The idea that society, or civilisation, is predicated on the'state'is a projection of present-day political ideology into the past. Nothing akin to what we call the'state'existed before the 19th century: it is a recent invention and the assumption that it is timeless, necessary for society, is simply part of its legitimating myth. The development, over the past three millennia, of the political structures of western civilisation is shown here to have been a succession of individual, unrepeatable stages: what links them is not that every period re-enacts the'state'in a different guise - that is, re-enacts the same basic pattern - but that one period-specific pattern evolves into the next in a path-dependent process. Treating western civilisation as a single political system, the book charts systemic structural change from the origins of western civilisation in the pre-christian Greek world to about 1800, when the onset of industrialisation began to create the conditions in which the state as we know it could function. It explains structural change in terms of both the political ideas of each period and in terms of the material constraints and opportunities (e.g. ecological and technological factors) that impacted on those ideas and which constitute a major cause of change. However, although material factors are important, ultimately it is the ideas that count - and indeed the words with which they were communicated when they were current: since political structures only exist in people ́s heads, to understand past political structures it is imperative to deal with them literally on their own terms, to take those terms seriously. Relabelling or redefining political units (for example by calling them'states'or equating them with'states') when those who lived (in) them thought of them as something else entirely imposes a false uniformity on the past. The dead will not object because they cannot: this book tries to make their voices heard again, through the texts that they left but whose political terminology, and often whose finer points, are commonly ignored in an unconscious effort to make the past fit our standard state-centric political paradigm.

motw/Before the State_ Systemic Poli - Andreas Osiander.pdf

9780198294511.pdf

Osiander, Andreas.

IRL Press at Oxford University Press

Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

German Historical Institute London

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Oxford, New York, England, 2007

1 edition, January 11, 2008

1. publ, Oxford, 2007

Oxford, 2009

1, PS, 2008

producers:
Acrobat Distiller 6.0 (Windows)

Memory of the World Librarian: Slowrotation

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Contents 8
Acknowledgements 12
Greek transliteration table 14
Comments on Greek transliteration 16
The treatment of Greek proper names 18
Other points regarding spelling and nomenclature 20
Abbreviations 22
1 Basics 24
1.1 History as popular myth in IR and elsewhere 24
1.2 The ‘state’ a timeless marker of civilization? ‘State’ and language 27
1.3 ‘State’ and discourse of eternity in historiography and social science. The notion of ‘bounded entities’ 33
1.4 The method of this study 40
1.5 Key concepts 48
2 Greeks and Romans 56
2.1 The material base of society and the threats facing it 56
2.1.1 Agriculture 56
2.1.2 Craftsmen, traders, and bankers 58
2.1.3 Limited economic role of warfare: the case of Corinth 62
2.2 Rule and society 65
2.2.1 The Greek world until the conquest of the Persian empire 65
2.2.2 The Greek world in the post-Persian era 107
2.2.3 Imperium Romanum 117
2.3 Political community and supralocal rule in the pre-christian Graeco-Roman world 133
2.3.1 The absence of domestic sovereignty in the pólis and in the Roman citizenry 133
2.3.2 Supralocal rule 137
2.3.3 Community and ideology in the Greek and Roman empires 141
2.3.4 Roma aeterna 146
2.4 The relations between autonomous actors and communities in Greek and Roman political thought 150
2.5 Thukydídês 162
3 The universal community of christendom 188
3.1 The Roman empire transformed 188
3.1.1 The crisis of the Roman empire after 235 188
3.1.2 The dissolution of the western empire 194
3.1.3 Constantinople and the Germanic world 198
3.1.4 The Roman empire of Constantinople: shrinkage and stabilization 211
3.1.5 The restoration of the imperial dignity in the west 214
3.2 Rule and society in pre-Reformation christendom 223
3.2.1 De-urbanization 223
3.2.2 Particularism and universalism in the west 244
3.3 Discourse of eternity and collective identities in christendom 251
3.3.1 The empire of Constantinople 252
3.3.2 Latin christendom 259
3.4 Political thinking of the respublica christiana 291
3.4.1 The Roman empire lives on, ‘albeit as a fiction’ 291
3.4.2 The empire in christian theology and eschatology 293
3.4.3 The political organization of christendom in the thinking of the scholastics 305
3.4.4 Henry VII 308
3.4.5 Engelbert of Admont 319
3.4.6 Dante Alighieri 335
3.4.7 Pierre Dubois 347
4 Pre-industrial Europe 364
4.1 A new, more dynamic era 364
4.1.1 Economic renewal: the millennium of mills 365
4.1.2 Monetization 382
4.2 Kingship in Latin christendom 391
4.2.1 The foil: first-millennium warrior kingship 392
4.2.2 The lord’s anointed 394
4.2.3 Kingship as a structural factor in the politics of ancien régime Europe: the case of Plantagenet expansionism 401
4.2.4 The fiction of the efficient ruler: Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome 417
4.2.5 The imperial office as an archetype of monarchical rule: Nicholas of Kues and Enea Silvio Piccolomini 426
4.2.6 The crown as an imagined central power 442
4.3 Crown and ‘state’ in the ancien régime 444
4.3.1 The nature of the period, and what to call it 444
4.3.2 The heightened profile of princely governance in post-Reformation Europe 445
4.3.3 Post-Reformation theorists of princely power: Bodin, Althusius, and Hobbes 454
4.4 The reality of late ancien régime society 473
4.4.1 Germany in the ancien régime 474
4.4.2 France in the ancien régime 490
4.4.3 Ancien régime kingdoms and comparable political units as precursors not prototypes of the modern state 502
4.4.4 Autonomous political actors in the ancien régime 508
5 Conclusion 518
References 534
Index 564
A 564
B 566
C 568
D 570
E 571
F 572
G 573
H 573
I 574
J 575
K 576
L 576
M 577
N 579
O 579
P 579
Q 582
R 582
S 583
T 585
U 586
V 586
W 586
X 587
Y 587
Z 587

"The idea that society, or civilization, is predicated on the "state" is a projection of present-day political ideology into the past. Nothing akin to what we call the "state" existed before the 19th century: it is a recent invention and the assumption that it is timeless, necessary for society, is simply part of its legitimating myth. The development, over the past three millennia, of the political structures of western civilization is shown here to have been a succession of individual, unrepeatable stages: what links them is not that every period re-enacts the "state" in a different guise - - that is, re-enacts the same basic pattern - -but that one period-specific pattern evolves into the next in a path-dependent process. Treating western civilization as a single political system, the book charts systemic structural change from the origins of western civilization in the pre-Christian Greek world to about 1800, when the onset of industrialization began to create the conditions in which the state as we know it could function. It explains structural change in terms of both the political ideas of each period and in terms of the material constraints and opportunities (e.g. ecological and technological factors) that impacted on those ideas and which constitute a major cause of change. However, although material factors are important, ultimately it is the ideas that count - and indeed the words with which they were communicated when they were current: since political structures only exist in people's heads, to understand past political structures it is imperative to deal with them literally on their own terms, to take those terms seriously. Relabelling or redefining political units (for example by calling them "states" or equating them with "states") when those who lived (in) them thought of them as something else entirely imposes a false uniformity on the past. The dead will not object because they cannot: this book tries to make their voices heard again, through the texts that they left but whose political terminology, and often whose finer points, are commonly ignored in an unconscious effort to make the past fit our standard state-centric political paradigm"--Book cover

Charting Structural Political Change From The Origins Of Western Civilisation In The Pre-christian Greek World To C1800, This Ambitious Reassessment Of World Political Development Draws On A Wealth Of Historical Material And Seeks To Change The Way We Think About The Nature Of The State. Andreas Osiander. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 511-539) And Index.

2025-10-27