabled conquest and was produced by it; in certain important points, knowledge was what colonialism was all about. Cultural forms in societies newly classified as “traditional” were reconstructed and transformed by and through this knowledge, which created new categories and oppositions between colonizers and colonized, European and Asian, Modern and traditional, west and east. (Cohn, 1997:ix)
The term imperialism became ideologically loaded and imprecise in the 19th century. It gained usage as the new colonial powers of Italy, Belgium, and Germany pushed their own claims on the
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world, joining the older colonial powers like the Netherlands, England, Portugal, Spain, and France. It reflects how the concept of imperialism is not always clear and how it can refer to a wide range of different forms of control, from direct rule over colonies to informal economic and political domination over other countries. The term is a difficult one to pin down and can be used in a broad sense to refer to the actions of any powerful state, but also in a more specific sense to refer to the actions of European states in the late 19th century as they sought to extend their political, economic and territorial control over other regions. It is also worth to note that the imperialism as an ideology and concept cannot be fully comprehended without dealing with other related concepts. On this issue, an early thinker, J. A. Hobson (1902) had the following to say:
A certain broad consistency in its relation to other kindred terms is the nearest approach to definition which such a term as imperialism admits, nationalism internationalism colonialism its three closest congeners, are equally elusive, equally shifty and the changeful overlapping of all four demands the closest vigilance of students of modern politics.
The four major colonial powers of the 19th century, France, Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, were able to establish themselves as dominant imperial powers by drawing on the legacy of Rome. These countries had long histories of expansion and colonization, dating back to the days of the Roman Empire, and they were able to use this legacy to justify their actions and gain support for their imperial ambitions. They also had the resources and infrastructure to support large-scale colonization efforts. In his book Peoples and Empires a historian and political scientist, Anthony Pagden (2003:83), explains the reasons for the European powers to control the word during the age of imperialism and colonialism.
Within less than a century, Europeans had taken position of much of America and had established enduring footholds in Asia and Africa. This rapid overseas expansion had been made possible by social and economic changes in the emerging European nation-states, by the development of new navigation techniques, and by the evolution of ships that could sail rapidly and effectively against the wind. They had taken place, too, against the background of one of the most enduring social transformations in the history of the continent of Europe itself.
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Among European countries Italy, Belgium, and Germany are considered to have been "late comers" to the colonial game. These powers also developed their own imperial philosophies and colonial institutions. They tried to catch up to the other powers by asserting themselves in Africa and other parts of the world and built on the pre-existing colonial structures and ideologies. In the case of Germany, for example, this led to the creation of its colonial empire in Africa, which in less than 30 years had grown from a handful of outposts to a large territorial empire. The push factor for new empire of Germany’s involvement in the European partition of the world as colonizers was politico-economic competition among European imperialist powers. This topic is extensively treated by Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper in their co-authored book, Empires in World History. This book makes an extraordinary examination of empires divers approach to influence the global system from ancient to modern times. Burbank and Cooper (2010:350) survey empires’ conquests, rivalries among themselves, and tactics of control:
The Kaiserreich, as the empire of Wilhelm and Bismarck was known, was a late comer to Europe’s imperial competition. German leaders worried about lagging behind Great Britain’s industrialization and about access to raw materials. They were influenced by the writings of Friedrich List (1789-1846), who advocated a national approach to economic policy, meaning that the state should make a vigorous effort to develop its internal resources and catch up with rivals.
The realist Heinrich Schnee (1871-1949) and the pragmatic Carl Peters (1856-1918) were among the German colonial officials who contextualized their nation's imperialism in a broader international framework. They did this to set it apart from the colonial policies of the British and French. Around the same time, they were taking part in a discussion on whether or not the Roman Empire might serve as a model for Europe. While late-19th century empires ruled the globe, Spain's global dominance was rooted in antiquated colonial practices, while Britain's colonial rule maintained extraordinary geographical sway until 1750 (see Palmer and Colton, 1997:666-669).
6.6. Imperialism and racism
However, it is important to note that the European colonialism and imperialism were characterized by a sense of superiority over the colonized peoples and territories, which led to discriminatory policies and practices. The construction of imperial control relied on the idea of the "Other" to
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legitimize the subjugation and exploitation of colonized peoples and their resources for the benefit of the colonizers. This view of European superiority also played a role in shaping global power dynamics and shaping the way that Europe was viewed by the rest of the world. The slave trade was also a key aspect of this system and allowed for the accumulation of wealth and power by European colonizers, particularly in the form of "gentlemanly capitalists" in Britain (Cohn, 1997:ix).
The racial ideology of High Imperialism was a pinnacle of the concept of separate human natures that justified slavery. The racial ideology of High Imperialism refers to the belief that certain races were inherently superior to others, and therefore had the right to control and dominate other races. This belief was commonly held by imperial powers during the late-19th and early-20th centuries, particularly in Europe and North America. This racial ideology was used to justify the colonization and exploitation of other countries and peoples, with the belief that the colonizers were bringing civilization and enlightenment to "backward" and "primitive" peoples. The imperial powers often portrayed the colonized people as inferior, uncivilized, and in need of the guidance and control of the "superior" European races. Already at the very beginning of the 20th century, Hobson (1902:223) noted that the discourse of colonial powers and ther intellectuals was that “it is true that most of the ‘backward’ races have been placed in some sort of dependence upon one or another of the ‘civilized’ powers as colony, protectorate, hinterland or sphere of influence.”
This racial ideology was also used to justify the enslavement and forced labor of colonized peoples, and to justify the suppression of their culture, languages, and traditions. The imperial powers often argued that these measures were necessary to "civilize" and "Christianize" the colonized people. It was used to legitimize the imperialist actions and to justify the atrocities committed on colonized people, it also led to the dehumanization of the colonized people, considering them inferior and uncivilized, it was a tool used to justify the cultural suppression, forced labor, and exploitation. This ideology also played a key role in the creation of a divide between races, leading to the systematic discrimination and persecution of certain ethnic and racial groups.
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6.7. Anti-imperialist struggles within Europe amid rising nationalism
In Europe, it is generally accepted that the rise of nationalism as the dominant ideology coincided with the decline of imperialism there, which is said to have begun with the unification of Italy and Germany and continued with the ensuing upheavals within the Ottoman, Habsburg, Romanov, and British empires. Nationalist movements in Europe throughout the 19th century are typically studied in two ways: those that sought to unite many countries, and those that sought independence for their own countries. This was because widespread attempts to bring together a lot of different countries were increasingly usual (see Breuilly ed 2013; Hroch, 2015).
There have been several nationalist movements in Europe that sought to unite various countries, including:
* Pan-Slavism: a movement that aimed to unite the Slavic peoples of Eastern and Central Europe, which emerged in the mid-19th century and gained momentum in the early-20th century.
* Pan-Germanism: a movement that aimed to unite all German-speaking peoples into a single nation-state, which emerged in the 19th century, and was a significant political force in Germany and Austria before and during World War II.
* Pan-Italianism: a movement that aimed to unite all the Italian-speaking people of the Italian Peninsula into a single nation-state, which emerged in the 19th century and helped lead to the unification of Italy in 1861.
* Pan-Catalanism: a movement that aimed to unite all the people who spoke Catalan and to promote the use of the Catalan language, culture, and identity.
* Pan-Iberism: a movement that aimed to unite Spain and Portugal and create a single nation-state.
Note that each of the above movements had its own political ideologies and the intention of the movements. And some of the movements have been motivated by ethnic, religious and linguistic factors, while some others have been motivated by economic and political factors.
Many people view the unification of Italy, Germany, and Poland in a different light than they do the nationalist movements of the Czechs, Finns, Norwegians, Irish, Serbs, Bulgarians, Croatians, and many other tiny nationalities. This is due to the fact that the populations of the Czech Republic, Finland, and Norway are among the smallest in the world. Miroslav Hroch (1968, 2015) has argued
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that this does make a difference -- that the development of small countries is fundamentally different from that of large ones. A classic work on nationalism among small nations has been Miroslav Hroch’s Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe. The German original appeared in 1968, and the English translation in 1985. It provides excellent historical and political background to several nationalisms in Eastern Europe. Hroch develops and demonstrates empirically the concept of a three-stage process of nationalist mobilization: (a) sharp cultural awareness of national uniqueness among scholars and politicians; (b) nationalism as a political program; and (c) mobilization of people using national sentiments. He shows how the character of a state's nationalism is molded by the period of each of these phases in relation to other social alterations, particularly economic changes. He evaluates which groups were the principal patrons of nationalism, under what conditions, and at which stage. In the preface of an edition issued in 2000, discussing why certain nationalist movements succeeded while others failed, Hroch (1968/2000:9) argues that four factors contribute to the effectiveness of nationalist movements: (1) a strong sense of identity and common historical past within the group; (2) a certain level of vertical mobility (some educated people must come from the non-dominant ethnic group without being assimilated); (3) an increasing level of social communication, including literacy; and (4) a nationally relevant conflict of interest. In the same place, Hroch argues that small countries can be identified by their "long history of servitude to a dominant power in which the relationship of subordination took on a structural aspect for both parties." There have been many nationalist movements in Europe that have sought independence for their respective countries. Some examples include:
* The Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) and subsequent Irish Civil War (1922-1923) were fought by Irish nationalists against British rule, resulting in the establishment of the Irish Free State (later the Republic of Ireland) in 1922.
* The Basque Nationalist Party, which was formed in 1895, has sought independence for the Basque Country, an autonomous community in northern Spain and southwestern France, through both political and violent means.
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* The Scottish National Party, which was formed in 1934, has sought independence for Scotland through peaceful political means, and in 2014 Scotland held a referendum on independence which rejected the idea.
* The Catalan independence movement has been seeking independence for Catalonia, an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, through peaceful political means. It has gained momentum in the recent years with a failed independence bid in 2017.
* The Flemish nationalist movements which emerged in Belgium in the late 19th century, which sought more autonomy or independence for Flanders, the Dutch-speaking region in northern Belgium.
* The Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, which was established in 1925, has sought independence for Wales through peaceful political means.
6.8. Irish nationalism: a peculiarly strong example
There have been many other independenc movements throughout the European continent over time. For example, after the Fenian Uprising in Ireland and the Fenian Dynamite campaign (1867-1885), the Land War of agrarian agitation in Ireland in 1879, the assassinations of the Irish National Invincible in 1881-1883, and the Easter Rising in 1916, Irish nationalism became a prototypical example of a minority nationalism challenging the hegemony of a great imperial power. The Fenian Uprising and the Fenian Dynamite campaign were a series of violent actions taken by Irish nationalist group, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), also known as the Fenians, during the late 19th century. The group sought to use force to achieve Irish independence from British rule. The Uprising, which began in 1867, involved several armed uprisings in Ireland, which were quickly suppressed by the British government. The Fenian Dynamite campaign, which began in 1881, involved a series of bombings and sabotage attacks on British targets, both in Ireland and in England. This campaign was also quickly suppressed by the British government, with many Fenians being imprisoned.
The Fenian Uprising and the Fenian Dynamite campaign had a significant impact on British-Irish relations. The British government responded with increased repression and censorship, which led to further alienation of the Irish population. Additionally, the Fenian uprisings and the dynamite
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campaign led to the introduction of harsher anti-terrorism laws, which allowed the British government to arrest and detain suspects without trial. Despite their failure, the Fenian Uprising and the Fenian Dynamite campaign had a significant impact on the Irish nationalist movement. They were a signal of the growing discontent with British rule and a call for action among the Irish population. They also served as a catalyst for the growing call for Irish self-government and self-rule, and the desire for a united Ireland.
The Irish political situation began to change in the early 20th century, with the rise of peaceful political movements such as Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers, which sought to achieve independence through political means. This ultimately led to the War of Independence (1919–1921) and the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. The Land War was a period of agrarian agitation and political conflict in Ireland that lasted from 1879 to 1882. This period was marked by the increased activism of the Irish National Land League, a political organization that sought to improve the rights and living conditions of Irish tenants and small farmers. At the time, Ireland was predominantly rural, and most of the population was dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. However, the majority of the land was owned by a small number of wealthy landlords, many of whom were absentee landlords who lived in England. The Irish tenants and small farmers were often subject to high rents, evictions, and poor living conditions.
The Land League was formed in 1879, led by Charles Stewart Parnell, and campaigned for land reform measures such as the fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure. They also advocated for the ending of evictions and improvements in the living conditions of tenants and small farmers. The Land War was marked by widespread protests and demonstrations, as well as acts of violence and intimidation against landlords and their agents. The British government responded with repression, including the use of martial law and the imprisonment of many Land League leaders. It ultimately resulted in the passing of the Land Act of 1881, which introduced some of the demands of the Land League, such as fair rents and the rights of tenants to purchase their land from landlords. The land act helped reduce the power of landlords, and it also helped to make tenants more secure in their land tenure. However, the Land War did not fully address the underlying issues of poverty and landlessness in Ireland, and the agrarian conflict continued to be a significant factor in Irish politics and society for many years to come.
Ireland and the notion of “small nation” against empire
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The idea of small nations in Europe refers to the idea that smaller nations or national minorities have the right to self-determination and the creation of their own independent states. This idea has been a significant political force in Europe, particularly in the 20th century, as many ethnic and national minorities have sought greater autonomy or independence from larger states.
This idea of small nations was also related to the principles of national self-determination and the right of nations to govern themselves without external interference, which were first articulated in the aftermath of World War I and have been a guiding principle of international law and diplomacy ever since. Small nations ideology is connected with the emergence of nationalism movements in Europe, those movements often have sought independence or greater autonomy for their respective nations or national minorities. In some cases, the idea of small nations has been used to justify the creation of new independent states, such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which were created as a result of the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
This idea was central to the Irish independence movement in the early-20th century, which sought to end British rule and establish an independent Irish state. The small nation ideology in Ireland was rooted in the belief that the Irish people, despite being part of the British Empire, had their own distinct identity and culture that was being suppressed by British rule. At the turn of the 20th century, the concept of smallness and the idea of a "small nation" began to receive more attention in Ireland, particularly in the wake of the unification of Italy and Germany, and the rise of other nationalist movements across Europe.
Irish political leaders and thinkers began to use the idea of smallness to defend a degree of independence within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. They argued that, just like other small nations in Europe, Ireland had a distinct identity, culture, and history, and that it should be allowed to maintain a certain degree of autonomy and self-government within the British Empire.
This idea of a small nation and the concept of smallness played an important role in the Irish independence movement at the time, says Keown (2016), particularly with the idea of "Home Rule" which aimed to grant Ireland a form of self-government within the British Empire. Many Irish political leaders, such as Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond, advocated for Home Rule as a way to achieve greater autonomy for Ireland while remaining within the British Empire.
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It's worth noting that this idea of smallness in Ireland, as well as in other European countries, was not only a response to the unification of Italy and Germany and the rise of nationalism movements across Europe but it was also influenced by other factors such as economic, social, and cultural developments.
The Irish independence movement was led by various political organizations, such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Sinn Féin, which advocated for Irish self-government and the establishment of an independent Irish republic. This movement gained momentum in the early 20th century, and in 1919 the Irish War of Independence broke out, which eventually led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, which established the Irish Free State, an independent state within the British Empire.
The Republic of Ireland was established in 1949, following a constitutional referendum that ended the country's status as a British Dominion. The small nation ideology played a critical role in the Irish independence movement, with the idea that Ireland should be free to control its own affairs and that its distinct identity should be protected and promoted.
Conor Cruise O'Brien (1993) compares the relationship between Ireland and England to "the coupling of a boa constrictor with its victim." This analogy is used in the book to convey the idea that the relationship between the two countries has been marked by a long history of oppression, where England had dominated Ireland politically, socially and economically. O'Brien makes the argument that this metaphor captures the Irish experience of colonialism, which was characterized by political and economic subordination, cultural suppression, and religious discrimination. This metaphor also illustrates how the Irish nation had to strive for a long time to achieve its independence, as well as its efforts to free itself from the coils of English domination.
Home Rule was the dominant ideology at the time in Ireland, and it referred to the idea that Ireland should have greater autonomy within the British Empire. Specifically, it aimed to give Ireland full control over its own government by putting all legislative power in the hands of a Dublin-based parliament.
The Home Rule Movement became a political movement that sought to achieve self-government for Ireland within the British Empire. It began in the late 19th century and was led by political figures such as Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond. They sought to achieve greater
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autonomy for Ireland by establishing a Dublin-based parliament that would have the power to make laws for Ireland, with the exception of certain reserved matters, such as foreign affairs, which would still be controlled by the British government. Home Rule was supported by many Irish politicians, including the Irish Parliamentary Party, which had a large number of seats in the British Parliament. The party campaigned for the passage of a Home Rule Bill, which would establish an Irish parliament. However, the passage of the Home Rule Bill was repeatedly blocked by the British Conservative Party, and it ultimately led to the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence in 1919. Even though the Home Rule Bill was not passed, the desire for autonomy and self-rule was still present in the Irish society and eventually led to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, which was independent from Great Britain, but still part of the British Empire until 1949 when it became the Republic of Ireland.
Due to its early declaration of independence, Ireland gained the nickname "the First of the Tiny Nations" and became a role model for subsequent minor nations seeking freedom. John A. Costello, who served as Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland from 1948 to 1951, famously declared "We are a little country" in 1948. This statement reflected the idea that despite its small size and population, Ireland had a greater influence on the international community than might be expected. Many scholars, like Keane (2007), argued that Ireland's early declaration of independence and its successful achievement of self-government had an impact on the self-perception of the Irish people and the way they were seen by other nations. The country was able to sustain its own government and make its own laws and shaped its own path without the need of a powerful empire to rely on. The idea of smallness was used as a source of pride and a way to assert the country's sovereignty.
Ireland was not an isolated backwater, but rather a hub of international political, economic, and cultural exchanges. The Irish people were not only oppressed by the British, but also played an important role in the expansion of the British Empire. Irish citizens were involved in various aspects of the Empire, including administration, settlement, commercial enterprise, military service, and as priests. They played a crucial role in the success of the colonial endeavor, and the success of the colonization effort depended on their presence.
32.2% of the British were Irish towards the middle of the 19th century. In fact, the Irish diaspora was one of the largest in the world and Irish immigrants played an important role in many parts of
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the British Empire, including North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Many Irish immigrants were actively involved in the military service, and their participation was higher than that of other immigrants and in many cases, even higher than that of native Englishmen (Boylan, 2016).
Furthermore, Irish culture was also influential, and it played a major role in shaping British culture, it was present in literature, music, and other forms of art. Ireland's cultural influence was also felt in other parts of the world, particularly in the United States and Canada, where many Irish immigrants settled, and Irish culture and identity have been maintained through generations.
Clergy from the Irish Catholic Church played a significant role in the "civilizing mission" that Europe pursued in Asia and Africa during the 19th and early 20th century, where they were responsible for the evangelization and conversion of millions of people who were not of European origin. They played a major role in spreading Christianity and Western culture in many parts of the world, particularly in countries that were part of the British Empire.
Irish priests and nuns were particularly active in mission work in Africa, India, and China, where they set up schools, hospitals, and orphanages to spread Christianity and educate local populations. They also provided essential services such as education and healthcare, often in areas that were otherwise neglected by the colonial authorities (Rothenbacher, 2002).
Irish immigrants also had a profound cultural impact in many countries across the "new globe," including the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They brought with them their culture, language, and traditions, which had a significant influence on the cultural development of these countries. This can be seen in the many Irish-American, Irish-Canadian, Irish-Australian, and Irish-New Zealand communities that have preserved their Irish heritage and culture, even after several generations.
6.9. Dreams of a glorious imperial past as ambition for anti-colonialism
In Europe, it was common for nationalist groups exploited imperial and nationalist motifs to legitimize their quest for independence and statehood. Colonialism was often linked to concepts
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of "the large country" or "the tiny country" in this context. Two ways in which imperialism helped nationalist causes were on the symbolic and institutional levels. Certain nationalist movements used symbols of an illustrious imperial past to express their call for national autonomy or unity. A variety of European nationalist movements have, historically and up until the present day, put heavy emphasis on the historical legacies left behind by colonial powers in order to achieve their nationalist ambitions. Images from the Golden Age of the Georgian Kingdom (12th century) under Queen Tamar, the Portuguese Empire, and the Kingdom of Greater Armenia (4th century BC) were important in the nationalist mythology of the nineteenth century. Such awe for storied history was crucial to the development of the idea of separate and independent nation-states.
Several post-imperial states in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Denmark, and Norway, maintained significant aspects of their former imperial identities. Danish and Norwegian nationalist ideologues relied on the legacy of the Oldenburg Monarchy of the Dano-Norwegian Realm; Hungarian nationalist movements did the same with the organizational legacies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and Polish and Lithuanian nationalisms did the same with the state heritage of the 16th and 17th century Polish Lithuanian commonwealth (1524–1814). Even while modern nation-states were totally novel experiments in political philosophy, the organizational legacies of prior empires had a significant impact on the early stages of development.
6.9.1. The Balkan wars of independence
The Balkans were home to a collection of small nations with inflated senses of self-importance. The Balkan wars of the early 19th century are often portrayed as "nationalist revolutions" that tried to topple Ottoman imperial control and set up new, independent nation-states. (Clark 2012; Hall 2000; Mackenzie 1994). But the Balkans did not experience any nationalism until much later in the 19th century. Nationalism as an ideology did not become a significant force in the Balkan region until much later in the 19th century. The Balkan Wars were primarily fought by the various ethnic groups and regions of the Balkans, such as Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Montenegro, against Ottoman imperial rule. However, these wars were not motivated by a shared sense of national identity or the desire to create new, independent nation-states. Desire for territorial expansion and power projection played a greater role than a desire for national self-determination.
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The Balkan region, which includes countries such as Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro, was under Ottoman rule for centuries. During the 19th century, a number of separatist and independence movements emerged in the Balkan region, motivated by a desire for national self-determination and liberation from Ottoman rule. Some of the most notable movements and events include:
The Greek War of Independence (1821-1832) was a war fought by the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the establishment of an independent Greek state. The Serbia's independence from Ottoman Empire was declared in 1804 and was recognized by the major European powers in 1878. Romania, Bulgaria, and Montenegro also gained their independence during the 19th century.
The region's political elite, meanwhile, felt deeply about their country. A unified Southeast European state was a goal for some, while others hoped that Russian imperial rule would stretch to the Balkans. Because no one could agree on a blueprint for the future state that would replace Ottoman authority, the transition was a rocky one. But only a tiny fraction of those who wanted independence followed clearly defined nationalist programs (Kitromilides 1994; Roudometof 2001).
The leaders of Serbia and Greece, both of which had achieved a degree of autonomy or independence from Ottoman rule, were influenced by imperial models and were not initially focused on democratic sovereignty or the creation of democratic nation-states. In the case of Serbia, its leaders, such as Prince Miloš and Prince Mihailo, looked to the Russian Empire as a model for the country's development and governance, and sought to establish a centralized and absolutist state, rather than a democracy. Similarly, in Greece, the leaders, such as Ioannis Kapodistrias and Otto of Wittelsbach, the first king of Greece, also looked to imperial models, mainly the French and German models, and sought to establish a centralized and authoritarian state, rather than a democratic one.
According to Maleevi (2019:111-34), this was because these nations' histories had periods as imperial powers. After gaining some kind of independence, the leaders of countries like Serbia, Greece, Romania, Montenegro, and Bulgaria rarely appealed to universal moral ideals of popular sovereignty, but rather to previous imperial state structures. This was the case despite the fact that each of these nations had attained a certain degree of autonomy in the past.
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6.9.2. The Greek Megali Idea
The democratic system of Athens, the wealth of literature, architecture, and science that sprang from Hellenic civilisation, and the cultural and political achievements of ancient Greek intellectuals all contributed to the rise of Greek nationalism. Additionally, the development of the Byzantine Empire and the survival of the Greek Orthodox Christian religion were linked to this pre-Christian ritual. Nationalist ideologies from the 19th century, such the one held by historian Constantine Paparrigopoulos, sought to prove the existence of a "unbroken continuity" linking the Greeks of antiquity, the Byzantine Empire, and the contemporary day. The History of the Greek Nation, his multi-volume masterpiece published between 1860 and 1877, devoted much attention to the imperial roots of the contemporary Greek nation-state. For its widespread impact, this book was almost immediately mandated required reading at Greek universities (Kitromilides, 1994).
The newly independent Greek kingdom in the 19th century did indeed look to the Byzantine Empire for guidance and inspiration, including regarding the status of Constantinople. Many Greek nationalists at the time believed that Constantinople, the former capital of the Byzantine Empire, should be the lawful and rightful capital of a greatly enlarged future Greek state.
This idea was rooted in the belief that the Byzantine Empire was the continuation of ancient Greece and that the Greek people had a historical right to Constantinople and the surrounding territories, which were still under Ottoman rule. This belief was also reflected in the Megali Idea (Greater Idea), a political concept that aimed to unite all the territories with a Greek-speaking population under one state, with Constantinople as its capital.
This idea of reclaiming Constantinople and its surrounding territories as the rightful capital of the Greek state was a major factor in the foreign policy of the newly independent Greek kingdom. The Greek government supported different kind of actions and movements to reach this goal, such as the 1821 Revolution, which aimed to overthrow Ottoman rule in Greece and the creation of independent Greek state.
However, reclaiming Constantinople and its surrounding territories as the rightful capital of the Greek state was controversial, both inside and outside of Greece. While it was a popular idea among many Greek nationalists, it was also met with opposition from other ethnic groups in the
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region and from the international community, as it could have led to tension and conflict with the Ottoman Empire and other neighboring countries.
Those in favor of an expanded Greek state contended that its borders should follow those of the former Byzantine Empire, and that, given the strong demographic ties between Greece and Eastern Orthodoxy; Eastern Orthodox Christians should be granted citizenship as full Greek citizens. In the past, a sizable chunk of modern-day Greece was part of the Byzantine Empire's territory. Ioannis Kolettis, a famous philosopher who subsequently became Prime Minister of the Greek kingdom, conceived up this semi-imperial notion, also known as the Megáli Idea. He foresaw a future in which Greece would rule over "two continents and five oceans" (Kitromilides, 1994). The formation of the Greek state in the 19th century was heavily influenced by the imperial legacy of the Byzantine Empire and the idea of reclaiming Constantinople and its surrounding territories as the rightful capital of a greatly enlarged Greek state (Brewer, 2012).
This meant that the needs of the Greek people and the realities on the ground, such as the diverse ethnic and religious composition of the population, were to some degree secondary to the goal of recreating the imperial glory of the Byzantine Empire.
Additionally, the Megali Idea also played a role in the shaping of the Greek state. This idea which emerged in the late-19th century, envisioned a greater Greece that would include not just the ethnic Greek population but also territories where the Greek language, culture and Orthodox Christianity were dominant, was a key component of the Greek identity and politics. This focus on the imperial legacy and the idea of a Greater Greece, led to policies that aimed to create a homogenous Greek nation, at the expense of the minorities living in Greece and the neighboring regions, policies such as the policy of forced assimilation and population transfer were used to achieve this goal.
6.9.3. Other imperial dreams in the Balkans
The development of Serbian and Bulgarian nationalist ideals in the 19th century was heading in similar directions and was heavily influenced by their respective imperial legacies. Many of the leaders of these new political parties, such as the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee (BRCC) and the Serbian Revolutionary Organization, staked their claims to legitimacy on direct ties to the former imperial legacies of the Bulgarian and Serbian empires, rather than on the liberal tradition of nationhood as liberty, equality, and fraternity.
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This focus on imperial legacies led to the identification of the Bulgarian and Serbian nations with the medieval empires of Bulgaria and Serbia, and the idea that the new nation-states should revive and restore the glory of these empires. This was the case with Simeon the Great's foundation of the Second Bulgarian Empire, which was seen by many as a watershed moment in Bulgarian history and served as a source of inspiration for the Bulgarian nationalist movement. It's worth mentioning that this way of thinking and the focus on the imperial legacies led to tension and conflicts with neighboring countries and ethnic groups, especially with the Ottoman Empire, which was viewed as the main obstacle to the restoration of the former empires. In an unambiguous demand for "returning to Simeon the Great," many public figures and experts advocated for a "Greater and Unified Bulgaria on three seas" (Daskalov, 2005:230). Because the state established by the Treaty of Berlin (1878) was far smaller than the one promised by the Russians at San Stefano, many Bulgarian officials became associated with the concept of uniting Macedonia, Thrace, and Bulgaria to form Greater Bulgaria.
State-builders in medieval Serbia, like those in Bulgaria, sought to revive and restore the glory of the former empires and incorporated imperial symbols and relics into their rule. This idea of revival and restoration of the former empires was also used by the Karađorđević and Obrenović dynasties who ruled over Serbia in the 19th and early 20th century. They made extensive use of imperial relics and symbols in their rule, as a way to legitimize their rule and to create a sense of continuity with the past empires.
They often referred to the glories of the Nemanjić dynasty, particularly the rule of Stefan Dušan, known as "Dušan the Mighty" who ruled as King of Serbia from 1331 until his death in 1355, and who also held the titles of "Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks" and "King of All Serbia and Romania". Dušan's reign is considered a golden age in Serbian history and his empire was a major power in the Balkan Peninsula and a significant threat to the Byzantine Empire.
In yet another example, a new Romanian state was formed in 1862 when the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia merged through the union of their respective ruling princes. This event, known as the Union of the Principalities, marked the first step towards the creation of a unified Romanian nation-state, which would later be recognized as an independent state by the European powers following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. At the time of the Union of the Principalities, the Ottoman Empire still exerted significant control over the region and the newly formed
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Romanian state was officially recognized as a tributary state of the Ottoman Empire. Despite this, the Union of the Principalities marked a significant step forward in the development of the Romanian national identity and the emergence of a Romanian nationalism movement, which would later play a significant role in the country's struggle for independence and the formation of a modern Romanian state.
Romanian nationalists, particularly Prime Minister Dumitru Brătianu conceived an idea Romania Mare, or "Greater Romania," in the middle of the 19th century. The idea was that Transylvania, Bukovina, and Bessarabia, which were then under Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman rule, should be combined into a single nation-state with a Romanian majority population.
This idea of a Greater Romania was based on the belief that these territories had historically been part of Romania and that they should be reunited with the Romanian-speaking population. This idea became very popular among the Romanian intelligentsia and nationalist circles that saw it as a way to recover the lands and people who historically were considered Romanian and whose culture, language, and religion were closely related to the people of Romania.
Michael the Brave, who was a prince of Wallachia and Moldavia, and conqueror of Transylvania in the late-16th century, was frequently cited as an inspiration by politicians and intellectuals of the late-19th and early-20th centuries as he briefly united under his rule the three regions that were at the center of the idea of Greater Romania (Maleevi, 2019).
The independence movements in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania were often framed in imperial and quasi-imperial discourses, rather than being portrayed solely or even primarily in nationalist terms. Despite the desire for independence being at the heart of these movements, the leaders and ideologues of state construction often turned to direct references to the imperial forebears of the new nations to legitimize the independence struggle. This imperial framing was a way of articulating a sense of historical continuity and of asserting a historical and cultural claim to the lands and peoples that they sought to incorporate into the new nation-states (Todd, 2003:245).
This focus on imperial legacies and the idea of reviving or restoring former empires, rather than appealing to universal values of people's sovereignty and self-determination, was a way for the
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leaders and ideologues of these movements to legitimize their claim to independence and to gain support from different social groups within their countries.
It's worth mentioning that this framing, which was heavily influenced by the imperial and quasi-imperial discourses, was not only used in the early stages of the independence movements but it also had an influence on the shape of the new nation-states, as the newly independent states inherited some of the characteristics of the imperial past. Todd (2003) notes that the historical legacy of empires served as a powerful tool for shaping the national imagination of the state builders, which led to an emphasis on the continuity of the historical legacy, a “golden age” and a desire to recreate it.
6.10. European imperialism outside Europe
During the 17th and 18th centuries, European countries engaged in a race to explore and colonize new territories outside of Europe. This competition was driven by a desire for resources, markets, and territory and it often led to conflict between rival European sea powers.
6.10.1. British imperialism: A case of modern European colonialism
British imperial interests, like her peers such as the Dutch and the Spanish, were expressed through their voyages across the world, that began at least modestly around the 15th century. It is believed that Bristol seamen reached Newfoundland before 1497, alongside John Cabot’s Atlantic crossing in the same year. These are considered the first recorded English explorations. However, soon afterwards, following the death of Henry VII in 1509 there was a reduced interest in exploring until 1553 with the formation of the Muscovy Company which ventured in search of passage to Asia.
Many explorations and ambitious ventures followed, which often resulted in fierce competition with rival sea powers for the colonization of newly found territories outside Europe. In 1600, the East India Company was formed by London merchants with focus on trade in East Indies. However, it was realized that the company was falling behind its rival Dutch company in profits from the region, so it transferred its interest to the Indian sub-continent. The English were bolstered in this project by the acquisition of Masulipatnam in 1611, Madras in 1639 and Bombay in 1661.
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Similar exploits were being conducted in America. The English settled many territories including the islands of Antigua, Nevis, St. Kitts, Bermuda and Barbados between 1609 and 1632. Joint stock companies founded colonies on the mainland including Virginia (1607), Plymouth (1620) and Massachusetts (1630). These were later joined by New England settlements of New Haven, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.
The main interest behind the colonial effort was conceptualized in 1776 by the Scottish scholar Adam Smith. The term mercantile system depicted the notion that national wealth is measured in the amount of gold and silver a nation possesses. The venture to the new colonies and far land was a bid to collect as much of this wealth as possible.
Later, this motivation was supplemented by other desires, such as civilizing the world, extending the British social and political system to other parts of the world and abolishing slavery, among other motivations.
The British Empire's expansion into the Americas at the beginning was primarily motivated by the desire to gain wealth and resources, but there was also a belief that it was a moral obligation to establish new colonies and spread British culture, religion and way of life. An example of this is the founding of the colony of Massachusetts by a group of religious refugees known as the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620, who sought a place where they could freely practice their religion. The majority of the original colonists were Calvinists who were dissatisfied with being governed by the Church of England.
Conditions were optimal for the fast expansion of the British Empire between 1790 and 1830, as a number of factors came together during that time period. This period, known as the "Great Expansion," saw a significant growth and expansion of the British Empire, as well as a global expansion in trade, population, and economic development.
During this period, the British government and private businesses had the ambition to build a new empire in the East, with India at its core, this was possible thanks to the country's military and naval dominance, enabled by the victories at Trafalgar and Waterloo, which helped to secure British control of the seas. Additionally, a population boom at the time, led to rapid agricultural and industrial progress, that was the base of Britain's economy. These economic developments
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allowed Britain to amass great wealth and resources, which provided the means to fund and sustain the building of the world's largest empire.
As the colonies grew and developed, they persisted in their differences about how much religious freedom each should enjoy. By 1660, around 30,000 people lived in New England. There was an increase in the migration of people from different faiths to the states of Rhode Island and Maryland, which offered more religious tolerance than the other colonies. The religious, social and political motivations for establishing colonies varied, and different colonies had different reasons and circumstances for their creation, but the moral and religious obligation was also a driving force in the formation and development of the British Empire.
6.10.2. The civilizing missions
The Industrial Revolution, which began in the late-18th century and continued through the 19th century, had a profound impact on British society, economy, and culture. It brought about significant changes in manufacturing, transportation, and communication, which allowed Britain to become one of the most powerful and wealthiest countries in the world.
As a result of these economic and technological advancements many people in Britain began to feel a sense of superiority and confidence in their nation's ability to shape the world. The rapid industrialization and economic growth of Britain helped to reinforce the idea that Britain was a special and powerful nation, and many people began to believe that they had a duty and a privilege to spread Western culture and values to other parts of the world.
This idea of British superiority and moral authority was particularly prevalent in the Victorian era, the period from 1837-1901 when Queen Victoria was the reigning monarch, where many Victorians believed that the values of Western civilization, such as Christianity, were inherently superior to other cultures, and that it was the duty of the British Empire to civilize and Christianize other parts of the world. This moral and cultural superiority complex led to a form of cultural imperialism and justified the colonial expansionism and exploitative economic policies of the British Empire, even though the country's own society was plagued by poverty and inequality.
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In the mid-19th century, many British politicians and citizens believed that it was their country's mission to spread civilization and Christianity around the world. This belief was often used to justify the expansion of the British Empire and the subjugation of other cultures and societies.
The abolition of slavery and the slave trade was an important movement in the late 19th century, which aimed to end the practice of human bondage and the trading of enslaved persons. It was indeed in the United States where this trend first emerged and it was largely driven by the abolitionist movement, which was made up of individuals and organizations who sought to end slavery in the United States.
There was a strong religious component to the abolitionist movement, with many of its leaders being inspired by evangelical revivalists, who believed that the abolition of slavery was a moral and religious duty. Evangelical revivalists believed that it was their responsibility to spread Christianity and "civilize" the world, and they saw the abolition of slavery as an important step in that process. Abolitionist movements and the end of slavery did not immediately lead to the end of violence against enslaved people. In many cases, the end of slavery was followed by increased violence and discrimination against the people who had been enslaved.
Many abolitionists saw the end of slavery as the first step in a broader "mission to civilize the world." however, this "mission" often ignored the fact that people from colonized and enslaved nations already had their own cultures, traditions, and societies. The "civilizing mission" and the abolition of slavery were intertwined, but the concept of "civilizing" was often used as an excuse for more violence and exploitation rather than genuine efforts to uplift the population and understand the local culture.
At first the idea of sending missionaries across the ocean to convert people to Christianity was met with skepticism in the early-18th century. At that time, many people believed that it was more important to focus on converting people in Europe who were not yet Christian, rather than spending time and resources on people in other parts of the world. However, by the 1790s, attitudes towards the potential for missionary work began to change. A more optimistic view of humanity emerged during this period, with many people believing that anyone, no matter how "heathen" or "corrupt" they may be, could be saved through Christianity. This led to the widespread conviction that anyone could find salvation if they just made their case to God.
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Captain Cook's explorations in the 1770s opened new areas of the world to British access and this contributed to the increased support for the idea of sending missionaries abroad. With access to new parts of the world and the belief that anyone could be saved through Christianity, many British Christians began to see the potential for missionary work in these new areas. This led to a century of sending missionaries abroad to convert indigenous peoples to Christianity.
This wave of missionary movements were also a product of the colonial expansion and political objectives of the British Empire and many of the missionaries were involved in the colonization of these new territories and often played a role in the subjugation of local populations under the guise of spreading Christianity.
William Carey, an English Baptist minister, was a pioneer in the modern missionary movement and is considered the "father of modern missions." In 1792, he formed the Baptist Missionary Society, an organization dedicated to spreading Christianity in foreign countries. Despite initial skepticism and criticism from his peers, Carey was able to establish the society and begin its mission in India. Other missionary organizations soon followed in Carey's footsteps. The London Missionary Society, which was founded in 1795, also focused on missionary work overseas, initially starting its operations in southern Africa. The Scottish Missionary Society, which was founded the next year, also had a primary focus on Africa and was an interfaith group.
Many of these early Missionary societies were formed by Christian denominations such as the Baptists, Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians, but it's also true that some of these societies were formed by a coalition of different denominations, like the London Missionary Society, were established by different groups like Congregationalists and Presbyterians coming together with other non-conformist groups. The Church Missionary Institution (CMS), an Anglican organization began its missionary activity in southern Africa in 1799. It was one of many Christian missionary societies that were established in the late 18th and early 19th centuries with the goal of spreading Christianity and "civilizing" the world.
The global reach of these groups, along with the anti-slavery movement, helped to reinforce the idea that Britain held a higher moral ground. The British government was involved in the abolition movement, and when slavery was finally abolished in the British Empire in 1833, the British government took several steps to enforce the ban on slavery. This included dispatching a naval
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patrol to West Africa, known as the "West Africa Squadron," to capture slave traders and suppress the transatlantic slave trade. The Royal Navy also played an important role in this by actively patrolling the coast of West Africa to intercept slave ships and freeing enslaved people they found on board.
However, it is important to note that the British government's efforts to suppress the transatlantic slave trade and abolish slavery in their colonies were not only driven by a moral or religious conviction, but also by economic and strategic considerations. The suppression of the transatlantic slave trade was seen as necessary to undermine the economies of competing imperial powers, and to secure access to resources and markets in newly found territories.
Mercantilism and British trade ambitions
In the early days of the British Empire, many people held the economic belief known as mercantilism, which states that international trade is limited and that a country's economic might is directly proportional to its market share. According to this view, increasing a country's share of global trade would require decreasing someone else's, and the goal was for each country to reap the most benefits possible.
Colonies were considered to be vital for a country since they provided raw materials and a market for a country's commodities. Therefore, it was deemed essential that they exclusively dealt with the mother country. To achieve this, the British government passed several acts, including the Navigation Acts of 1649 and 1660, the Staple Act of 1663, and the Plantation Act of 1673. These acts made it illegal for foreign ships to transport goods between Britain and her colonies or between colonies, thus ensuring that the colonies would only trade with the mother country. This mercantilist economic system helped to ensure a positive balance of trade for the British Empire, as well as providing it access to raw materials and new markets.
In order to become the dominant commercial power in the colonies, the British government took several measures to protect and promote its interests in trade. One of the main measures was to boost the strength of the navy and to order the colonies to transfer all future commercial activities to British-flagged ships. This was achieved through the Navigation Acts, which included a ban on using foreign ships to transport goods between Britain and the colonies, as well as inside the colonies themselves. The goal of this policy was to ensure that all trade between the colonies and
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other countries would be conducted through British ships, giving British merchants a monopoly on trade. The regulations also stipulated that all goods shipped to or from the colonies had to be transported in British ships, which further reinforced the British control over colonial trade. This system helped to increase the economic power of the British Empire, but it could also hinder the economic development of the colonies.
During the time period from 1790 to 1830, it was widely acknowledged by economic thinkers and policy makers that Mercantilism, which had been the dominant economic philosophy for several centuries, had run its course and was impeding Britain's efforts to industrialize and integrate into the global economy. Mercantilism was an economic system that focused on increasing a country's wealth by increasing its exports and restricting imports, and it was no longer seen as sustainable or compatible with the rapid economic and industrial changes of the era. As Britain's economy continued to grow, there was an increasing pressure from various groups, including businessmen, economists, and politicians, to overturn Mercantilist laws and policies in order to allow for greater economic growth and integration into the global economy. This pressure mounted after 1815, with the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and ultimately led to a period of unprecedented economic growth known as the Victorian era. This era was characterized by laissez-faire economic policies and a greater emphasis on free trade.
The argument made during the Victorian era for free trade policies was that by eliminating import duties, the price of raw materials would drop, leading to cheaper manufactured items that could be exported to other countries. This would in turn, make the United Kingdom a more attractive trading partner for other countries, leading to greater exports and economic growth. One notable group that worked to overturn protectionist policies during this time period was the Anti-Maize Law League, which aimed to repeal the Grain Laws, legislation that protected the financial interests of local farmers and the production of corn. They argued that by allowing the import of cheaper grain from the United States and Europe, food prices would decrease and it would benefit the consumer. This drive to change government policy was supported by various groups and individuals, such as the Anti-Corn Law League, prominent economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, as well as the financiers and bankers of London's City. These efforts were successful and eventually led to the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 which was a major change in the British trade policies which paved way for free trade policies.
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In the mid-19th century, the United Kingdom, under the leadership of William Ewart Gladstone, eliminated most trade barriers, which led to an increase in trade and economic growth. The country's manufacturing sector expanded rapidly, and British companies became major producers of goods such as coal, cotton, and iron, with the country accounting for a significant share of global production. This period, roughly between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the start of World War I, was characterized by a period of economic prosperity and dominance for the UK.
The American Revolution of 1775-1783, also known as the U.S. War of Independence, had limited impact on Britain's position as the world's leading trading power, especially in the short term. Even after the loss of the thirteen colonies, London remained the financial center of the globe, and as a result, other important seaports such as Bristol and Liverpool benefited from the influx of raw commodities. London, the capital of the United Kingdom at the time, served as both the headquarters of the East India Company and a significant hub of the transatlantic slave trade.
Despite this loss, Britain's economy continued to flourish during the Industrial Revolution, which began in the late-18th century, and the country's people's skills and knowledge helped to advance the empire further. The British Empire continued to expand in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world and Britain was still able to establish its economic and political dominance over many countries. However, the loss of the American colonies, which were significant in terms of wealth, population, and strategic location, was a blow to the British Empire, and the War of Independence represented a significant turning point for British colonial rule in North America, setting the stage for future decolonization movements.
At the end of the Victorian era, which lasted from 1837 to 1901, European powers were expanding their empires around the world. This period, known as the New Imperialism, saw an increase in European colonization and the acquisition of territories in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The growing economic and political power of these empires led to increased public discussion and debate about issues of race, imperialism, and colonialism. Imperialism was seen as a means to secure economic and strategic advantages, and many European nations believed that they had a moral duty to "civilize" and bring Christianity to the peoples of the colonies. This period saw the growth of racist ideas and theories, which were used to justify the subjugation and domination of colonized peoples.
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6.10.3. Race ideology and colonialism
During the late-19th century, there was a growing belief among some British figures that different races should be treated differently. This ideology was advocated by figures such as Augustus Keane, a writer who did not believe in the theory of evolution, but nonetheless contributed to discussions on race. Other figures, such as Harry Johnstone, an explorer, believed that modernization would never reach Africa, and Lord Milner, a politician and self-proclaimed defender of white culture, who became South Africa's High Commissioner in 1897, advocated for racial superiority. Some figures like Robert Seeley, a professor of history at Cambridge and author of the bestselling book Expansion of England, argued that the rise of the British Empire was proof of the superior intelligence of the Anglo-Saxon people. While Cecil Rhodes claimed that the British were the superior race, Rudyard Kipling instead urged Anglo-Saxon countries to live up to their obligations and aid in the development of less developed regions, this was seen as a civilizing mission.
Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 and The Descent of Man in 1871, which proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection, had a significant impact on the way that people thought about race. While Darwin's theories did not directly address the question of the origin of race, they cast doubt on the traditional religious perspective that all human beings were created by a single common ancestor. The publication of Darwin's work, and the subsequent debate regarding the origin of race, heightened sensitivity to the race question.
Social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer and others interpreted Darwin's theories in a way that supported their own ideas about the innate superiority of certain races. They argued that the "survival of the fittest" principle, which Darwin had described as the mechanism driving evolution, also applied to human societies and that certain races were more advanced than others. This interpretation of Darwin's work was used to justify the colonial subjugation and domination of indigenous peoples and the racist ideologies.
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection led some people to interpret that the racial differences observed among human populations had existed for millions of years and that certain races were inherently superior or inferior to others. This led to a debate over whether race was an accurate predictor of human progress and cast doubt on the effectiveness of missionary efforts to Christianize non-Western populations. Some anthropologists and explorers of the time,
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like James Hunt and Richard Burton, argued that certain non-Western peoples and cultures could never be "civilized" and that the only way to improve their situation was for them to be removed from their native lands.
These views had a significant impact on the way that Westerners thought about race and imperialism, and many people began to question the morality and effectiveness of colonial rule and missionary efforts. Disillusionment among missionaries was widespread, and for decades, little progress was made by missionary groups in places like Nigeria and New Zealand.
Social Darwinism was a set of beliefs that emerged in the late-19th century and the early-20th century, which applied Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection to human society. It posited that competition between individuals, groups, and nations was a natural and necessary process that would ultimately lead to the survival of the strongest and most capable. Some Social Darwinists used this idea to justify imperialism, claiming that the British Empire was a "civilizing" force that was bringing progress and development to the "less advanced" peoples of the world. This idea was often used to support the justification of British imperial rule and to argue that the British were a superior race with a moral duty to govern the "inferior" peoples of the colonies. the development of Social Darwinism provided the British Empire with a guise of justification for their imperialistic expansion and the subjugation of other people. The idea of preparing colonies for independence was not seen as necessary or priority, and the idea of anarchy breaking out if Britain abandoned the colonies was a justification for continued British imperial rule.
6.10.4. Threats and public support to colonial efforts
During the late-19th century, many people in Britain and the colonies believed that the British Empire was beneficial to its subjects and that imperial rule was necessary for stability and prosperity in the colonies. The idea of chaos resulting from Britain's withdrawal from the colonies was a commonly held belief, and it was often cited as a justification for maintaining imperial rule.
The British colonial rule in India, known as the Raj, was marked by a period of economic, political and cultural hegemony. The British attempted to establish "tiny England" in India, where they could live and work in familiar surroundings and customs, in an effort to make themselves feel more at ease and to make it easier to administer the colony. These enclaves also served to reinforce the British belief in their own cultural and economic superiority, which was an integral part of the
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New Imperialism that emerged in the late 19th century. Additionally, Christian missionary groups played an important role in spreading British values and beliefs in India and other colonies during the early 20th century.
During the late-19th century, there were calls from some British figures, such as John Ruskin, for the spread of British culture and values to the rest of the world through colonial expansion. The idea was that the British had a duty to bring their way of life to other parts of the globe, and that this could be achieved through the building of colonies and the education of colonial subjects in British patriotism. In 1872, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli centered his politics on the empire, arguing that Britain had a choice between remaining content and insular or becoming a great imperial power that commanded the respect of nations all over the world. This view helped to cement the idea that the empire was a major player in international politics and that British expansion was seen as something positive and necessary (Andrew Thompson, 1997).
The Indian Councils Act of 1892, also known as the Gilbert Bill, proposed to expand the jurisdiction of Indian courts to hear cases involving Europeans, which sparked widespread concern among Europeans living in India and among some British politicians. The Act was seen as a threat to the privileges and power of the European community in India, and it was heavily criticized. During this time, there were also attempts to improve conditions in the colonies, particularly in India. However, these reforms were often seen more as a strategy to pacify growing unrest and resistance rather than a genuine effort to improve the lives of the colonized people. In this way, the British Empire was trying to maintain a balance between reform and repression to prevent any major rebellion which could threaten their rule.
6.11. Anti-colonial efforts and ideological implications
As European expansion intensified around the world, so did efforts to gain independence. The struggle for independence was accomplished in waves, and those that missed the first wave had to wait for quite a while to gain theirs as well. In what could be the early efforts at independence, in 1776 thirteen American colonies declared their independence from Britain. In 1804 Haiti declared its independence from France, Mexico declared independence from Spain in 1821, and Brazil from Portugal in 1822. The rest of the Caribbean countries would then wait until the twentieth century for their independence.
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Anti-colonial movements refer to social, political and economic movements that emerged in colonies and territories under foreign rule mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries. These movements aimed to end the control and exploitation of the colonized people by the colonizers, and to secure the right to self-determination and independence. Some notable examples of anti-colonial movements include:
The Indian National Congress was formed in 1885 and led the Indian independence movement against British rule.
The other anti-colonial movement was the Pan-African Movement, which, aimed to unite and empower people of African descent across the continent and the diaspora.
The Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, which was a rebellion against British colonialism and white minority rule in the 1950s. The Algerian War of Independence, which was a struggle for independence from French rule in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Vietnamese nationalist movement, which fought for independence from French and later American rule in. This was one of the most important ant-colonial struggle in the 20th century.
These movements often faced significant opposition from the colonizers and faced repression, but ultimately led to the decolonization of many countries around the world.
Since most of the European settlement in the New World was hinged on slavery and slate trade, the abolition of the practice there could help explain the independence declarations there. It is estimated that between nine and thirteen million African slaves arrived in the Americas between 1450 and 1870 to work on plantations. During the slave voyage, sometimes these African slaves started to revolt, fighting back against their transporters. The later period success of slave revolts can be attributed to the coming together of different ethnic groups to achieve a common purpose. It is this that is regarded as the genesis of anti-colonial struggles.
The abolition of slave trade and slavery was relatively quick. It is estimated that between the 1790s and 1880s, over 6.5 million slaves gained their freedom in the Americas linked to anti-colonial struggles in the French Caribbean and Spanish colonies in South America. Later, the legal abolition in the British West Indies in 1834 to 1838 induced the great era of emancipation that was also bolstered by the military defeat of the slaveholding south in the American civil war which helped
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to free over 4.5 million people by 1865. Puerto Rico ended slavery in 1873, Cuba in 1886, and Brazil in 1888.
At the same time the end of slavery in Brazil and Cuba, the European powers were now scrambling for new territories and possessions in other parts of the world. The biggest victim were Africans because, between the Berlin conference of 1884-1885 and the world war I in 1914, almost all of Africa, with the exemption of Liberia and Ethiopia had been divided up and distributed among the great European powers which called for renewed anti-colonial efforts there.
That opportunity seemed to have come following the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 and the end of World War I in 1918 which helped national liberation struggles in Ireland, Egypt, Vietnam, and India among other places to gain momentum. The flow of revolutionary ideas impacted black intellectuals such as Marcus Garvey who formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which was quick to gain adherents in the different parts of the colonized black world. The purpose of this organization, and the ones that followed it, was to raise awareness and to coordinate independence struggles across Africa. In the 1920s, anti-colonial movements began to gain momentum in several parts of the world as colonized peoples began to demand greater autonomy and self-determination. Some of the key anti-colonial movements of the 1920s include:
* The Indian National Congress, which had been calling for greater autonomy for India within the British Empire since the late-19th century, began to push for full independence in the 1920s.
* In Egypt, the Wafd Party emerged as a powerful force calling for greater autonomy and eventual independence from British colonial rule.
* In Iraq, a nationalist movement began to take shape, calling for greater autonomy and self-government within the British-controlled mandate.
* In China, the May Fourth Movement emerged in 1919, with young intellectuals and students demanding an end to foreign influence and the establishment of a strong, independent Chinese nation.
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* In the continent of Africa, Pan-Africanism begin to gather momentum, with leaders such as Marcus Garvey advocating for the solidarity of Africa and the diaspora and a rejection of European colonial rule
These movements were not unified and had different goals and different ways to achieve those, but all shared the goal of breaking free from colonialism.
In the 1930s, when the United States military occupied Haiti, W. E. B. Du Bois, another black campaigner and editor of the journal The Crisis of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP), challenged this colonial aggression and continued the spread of awareness messages calling for decolonization. These campaigns proved vital when the Italian government led by Benito Mussolini sought to invade Ethiopia; one of the two un-colonized African countries and the symbol of African leadership at the time. This forced the groups to organize events across America and other countries with a "Hands off Ethiopia" campaign.
The 1930s saw a continued focus on anti-colonial efforts seeing of anti-colonial rebellions throughout the Caribbean for instance in Puerto Rico (1937), British Caribbean (1935-1938) and similar revolts in Saint Lucia, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and British Guiana among other territories. It was now clear that public opinion was in favor of independence, as a report by the West India Royal Commission showed. In brief, “the road to revolution had been marked out" (Williams, 1970:473).
With increasing ability to connect, anti-colonial efforts were organized in every corner of the colonized world, including the colonial capitals themselves. One catalyst for this connection of anti-colonial minds was students and traders who came from different parts of the colonies to capitals like London. The students became interested as they interacted with black intellectuals like George Padmore and C. L. R. James from Trinidad; Harold Moody of Jamaica; T. Ras Makonnen from British Guyana; Nnamdi Azikiwi of Nigeria; Kwame Nkrumah from the Gold Coast; P. K. I. Seme of South Africa; and Jomo Kenyatta from Kenya. The black intellectuals established social and political organizations, including the West African Students Union in 1925, the League of Colored Peoples in 1931, and the International African Service Bureau in 1937.
Important cultural and intellectual works were produced in this period which increased awareness of self-determination and helped to place events like slave trade in the historiography of the world.
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For example, African American writer Arna Botempt wrote a historical novel black thunder which linked slave revolts in Haiti and Virginia with Pan-Africanism. DuBois (1935’s), black reconstruction, James (1938’s) black Jacobins and others provided the impetus for black consciousness. According to historian Walter Rodney (1990:15), the works were "about black people involved in revolution, involved in making choices, involved in the real movements of history."
Activists and anti-colonial theorists have developed a wide range of theories and strategies to support the anti-colonial struggle. Some have advocated for international political solidarity and collaboration between colonized nations, while others have stressed the importance of national self-reliance and autonomy. Examples of anti-colonial movements and organizations include the Afro-Asian Solidarity Movement and the Non-Aligned Movement, which brought together leaders of newly independent countries in the Global South to promote shared interests and cooperation. Anti-colonialism is not only a historical occurrence but also remains a critical critique as some former colonies are still facing economic, political, and cultural influences from their former colonizers. The development of anti-colonial theory and practice has revealed a historical and analytical connection between the colonized world, the Third World, and the contemporary Global South, which reflects the ongoing struggle for decolonization and self-determination.
Historical anti-colonialism took different forms in different parts of the world at different eras. In South Asia, anti-colonial movements emerged in the 1920s and gained momentum in the 1940s, leading to the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. However, it is also important to note that anti-colonial sentiment and resistance in South Asia had a longer history, dating back to events such as the 1857 Indian Mutiny.
One of the most well-known anti-colonial leaders in South Asia is Mahatma Gandhi, who led a peaceful resistance movement against British rule in India. Gandhi's philosophy of ahimsa, or non-violence, was central to his strategy, and he advocated for peaceful protests, strikes, and boycotts as a means of challenging the British government. This approach was in contrast to other anti-colonialists in South Asia, such as those who advocated for nationalist or revolutionary strategies, who often resorted to violent tactics such as terrorism and armed revolt. The British Raj referred to these acts as "terrorism" but many of the anti-colonialists saw themselves as revolutionary and drawn inspiration from other democratic and socialist movements such as the Bolshevik
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Revolution of 1917. Bhagat Singh was a major figure in the revolutionary anti-colonial struggle in India and was a vocal critic of Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence. Singh and other revolutionary anti-colonialists believed that more militant and violent tactics were necessary to achieve independence from British rule.
However, it is also worth noting that both nationalist and revolutionary anti-colonialists sought to develop a sense of national identity and solidarity among the people of India. Nationalist anti-colonialism sought to build a shared sense of culture, religion, or politics among the Indian people as a means of resisting British rule. Some of these nationalist movements, such as V.D. Savarkar's Hindutva movement, were known to be xenophobic and divisive in nature and sought to create an "exclusive" identity while dividing the society. They actively promoted the idea of "pure Hindu Indian country" from the alleged invaders, Muslims and the British. These different anti-colonial movements had their own distinct ideologies and strategies, but they were not isolated from each other, and their leaders, followers, and activists interacted and influenced each other, even if they sometimes disagreed or even antagonized one another.
6.11.1. African anti-colonialism and continuing struggles
African nationalism as a political movement and ideology emerged in the early 20th century. It advocates for the self-determination and independence of African nations from foreign domination and control, as well as the promotion of a shared sense of African identity and culture. The movement sought to end the colonization and subjugation of Africa by European powers, and to promote the development and self-determination of African nations. Africa drew inspiration and influence from a variety of sources, including the anti-colonial movements in India and the Caribbean, as well as the philosophies of leaders such as Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois.
African nationalists believe that the best way to achieve this is through the formation of strong, independent African states that are free from the influence of European powers. Nationalism movements emerged in different parts of the continent at different times and in response to different circumstances. For example, in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) was formed in 1912 to challenge the system of white minority rule and segregation known as apartheid. In Kenya, there was a Mau Mau movement, a rebellion against British colonial rule in the 1950s, which sought independence and land reform.
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Colonialism has had a profound impact on Africa and its people, and one of the ways this has manifested is in the concept of leadership. As a result of colonialism and the imposition of Western ideas and systems, the traditional African understanding of leadership has been disrupted and replaced with Western-style concepts and expectations. This has led to some ambiguity and confusion around what constitutes good leadership in the modern African context. This is linked to broader challenges faced by postcolonial African societies, including the ongoing struggles to maintain stability and development in the face of persistent sociopolitical crises and the need to find new approaches to governance that can effectively address these issues and support democratic progress. It is important for people to come up with a new form of government that takes into account the unique history, culture, and needs of African societies, rather than solely relying on the models and principles imposed by colonialism.
During the era of colonialism and the Cold War, democracy as a form of government was not widely accepted or practiced in many parts of the world, particularly in colonized countries. Instead, powerful nations tended to impose their own political systems and leaders on the colonized populations, rather than allowing for the development of democratic institutions and processes.
6.11.2. Where are the independence struggles and their result?
However, in the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st century, there has been a resurgence of interest in democracy and democratic governance in Africa and other parts of the world. This has been partly due to the success of liberal economic policies and the recognition of the importance of democratic leadership in the responsible administration of people and public affairs. Economic development and improved living standards have also made freedoms such as political representation, free speech and press, religious freedom and many other previously unattainable freedoms widely available. The idea of democracy has grown popular among people as they saw it as a way to ensure good governance and ensure that the government is held accountable to the people.
Many African countries continue to face challenges related to election fraud and the military's involvement in politics, which can undermine the democratic process and the rule of law. These issues can make it difficult for citizens to have their voices heard and hold their leaders
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accountable, and they can also make it difficult for governments to provide effective and responsive governance.
Postcolonialism as a critical perspective emerged in the wake of decolonization and has since evolved to encompass a wide range of issues related to the legacy of colonialism and imperialism. It is an interdisciplinary field that encompasses literature, history, politics, and cultural studies, among other areas, and it seeks to challenge the dominant narratives and power structures that emerged from colonialism. Postcolonialism has come to play a more interventionist role in the post independent era. It has sought to expose the ways in which the institutional frameworks of imperialism continue to shape the global political and economic landscape, particularly in Africa and Asia. This includes the ways in which colonial powers exploited and oppressed colonized peoples, as well as the ways in which colonial ideologies and institutions continue to shape contemporary society.
Edward Said's book Orientalism is a seminal text in postcolonial studies, which argues that European culture constructed a stereotype of the "Orient" and "Oriental" people as a way to legitimize and justify their colonization and domination of the East. According to Said, European culture was defined in opposition to the "other" and this "other" is the people living in the Orient. Said explains that through this process the Europeans created a dehumanizing image of the people living in the Orient which helped them to justify their exploitation and domination of them.
The postcolonial movement has sought to challenge the narrative that people in the former colonies are inherently inferior, and to question the notion that they were unable to govern themselves effectively. This is a central aspect of postcolonial thought, which seeks to deconstruct the imperialistic ideologies and power structures that emerged from colonialism.
Postcolonial movements in Africa and other parts of the world have been fighting against European colonialism and later, Western imperialism since the early 20th century. This resistance against colonialism took many forms, from peaceful protests to armed struggle. These movements aimed to achieve independence and self-determination for the people of the colonies, and this struggle was a long and difficult one.
Postcolonial struggle in Africa has evolved over time. The anti-colonial movements fought to secure independence and self-determination. Then, it took a shift in focus to fight against
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neocolonialism - a term used to describe the maintenance and continuance of economic, political and cultural control by imperial powers on newly independent countries. This has been a recurrent theme throughout the history of postcolonial Africa and the anti-imperialist movement is still ongoing.
Overall, postcolonial movements and thinking have aimed to challenge the imperialistic ideologies and power structures that emerged from colonialism and sought to create a more inclusive, equitable, and self-determining society.
Frantz Fanon is a prominent and influential figure in French anti-colonial theory. He is best known for his work as a psychiatrist and philosopher, and for his writings on the subject of violence and its role in the struggle against colonialism. Fanon's background in various philosophical traditions, such as psychoanalysis, existentialism, and phenomenology, heavily influenced his writing and helped to frame his ideas in a unique way.
One of his most famous works is The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la Terre), published in 1961, in which Fanon discussed the effects of colonialism on the mental and physical health of colonized peoples, and the pros and cons of using violence to resist colonial oppression. He argued that the use of force can be devastating and can lead to a mere replacement of European leaders with African leaders, rather than eliminating the hierarchies and "nervous circumstances" that were the result of colonialism. He also discussed the importance of decolonization of the mind, the importance of having a cultural and societal identity, and the effects of colonialism on the psyche of the colonized people.
Fanon's work has had a profound impact on anti-colonial and postcolonial thinking, and his ideas continue to be studied and debated by scholars in the fields of philosophy, political science, sociology, and psychology.
6.12. Conclusion
In conclusion, colonialism and imperialism have had a profound impact on the world throughout history. The spread of European powers throughout the globe brought about significant changes to the political, economic, and social systems of the colonized countries. The rise of nationalist ideas also played a significant role in shaping the aftermath of colonialism and imperialism.
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Nationalism provided a sense of identity and unity for the colonized people, leading to the eventual decolonization and independence of many countries. However, the legacy of colonialism and imperialism is still felt today in the form of economic inequality, political instability, and cultural loss. It is crucial that we continue to study and understand the effects of these historical events in order to work towards a more just and equitable world.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
CONCLUSION
This thesis has sought to take a comparative approach to exploring the various stages in the development of the modern state in both Europe and outside Europe, with a special focus on the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. I see this process as having gone through (a) a pre-modern, traditional agrarian stage of peasant economies and societies surmounted by dynastic states ruling space through a fief-system; (b) the centralizing impact of the Military Revolution; (c) the coming of nationalism on top of these beginnings of the modern state; (d) the further coming of extra-Euopean imperialism and colonialism on top of this initially intra-Euopean nationalism. This is what I have tried to trace and describe in each of my major chapters.
Initially I have focused on the relationship between power structures and the formation of states. It posits that for a state to exist, it must have a military and an administration, both with their own hierarchies and leaders. It then compares the formation and power structure of the state, specifically looking at how “intermediaries” (whether aristocratic or bureaucratic) play a role in the organization of society at all levels of government, from local to national levels. The key question explored is how society is organized, who holds power and how much influence they have on decision making. The thesis aims to understand how power is distributed in society and how it impacts the formation and functioning of states. It examines the role of leaders, military and bureaucracy in the creation of a state and the distribution of power in these societies.
It examines the relationship between power structures and the formation of states, specifically focusing on the connections between monetary systems and fief-based state structures in medieval Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and other communities. It questions the traditional depiction of feudalism as a decentralized system in Europe and the assumption that it was operational for the duration of the Middle Ages. It also examines the various monetary systems used in the rest of the world and how they relate to the concept of feudalism. The thesis further explores how power structures that do not recognize hereditary nobility fit into the concept of feudalism. It examines the Ottoman Empire's military system, known as the timar system, and whether it can be
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considered as a form of feudalism. The thesis argues that the timar system may not fit neatly into the traditional European concept of feudalism, but it is possible that it shares some similarities.
The timar system was a military and administrative system used in the Ottoman Empire. It was a form of land tenure in which certain individuals, known as timar holders, were granted the right to collect revenue and administer justice in a specific geographic area in return for providing military service to the state. The timar holder was not considered the owner of the land, but rather a temporary holder of the rights to the land's revenue. The timar system has been compared to European feudalism in that it also involved the granting of land rights in exchange for military service. However, there are also significant differences between the two systems. In the European feudal system, the land rights were inherited and passed down through family lines, while in the timar system the rights to the land were temporary and could be revoked by the state. Furthermore, the timar holders were not a hereditary nobility but rather appointed by the state, and the timar system was not decentralized but rather a centralized system of administration.
Feudalism, a political and social system that was prevalent in Europe during the Middle Ages, was characterized by a decentralized power structure in which lords held land and provided protection to vassals in exchange for loyalty and labor. This system of land tenure and social hierarchy had a significant impact on the economic, social and political development of Europe, and it was one of the main factors that led to the rise of the Industrial Revolution. Feudalism created a society that was mainly agricultural, and it limited the mobility of labor and the potential for economic growth. The lords held a monopoly on land, and the serfs were not able to leave the land they were tied to, which resulted in a shortage of labor in the cities and an inability to expand trade and commerce. The lords also held a monopoly on the means of production, which hindered the development of new technologies and industries.
However, the rise of the Industrial Revolution led to a change in the feudal system. The development of new technologies, such as the steam engine and the spinning jenny, led to the mechanization of agriculture and the growth of new industries. The increased demand for labor and the growth of new markets led to the rise of the urban working class and the decline of the feudal lords' power.
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The Industrial Revolution also led to the emergence of a capitalist economic system, which was based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of a market economy. This led to the decline of feudalism and the rise of a new economic and social order.
The rise of the market economy was a significant factor in the final decline of feudalism in Europe. Feudalism was a system of land tenure and social hierarchy in which lords held land and provided protection to vassals in exchange for loyalty and labor. This system was characterized by a decentralized power structure and a mainly agricultural economy. However, the emergence of a market economy led to a shift in the balance of power, as lords were no longer able to control the economy and labor through their control of land. The market economy, which is based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of a market for goods and services, led to the growth of new industries and the mechanization of agriculture. This increased the demand for labor and led to the rise of the urban working class. The urban working class, which was not tied to the land, had more mobility and economic opportunities than the serfs in the countryside. The market economy also led to the growth of trade and commerce, which increased the mobility of goods and capital. This led to the decline of the lords' power and the emergence of a new economic and social order. The lords were no longer able to control the economy and labor through their control of land, and they had to adapt to the new economic realities.
One of the main factors that contributed to the rise of nationalism in Europe was the growth of the middle class. The Industrial Revolution led to the growth of new industries and the rise of the urban working class, which created a new social class with its own economic and political interests. This new class began to demand more representation and political rights, and they began to identify with a particular nation or ethnic group. The French Revolution of 1789 also played a significant role in the rise of nationalism in Europe. The ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which were central to the revolution, resonated with many ethnic groups and regions within Europe and inspired them to demand greater autonomy and self-determination. The spread of education also played a role in the rise of nationalism in Europe. The rise of the printing press in the 18th century allowed for the mass production of books, newspapers, and pamphlets, making it easier to disseminate ideas and information. As more people were able to read and understand the ideas presented in literature and media, they began to identify with a particular nation or ethnic group. The rise of romanticism, which emphasized the importance of national culture and history, also
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played a role in the rise of nationalism in Europe. Romanticism encouraged people to identify with their national culture and history and to see themselves as a distinct and unique group.
The spread of ideas and nationalism in Europe was greatly facilitated by the increased mobility and communication in the 18th and 19th centuries. The invention of the steam engine and the railway allowed for more efficient and faster travel, making it easier for people to move around and share ideas. This increased mobility facilitated the spread of nationalism among different ethnic groups and regions within Europe. Nationalist ideas were also spread through literature, newspapers, and other forms of media. The rise of the printing press in the 18th century allowed for the mass production of books, newspapers, and pamphlets, making it easier to disseminate ideas and information. The spread of education also played a role in the spread of nationalist ideas, as more people were able to read and understand the ideas presented in literature and media.
One of the key ways in which nationalist ideas spread among civilizations was through colonialism and imperialism. European powers, for example, imposed their own national identities and ideologies on the peoples they colonized, which led to the emergence of nationalist movements in these colonies. Imperialism, the policy or practice of extending a country's power and influence through colonization, military conquest, or other means, played a significant role in the spread of nationalism. The subjugation of other countries and cultures by imperial powers led to the emergence of nationalist movements among the colonized peoples.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, European powers colonized large parts of Africa and Asia, imposing their own languages, culture, and political systems on the colonized peoples. This led to the suppression of indigenous cultures, languages, and identities, which in turn led to a sense of resentment and the desire for self-determination among the colonized peoples. As a result, nationalist movements emerged among the colonized peoples, as they sought to reclaim their own cultures and identities and to free themselves from the yoke of imperialism. These movements were often led by educated elites who were exposed to Western ideas of nationalism and democracy and were deeply influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution. Moreover, imperialism also led to the spread of nationalist ideas among the imperial powers themselves. The acquisition of colonies and the subjugation of other peoples led to a sense of national pride and a belief in the superiority of one's own culture and civilization.
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This thesis argues that military changes and developments played a crucial role in the expansion of imperial powers and the acquisition of colonies. The development of new weapons and tactics, as well as the improvement of transportation and communication technologies, allowed imperial powers to project their military power and control over far-flung territories. The thesis also suggests that the competition among imperial powers for colonies was intense, and each society was forced to adopt and strive for military superiority in order to maintain their imperial ambitions. The competition led to a arms race and increased spending on military technology and training, which further enabled imperial powers to project their military power and control over other societies.
This thesis also highlights the impact of these military changes and developments on the colonized societies. The military superiority of imperial powers enabled them to subjugate and control other societies, leading to the suppression of indigenous cultures, languages, and identities. In addition, the thesis argues that the competition among imperial powers for colonies also had a significant impact on the domestic politics and society of imperial powers, as the acquisition of colonies became a source of national pride and a justification for increased military spending and expansion.
In conclusion, this thesis argues that military changes and developments played a crucial role in the expansion of imperial powers and the acquisition of colonies. The competition among imperial powers for colonies was intense, and each society was forced to adopt and strive for military superiority in order to maintain their imperial ambitions. This competition led to arms race and increased spending on military technology and training, and the impact of these military changes and developments on the colonized societies and the imperial powers themselves was significant.
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