War, State Formation, and Culture

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 795-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Neep
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Early States ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
War Effort

Historical sociology has long been concerned with the study of organized state violence. Since the mid-1970s, a substantial body of work has come to focus on the importance of warfare to historical processes of state formation. The first generation of this literature proposed that the relentless existential struggle between the warring polities of medieval Europe had favored the survival of states that could adopt ever more efficient means to extract and mobilize resources from the local population to feed the war effort. Early states therefore evolved the institutions to collect taxes and administer territory largely as a functional byproduct of interstate military competition. From this perspective, the logic of war making was the driving force behind the rise of the modern state in Europe.

Accelerating democratic global state formation

2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Chase-Dunn ◽  
Hiroko Inoue
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International System ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Global State ◽  
World State ◽  
Global Democracy ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Historical Processes

This article discusses the evolution of the international system and global governance within the Europe-centred modern world-system since the 15th century in the context of a comparative framework that includes interpolity systems since the Stone Age. The evolution of the modern system includes the emergence of the European system of sovereign national states and colonial empires, the extension of the Westphalian system to the non-core by succeeding waves of decolonization, the rise and fall of successively larger hegemons, the deepening of global capitalism in waves of globalization, the emergence of weak international regulatory institutions and the prospects for and the rapid emergence of global democracy. It is not claimed that a global state has already emerged, but the authors see the long-term processes as the early stages of the emergence of a world state, and consider how these processes might be accelerated within the next few decades. The need for democratization of the institutions of global governance is also discussed. However, in this article, the focus is more on real geo-historical processes than normative questions, outlining the evolution of interpolity institutional orders, describing the challenges in thinking about global state formation, and discussing some of the technological and political forces that might accelerate the long-term trend toward global state formation.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
State Formation ◽  
State Power ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
And Control

The conclusion reiterates the centrality of the coroner system and its oversight in the monopolization of violence, state formation, and the growth of state power by creating and delineating new definitions of legitimate and illegitimate violence. It also examines the resulting decline of extra-judicial violence—blood feud, vendetta etc.—and subsequent attempts by the English state to target and control non-lethal forms of non-state violence such as riot and assault. Finally, the conclusion offers some initial comparisons with continental Europe and suggests that the trends seen in England may have been mirrored by similar attempts to monopolize violence in the Holy Roman Empire.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF POOR RELIEF IN LANCASHIRE, c. 1598–1680

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN HEALEY
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor

ABSTRACTThe development of the poor law has formed a key element of recent discussions of ‘state formation’ in early modern England. There are, however, still few local studies of how formal poor relief, stipulated in the great Tudor statutes, was implemented on the ground. This article offers such a study, focusing on Lancashire, an economically marginal county, far from Westminster. It argues that the poor law developed in Lancashire surprisingly quickly in the early seventeenth century, despite the fact that there is almost no evidence of implementation of statutory relief before 1598, and formal relief mechanisms were essentially in place before the Civil War even if the numbers on relief remained small. After a brief hiatus during the conflict, the poor law was quickly revived in the 1650s. The role of the magistracy is emphasized as a crucial driving force, not just in the enforcement of the statutes, but also in setting relief policy. The thousands of petitions to JPs by paupers, parishes, and townships that survive in the county archives suggests that magistrates were crucial players in the ‘politics of the parish’.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. xxxii-27
Author(s):  
Danna A. Levin Rojo ◽  
Cynthia Radding
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Modes Of Life ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Broad Approach ◽  
Modern Nation State

Borderlands arise where two or more spheres of hegemony that claim jurisdiction over resources and people limit each other and often overlap, where two or more groups of people with different cultures and modes of life intermingle, and where the prevailing ecological conditions challenge particular forms of human life. Drawing on theorists from historical sociology, geography, anthropology, and spatial history, the editors and contributors to this volume understand borderlands as diffuse spaces of contestation, adaptation, and admixture that are produced through historical processes in specific times and places. Providing a broad approach to borderlands applicable to time periods predating the modern nation-state and areas not standing at the limits between two constituted polities, this perspective addresses indigenous America and the character of early Iberian empires. We advance the interrelated notions of successive frontiers and internal borderlands to address these territorial and cultural processes over time and in different continental and maritime regions.

Theorising the international system: perspectives from Historical Sociology

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN HOBDEN
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
State Formation ◽  
International System ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
The State ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
International Context ◽  
Recent Interest ◽  
State Context ◽  
Inter State

Recent interest in the work of Historical Sociologists has concentrated on their renewed interest in the state. There is considerable regard for the historical account of state formation and development produced by writers such as Mann, Skocpol and Tilly. Surprisingly there has been less attention paid to another feature of their writings—the locating of states in an inter-state context. This article examines the international context envisioned by four historical sociologists. It argues that, although these writers have been successful at historicising state formations, this powerful account has not been matched with a historical account of international relations. If this project is to move forward, a complementary historical account of international contexts, or global structures, is required.

State Formation from the Vantage of Early English Jamaica: The Neglect of Edward Doyley

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Gardina Pestana
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
State Building ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Central Authority ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Early English

AbstractEdward Doyley led English Jamaica for most of its first decade. Sent as part of a military force intent on conquering the island, he rose to a position of command in the army as a result of his survival and seniority. Eventually he took charge of the navy and civilian affairs as well. Wielding theoretically vast powers he lacked official authorization from any central authority for much of his tenure. His correspondence requesting support for the island reveals the needs of a newly conquered colony, enumerating the requirements that an expanding imperial center must fill as England moved more decisively toward engagement in the wider world. Scholarly debates over state building that emphasize military and naval expansion as a driving force, and debates about state formation focusing on negotiations between central and local authorities, speak to the experience of early Jamaica. Doyley's circumstances place him in a position between the two ideal situations described in that literature.

Indirect British Rule, State Formation, and Welfarism in Kerala, India, 1860–1957

2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manali Desai
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Comparative Historical Sociology ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Determining Factors ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the relationship between a strong nineteenth-century welfarist expansion between the 1860s and early 1940s, in Kerala, India, under indirect British rule, and the “exceptional” antipoverty regime that democratically elected Communists implemented during the postcolonial (post 1947) era in the state. While much attention has focused on Kerala as a model of social development and on postindependence state policies in creating it, no single work has attempted to understand the significance of its prior legacy of welfare. This article uses methods of comparative historical sociology to trace the historical making of Kerala's “exceptionalism.” It argues that the early welfare policies in Kerala were implemented in a dependent colonial context and aimed at warding off annexation by the British, but their unintended consequences were to stimulate what they were precisely designed to avoid—radical caste and class movements. The analysis suggests that the form and content of welfare policies are shaped by the exigencies of state formation, as state autonomy theorists would argue; however, it shows that political struggles are the decisive determining factors of the former.

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