“Would you eke out your life, my young noble squire,
      Follow then my teaching, upon your horse and join the gang!
    Take to the greenwood, when the peasant comes up,
      Run him down quickly, grab him then by the collar,
    Rejoice in your heart, taking from him whatever he has,
      Unharness his horses and get you away!”[51]

“Unless,” as Sombart adds, “he preferred to hunt nobler game and to
relieve merchants of their valuable consignments.” The nobles carried
on robbery as a natural method of supplementing their earnings,
extending it more and more as the income from their property no longer
sufficed to pay for the increasing demands of daily consumption and
luxury. The system of freebooting was considered a thoroughly honorable
occupation, since it met the demand of the essence of chivalry, that
every one should appropriate whatever was within reach of his spear
point or of the blade of his sword. The nobles learned freebooting as
the cobbler was brought up to his trade. The ballad has put this in
merry wise:

   “To pillage, to rob, that is no shame,
    The best in the land do quite the same.”

Besides this principal point of the “squire-archical” psychology, a
second distinguishing mark scarcely less characteristic is found in
the piety of these folk whether it be of conviction or merely strongly
accentuated in public.

It seems as though the same social ideas always force identical
characteristics on the ruling class. This is illustrated by the form
under which God, in their view, appears as their special National God
and preponderatingly as a God of War. Although they profess God as the
creator of all men, even of their enemies, and since Christianity, as
the God of Love, this does not counteract the force with which class
interests formulate their appropriate ideology.

In order to complete the sketch of the psychology of the ruling class,
we must not forget the tendency to squander, easily understood in those
“ignorant of the taste of toil,” which appears sometimes in a higher
form as generosity; nor must we forget, as their supreme trait, that
death-despising bravery, which is called forth by the coercion imposed
on a minority, their need to defend their rights at any time with arms,
and which is favored by a freedom from all labor which permits the
development of the body in hunting, sport and feuds. Its caricature
is combativeness, and a supersensitiveness to personal honor, which
degenerates into madness.

At this point a small digression: Cæsar found the Celts just at that
stage of their development, in which the nobles had obtained dominion
over their fellow clansmen. Since that time, his classic narrative
has stood as a norm--their class psychology appears as the race
psychology of all Celts. Not even Mommsen escaped this error. The
result is that now, in every book on universal history or sociology,
one may read the palpable error, repeated until contradiction is of
no avail, although a mere glance would have sufficed to show that all
peoples of all races, in the same stage of their development, have
showed the same characteristics; in Europe, Thessalians, Apulians,
Campanians, Germans, Poles, etc. Meanwhile the Celts, and specifically
the French, in different stages of their development, have showed quite
different traits of character. The psychology belongs to the stage of
development, not to the race!

Whenever, on the other hand, the religious sanctions of the “state” are
weak, or become so, there develops as a group theory on the part of the
subjects, the concept, either clear or blurred, of _Natural Law_. The
lower class regards the race pride and the assumed superiority of the
nobles as presumptuous, claims to be of as good race and blood as the
ruling class--and from their standpoint again quite correctly, since
according to their views, labor, efficiency and order are accounted the
only virtues. They are skeptical also as to the religion which is the
helper of their adversaries; and are as firmly convinced as are the
nobles of the directly opposite opinion, namely, that the privileges of
the master group violate law as well as reason. Later development is
not able to add any essential point to the factors originally given.

Under the influence of these ideas, now clearly, now obscurely brought
out, the two groups henceforth fight out their battles, each for its
own interests. The young state would be burst apart under the strain
of such centrifugal forces, were it not for the centripetal pull of
common interests, of the still more powerful state-consciousness. The
pressure of foreigners from without, of common enemies, overcomes the
inner strain of conflicting class interests. An example may be found in
the tale of the secession of the “Plebs” and the successful mission of
Menenius Agrippa. And so the young state would, like a planet, swing
through all eternity in its predetermined orbit, in accordance with
the parallelogram of forces, were it not that it and its surrounding
world is changed and developed until it produces new external and inner
energies.

(d) THE PRIMITIVE FEUDAL STATE OF HIGHER GRADE

Growth in itself conditions important changes; and the young state must
grow. The same forces that brought it into being, urge its extension,
require it to grasp more power. Even were such a young state “sated,”
as many a modern state claims to be, it would still be forced to
stretch and grow under penalty of extinction. Under primitive social
conditions Goethe’s lines apply with absolute truth: “You must rise or
fall, conquer or yield, be hammer or anvil.”

States are maintained in accordance with the same principles that
called them into being. The primitive state is the creation of warlike
robbery; and only by warlike robbery can it be preserved.

The economic want of the master group has no limits; no man is
sufficiently rich to satisfy his desires. The political means are
turned on new groups of peasants not yet subjected, or new coasts
yet unpilfered are sought out. The primitive state expands, until a
collision takes place on the edge of the “sphere of interests” of
another primitive state, which itself originated in precisely the same
way. Then we have for the first time, in place of the warlike robbery
heretofore carried on, true war in its narrower sense, since henceforth
equally organized and disciplined masses are hurled at one another.

The object of the contest remains always the same, the produce of the
economic means of the working classes, such as loot, tribute, taxes
and ground rent; but the contest no longer takes place between a group
intent on exploiting and another mass to be exploited, but between two
master groups for the possession of the entire booty.

The final result of the conflict, in nearly all instances, is the
amalgamation of both primitive states into a greater. This in turn,
naturally and by force of the same causes, reaches beyond its borders,
devours its smaller neighbors, and is perhaps in its turn devoured by
some greater state.

The subjected laboring group may not take much interest in the final
issue of these contests for the mastery; it is a matter of indifference
whether it pays tribute to one or the other set of lords. Their chief
interest lies in the course of the particular fight, which is, in any
case, paid for with their own hides. Therefore, except in cases of
gross ill treatment and exploitation, the lower classes are rightly
governed by their “state-consciousness” when, with all their might they
aid their hereditary master group in times of war. For if their master
group is vanquished, the subjects suffer most severely from the utter
devastation of war. They fight literally for wife and children, for
home and hearth, when they fight to prevent the rule of foreign masters.

The master group is involved completely in the issue of this fight for
dominion. In extreme cases, it may be completely exterminated, as were
the local nobility of the Germanic tribes in the Frankish Empire.
Nearly as bad, if not worse, is the prospect of being thrust into the
group of the serfs. Sometimes a well-timed treaty of peace preserves
their social position as master groups of subordinate rank: e. g., the
Saxon nobility in Norman England, or the Suppans in German territory
taken from the Slavs. In other cases, where the forces are about equal,
the two groups amalgamate into one master group with equal rights,
which forms a nobility whose members intermarry. This, for instance,
was the situation in the Slavic Territories, where isolated Wendish
chieftains were treated as the equals of the Germans, or in mediæval
Rome, in the case of prominent families from the Alban Hills and
Tuscany.

In this new “primitive feudal state of higher grade,” as we shall call
it, the ruling group may, therefore, disintegrate into a number of
more or less powerful and privileged strata. The organization may show
many varieties because of the well-known fact, that often the master
group separates into two subordinated economic and social layers,
developed as we saw them in the herdsmen stage: the owners of large
herds and of many slaves, and the ordinary freemen. Possibly the less
complete differentiation into social ranks in the states created by
huntsmen in the new world, is to be assigned to the circumstance that
in the absence of herds, the concomitants of that form of ownership,
and the original separation into classes, were not introduced into the
state. We shall, later, see what force was exerted on the political and
economic development of states in the old world by the differences in
rank and property of the two strata of rulers.

Similarly, as in the case of the ruling group, a corresponding process
of differentiation divides the subject group in the “primitive feudal
state of a higher grade” into various strata more or less despised
and compelled to render service. It is only necessary to recall the
very marked difference in the social and jural position occupied by
the peasantry in the Doric States, Lacedæmon and Crete, and among the
Thessalians, where the perioiki had clear rights of possession and
fairly well protected political rights, while the helots, in the latter
case the _penestai_, were almost unprotected in life and property.
Among the old Saxons also we find a class, the liti, intermediate
between the common freemen and the serfs.[52] These examples could be
multiplied; apparently they are caused by the same tendencies that
brought about the differentiation among the nobility mentioned above.
When two primitive feudal states amalgamate, their social layers
stratify in a variety of ways, which to a certain extent are comparable
to the combinations resulting from mixing together two packs of cards.

It is certain that this mechanical mixture caused by political forces,
influences the development of _castes_, that is to say, of hereditary
professions, which at the same time form a hierarchy of social classes.
“Castes are usually, if not always, consequences of conquest and
subjugation by foreigners.”[53] Although this problem has not been
completely solved, it may be said that the formation of castes has been
very strongly influenced by economic and religious factors. It is
probable that castes came about in some such way as this: state-forming
forces penetrated into existing economic organizations, and vocations
underwent adaptation, and then became petrified under the influence
of religious concepts, which, however, may also have influenced their
original formation. This seems to follow from the fact that even as
between man and woman there exist certain separations of vocation,
which, so to say, are taboo and impassable. Thus among all huntsmen,
tilling the ground is woman’s work, while among many African shepherds,
as soon as the ox-plow is used, agriculture becomes man’s work, and
then women may not, under pain of sacrilege, use the domestic cattle.[H]

[H] Similarly there are North Asiatic tribes of huntsmen, where women
are definitely forbidden to touch the hunting gear or to cross a
hunting trail.--Ratzel I, page 650.

It is likely that such religious concepts may have brought it about
that a vocation became hereditary, and then compulsorily hereditary,
especially where a tribe or a village carried on a particular craft.
This happens with all tribes in a state of nature, where intercourse
is easily possible, especially in the case of islanders. When some
such group has been conquered by another tribe, the subjects, with
their developed hereditary vocations, tend to form within the new state
entity a pure “caste.” Their caste position depends partly upon the
esteem they had heretofore enjoyed among their own people, and partly
upon the advantage which their vocation affords their new masters.
If, as was often the case, waves of conquest followed one another in
series, the formation of castes might be multiplied, especially if
in the meantime economic development had worked out many vocational
classes.

This development is probably best seen in the group of smiths, who, in
nearly all cases, have occupied a peculiar position, half feared and
half despised. In Africa especially, since the beginning of time, we
find tribes of expert smiths, as followers and dependents of shepherd
tribes. The Hyksos brought such tribes with them into the Nile country,
and perhaps owed their decisive victory to arms made by them; and
until recent times the Dinka kept the iron working Djur in a sort of
subject relation. The same applied also to the nomads of the Sahara;
while our northern sagas are filled with the tribal contrast to the
“dwarfs” and the fear of their magical powers. All the elements were at
hand in a developed state for the formation of sharply differentiated
castes.[54]

How the coöperation of religious concepts affects the beginning of
these formations may be well illustrated by an example from Polynesia.
Here, “although many natives have the ability to do ship-building,
only one privileged class may exercise the craft, so closely is the
interest of the states and the societies bound up in this art. All over
the archipelago formerly, and to this day in Fiji, the carpenters, who
are almost exclusively ship-builders, form a special caste, bear the
high sounding title of ‘the king’s workmen,’ and enjoy the prerogative
of having their own chieftains.... Everything is done in accordance
with ancient tradition; the laying the keel, the completion of the
ship, and the launching, all take place amidst religious ceremonies and
feasts.”[55]

Where superstition has been strongly developed, a genuine system
of castes may come about, based partly on economic and partly on
ethnic foundations. In Polynesia, for example, the articulation of
the classes, through the operation of the taboo, has brought about
a state of affairs very like a most thoroughgoing caste system.[56]
Similar results may be seen in Southern Arabia.[57] It is unnecessary
at this place to enlarge on the important place which religion had in
the origin and maintenance of separate castes in ancient Egypt and in
modern India.[I]

[I] Besides, it seems that the rigidity of the Indian caste-system is
not so harsh in practise. The guild seems as often to break through the
barriers of caste as the converse.--Ratzel II, page 596.

These are the elements of the primitive feudal state of higher
grade. They are more manifold and more numerous than in the lower
primitive state; but in both, legal constitution and political-economic
distribution are fundamentally the same. The products of the economic
means are still the object of the group struggle. This remains now as
ever the moving impulse of the domestic policy of the state, while the
political means continues now as ever to constitute the moving impulse
of its foreign policy in attack or in defense. Identical group theories
continue to justify, both for the upper classes and the lower, the
objects and means of external and domestic struggles.

But the development can not remain stationary. Growth differs from mere
increase in bulk; growth means a constantly heightening differentiation
and integration.

The farther the primitive feudal state extends its dominion, the more
numerous its subjects, and the denser its population, the more there
develops a political-economic division of labor, which calls forth new
needs and new means of supplying them; and the more there come into
sharp contrasts the distinctions of economic, and consequently of
social, class strata, in accordance with what I have called the “law
of the agglomeration about existing nuclei of wealth.” This growing
differentiation becomes decisive for the further development of the
primitive feudal state, and still more for its conclusion.

This conclusion is not meant to be, in any sense, the physical end
of such a state. We do not mean the death of a state, whereby such a
feudal state of the higher type disappears, in consequence of conflict
with a more powerful state, either on the same or on a higher plane
of development, as was the case of the Mogul states of India or of
Uganda in their conflicts with Great Britain. Neither does it mean
such a stagnation as that into which Persia and Turkey have fallen,
which represents for a time only a pause in development, since these
countries, either of their own force or by foreign conquest, must
soon be pushed on the way of their destiny. Neither have we meant the
rigidity of the gigantic Chinese Empire, which can last only so long as
foreign powers refrain from forcing its mysterious gates.[J]

[J] Had we the space, a detailed exposition of this exceptional
development of a feudal state would be tempting. China would be well
worth a more detailed discussion, since, in many aspects it has
approached the condition of “free citizenship” more closely than any
people of Western Europe. China has overcome the consequences of the
feudal system more thoroughly than we Europeans have; and has made,
early in its development, the great property interests in the land
harmless, so that their bastard offspring, capitalism, hardly came into
being; while in addition, it has worked out to a considerable degree
the problems of coöperative production and of coöperative distribution.

The outcome here spoken of means the further development of the
primitive feudal state, a matter of importance to our understanding of
universal history as a _process_. The principal lines of development
into which this issue branches off are twofold and of fundamentally
different character. _But this polar opposition is conditioned by
a like contrast between two sorts of economic wealth each of which
increases in accordance with the “law of agglomeration about existing
nuclei.”_ In the one case, it is movable property; in the other, landed
property. Here it is the capital of commerce, there property in land,
accumulating in the hands of a smaller and smaller number, and thereby
overturning radically the articulation of classes, and with it the
whole State.

The maritime State is the scene of the development of movable wealth;
the territorial State is the embodiment of the development of landed
property. The final issue of the first is _capitalistic exploitation_
by slavery, the outcome of the latter is, first of all, the _developed
feudal State_.

Capitalistic exploitation by slavery, the typical result of the
development of the so-called “antique States” on the Mediterranean,
does not end in the death of states, which is of no importance, but in
the death of peoples, because of the consumption of population. In the
pedigree of the historical development of the State, it forms a side
branch, from which no further immediate growth can take place.

The developed feudal State, however, represents the principal branch,
the continuation of the trunk; and is therefore the origin for
the further growth of the State. Thence it has developed into the
State governed by feudal systems; into absolutism; into the modern
constitutional State; and if we are right in our prognosis, it will
become a “free citizenship.”

So long as the trunk grew only in one direction, i. e., to include the
primitive feudal State of higher grade, our sketch of its growth and
development could and did comprise both forms. Henceforth, after the
bifurcation, our story branches and follows each branch to its last
twig.

We begin, then, with the maritime states, although they are not the
older form. On the contrary, as far back as the dawn of history clears
the fog of prehistoric existence, the first strong states were formed
as territorial states, which then, by their own powers, attained the
scale of developed feudal States. But beyond this stage, at least as
regards those States most interesting to our culture, most of them
either remained stationary or fell into the power of maritime states;
and then, infected with the deadly poison of capitalistic exploitation
through slavery, were destroyed by the same plague.

The further progress of the expanded feudal states of higher grade
could take place only after the maritime states had run their
course: mighty forms of domination and statescraft these became, and
they subsequently influenced and furthered the conformation of the
territorial states that grew from their ruins.

For that reason the story of the fate of maritime states must be first
traced, as these are the introduction to the higher forms of state
life. After first tracing the lateral branch, we shall then return to
the starting point, the primitive feudal State, follow the main trunk
to the development of the modern constitutional State, and anticipating
actual history, sketch the “free citizenship” of the future.

CHAPTER IV

THE MARITIME STATE

The course of life and the path of suffering of the State founded by
sea nomads, as has been stated above, is determined by commercial
capital; just as that of the territorial State is determined by capital
vested in realty; and, we may add, that of the modern constitutional
State by productive capital. The sea nomad, however, did not invent
trade or merchandising, fairs or markets or cities; these preëxisted,
and since they served his purpose, were now developed to suit his
interests. All these institutions, serving the economic means, the
barter for equivalents, had long since been discovered.

Here for the first time in our survey we find the economic means not
the object of exploitation by the political means, but as a coöperating
agent in originating the State, one might call it the “chain” passing
into the “lift” created by the feudal state to bring forth a more
elaborate structure. The genesis of the maritime State would not be
thoroughly intelligible, were we not to premise a statement concerning
traffic and interchange of wares in prehistoric times. Furthermore, no
prognosis of the modern state is complete, which does not take into
account the independently formed economic means of aboriginal barter.

(a) TRAFFIC IN PREHISTORIC TIMES

The psychological explanation of barter has brought forth the theory
of the marginal utility, its greatest merit. According to this theory,
the subjective valuation of any economic good decreases in proportion
to the number of objects of the same kind possessed by the same owner.
When even two proprietors meet, each having a number of similar
articles, they will gladly barter, provided political means are barred,
i. e., if both parts are apparently equally strong and well-armed, or
in the very early stage, are within the sacred circle of relationship.
By barter, each one receives property of very high subjective value,
in place of property of very low subjective value, so that both
parties are gainers in the transaction. The desire of primitive people
for bartering must be stronger than that of cultured ones. For at
this stage man does not value his own goods, but covets the things
belonging to strangers, and is hardly affected by calculated economic
considerations.

On the other hand, we must not forget that there are primitive
peoples for whom barter has no attraction whatever. “Cook tells of
tribes in Polynesia, with whom no intercourse was possible, since
presents made absolutely no impression on them, and were afterward
thrown away; everything shown them they regarded with indifference,
and with no desire to own it, while with their own things they
would not part; in fact, they had no conception of either trade or
barter.”[58] So Westermarck is of the opinion that “barter and traffic
are comparatively late inventions.” In this he stands in opposition
to Peschel, who would have it that man in the earliest known stage
of development engaged in barter. Westermarck states that there is no
proof “that the cave-dwellers of Périgord from the reindeer period
obtained their rock-crystals, their shells from the Atlantic, and the
horns of the Saiga antelope from (modern) Poland by way of barter.”[59]

In spite of these exceptions, which admit other explanations--perhaps
the natives feared sorcery--the history of primitive peoples shows that
the desire to trade and barter is a universal human characteristic.
It can, however, take effect only when these primitive men on meeting
with strangers are offered new enticing objects, since in the immediate
circle of their own blood kinsmen every one has the same kinds of
property, and in their natural communism, on the average about the same
amount.

Yet even then, barter, the beginning of all regular trading, can take
place only when the meeting with foreigners is a peaceable one. But is
there any possibility for peaceable meeting with foreigners? Is not
primitive man, through his entire life, and especially at the period
when barter begins, still under the apprehension that every one of a
different horde is an enemy to be feared as the wolf?

After trade is developed, it is, as a rule, strongly influenced by the
“political means,” “trade generally follows robbery.”[60] But its first
beginnings are chiefly the result of the economic means, the outcome of
pacific, not warlike, intercourse.

The international relations of primitive huntsmen with one another
must not be confused with those existing either between the huntsmen
or herdsmen and their peasants, or amongst the herdsmen themselves.
There are, undoubtedly, blood-feuds, or feuds because of looted women,
or possibly because of violation of the districts set aside for
hunting grounds; but these lack that strong incentive, which is the
consequence of avarice alone, of the desire to despoil other men of the
products of their labor. Therefore, the “wars” of primitive huntsmen
are scarcely real wars, but rather scuffles and single combats,
carried on frequently--as are the German student duels--according
to an established ceremonial, and prolonged only up to the point
of incapacity to fight, as one might say, “until claret has been
drawn.”[61] These tribes, numerically very weak, wisely limit bloodshed
to the indispensable amount--e. g., in case of a blood vendetta
feud--and thus avoid starting new vendetta blood feuds.

For this reason, pacific relations with their neighbors on an equal
economic scale are much stronger, and also freer from the incentive to
use political means, both among huntsmen and among primitive peasants,
than among herdsmen. There are numerous examples where the former
meet peaceably to exploit natural resources in common. “While yet
in primitive stages of civilization, great masses of people gather
together, from time to time, at places where useful objects may be
found. The Indians of a large part of America made regular pilgrimages
to the flint grounds; others assembled annually at harvest time at the
Zizania swamps of the lakes of the Northwest. The Australians, living
scattered in the Barku district, assemble from all directions for the
harvest festivals at the swamp beds of the corn bearing Marsiliacae.
When the bonga-bonga trees in Queensland produce a superabundant crop,
and a greater store is on hand than the tribe can consume, foreign
tribes are permitted to share therein.”[63] “Various tribes agree on
the common ownership of definite strips of territory, and likewise of
the quarries of phonolite for hatchets.”[64] Numerous Australian tribes
have common consultations and sessions of the elders for judgment. In
these, the remainder of the population form the bystanders, a custom
similar to the Germanic “_Umstand_” in the primitive folkmoot.[65]

It is but natural that such meetings should bring about barter. Perhaps
this explains the origin of those “weekly fairs held by the Negroes
of Central Africa in the midst of the primæval forest _under special
arrangements for the peace_,”[66] and likewise the great fairs, said
to be very ancient, of the fur hunters of the extreme north of the
Tschuktsche.

All these things presuppose the development of pacific forms of
intercourse between neighboring groups. These forms are to be found
almost universally. They could very easily be developed at this period,
since the discovery had not yet been made that men can be utilized as
labor motors. At this stage, the stranger is treated as an enemy only
in doubtful cases. If he comes with apparently peaceable intent, he is
treated as a friend. Therefore, a whole code of public law ceremonies
grew up, intended to demonstrate the pacific intent of the newcomer.[K]
One puts aside one’s arms and shows one’s unarmed hand, or one sends
heralds in advance, who are always inviolable.

[K] In this category must be reckoned the salutation, still in use in
some parts, “Peace Be With You.” It is expressive of the perversity of
Tolstoi’s later years that he misapprehends this characteristic mark of
a time when war was the normal state of affairs, as the remnant of a
golden age of peace. _The Importance of the Russian Revolution_ (German
translation by A. Hess, p. 17).

It is clear that these forms represent some kind of claim to
hospitality, and in fact it is by this guest-right that peaceful trade
is first made possible. The exchange of guest-gifts precedes, and
appears to introduce, barter proper. It becomes, therefore, important
to investigate the source of hospitality.

Westermarck, in his recent monumental work (1907), _Origin and
Development of Moral Concepts_,[68] states that the custom of
hospitality results from two causes, curiosity for news from the
stranger from afar, and still more from the fear that the stranger
may be endowed with powers of sorcery, imputed to him just because he
is a stranger.[L] In the Bible, hospitality is recommended for the
reason that one can not know that the stranger may not be an angel.
The superstitious race fears his curse (the Erinys of the Greeks) and
hastens to propitiate the stranger. Having been accepted as a guest he
is inviolable and enjoys the sacred right of the blood-related group,
and is regarded as belonging to it during his stay. Therefore he
partakes of the benefits of the aboriginal communism reigning in the
group, and shares its property. The host demands and receives whatever
he claims, the stranger obtains in turn what he asks for. When the
peaceable intercourse becomes more frequent, the mutual giving of
guest-presents may develop into a trading arrangement, because the
trader gladly returns to the spot where he found good entertainment
and a profitable exchange and where he is protected by the laws of
hospitality, instead of seeking new places, where, often with danger to
his life, he would first have to acquire the right to hospitality.

[L] This may account for the use made of old women as heralds. They
are doubly available for that purpose, since they are worthless for
warfare, and are supposed to be endowed with specific powers of sorcery
(Westermarck), even more than old men, who also are treated cautiously,
since they may soon become “ghosts.”

The existence of an “international” division of labor is, of course,
presupposed before the development of a regular trade relation can
begin. Such a division of labor exists much earlier and to a greater
extent than is generally believed. “It is quite erroneous to suppose
that the division of labor takes place only on a high scale of
economic development. There are in the interior of Africa villages of
iron-smiths, nay, of such as only turn out dart-knives; New Guinea has
its villages of potters, North America its arrow-head makers.”[69]
From such specialties there develops trade, whether through roving
merchants, or by gifts to one’s hosts, or by peace-gifts from tribe
to tribe. In North America, the Kaddu trade in bows. “Obsidian was
universally employed for arrow heads and knives; on the Yellowstone, on
the Snake River, in New Mexico, but especially in Mexico. Thence the
precious article was distributed all over the entire country as far as
Ohio and Tennessee, a distance of nearly two thousand miles.”[70]

According to Vierkandt: “From the purely home-made products of
primitive peoples, there results a system of trade totally distinct
from that prevailing under modern conditions.... Each separate tribe
has developed special aptitudes, leading to interexchange. Even among
the comparatively uncivilized Indian tribes of South America, we find
such differentiations.... By such a trade, products may be distributed
over extraordinary distances, not in any direct way through
professional traders, but through a gradual passing along from tribe
to tribe. The origin of such a trade, as Buecher has shown, is to be
traced back to the exchange of guest-gifts.”[71]

Besides this exchange of guest-gifts, a trade may grow from the peace
offerings which adversaries after a fight exchange as a sign of
reconciliation. Sartorius reports on Polynesia: “After a war between
different islands, the peace offerings for each group were something
novel; and if the present and return present pleased both parties, a
repetition took place, and thus again the way for exchange of products
was opened. But, these, in contrast to guest-gifts, were the bases of
continuing intercourse. Here, in place of the contact of individuals,
tribes and peoples met. Women are the first object of barter; they form
the connecting link between strange tribes, and according to evidence
from many sources, women are exchanged for cattle.”[72]

We meet here an object of trade, exchangeable even without
“international division of labor.” And it appears as though the
_exchange of women_ had, in many ways, smoothed the way for the
traffic in merchandise, as though it had been the first step toward
the _peaceable_ integration of tribes, which accompanied the _warlike_
integration of the formation of the State. Lippert, however, believes
that the peaceful _exchange of fire_ antedates this barter.[73]
Conceding that this custom is very ancient, he can nevertheless trace
it only from rudiments of observances and of law; and since proof is
no longer accessible, we shall not pursue the question further in this
place.

On the other hand, the exchange of women is observed universally,
and doubtless exerts an extraordinarily strong influence in the
development of peaceable intercourse between neighboring tribes,
and in the preparation for barter of merchandise. The story of the
Sabine women, who threw themselves between their brothers and their
husbands, as these were about to engage in battle, must have been an
actuality in a thousand instances in the course of the development of
the human race. All over the world, the marriage of near relatives is
considered an outrage, as “incest,” for reasons not within the scope
of this book.[74] This directs the sexual longing toward the women of
neighboring tribes, and thus makes the loot of women a part of the
primary intertribal relations; and in nearly all cases, unless strong
feelings of race counteract it, the violent carrying off of women
is gradually commuted to barter and purchase, the custom resulting
from the relative undesirability of the women of one’s own blood in
comparison to the wives to be had from other tribes.[75]*

Where division of labor made at all possible the exchange of goods, the
relations among the various tribes would thereafter be made serviceable
to it; the exogamic groups gradually become accustomed regularly to
meet on a peaceful basis. The peace, originally protecting the horde of
blood relations, thereafter comes to be extended over a wider circle.
One example from numberless instances: “Each of the two Camerun tribes
has its own ‘bush countries,’ places where its own tribesmen trade,
and where, by intermarriage, they have relatives. Here also exogamy
shows its tribe-linking power.”

These are the principal lines of growth of peaceful barter and traffic;
from the right to hospitality and the exchange of women, perhaps also
from the exchange of fire, to the trade in commodities. In addition
to this, markets and fairs, and perhaps also traders, were almost
uniformly regarded as being under the protection of a god who preserved
peace and avenged its violation. Thus we have brought the fundamentals
of this most important sociological factor to the point where the
political means enters as a cause to disturb, rearrange, and then to
develop and affect the creations of the economic means.

(b) TRADE AND THE PRIMITIVE STATE

There are two very important reasons why the robber-warrior should not
unduly interfere with such markets and fairs as he may find within his
conquered domain.

The first, which is extra-economic, is the superstitious fear that
the godhead will avenge a breach of the peace. The second, which is
economic, and probably is the more important--and I think I am the
first to point out this connection--is that the conquerors can not well
do without the markets.

The booty of the primitive victors consists of much property which is
unavailable for their immediate use and consumption. Since valuable
articles at that period exist in but few forms, while these few occur
in large quantity, the “marginal utility” of any one kind is held very
low. This applies especially to the most important product of the
political means, slaves. Let us first take up the case of the herdsman:
his need of slaves is limited by the size of his herds; he is very
likely to exchange his surplus for other objects of greater value to
him: for salt, ornaments, arms, metals, woven materials, utensils, etc.
For that reason, the herdsman is not only at all times a robber, always
in addition he is a merchant and trader and he protects trade.

He protects trade coming his way in order to exchange his loot against
the products of another civilization--from the earliest times, nomads
have convoyed the caravans passing through their steppes or deserts in
consideration of protection money--but he also protects trade even in
places conquered by him in prehistoric times. Quite the same sort of
consideration which influenced the herdsmen to change from bear stage
to bee-keeper stage, must have influenced them to maintain and protect
ancient markets and fairs. One single looting, in this case, would
mean killing the hen that lays the golden eggs. It is more profitable
to preserve the market and rather to extend the prevailing peace over
it, since there is not only the profit to be had from an exchange
of foreign wares against loot, but also the protection money, the
lords’ toll, to be collected. For that reason princes of feudal states
of every stage of development extended over markets, highways and
merchants, their especial protection, the “king’s peace,” often indeed
reserving to themselves the monopoly of foreign trade. Everywhere we
see them busily engaged in calling into being new fairs and cities by
the grant of protection and immunity.

This interest in the system of fairs and markets makes it thoroughly
credible that tribes of herdsmen respected existing market places in
their sphere of influence to such an extent that they suspended the
exertion of the political means so completely as not even to exercise
“dominion” over them. The story told by Herodotus is inherently
probable, though he was astonished that the Argippæans had a sacred
market amidst the lawless Scythian herdsmen, and that their unarmed
inhabitants were effectively protected through the hallowed peace of
their market place. Many similar phenomena make this the more easily
believable.

“No one dare harm them, since they are considered _holy_; and yet they
have no arms; but it is they who allay the quarrels of their neighbors,
and whoever has escaped to them as a runaway may not be touched by any
other man.”[76] Similar instances are found frequently: “It is always
the same story of the Argippæans, the story of the ‘holy,’ ‘unarmed,’
‘just,’ bartering, and strife-settling tribelet in the midst of a
Bedouin-like, nomadic population.”[77] Cære may be taken as an example
of a higher type. Strabo says of its inhabitants: “The Greeks thought
highly of their bravery and justice, because although powerful in a
great degree, they abstained from robbery.” Mommsen, who quotes this
passage, adds: “This does not exclude piracy, which was engaged in by
the merchants of Cære as well as by all other merchants, but rather
that Cære was a sort of free harbor for the Phœnicians as for the
Greeks.”[78]

Cære is not like the fair of the Argippæans, a market place in the
interior _of a district of land nomads, but is in the midst of a domain
of sea nomads, a port endowed with its own peace_. This is one of those
typical formations whose importance, in my estimation, has not been
appreciated at its real value. They have, it seems to me, exercised a
mighty influence on the genesis of maritime states.

Those reasons by which we saw the land nomads forced to preserve, if
not to create, market places, must with even more intensity, have
coerced the sea nomads to similar demeanor. For the transportation of
loot, especially of herds and of slaves, is difficult and dangerous on
the trails across the desert or the steppes: the slow progress invites
pursuit. But with war-canoe and “dragon-ship” this transportation
is easy and safe. For that reason, the Viking is even much more a
trader and merchant than is the herdsman. As is said in _Faust_, “War,
Commerce, and Piracy are inseparable.”

(c) THE GENESIS OF THE MARITIME STATE

In many cases, I believe, trade in the loot of piracy is the origin of
those cities around which, as political centers, the city-states of the
antique or Mediterranean civilization grew up; while in very many other
cases, the same trade coöperated to bring them to the same point of
political development.

These harbor markets developed from probably two general types: they
grew up either as piratical fortresses directly and intentionally
placed in hostile territory, or else as “merchant colonies” based on
treaty rights in the harbors of foreign primitive or developed feudal
states.

Of the first type, we have a number of important examples from ancient
history which correspond exactly to the fourth stage of our scheme,
where an armed colony of pirates plants itself down at a commercially
and strategically defendable point on the seacoast of a foreign state.
The most notable instance is Carthage; and in like manner, the Greek
sea nomads, Ionians, Dorians and Achæans, settled in their sea castles
on the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian coasts of Southern Italy, on the
islands of these seas, and on the gulfs of Southern Gaul. Phœnicians,
Etruscans,[M] Greeks, and according to modern investigation, Carians,
all about the Mediterranean, founded their “States” after the same
type, with identical class division into masters and servile peasantry
of the neighboring territory.[79]

[M] Whether the Etruscans were immigrants into Italy by land who took
up piracy after having made war successfully on land, or whether as sea
nomads they had already settled the country along the sea named after
them, has not been determined.

Some of these states on the coast developed into feudal states
of the type of the territorial states; and the master class then
became a landed aristocracy. The factors in this change were: first,
geographical conditions, lack of good harbors, and a wide stretch
of _hinterland_ cultivated by peaceful peasants; and secondly, very
probably, the acquired organization into classes taken with them from
their original homes. In many cases, they were fugitive nobles, the
vanquished of domestic feuds, or younger sons, sometimes an entire
generation of youth of both sexes, who thus started “on the viking,”
and having at home had lands and serfs, as petty lords, they again
sought in foreign lands what they regarded as their due. The occupation
of England by the Anglo-Saxons, and of Southern Italy by the Normans,
are examples of this method; so too are the Spanish and Portuguese
colonizations of Mexico and of South America. The Achæan colonies of
Greater Greece in Southern Italy furnish additional and very important
instances of this development of territorial feudal states by sea
nomads: “This Achæan League of cities was a true colonization. The
cities were without harbors--Croton only had a fair roadstead--_and
were without any trade of their own_; the Sybarite could boast of
his growing gray in his water town between his home bridges, while
buying and selling were carried on by Milesians and Etruscans. On the
other hand, the Greeks in this region not only controlled the fringe
of the shore, but ruled from sea to sea; ... the native agricultural
inhabitants were forced into a relation of clientage or serfdom, and
were required to work the farms of their masters or to pay tribute to
them.”[80] It is probable that most of the Doric colonies in Crete were
similarly organized.

But in the course of universal history these “territorial states,”
whether they arose more or less frequently, did not acquire any such
importance as did those maritime cities which devoted their principal
energies to commerce and to privateering. Mommsen contrasts in distinct
and well chosen sentences the Achæan landed squire with the “royal
merchants” of the Greek Colonies in Southern Italy: “In no way did
they spurn agriculture or the increase of territory; the Greeks were
not satisfied, at least not after they became powerful, to remain
within the confined space of a fortified commercial factory in the
midst of the country of the barbarians, as the Phœnicians had done.
Their cities were founded primarily and exclusively for purposes of
trade, and unlike the Achæan colonies, were universally situated at the
best harbors and landing places.”[81] We are certain, in the case of
the Ionic colonies, and may well assume it for the other cases, that
the founders of these cities were not landed squires, but seafaring
merchants.

But such maritime states or cities, in the strict sense, came into
being not only through warlike conquest, but also through peaceable
beginnings, by a more or less mixed _pénétration pacifique_.

Where, however, the Vikings did not meet peaceable peasants, but feudal
states in the primitive stage, willing to fight, they offered and
accepted terms of peace and settled down as colonies of merchants.

We know of such cases from every part of the world, in harbors and on
markets held on shore. To take the instances with which Germans are
most conversant, there are the settlements of North German merchants
in countries along the German ocean and the Baltic Sea, the German
Steel Yard in London, the Hansa in Sweden and Norway, on the Island
of Schönen, and in Russia, at Novgorod. In Wilna, the capital of the
Grand Dukes of Lithuania, there was such a colony; and the Fondaco
dei Tedeschi in Venice is another example of a similar institution.
The strangers in nearly every instance settle down as a compact mass,
subject to their own laws and their own jurisdiction. They often
acquire great political influence, sometimes extending to dominion over
the state. One would think the following tale of Ratzel, concerning
the coast and islands of the Indian Ocean, were a contemporaneous
narrative of the Phœnician or Greek invasion of the Mediterranean at
about 1,000 B. C.: “Whole nations have, so to say, been liquefied by
trade, especially the proverbially clever, zealous, omnipresent Malays
of Sumatra; as well as the treacherous Bugi of Celebes. These can
be met with at every place from Singapore to New Guinea. Latterly,
especially in Borneo, they have immigrated in masses on the call of
the Borneo chieftains. Their influence was so strong that they were
permitted _to govern themselves according to their own laws_, and they
felt themselves so strong _that repeatedly they attempted to achieve
independence_. The Achinese formerly occupied a similar position.
Malacca had been made the principal mart by Malays from Sumatra, and
after its decline, Achin became the most frequented harbor of this
distant east, especially for the first quarter of the seventeenth
century, the pivotal period of the development of that corner of the
world.”[82] The following, from among numberless instances, demonstrate
the universality of this form of settlement: “In Urga, _where they
politically dominate_, the merchants are crowded together into a
separate Chinese Town.”[83] In the Jewish States there were “small
colonies of foreign merchants and mechanics, set apart in distinct
quarters of the cities. Here, under the king’s protection, they could
live according to their own religious customs.”[84] We may also compare
with this, First Kings XX, 34. “King Omri of Ephraim was forced by the
military success of his opponent, the King of Damascus, to grant to
the Aramaic merchants the use of certain parts of the city of Samaria,
where under royal protection they could trade. Later, when the turn of
war favored his successor, Ahab, the latter demanded the same privilege
for the Ephraimitic merchants in Damascus.”[85] “The inhabitants of
Italy, wherever they were, held together as solid and organized
masses, the soldiers as legionaries, the merchants of all large cities
as corporations; while the Roman citizens domiciled or dwelling in the
various provincial _circuits_, were organized as a ‘convention of Roman
citizens’ with their own communal government.”[86] We may recall the
mediæval Ghettos, which, before the great persecution of the Jews in
the Middle Ages, were similar merchant colonies. The settlements of
Europeans in the ports of strong foreign empires at the present time
show similar corporate organizations, having their own constitution and
(consular) jurisdiction. China, Turkey and Morocco must continue to
bear this mark of inferiority, while recently Japan has been able to
rid herself of that badge.

The most interesting point about these colonies, at least for our
study, consists in their general tendency to extend their political
influence into complete domination. And there is good reason for this.
Merchants have a mass of movable wealth, which is likely to be used as
a decisive factor in the political upheavals constantly disturbing
all feudal states, be it in international wars between two neighboring
states, or in intra-national fights, such as wars of succession. In
addition to this the colonists, in many cases, may rely on the power of
their home state, basing their claim on ties of blood and on uncommonly
strong commercial interests; while there is besides, the fact that in
many cases they have in their warlike sailor-folk and their numerous
slaves an effective and compact force of their own, capable of
accomplishing much in a limited sphere.

The following story of the rôle played by Arab merchants in East Africa
appears to me to show a historical type heretofore not sufficiently
appreciated: “When Speke, as the first European, made this trip in
1857, the Arabs were merchants, living as aliens in the land. When
in 1861 he passed the same way, the Arabs resembled great landed
proprietors with rich estates and were waging war with the native
territorial ruler. This process, repeatedly found in many other regions
in the interior of Africa, is the necessary consequence of the balance
of power. The foreign merchants, be they Arabs or Suaheli, ask the
privilege of transit and pay tribute for it; they establish warehouses,
which the chiefs favor, as these seem both to satisfy their vanity and
to extend their connections; then incurring the suspicion, oppression
and persecution of the chiefs, the merchants refuse to pay the rack
tolls and dues, which have grown with their increased prosperity. At
last, in one of the inevitable fights for the succession, the Arabs
take the side of one pretender if he is pliable enough, and are thus
brought into internal quarrels of the country and take part in the
often endless wars.”[87]

This political activity of the merchant denizens (_metoikoi_) is
a constantly recurring type. “In Borneo there developed from the
settlements of Chinese gold diggers separate states.”[88] Properly
speaking, the entire history of colonization by Europeans is a series
of examples of the law that, with any superior force, the factories
and larger settlements of foreigners tend to grow into domination,
unless they approximate to the primal type of simple piracy, such as
the Spanish and Portuguese conquests, or the East India Companies, both
the English and the Dutch. “There lies a robber state beside the ocean,
between the Rhine and the Scheldt,” are the accusing words of the Dutch
Multatuli. All East Asiatic, American and African colonies of all
European peoples arose as one or the other of these two types.

But the aliens do not always obtain unconditional mastery. Sometimes
the host state is too strong, and the newcomers remain politically
powerless but protected aliens; as, for example, the Germans in
England. Sometimes the host state, although subjugated, becomes strong
enough to shake off the foreign domination; so, for instance, Sweden
drove out the Hanseats who had imposed on her their sovereignty. In
some cases, a conqueror overcomes both merchants and host state, and
subjugates both; as happened to the republics of Novgorod and Pskov,
when the Russians annexed them. In many cases, however, the rich
foreigners and the domestic nobility amalgamate into one group of
rulers, following the type of the formation of territorial states, in
which we saw this take place whenever two about equally strong groups
of rulers came into conflict. It seems to me that this last named
situation is the most probable assumption for the genesis of the most
important city states of antiquity, for the Greek maritime cities, and
for Rome.

Of Greek history, to use the terms of Kurt Breysig, we know only
the “Middle Ages,” of Roman history, only its “Modern Times.” For
the matters that preceded, we must be extremely careful in drawing
deductions from fancied analogies. But it seems to me that enough facts
are proved and admitted to permit the conclusion that Athens, Corinth,
Mycenæ, Rome, etc., became states in the manner already set forth.
And this would follow, even if the data from all known demography and
general history were not of such universal validity as to permit the
conclusion in itself.

We know accurately from the names of places (Salamis: Island of Peace,
equivalent to Market-Island), from the names of heroes, from monuments,
and from immediate tradition, that in many Greek harbors there existed
Phœnician factories, while the _hinterland_ was occupied by small
feudal states with the typical articulation of nobles, common freemen,
and slaves. It can not seriously be disputed that the development of
the city states was powerfully advanced by foreign influences; and
this is true, though no specific evidence can be adduced to show that
any of the Phœnician, or of the still more powerful Carian merchants
were either allowed to intermarry with the families of the resident
nobility, or were made full citizens, or finally even became princes.

The same applies to Rome, concerning which Mommsen, a cautious author,
states: “Rome owes its importance, if not its origin, to these
commercial and strategic relations. Evidence of this is found in
many traces of far greater value than the tales of historical novels
pretending to be authentic. Take an instance of the primæval relations
existing between Rome and Cære, which was for Etruria what Rome was for
Latium, and thereafter was its nearest neighbor and commercial friend;
or the uncommon importance attributed to the bridge over Tiber and the
bridge building (Pontifex Maximus) in every part of the Roman State; or
the galley in the municipal coat of arms. To this source may be traced
the primitive Roman harbor dues to which, from early times, only those
goods were subject which were intended for sale (_promercale_) and not
what entered the harbor of Ostia, for the proper use of the charterer
(_usuarium_), and which constituted therefore an impost on trade. For
that reason we find the comparatively early use of minted money, and
the commercial treaties of states oversea with Rome. In this sense,
then, Rome may, as the story of its origin states, have been rather a
created than a developed city, and among the Latin cities rather the
youngest than the eldest.”[89]

It would require the work of a lifetime of historical research to
investigate these possibilities, or rather these probabilities;
and then to write the constitutional history of these preëminently
important city states, and to draw thence the very necessary
conclusions. It seems to me that along this path there would be found
much information on many an obscure question, such as the Etruscan
dominion in Rome, or the origin of the rich families of Plebeians, or
concerning the Athenian _metoikoi_, and many other problems.

Here we can only follow the thread which holds out the hope of leading
us through the labyrinth of historical tradition to the issue.

(d) ESSENCE AND ISSUE OF THE MARITIME STATES

All these are true “States” in the sociologic sense, whether they
arose from the fortresses of sea-robbers, or from harbors of original
land nomads as merchant colonies which obtained dominion or which
amalgamated with the dominating group of the host people. For they are
nothing but the organization of the political means, their form is
domination, their content the economic exploitation of the subject by
the master group.

So far as the principle is concerned, they are not to be differentiated
from the States founded by land nomads; and yet they have taken a
different form, both from internal and external reasons, and show a
different psychology of classes.

One must not believe that class feeling was at all different in these
and in the territorial states. Here as there the master class looks
down with the same contempt on the subjects, on the “_Rantuses_,”
on the “man with the blue fingernails,” as the German patrician in
the Middle Ages looked on a being with whom, even when free born, no
intermarriage or social intercourse was permitted. Little indeed does
the class theory of the καλοκἀγαθοί (well-born) or of the patricians
(children of ancestors) differ from that of the country squires. But
other circumstances here bring about differences, consonant, naturally,
with class interests. In any district ruled by merchants, highway
robbery can not be tolerated, and therefore it is considered, e. g.,
among the maritime Greeks, a vulgar crime. The tale of Theseus would
not in a territorial state have been pointed against the highwaymen.
On the other hand, “piracy was regarded by them, in most remote
times, as a trade nowise dishonorable ... of which ample proof may be
found in the Homeric poems; while at a much later period Polycrates
had organized a well developed robber state on the Island of Samos.”
“In the _Corpus Juris_, mention is made of a law of Solon in which
the association of pirates (ἐπὶ λείαν οἰχόμενοι) is recognized as a
permissible company.”[90]

But quite apart from such details, mentioned only because they serve to
cast a clear light on the growth of the “ideologic superstructure,”[N]
the basic conditions of existence of maritime states, utterly different
from those of territorial states, called into being two exceedingly
important phenomena, which are of universal historical importance,
viz., the growth of a _democratic constitution_, whereby the gigantic
contest between the sultanism of the Orient and the civic freedom of
the West was to be fought out (according to Mommsen the true content
of universal history); and in the second place the development of
_capitalistic slave-work_, which in the end was to annihilate all these
states.

[N] How characteristic of these relations it is that Great Britain,
the only “maritime state” of Europe, even at this present day will not
surrender the right to arm privateers.

Let us first consider the inner or socio-psychological causes of this
contrast between the territorial and the maritime state.

States are maintained by the same principle from which they
arise. Conquest of land and populations is the _ratio essendi_ of
a territorial state; and by the repeated conquest of lands and
populations it must grow, until its natural growth is checked by
mountain ranges, desert, or ocean, or its sociological bounds are
determined by contact with other states of its own kind, which it can
not subjugate. The maritime state, on the other hand, came into being
from piracy and trade; and through these two means, it must strive
to extend its power. For this purpose, no extended territory need
be absolutely subjected to its sway. There is no need to carry its
development beyond the first five stages. The maritime states rarely,
and only when compelled, proceed beyond the fifth stage, and attain to
complete intra-nationality and amalgamation. Usually, it is enough if
other sea nomads and traders are kept away, if the monopoly of robbery
and trade is secured, and if the “subjects” are kept quiet by forts
and garrisons. Important places of production are, of course, actually
“dominated”; and this applies especially to mines, to a few fertile
grain belts, to woods with good lumber, to salt works, and to important
fisheries. Domination here, therefore, means permanent administration,
by making the subjects work these for the ruling class. It is only
later in the development, that there arises a taste for “lands and
serfs” and large domains for the ruling class _beyond the confines of
the narrow and original limits of the State_. This happens when the
maritime state by the incorporation of subjugated territories has
become a mixture of the territorial and the maritime forms. But even in
that case, and in contradistinction to territorial states, large landed
properties are merely a source of money rentals, and are in nearly all
cases administered as absentee-property. This we find in Carthage and
in the later Roman Empire.

The interests of the master class, which in the maritime state as well
as in every other state, governs according to its own advantage, are
different from those in the territorial state. In the latter the feudal
territorial magnate is powerful because of his ownership of lands
and people; while conversely, the patrician of the maritime city is
powerful because of his wealth. The territorial magnate can dominate
his “State” only by the number of men-at-arms maintained by him, and
in order to have as many of these as possible, he must increase his
territory as much as possible. The patrician, on the other hand, can
control his “state” only by movable wealth, with which he can hire
strong arms or bribe weak souls; such wealth is won faster by piracy
and by trade than by land wars and the possession of large estates
in distant territories. Furthermore, in order thoroughly to use such
property, he would be obliged to leave his city to settle down on it,
and to become a regular squire; because in a period when money has not
yet become general, where a profitable division of labor between town
and country has not yet come about, the exploitation of large estates
can only be carried on by actually consuming their products, and
absentee ownership as a source of income is inconceivable. Thus far,
however, we have not reached that portion of the development. We are
still examining primitive conditions. No patrician of any city-state
would, at this time, think of leaving his lively rich home, in order
to bury himself among barbarians, and thus with one move cut himself
off in his state from any political rôle. All his economic, social and
political interests impel him with one accord toward maritime ventures.
Not landed property, but movable capital, is the sinew of his life.

These were the moving causes of the actions of the master class in
the maritime cities; and even where geographical conditions permitted
an extensive expansion beyond the adjoining _hinterland_ of these
cities, they turned the weight of effort toward sea-power rather than
toward territorial growth. Even in the case of Carthage, its colossal
territory was of far less importance to it than its maritime interests.
Primarily it conquered Sicily and Corsica more in order to check the
competition of the Greek and Etruscan traders than for the sake of
owning these islands; it extended its territories toward the Lybians
largely to insure the security of its other home possessions; and
finally, when it conquered Spain, its ultimate reason was the need
of owning the mines. The history of the _Hansa_ shows many points
of similarity to the above. The majority of these maritime cities,
moreover, were not capable of subjugating a large district. Even had
there been the will to conquer, there were extraneous, geographical
conditions that hindered. All along the Mediterranean, with the
exception of some few places, the coastal plain is extremely narrow,
a small strip fenced off by high mountain ranges. That was one cause
which prevented most of the states grouped about some trading harbor
from growing to anything like the size we should naturally assume to be
probable; while in the open country, ruled by herdsmen, and this very
early, immense realms came into being. The second cause for the small
beginnings of these states is found in this, that the _hinterland_
whether in the hills or on the few plains of the Mediterranean was
occupied by warlike tribes. These tribesmen, either hunters or warlike
herdsmen, or else primitive feudal states of the same master race as
the sea nomads, were not likely to be subjugated without a severe
contest. Thus in Greece the interior was saved from the maritime states.

For these reasons the maritime State, even when most developed, always
remains centralized, one is tempted to say centered, on its trading
harbor; while the territorial State, strongly decentralized from the
start, for a long time continues to develop as it expands a still
more pronounced decentralization. Later, we shall see how this is
affected by the adoption of those forms of government and of economic
achievement which first were perfected in the “city-state,” and which
thus obtained the strength to counteract the centrifugal forces, and to
build up the central organization which is characteristic of our modern
states. This is the first great contrast between the two forms of the
State.

No less decisive is the second point of contrast, whereby the
territorial State remains tied up to natural economies as opposed to
money economies, toward which the maritime State quickly turns. This
contrast grows also out of the basic conditions of their existence.

Wherever a State lives in natural economy, money is a superfluous
luxury--so superfluous that an economy developed to the use of
money retrogrades again into a system of payments in kind as soon
as the community drops back into the primitive form. Thus after
Charlemagne had issued good coins, the economic situation expelled
them. Neustria--not to mention Austrasia--under the stress of the
migration of the peoples reverted to payment in kind. Such a system
can well do without money as a standard of values, since it is without
any developed intercourse and traffic. The lord’s tenants furnish
as tribute those things that the lord and his followers consume
immediately; while his ornaments, fine fabrics, damascened arms, or
rare horses, salt, etc., are procured in exchange with wandering
merchants for slaves, wax, furs and other products of a warlike
economic system of exchange in kind.

In city life, at any advanced stage of development, it is impossible to
exist without a common measure of values. The free mechanic in a city
can not, except in rare cases, find some other craftsman in need of the
special thing which he produces, prepared to consume it immediately.
Then, too, in cities the inevitable retail trade in food products,
where every one must purchase nearly everything required, makes the
use of coined money quite inevitable. It is impossible to conduct
trade in its more limited sense, not between merchant and customers,
but between merchant and merchant, without having a common measure of
value. Imagine the case of a trader entering a port with a cargo of
slaves, wishing to take cloth as a return cargo, and finding a cloth
merchant who at the time may not want slaves but iron, or cattle,
or furs. To accomplish this exchange, at least a dozen intermediate
trades would have to take place before the object could be achieved.
That can be avoided only if there exists some one commodity desired by
all. In the system of payment in kind of the territorial states this
may be taken by cattle or horses, since they may be used by any one at
some time; but the ship owner can not load with cattle as a means of
payment, and thus gold and silver become recognized as “money.”

From centralization and from the use of money, which are the necessary
properties of the maritime or the _city State_, as we shall hereafter
call it, its fate follows of necessity.

The psychology of the townsman, and especially of the dweller in the
maritime commercial city, is radically different from that of the
countryman. His point of view is freer and more inclusive, even though
it be more superficial; he is livelier, because more impressions strike
him in a day than a peasant in a year. He becomes used to constant
changes and news, and thus is always _novarum rerum cupidus_. He is
more remote from nature and less dependent on it than is the peasant,
and therefore he has less fear of “ghosts.” One consequence of this is
that an underling in a city State is less apt to regard the “taboo”
regulations imposed on him by the first and second estates of rulers.
And as he is compelled to live in compact masses with his fellow
subjects, he early finds his strength in numbers, so that he becomes
more unruly and seditious than the serf who lives in such isolation
that he never becomes conscious of the mass to which he belongs and
ever remains under the impression that his overlord with his followers
would have the upper hand in every fight.

This in itself brings about an ever progressive dissolution of the
rigid system of subordinated groups first created by the feudal state.
In Greece the territorial states alone were able to keep their subjects
for a long time in a state of subjection: Sparta its Helots, Thessaly
its _Penestæ_. In all the city States, on the other hand, we early
find an uprising of the proletariat against which the master class was
unable to oppose an effective resistance.

The economic situation tends toward the same result as the conditions
of settlement. Movable wealth had far less stability than landed
property: the sea is tricky, and the fortunes of maritime war and
piracy not less so. The rich man of to-day may lose all by a turn of
Fortune’s wheel; while the poorest man may, by the same swing, land
on top. But in a commonwealth based entirely on possessions, loss
of fortune brings with it loss of rank and of “class,” just as the
converse takes place. The rich Plebeian becomes the leader of the
mass of the people in their constitutional fight for equal rights and
places all his fortune at risk in that struggle. The position of the
patricians becomes untenable; when coerced they have ever conceded
the claims of the lower class. As soon as the first rich Plebeian has
been taken into their ranks, the right of rule by birth, defended as a
holy institution, has forever become impossible. Henceforth it follows
that what is fair for one is fair for the other; and the aristocratic
rule is followed first by the plutocratic, then by the democratic,
finally by the ochlocratic régime, until either foreign conquest or
the “tyranny” of some “Savior of the Sword” rescues the community from
chaos.

This end affects not only the State, but in most cases its inhabitants
so profoundly that one may speak of a literal _death of the peoples_,
caused by the _capitalistic exploitation of slave labor_. This latter
is a social institution inevitably bound to exist in every state
founded on piracy and maritime ventures and thus coming to use money as
a means of exchange. In the primitive stages of feudalism, whence it
was derived, slavery was harmless, as is true in all economic systems
based on exchange and use in kind, only to become an ulcerating cancer,
utterly destructive of the entire life of the State as soon as it is
exploited by the “capitalist” method, i. e., as soon as slave labor is
applied, not to be used in a system of a feudal payment in kind, but to
supply a market paying in money.

Numberless slaves are brought into the country by piracy, privateering,
or by the commercial wars. The wealth of their owners permits them
to work the ground more intensively, and the owners of realty within
the confines of the city limits draw ever increasing revenues from
their possessions, and become more and more greedy of land. The small
freeholder in the country, overburdened by the taxes and military
service of wars waged in the interests of this great merchant class,
sinks into debt, becomes a slave for debt, or migrates into the city
as a pauper. But even so there is no hope for him, since the removal
of the peasants has damaged the craftsmen and small traders, for the
peasants were wont to purchase in the city, while the great estates,
constantly increasing by the removal of the peasantry, supply their
own needs by their own slave products. The evil attacks other parts
of the body politic. The remaining trades are gradually usurped by
masters exploiting slave labor, which is cheaper than free labor.
The middle class thus goes to pieces; and a pauper, good-for-nothing
mob, a genuine “bob-tail proletariat” comes into being, which, by
reason of the democratic constitution achieved in the interim, is the
sovereign of the commonwealth. The full course, political as well as
military, is then a mere question of time. It may take place without
a foreign invasion; which, however, usually sets in, when by reason
of the physical breakdown caused by the immense depopulation, by the
consumption of the people in its literal sense, the final stage is
attained. This is the end of all these states. Within the scope of this
treatise we can not dilate on this phase.

Only one city State was able to maintain itself throughout the
centuries, because it was the ultimate conqueror of all the others,
and because it was enabled to counteract the consumption of population
by the only method of sanitation possible; by extensive recreations
of middle class populations, both in cities and in country districts,
as well as by vast colonizations of peasants on lands taken from the
vanquished.

The Roman Empire was that state. But even this gigantic organism
finally succumbed to the consumption of population, caused by
capitalistic slave exploitation. In the interval, however, it had
created the first _imperium_, i. e., the first tensely centralized
state on a large scale, and had overcome and amalgamated all
territorial states of both the Mediterranean shores and its neighboring
countries, and had thereby for all time set before the world the model
of such an organized dominion. In addition to this it had developed
the organization of cities and of the system of money economy to such
an extent that they never were utterly destroyed, even in the turmoil
of the barbarian migration. In consequence of this, the feudal
territorial states that occupied the territory of the former Roman
Empire either directly or indirectly received those new impulses which
were to carry them beyond the condition of the normal primitive feudal
State.

CHAPTER V

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEUDAL STATE

(a) THE GENESIS OF LANDED PROPERTY

We now return, as stated above, to that point where the primitive
feudal State gave rise to the city State as an offshoot, to follow the
upward growth of the main branch. As the destiny of the city State was
determined by the agglomeration of that form of wealth about which
the State swung in its orbit, so the fate of the territorial State is
conditioned by that agglomeration of wealth which in turn controls its
orbit, the _ownership of landed property_.

In the preceding, we followed the economic differentiation in the
case of the shepherd tribes, and showed that even here the law of the
agglomeration about existing nuclei of wealth begins to assert its
efficacy, as soon as the political means comes into play, be it in the
form of wars for booty or still more in the form of slavery. We saw
that the tribe had differentiated nobles and common freemen, beneath
whom slaves, being without any political rights, are subordinated as
a third class. This differentiation of wealth is introduced into the
primitive state, and sharpens very markedly the contrast of social
rank. It becomes still more accentuated by settlement, whereby private
ownership in lands is created. Doubtless there existed even at the time
when the primitive feudal state came into being, great differences in
the amount of lands possessed by individuals, especially if within
the tribe of herdsmen the separation had been strongly marked between
the prince-like owners of large herds and many slaves, and the poorer
common freemen. These princes occupy more land than do the small
freemen.

At first, this happens quite harmlessly, and without a trace of any
consciousness of the fact that extended possession of land will become
the means of a considerable increase of social power and of wealth.
Of this, there is at this time no question, since at this stage the
common freemen would have been powerful enough to prevent the formation
of extended landed estates had they known that it would eventually do
them harm. But no one could have foreseen this possibility. Lands, in
the condition in which we are observing them, have no value. For that
reason the object and the spoils of the contest were not the possession
of _lands_, but of _the land and its peasants, the latter being bound
to the soil_ (_glebæ adscripti_ of our later law) as labor substrat and
labor motors, from the conjunction of which there grows the object of
the political means, viz., ground rent.

Every one is at liberty to take as much of _the uncultivated land_
existing in masses as he needs and will or can cultivate. It is quite
as unlikely that any one would care to measure off for another parts
of an apparently limitless supply, as that any one would apportion the
supply of atmospheric air.

The princes of the noble clans, probably from the start, pursuant to
the usage of the tribe of herdsmen, receive more “lands and peasants”
than do the common freemen. That is their right as princes, because
of their position as patriarchs, war lords, and captains maintaining
their warlike suites of half-free persons, of servants, of clients, or
of refugees. This probably amounts to a considerable difference in the
primitive amounts of land ownership. But this is not all. The princes
need a larger surface of the “_land without peasants_” than do the
common freemen, because they bring with them their servants and slaves.
These have, however, no standing at law, and are incapable, according
to the universal concepts of folk law, of acquiring title to landed
property. Since, however, they must have land in order to live, their
master takes it for them, so as to settle them thereon. In consequence
of this, the richer the prince of the nomad tribe the more powerful the
territorial magnate becomes.

But this means that wealth, and with it social rank, is consolidated
more firmly and more durably than in the stage of herdsman
ownership. For the greatest herds may be lost, but landed property
is indestructible; and men bound to labor, bringing forth rentals,
reproduce their kind even after the most terrible slaughter, even
should they not be obtainable full grown in slave hunts.

About this fixed nucleus of wealth, property begins to agglomerate
with increasing rapidity. Harmless as was the first occupation, men
must soon recognize the fact that rental increases with the number of
slaves one can settle on the unoccupied lands. Henceforth, the external
policy of the feudal state is no longer directed toward the acquisition
of land and peasants, but rather of peasants without land, to be
carried off home as serfs, and there to be colonized anew. When the
entire state carries on the war or the robbing expedition, the nobles
obtain the lion’s share. Very often, however, they go off on their own
account, followed only by their suites, and then the common freeman,
staying at home, receives no share in the loot. Thus the vicious circle
constantly tends rapidly to enlarge with the increasing wealth of the
lands owned by the nobles. The more slaves a noble has, the more rental
he can obtain. With this, in turn, he can maintain a warlike following,
composed of servants, of lazy freemen, and of refugees. With their
help, he can, in turn, drive in so many more slaves, to increase his
rentals.

This process takes place, even where some central power exists, which,
pursuant to the general law of the people, has the right to dispose of
uncultivated lands; while it is, in many cases, not only by sufferance,
but often by the express sanction of that authority. As long as the
feudal magnate remains the submissive vassal of the crown, it lies
in the king’s interest to make him as strong as possible. By this
means his military suite, to be placed at the disposal of the crown
in times of war, is correspondingly increased. We shall adduce only
one illustration to show that the necessary consequence in universal
history is not confined to the well-known effect in the feudal states
of Western Europe, but follows from these premises even under totally
different surroundings: “The principal service in Fiji consisted in
war duty; and if the outcome was successful it meant new grants of
lands, including therein the denizens, as slaves, and thus led to the
assumption of new obligations.”[91]

This accumulation of landed property in ever increasing quantity in
the hands of the landed nobility brings the primitive feudal state of
a higher stage to the “finished feudal state” with a complete scale of
feudal ranks.

Reference to a previous work by the author, based on a study of the
sources, will show the same causal connection for German lands;[92] and
in that publication it was pointed out that in all the instances noted
a process takes place, identical in its principal lines of development.
It is only on this line of reasoning that one can explain the fact,
to take Japan as an example, that its feudal system developed into
the precise details which are well known to the students of European
history, although Japan is inhabited by a race fundamentally different
from the Arians; and besides (a strong argument against giving too
great weight to the materialistic view of history) the process of
agriculture is on a totally different technical basis, since the
Japanese are not cultivators with the plow, but with the hoe.

In this instance, as throughout this book, it is not the fortune of
a single people that is investigated; it is rather the object of the
author to narrate the typical development, the universal consequences,
of the same basic traits of mankind wherever they are placed.
Presupposing a knowledge of the two most magnificent examples of the
expanded feudal state, Western Europe and Japan, we shall, in general,
limit ourselves to cases less well known, and so far as possible give
the preference to material taken from ethnography, rather than from
history in its more restricted sense.

The process now to be narrated is a change, gradually consummated but
fundamentally revolutionary, of the political and social articulation
of the primitive feudal state: _the central authority loses its
political power to the territorial nobility, the common freeman sinks
from his status, while the “subject” mounts_.

(b) THE CENTRAL POWER IN THE PRIMITIVE FEUDAL STATE

The patriarch of a tribe of herdsmen, though endowed with the authority
which flows from his war-lordship and sacerdotal functions, generally
has no despotic powers. The same may be said of the “king” of a small
settled community, where, generally speaking, he would exercise very
limited command. On the other hand, as soon as some military genius
manages to fuse together numerous tribes of herdsmen into one powerful
mass of warriors, despotic centralized power is the direct, inevitable
consequence.[93] As soon as war exists, the truth of the Homeric

    οὐκ ἀγαθὴ πολυκοιρανιὴ εἶς κοίρανος ἔστω
    εἶς βασιλεύς,[O]

is admitted by the most unruly tribes, and becomes a fact to be
acted on. The free primitive huntsmen render to their elected chief
unconditioned obedience, while on the war-path; the free Cossacks
of the Ukraine, recognizing no authority in times of peace, submit
to their _hetman’s_ power of life and death in times of war. This
obedience toward their war-lord is a trait common to every genuine
warrior psychology.

[O] “The rule of the many is not a good thing, over the many there
should be one king.”

The leaders of the great migrations of nomads are all powerful despots:
Attila, Omar, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Mosilikatse, Ketchwayo.
Similarly, we find that whenever a mighty territorial state has
come into being as the result of the welding together of a number
of primitive feudal states, there existed in the beginning a strong
central authority. Examples of this may be seen in the case of Sargon
Cyrus, Chlodowech, Charlemagne, Boleslaw the Red. Sometimes, especially
as long as the main state has not yet reached its geographical or
sociologic bounds, the centralized authority is maintained intact in
the hands of a series of strong monarchs, which degenerates, in some
instances, to the maddest despotism and insanity of some of the Cæsars:
especially do we find flagrant examples of this in Mesopotamia and
in Africa. We shall merely touch on this phase: the more so, as it
has little general effect on the final development of the forms of
government. This point should, however, be stated, that the development
of the form of government of a despotism depends in the main, on what
the _sacerdotal_ status of the rulers may be, in addition to their
position as war-lords, and whether or not they hold the monopoly of
trade as an additional regalian right.

The combination of Cæsar and Pope tends in all cases to develop the
extreme forms of despotism; while the partition of spiritual and
temporal functions brings it about that their exponents mutually check
and counterbalance one another. A characteristic example may be found
in the conditions prevailing among the Malay states of the East Indian
Archipelago, genuine “maritime states,” whose genesis is an exact
counterpart of that of the Greek maritime states. Generally speaking,
the prince has just as little power among these, as, shall we say, the
king at the opening of the history of the Attic states. The chieftains
of the clans (in Sulu the Dato, in Achin the Panglima), as in the case
of Athens, have the real power. But where, “as in Tobah, religious
motives endow the rulers with the position of a Pope in miniature, an
entirely different phase is found. The Panglima then depend entirely
on the Rajah, and are merely officials.”[94] To refer to a well-known
fact, when the aristocrats and chiefs of the clans in Athens and in
Rome abolished the kingdom, they preserved at least the old _title_,
and granted its use to a dignitary otherwise politically impotent,
in order that the gods might have their offerings presented in the
accustomed manner. For the same reason, in many cases, the descendant
of the former tribal king is preserved as a dignitary, otherwise
totally powerless, while the actual power of government has long since
been transferred to some war chief; as in the later Merovingian Empire,
the Carolingian Mayors of the palace (Majordomus) ruled alongside a
“long locked king,” _rex crinitus_, of the race of Merowech, so, in
Japan, the Shogun ruled beside the Mikado, and in the Empire of the
Incas, the commander of the Inca beside the Huillcauma, who had been
gradually limited to his sacerdotal functions.[P][95]

[P] In Egypt we find a similar state of affairs, beside the bigoted
Amenhotep IV., the Majordomus of the palace Haremheb, who “managed to
unite in his hands the highest military and administrative functions of
the empire, until he exercised the powers of a regent of the state.”
Schneider, _Civilization and Thought of the Ancient Egyptians_.
Leipzig, 1907, page 22.

In addition to the office of supreme pontiff, the power of the head of
the state is frequently increased enormously by the trading monopoly, a
function exercised by the primitive chieftains as a natural consequence
of the peaceful barter of guest-gifts. Such a trade monopoly, for
example, was exercised by King Solomon; and latterly by the Roman
Emperor Friedrich II.[Q][96]

[Q] Cf. _Acta Imperii_, or _Huillard-Breholles, H. D. Fred.
II._--_Translator._

As a rule, the negro chieftains are “monopolists of trading”;[97] as
is the King of Sulu.[98] Among the Galla, wherever the supremacy of a
head chief is acknowledged, he becomes “as a matter of course, the
tradesman for his tribe; since none of his subjects is allowed to trade
with strangers directly.”[99] Among the Barotse and Mabunda, the king
is “according to the strict interpretation of the law, the only trader
of his country.”[100]

Ratzel notes, in telling language, the importance of this factor:
“In addition to his witchcraft, the chief increases his power by a
_monopoly of trading_. Since the chief is the sole intermediary in
trade, everything desired by his subjects passes through his hands,
and he becomes the donor of all longed-for gifts, the fulfiller of the
fondest wishes. In such a system, there lie certainly the possibilities
of great power.”[101] If, in conquered districts, where the power of
government is apt to be more tensely exercised, there is added the
monopoly of trade, the royal power may become very great.

It may be stated as a general rule, that even in the apparently most
extreme cases of _despotism_, no monarchical _absolutism_ exists. The
ruler may, undeterred by fear of punishment, rage against his subject
class; but he is checked in no small degree by his feudal followers.
Ratzel, in speaking of the subject generally, remarks: “The so-called
‘court assemblage’ of African or of ancient American chiefs is probably
always a council.... Although we meet with traces of absolutism with
all peoples on a low scale, even where the form of government is
republican, the cause of absolutism is not in the strength of either
the state or of the chieftain, but in the moral weakness of the
individual, who succumbs without any effective resistance to the powers
wielded over him.”[102] The kingdom of the Zulu is a limited despotism,
in which very powerful ministers of state (Induna) share the power;
with other Caffir tribes it is a council, sometimes dominating both
people and chieftains.[103] In spite of this control “under Tshaka
every sneezing or hawking in the presence of the tyrant, as well as
every lack of tears at the death of some royal kinsman, was punished
with death.”[104] The same limitation applies to the West African
kingdoms of Dahomy and Ashanti, notorious because of their frightful
barbarities. “In spite of the waste of human life, in war, slave trade,
and human sacrifices, there existed at no place absolute despotism....
Bowditch remarks on the similarity of the system prevailing in Ashanti,
with its ranks and orders, with the old Persian system as described by
Herodotus.”[105]

One must be very careful, and this may again be insisted upon, not
to confuse despotism with absolutism. Even in the feudal states of
Western Europe, the rulers exercised, in many cases, power of life and
death, free from the trammels of law; but nevertheless such a ruler was
impotent as against his “magnates.” So long as he does not interfere
with the privileges of the classes, he need not restrain his cruelty,
and he may even occasionally sacrifice one of the great men; but woe to
him were he to dare to touch the economic privileges of his magnates.
It is possible to study this very characteristic phase, completely
free, from the standpoint of law, and yet closely hemmed in by
political checks, in the great East African empires: “The government
of Waganda and Wanyoro is, in theory, based on the rule of the king
over the whole territory; but in reality this is only the semblance of
government, since, as a matter of fact, the lands belong to the supreme
chieftains of the empire. It was they who represented the popular
opposition to foreign influences, in the time of Mtesa; and Muanga did
not dare, for fear of them, to carry out any innovations. Although the
kingship is limited in reality, yet in form it occupies an imposing
position in unessentials. The ruler is absolute master over the lives
and limbs of his subjects, the mass of the people, and feels himself
restrained only in the narrowest circle of the chief courtiers.”[106]

Precisely the same statement applies to the inhabitants of Oceania, to
mention the last of the great societies that created states: “At no
place does one find an entire absence of a representative mediation
between prince and people.... The aristocratic principle corrects
the patriarchal. Therefore, the extremes of _despotism_ depend more
on class and caste pressure than on the overpowering will of any
individual.”[107]

(c) THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DISINTEGRATION OF THE PRIMITIVE FEUDAL
STATE

Space forbids our detailing the innumerable shadings under which the
patriarchal-aristocratic (in some cases plutocratic) mixture of form
of government in the primitive feudal state is shown in either an
ethnographic, historical or juristic survey. This is likewise of the
greatest importance for the subsequent development.

It is indifferent how much power the ruler may have had at the
beginning, an inevitable fate breaks down his power in a short while;
and does this, one may say, the faster, the greater that power was, i.
e., the larger the territory of the primitive feudal state of higher
grade.

Taking into account the process already set forth, which, through the
occupation and settlement of unused lands by means of newly acquired
slaves, made for the increase of power of the separate nobles, a
result came about which might prove uncomfortable for the central
power. Mommsen in speaking of the Celts says: “When in a clan numbering
about eighty thousand armed men, a single chieftain could appear at
convocation with ten thousand followers, exclusive of his serfs and
debtors, it becomes clear that such a noble was rather an independent
prince than a mere citizen of his clan.”[108] And the same may apply to
the “Heiu” of the Somali, where a great landed proprietor maintained
hundreds of families in dependence on his lands, “so that conditions
in Somaliland tend to recall those existing in mediæval Europe during
feudal times.”[109]

Although such a preponderance of isolated territorial magnates can come
about in the feudal state of low development, it nevertheless reaches
its culmination in the feudal state of higher grade, the great feudal
state; this happens by reason of the increased power given to the
landlords by the bestowal of _public official functions_.

The more the state expands, the more must official power be delegated
by the central government to its representatives on the borders and
marches, who are constantly threatened by wars and insurrectionary
outbreaks. In order to preserve his bailiwick in safety for the state,
such an official must be endowed with supreme military powers, joined
with the functions of the highest administrative officials. Even
should he not require a large number of civil employees, he still must
have a permanent military force. And how is he to pay these men? With
one possible exception, to be noted hereafter, there are no taxes
which flow into the treasury of the central government and then are
poured back again over the land, since these presuppose an economic
development existing only where money is employed. But in communities
having a system of payments in kind, such as these “territorial
states” all are, there are no taxes payable in money. For that reason,
the central government has no alternative but to turn over to the
counts, or border wardens, or satraps, the income of its territorial
jurisdiction. Such an official, then, receives the dues of the
subjects, determines when and where forced labor is to be rendered,
receives the deodands, fees and penalties payable in cattle, etc.; and
in consideration of these must maintain the armed force, place definite
numbers of armed men at the disposal of the central government, build
and maintain highways and bridges, feed and stable the ruler and his
following, or his “royal messengers,” and finally, furnish a definite
“Sergeantry” consisting of highly valuable goods, easily transported to
the court, such as horses, cattle, slaves, precious metals, wines, etc.

In other words, he receives an immensely large fief for his services.
If previously he was not, he now becomes the greatest man in his
country, though before he probably was the most powerful landlord in
his official district. He will hereafter do exactly what his equals
in rank are doing, although they may not have his official position;
that is to say, he will, only on a larger scale, continue to settle
new lands with ever newly recruited serfs. By this he increases his
military strength; and this must be wished for and aided by the
central government. For it is the fate of these states, that they must
fatten those very local powers, that are to engulf them.

Conditions arise which enable the warden of the marches to impose the
terms of his military assistance, especially in the inevitable feuds
which arise over the right of succession to the central government.
Thereby he obtains further valuable concessions, especially the
formal acknowledgment of the heritability of his official fief, so
that office and lands come to be held by an identical tenure. By
this means, he gradually becomes almost independent of the central
authority, and the complaint of the Russian peasant, “The sky is high
up and the Tsar is far off,” tends to become of universal application.
Take this characteristic example from Africa: “The empire of Lunda
is an absolute feudal state. The chieftains (Muata, Mona, Muene) are
permitted independent action in all internal affairs, so long as it
pleases the Muata Jamvo. Usually, the great chieftains, living afar,
send their caravans with their tribute once a year to the Mussumba;
but _those living at too great a distance, sometimes for long periods
omit making any payments of their tribute_; while similar chiefs in the
neighborhood of the capital forward tribute many times a year.”[110]

Nothing can show more plainly than this report, how, because of
inadequate means of transportation, extent of distance becomes
politically effective in these states loosely held together and in a
state of payment in kind. One is tempted to say that the independence
of the feudal masters grows in proportion to the square of their
distance from the seat of the central authority. The crown must pay
more and more for their services, and must gradually confirm them in
all the sovereign powers of the state, or else permit their usurpation
of these powers after they have seized them one after the other. Such
are heritability of fiefs, tolls on highways and commerce, (in a later
stage the right of coinage), high and low justice, the right to exact
for private gain the public duties of repair of ways and bridges (the
old English _trinodis necessitas_) and the disposal of the military
services of the freemen of the country.

By these means, the powerful frontier wardens gradually attain an
ever greater, and finally a complete, _de facto_ independence, even
though the _formal_ bond of feudal suzerainty may for a long time
apparently keep together the newly developed principalities. The
reader, of course, recalls instances of these typical transitions;
all mediæval history is one chain of them; not only the Merovingian
and Carolingian Empires, not only Germany, but also France, Italy,
Spain, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, as well as Japan and China,[111]
have passed through this process of decomposition, not only once,
but repeatedly. And this is no less true of the feudal states of
Mesopotamia: great empires follow each other, acquire power, burst
asunder time after time, and again are re-united. In the case of
Persia, we are expressly told: “Separate states and provinces, by a
successful revolt, obtained freedom for a longer or shorter time, and
the ‘great king’ at Susa did not always have the power to force them
to return to their obedience; in other states, the satraps or warlike
chieftains ruled arbitrarily, carrying on the government faithlessly
and violently, either as independent rulers or tributary under-kings of
the king of kings. The Persian world-empire went to its disintegration
an agglomeration of states and lands, without any general law, without
ordered administration, without uniform judicial system, without order
and enforcement of law, and without possibility of help.”[112]

A similar fate overtook its neighbor in the valley of the Nile:
“Princes spring from the families of the usurpers, free landlords,
who pay land-taxes to nobody but to the king, and rule over certain
strips of land, or districts. These district princes govern a territory
specifically set apart as pertaining to their official position, and
separate from their family possessions.

“Later successful warlike operations, perhaps filling in the gap
between the Ancient and the Middle (Egyptian) Empire, _together with
the gathering in of captives of the wars, who could be utilized as
labor motors_, brought a more stringent exploitation of the subjects,
a definite determination of the tributes. During the Middle Empire,
the power of the princes of the clans rose to an enormous height,
they maintained great courts, imitating the splendor of the royal
establishment.”[113] “With the decline of the royal authority
during a period of decay, the higher officials use their power for
personal aims, in order to make their offices hereditary within their
families.”[R][114]

[R] Maspero says, _New Light on Ancient Egypt_, pp. 218-9: “Until
then, in fact, the high priest had been chosen and nominated by the
king; from the time of Rameses III. he was always chosen from the same
family, and the son succeeded his father on the pontifical throne. From
that time events marched quickly. The Theban mortmain was doubled with
a veritable seigniorial fief, which its masters increased by marriages
with the heirs of neighboring fiefs, by continual bequests from one
branch of the family to the other, and by _the placing of cadets of
each generation at the head of the clergy of certain secondary towns_.
The official protocol of the offices filled by their wives shows that a
century or a century and a half after Rameses III., almost the whole of
the Thebaid, about a third of the Egyptian territory was in the hands
of the High Priest of Ammon and of his family.”--_Translator’s Note
(and italics)._

But the operation of this historical law is not restricted to the
“historical” peoples. In speaking of the feudal states of India,
Ratzel states: “Even beyond Radshistan, the nobles often enjoyed a
great measure of independence, so that even in Haiderabad, after the
Nizam had acquired the sole rule over the country, the Umara or Nabobs
maintained troops of their own, independently of the army of the Nizam.
These smaller feudatories did not comply with the increased demands of
modern times as regards the administration of Indian states as often as
did the greater princes.”[115]

In Africa finally, great feudal states come and pass away, as do
bubbles arising and bursting from the stream of eternally similar
phenomena. The powerful Ashanti empire, within one and a half
centuries, has shriveled to less than one-fifth of its territory;[116]
and many of the empires that the Portuguese encountered have since
disappeared without leaving a trace of their existence. And yet these
were strong feudal powers: “Stately and cruel negro empires, such as
Benin, Dahomy or Ashanti, resemble in many respects ancient Peru or
Mexico, having in their vicinity politically disorganized tribes. The
hereditary nobility of the Mfumus, sharply separated from the rest of
the state, had mainly the administration of the districts, and together
with the more transitory nobility of service, formed in Loango strong
pillars of the ruler and his house.”[117]

But whenever such a state, once powerful, has split into a number of
territorial states either _de facto_ or juristically independent, the
former process begins anew. The great state gobbles up the smaller
ones, until a new empire has arisen. “The greatest territorial magnates
later become emperors,” says Meitzen laconically of Germany.[118] But
even this great demesne vanishes, split up by the need of equipping
warlike vassals with fiefs. “The Kings soon found that they had donated
away all their belongings; their great territorial possessions in the
Delta had melted away,” says Schneider (l. c. page 38) of the Pharaohs
of the sixth dynasty. The same causes brought about like effects in
the Frankish Empire among both Merovingians and Carolingians; and later
in Germany in the case of the Saxon and Hohenstaufen Emperors.[119]
Additional references are unnecessary, as every one is familiar with
these instances.

In a subsequent part of this treatise, we shall examine into the causes
that finally liberated the primitive feudal state from this witch’s
curse, this circling from agglomeration to disintegration without end.
Our present task is to take up the _social_ side of the process, as
we have already taken up the historical phase of it. It changes the
articulation of classes in the most decisive manner.

The common freemen, the lower strata of the dominating group, are
struck with overpowering force. They sink into bondsmenship. Their
decay must go along with that of the central power; since both, allied
one might say, by nature, are menaced simultaneously by the expanding
power of the great territorial lords. The crown controls the landed
magnate so long as the levy of the common freemen of the district is
a superior force to his guards, to his “following.” But a fatal need,
already set forth, impels the crown to deliver over the peasants to
the landed lordling, and from the moment when the county levy has
become weaker than his guards, the free peasants are lost. Where the
sovereign powers of the state are delegated to the territorial magnate,
i. e., where he has developed more or less into an independent lord of
the region, the overthrow of the liberties of the peasants is carried
out, at least in part, under the color of law, by forcing excessive
military services, which ruin the peasants, and which are required the
more often as the dynastic interests of the territorial lord require
new lands and new peasants, or by abusing the right to compulsory
labor, or by turning the administration of public justice into military
oppression.

The common freemen, however, receive the final blow either by the
formal delegation or by the usurpation of the most important powers
of the crown, the disposition of unoccupied lands or “commons.”
Originally, this land belonged to all the “folk” in common; i. e., to
the freemen for common use; but in accordance with an original custom,
probably universal, the patriarch enjoys disposal of it. This right of
disposition passes to the territorial magnate with the remaining royal
privileges--and thus he has obtained the power to strangle any few
remaining freemen. He now declares all unoccupied lands his property,
_and forbids their settlement by free peasants_, while those only are
permitted access who recognize his superior lordship; i. e., who have
commended themselves to him, or are his serfs.

That is the last nail in the coffin of the common freemen. Heretofore
their equality of possessions has been in some way guaranteed.
Even if a peasant had twelve sons, his patrimony was not split up,
because eleven of them broke new hides of land in the commons of the
community, or else in the general land not yet distributed to other
villages. That is henceforth impossible; hides tend to divide where
large families grow up, others are united when heir and heiress marry:
henceforth there come into existence “laborers,” recruited from the
owners of half, a quarter, or even an eighth of a hide who help work
a larger area. Thus the free peasantry splits into rich and poor;
this begins to loosen the bond which hitherto had made the bundle of
arrows unbreakable. When, therefore, some comrade is overwhelmed by the
exactions of the lord and has become his liegeman, or if bond peasants
are settled among the original owners, either to occupy some hide
vacated by the extinction of the family or fallen into the hands of the
lord because of the indebtedness of its occupant, then every social
cohesion is loosened; and the peasantry, split apart by class and by
economic contrasts, is handed over without power of resistance to the
magnate.

On the other hand, the result is the same where the magnate has no
usurped regalian powers of the state. In such cases, open force and
shameless violation of rights accomplish the same ends. The ruler,
far off and impotent, bound to rely on the good will and help of the
violators of law and order, has neither the power nor the opportunity
of interference.

There is hardly any need of adducing instances. The free peasantry
of Germany were put through the process of expropriation and
declassification at least three times. Once it happened in Celtic
times.[120] The second overthrow of the free peasants of the old German
Empire took place in the ninth and tenth centuries. The third tragedy
of the same form began with the fifteenth century, in the countries
formerly Slavic, which they had conquered and colonized.[121] The
peasants fared worse in those lands, in the “republics of nobles,”
where there was no monarchical central authority, whose community of
interests with their subjects tended to deprive oppression of its
worse features. The Celts in the Gaul of Cæsar’s time are one of the
earliest examples. Here “the great families exercised an economic,
military and political preponderance. They monopolized the leases of
the lucrative rights of the state. They forced the common freemen,
overwhelmed by the taxes which they had themselves imposed, to
borrow of them, and then, first as their debtors, afterward legally
as their serfs, to surrender their liberty. For their own advantage
they developed the system of followers: i. e., the privilege of the
nobility to have about them a mass of armed servants in their pay,
called _ambacti_, with whose aid they formed a state within a state.
Relying on these, their own men-at-arms, they defied the lawful
authorities and the levies of the freemen, and thus were able to burst
asunder the commonwealth.... The only protection to be found was in
the relation of serfdom, where personal duty and interest required the
lord to protect his clients and to avenge any wrong to his men. Since
the state no longer had the power to protect the freemen, these in
growing numbers became the vassals of some powerful noble.”[122] We
find these identical conditions fifteen hundred years later in Kurland,
Livonia, in Swedish Pomerania, in Eastern Holstein, in Mecklenburg,
and especially in Poland. In the German territories the petty nobles
subjugated their peasantry, while in Poland their prey was the
formerly free and noble Schlachziz. “Universal history is monotonous,”
says Ratzel. The same procedure overthrew the peasantry of ancient
Egypt: “After a warlike _intermezzo_, there follows a period in the
history of the Middle Empire, which brings about a deterioration of
the position of the peasantry in Lower Egypt. The number of landlords
decreases, while their territorial growth and power increases. The
tribute of the peasants is hereafter determined by an exact assessment
on their estates, and definitely fixed by a sort of Doomsday Book.
Because of this pressure, many peasants soon enter the lord’s court or
the cities of the local rulers, and take employment there either as
servants, mechanics, or even as overseers in the economic organization
of these manors or courts. In common with any available captives, they
contribute to the extension of the prince’s estates, and to further the
general expulsion of the peasantry from their holdings.”[128]

The example of the Roman Empire shows, as nothing else can, how
inevitable this process becomes. When we first meet Rome in history
the conception of serfdom or bondage has already been forgotten. When
the “modern period” of Rome opens, only slavery is known. And yet,
within fifteen centuries, the free peasantry again sink into economic
dependence, after Rome has become an overextended, unwieldy empire,
whose border districts have more and more dissolved from the central
control. The great landed proprietors, having been endowed with the
lower justice and police administration on their own estates have
“reduced their servants, who may originally have been free proprietors
of the ‘_ager privatus vectigalis_’ to a state of servitude, and
have thus developed a sort of actual _glebæ adscriptus_, within the
boundaries of their ‘immunities.’”[124] The invading Germans found
this feudal order worked out in Gaul and the other provinces. At this
particular time, the immense difference formerly existing between
slaves and free settlers (_coloni_) had been completely obliterated,
first in their economic position, and then, naturally, in their
constitutional rights.

Wherever the common freemen sink into political and economic dependence
on the great territorial magnates, when, in other words, they become
bound either to the court or to the lands, the social group formerly
subject to them tend in a corresponding measure to improve their
status. Both layers tend to meet half-way, to approximate their
position, and finally to amalgamate. The observations just made
concerning the free settlers and the agricultural slaves of the later
Roman Empire hold true everywhere. Thus in Germany, freemen and serfs
together formed, when fused, the economic and legally unital group of
_Grundholde_, or men bound to the soil.[125]

The elevation of the former “subjects,” hereafter for the sake of
brevity to be called “plebs,” flows from the same source as the
debasement of the freeman, and arises by the same necessity from the
very foundations on which these states are themselves erected, viz.,
the agglomeration of the landed property in ever fewer hands.

The plebs are the natural opponents of the central government--since
that is their conqueror and tax imposer; while they naturally oppose
the common freemen, who despise them and oppress them politically,
besides crowding them back economically. The great magnate also is the
natural opponent of the central government--an impediment in his path
toward complete independence, and he is at the same time also a natural
enemy of the common freemen, who in turn not only support the central
government; but also block with their possessions his path toward
territorial dominion, while with their claims to equality of political
rights they annoy his princely pride. Since the political and social
interests of the territorial princes and of the plebs coincide, they
must become allies; the prince can attain complete independence only
if, in his fight for power against the crown and the common freemen,
he controls reliable warriors and acquiescent taxpayers; the plebs
can only then be freed from their pariah-like declassification, both
economically and socially, if the hated and proud common freemen are
brought down to their level.

This is the second time that we have noted the identity of interest
between the princes and their subjects. The first time we found a
weakly developed solidarity in our second stage of state formation.
This causes the semi-sovereign prince to treat his dependent tenants
as kindly as he ill-treats the free peasants of his territory; in
consequence, they will fight the more willingly for him and contribute
taxes, while the more readily will the oppressed freemen succumb to
the pressure, especially as their share of political power in the
state, coincident with the decline of the central power, has become
only a meaningless phrase. In some cases, as in Germany toward the
end of the tenth century, this was done with full consciousness of
its effects[126]--some prince exercises a particularly “mild” rule,
in order to draw the subjects of a neighboring potentate into his
lands, and thus to increase his own strength in war and taxation,
and to weaken his opponent’s. The plebs come to possess, both legally
and actually, constantly increasing rights, enlarged privileges of
the law of ownership, perhaps self-government in common affairs,
and their own administration of justice; thus they rise in the same
degree as the common freemen sink, until the two classes meet and they
are amalgamated into one body on approximately the same jural and
economic plane. Half serfs, half subjects of a state, they represent
a characteristic formation of the feudal state, which does not as
yet recognize any clear distinction between public and private law;
in its turn an immediate consequence of its own historical genesis,
_the dominion in the form of a state for the sake of economic private
rights_.

(d) THE ETHNIC AMALGAMATION

The juristic and social amalgamation of the degraded freemen and
the uplifted plebs henceforth inevitably tends toward ethnic
interpenetration. While at first the subject peoples were not allowed
either to intermarry or to have social intercourse with the freemen,
now no such obstacles can be maintained; in any single village the
social class is no longer determined by descent from the ruling race,
but rather by wealth. And the case may frequently arise where the
pure-blooded descendant of the warrior herdsman must earn his living
as a field hand in the hire of the equally pure-blooded descendant of
the former serfs. The social group of the subjects is now composed of a
part of the former ethnic master group and a part of the former subject
group.

We say from a part only, because the other part has by this time been
amalgamated with the other part of the old ethnic master group into a
unital social class. In other words, a part of the plebs has not only
attained the position to which the mass of the common freemen have
sunk, but has climbed far beyond it, in that it has been completely
received into the dominating group, which in the meantime, has not only
risen enormously, but has been as greatly diminished in numbers.

And that, too, is a universal process found in all history; because
everywhere it follows with equally compelling force from the very
premises of feudal dominion. The _primus inter pares_, whether the
holder of the central power or some local potentate, taking the rank
of a prince, requires more supple tools for his dominion than are to
be found among his “peers.” The latter represent a class whom he must
put down if he wants to rise--and that is and must be the aim of every
one, since in this stage aiming for power is identical with the aim of
self-preservation. In this effort he is opposed by his obnoxious and
stiff-necked cousins and by his petty nobles--and for this reason, we
find at every court, from that of the sovereign king of a mighty feudal
empire down to the lord of what is hardly more than a big estate,
men of insignificant descent as confidential officials alongside
representatives of the master group, who in many cases under the mask
of officials of the prince, as a matter of fact, are “ephors,” sharers
of the power of the prince as the plenipotentiaries of their group.
Let us but recall the Induna at the court of the Bantu kings. There
is no wonder, then, that the prince rather places confidence in his
own men than in these annoying and pretentious advisers, in men whose
position is indissolubly bound up with his own, and who would be ruined
by his fall.[S]

[S] One of the most notable instances may be found in the case of
Markward of Annweiler, Marquis of Ancona and Duke of Ravenna, seneschal
of Henry VI., who after the death of the Emperor Henry VI. disputed the
power of the Regent Constance acting for her son, Frederick II. (See
Boehmer-Ficker, _Regesta Imperii_, V, vol. 1, No. 511. v. ad. annum
1197.)--_Translator._

Here, too, historical references are nearly superfluous. Every one
is familiar with the fact that at the courts of the Western European
feudal kingdoms, besides the relatives of the king and some noble
vassals, there were also elements from the lower groups, occupying high
positions, clerics and great warriors of the plebeian class. Among the
immediate following of Charlemagne all the races and peoples of his
empire were represented. Also in the tales of Theodoric the Goth in
the Dietrich Saga of the _Niebelungen Lied_, this rise of brave sons
of the subject races finds its reflection. In addition to these, there
follow some less well-known instances.

In Egypt, as far back as the Old Empire, there is found alongside the
royal officials of the feudal nobility, who are the descendants of the
Shepherd conquerors, administering their districts as representatives
of the crown, with plenary powers as deputies, “_a mass of court
officials_ trusted with determined functions of government.” It
“originated with the _servants_ employed at the courts of the princes,
_such as prisoners of war, refugees etc._”[127] The fable of Joseph
shows a state of affairs known at that time to be a usual occurrence,
of the rise of a slave to the position of an all powerful minister
of state. At the present day such a career is within the realm of
possibility at any oriental court, such as Persia, Turkey, or Morocco,
etc. In the case of old Marshal Derflinger, in the time of Friedrich
Wilhelm I., the Great Elector, at a much later date, we have an
example from the transition of the developed feudal state to a more
modern form of the state, which might be multiplied by the examples of
innumerable other brave swordsmen.

Let us add a few instances from the peoples “disregarded by history.”
Ratzel tells of the realm of Bornu: “The freemen have not lost the
consciousness of their free descent, in contrast with the slaves of
the sheik; but the rulers place more confidence in their slaves than
in their own kinsmen and free associates of their tribe. They can
count on the devotion of the former. Not only positions at court, but
the defense of the country was from ancient times preferably confided
to slaves. The brothers of the prince, as well as the more ambitious
or more efficient sons, are objects of suspicion; and while the most
important places at court are in the hands of slaves, the princes are
put at posts far from the seat of government. Their salaries are paid
from the incomes of the offices and the taxes from the provinces.”[128]

Among the Fulbe “society is divided into princes, chieftains, commons
and slaves. The slaves of the king play a great rôle as soldiers and
officials, and may hope for the highest offices in the state.”[129]

This nobility of the court’s creation may, in certain cases, be
admitted to the great imperial offices, so that according to the method
stated above, it may achieve the sovereignty over a territory. In the
developed feudal state, it represents the high nobility; and usually
manages to preserve its rank, even when some more powerful neighbor
has mediatized it by incorporating the state. The Frankish higher
nobility certainly contains such elements from the original lower
group;[130] and since from its blood the entire upper nobility of the
European civilized states has been descended at least in direct line by
marriage, we find an ethnic amalgamation, both in the present day group
of subjects and in the highest order of the ruling class. And the same
applies to Egypt: “With the sinking of the royal authority in the time
of the decay, the higher officials abuse their power for personal ends,
to make their offices hereditary in their families, and thereby to call
into existence an official nobility not differentiated from the rest
of the population.”[131]

And finally, the same process, from the same causes, takes hold of
the present middle class, the lower stratum of the master class,
the officials and officers of the great feudatories. At first there
still exists a social difference between, on the one hand, the free
vassals, the subfeudatories of the great landlord, kinsmen, younger
sons of other noble families, impoverished associates from the same
district, in isolated cases freeborn sons of peasants, free refugees
and professional ruffians of free descent; and on the other, if the
term may be allowed, the subalterns of the guards of plebeian descent.
But lack of freedom advances, while freedom sinks in social value; and
here too the ruler places more reliance on his creatures than on his
peers. Here also, sooner or later, the process of amalgamation becomes
complete. In Germany, as late as 1085, the non-free nobility of the
court ranks between “_servi et litones_” while a century afterward
it is placed with the “_liberi et nobiles_.” In the course of the
thirteenth century, it has been completely absorbed, along with the
free vassals, into the nobility by chivalry. The two orders in the
meantime tend to become equal economically; both have subinfeudations,
fiefs on the obligation of service in warfare, and the service feuds of
the bondsmen; while all the fiefs of the “ministerials” or sergeants
have in the meantime become as heritable as are those of the free
vassals, as much so as are the patrimonies of the few surviving smaller
territorial lords belonging to the original nobility, who may still
have escaped the grasp of the great territorial principalities.

In ways quite analogous to this the development went on in all other
feudal states of Western Europe; while its exact counterpart is found
in the extremest Orient on the edge of the Eurasian continent, in
Japan. The daimio are the higher nobility; the samurai, the chivalry,
the nobility of the sword.

(e) THE DEVELOPED FEUDAL STATE

With this the feudal state has reached its pinnacle. It forms,
politically and socially, a hierarchy of numerous strata; of which, in