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A Millennium of European State Formation

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TillyCharles. Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1990. Basil Blackwell, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 1990. xi, 269pp. £25.00.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

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Type
Review Essays
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1995

References

1 Tilly, Coercion, pp. 39–43; also see Greengrass, Mark (ed.), Conquest and Coalescence. The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe (London, 1991), pp. 12Google Scholar.

2 Recently, however, it has been argued that the sophistication and the size of the tax-gathering organization are greater in the case of a highly developed market economy, see Ertman, Thomas, “The Sinews of Power and European State-Building Theory”, in Stone, Lawrence (ed.), An Imperial State at War. Britain from 1689 to 1815 (London and New York, 1994), pp. 3351, especially p. 38Google Scholar.

3 Rokkan, Stein, “Dimensions of State Formation and Nation-Building: A Possible Paradigm for Research on Variations Within Europe”, in Tilly, Charles (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, 1975), especially pp. 575591Google Scholar.

4 For an attempt to explain the geographic distribution of these proto-monarchies in Western Europe, see Hechter, Michael and Brustein, William, “Regional Modes of Production and Patterns of State Formation in Western Europe”, American Journal of Sociology, 85 (1979–1980), pp. 10611094CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 To see how such a model succumbed when confronted with historical issues and historians, see Grew, Raymond (ed.), Crises of Political Development in Europe and the United States (Princeton, 1978)Google Scholar.

6 See Tilly, Charles, “Cities and States in Europe, 1000–1800”, Theory and Society, 18 (1989), p. 563CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Tilly's approach shows some similarities with Immanuel Wallerstein's analysis of the world system, but lacks its economic determinism; see Zolberg's, Aristide critique of Wallerstein: “Origins of the Modern World System. A Missing Link”, World Politics, 23 (1980–1981), pp. 253281Google Scholar.

8 Tilly, Charles, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York, 1984), pp. 5359Google Scholar.

9 See Parker, David, The Making of French Absolutism (London, 1983), pp. 59ffGoogle Scholar.

10 Stone, Bailey, The Genesis of the French Revolution: A Global-Historical Interpretation (Cambridge, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Carsten, Francis L., Geschichte der Preussischen Junker (Frankfurt/M., 1988), pp. 3544Google Scholar; Siemann, Wolfram, Gesellschaft im Aufbruch. Deutschland 1849–1871 (Frankfurt/M., 1990), pp. 200231Google Scholar; Sheehan, James J., Der Deutsche Liberalismus, 1770–1914 (Munich, 1983), pp. 135ffGoogle Scholar.

12 See Kann, Robert A., A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526–1918 (Berkeley, 1980)Google Scholar.

13 Sayles, G. O., The Medieval Foundations of England (London, 1948), pp. 399ffGoogle Scholar.

14 Stone, Lawrence, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529–1642 (London, 1977), pp. 116ffGoogle Scholar.

15 Stone, Causes, p. 116; Keith Thomas, “The United Kingdom”, in Grew, Crises of Political Development, p. 93.

16 Downing, Brian M., The Military Revolution and Political Change. Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, 1992), pp. 183186Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., p. 242. Breuilly, John reaches a similar conclusion in Labour and Liberalism in Nineteenth-century Europe. Essays in Comparative History (Manchester, 1992), pp. 289293Google Scholar.

18 Strayer, Joseph R., Feudalism (Princeton, 1965), pp. 3841Google Scholar; recently, and in the same vein: Bisson, T. N., “The ‘Feudal Revolution’”, Past and Present, 142 (1994), pp. 642CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Strayer, Joseph R., On the Medieval Origins of the Modem State (Princeton, 1970), pp. 2628Google Scholar.

20 Blockmans, Wim P. stresses this point in “A Typology of Representative Institutions in Late Medieval Europe”, Journal of Medieval History, 4 (1978), pp. 192193, 196–197CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tilly, Coercion, p. 64, also refers to this article, but only with respect to urban zones. Blockmans, however, discusses a mechanism that operated throughout Europe and investigates internal variations. He also notes somewhat emphatically that issues of war finance were not the main impetus behind the expansion of representative institutions (p. 202); see also Blockmans, , “Voracious States and Obstructing Cities. An Aspect of State Formation in Preindustrial Europe”, Theory and Society, 18 (1989), pp. 733755, especially p. 740CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 See Koenisberger, H. G., “Composite States, Representative Institutions and the American Revolution”, Historical Research, 148 (1989), pp. 136138Google Scholar; Elliott, J. H., “A Europe of Composite Monarchies”, Past and Present, 137 (1992), pp. 4871CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Cf. Anderson's, Perry remarks in Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974), p. 410Google Scholar; also see Burke's, Peter more reserved conclusions in “City-States”, in Hall, John A. (ed.), States in History (Oxford, 1989), pp. 149153Google Scholar; see also the contributions in Tilly, Charles and Blockmans, Wim P. (eds), Cities and the Rise of States in Europe (Boulder, 1994)Google Scholar, especially the differences between Tilly's introduction and Blockmans' concluding essay.

23 Quoted in Kelley, Donald R., Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship. Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York and London, 1970), p. 127Google Scholar.

24 On the latter subject, see Mousnier's detailed analysis of the operation of formal institutions of French absolutism: Mousnier, Roland E., The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy, 1598–1789 (Chicago and London, 1979), especially pp. 645ffGoogle Scholar.

25 See Ganshof, F. L., Frankish Institutions under Charlemagne (New York, 1970), pp. 5053Google Scholar, on the origins of vassalic contracts; Moore, Social Origins, p. 415, correctly notes the importance of these feudal practices, but fails to integrate this observation into his socio-economic model; Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, pp. 414, 435–461, compares European and Japanese feudalism and observes that the contractual aspect was less advanced in Japan. The point was first made by Bloch, Marc, La Socieété Féodale (Paris, 1968; 1st pub. 1939), p. 611Google Scholar.

26 This doctrine was not specifically “Calvinist”, as is sometimes alleged, see Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 1979), vol. II, p. 321Google Scholar; Shoenberger, Cynthia G., “Luther and the Justifiability of Resistance to Legitimate Authority”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 40 (1979), pp. 320CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scheible, Heinz, Das Widerstandsrecht als Problem der deutschen Protestanten, 1523–1546 (Gütersloh, 1969)Google Scholar.

27 See Quentin Skinner, Foundations, passim; Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975)Google Scholar. Both authors show that the modern concepts of state and sovereignty emerged from political discourses in which restricted sovereignty, active citizenship, and the right to resist tyrannical rulers were firmly embedded.

28 See Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1987; 1st pub. 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keohane, Nannerl, Philosophy and the State in France: the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton, 1980), ch. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, Martyn P., “The History of Funda-mental Law in Political Thought from the French Wars of Religion to the American Revolution”, American Historical Review, 91 (1986), pp. 11031128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hughes, Michael, “Fiat Justitia, pereat Germania? The Imperial Supreme Jurisdiction and Imperial Reform in the Later Holy Roman Empire”, in Breuilly, John (ed.), The State of Germany (London and New York, 1992), pp. 2946Google Scholar.

29 This observation also applies in the cases of the impact on the process of state formation of other major transformations in political culture and the social patterns of communication, such as the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century social democracy. For an ambitious attempt in that direction, see Wuthnow, Robert, Communities of Discourse. Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism (Cambridge, Mass., 1989)Google Scholar.

30 Garrisson, Janine, L'Edit de Nantes et sa Révocation (Paris, 1985), pp. 184ff.Google Scholar; Labrousse, Elizabeth, La Révocation de I'Edit de Nantes (Paris, 1990; 1st pub. 1985), pp. 9295Google Scholar.

31 Merrick, Jeffrey W., The Desacralization of the French Monarchy in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge, 1990)Google Scholar.

32 See for example Baker, Keith Michael, Inventing the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sewell, William H. Jr, Work and Revolution in France. The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, E. P., Customs in Common (London, 1991)Google Scholar; Chartier, Roger, Les origines culturelles de la Révolution francaise (Paris, 1990)Google Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., “The Concept of a Language and the mitier d'historien: Some Considerations on Practice”, in Pagden, Anthony (ed.). The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modem Europe (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 1938CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, “Language and Political Change”, in Ball, Terence, Farr, James and Hanson, Russell L. (eds), Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 623Google Scholar; Toews, John E., “Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience”, American Historical Review, 92 (1987), pp. 679907CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Gareth Stedman, Languages of Class. Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar.

33 See Sewell, William criticism of Tilly in “Collective Violence and Collective Loyalties in France: Why the French Revolution Made a Difference”, Politics and Society, 18 (1990), pp. 527552CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tarrow's, Sidney response in “Modular Collective Action and the Rise of the Social Movement: Why the French Revolution Was Not Enough”, Politics and Society, 21 (1993), pp. 6990CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also see Furet, François, Interpreting the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 22, 79Google Scholar.

34 Tilly's, analysis presents the same problem as Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar, which relates national identity to the “need” for homogenization of industrial society, i.e. to a sociological issue that became fully manifest only after the rise of nationalism. I prefer the historical explanation in McNeill, William H., Poly-ethnicity and National Unity in World History (Toronto, 1986), pp. 36ff.Google Scholar; see also the perceptive comments by Hall, John A., “Nationalisms, Classified and Explained”, in idem (ed.), Coercion and Consent. Studies on the Modern State (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 124148, especially 127–131Google Scholar.

35 See Downing, Military Revolution, p. 253.

36 Modern nationalism is inextricably linked with the idea of civil equality: nations are homogeneous and do not tolerate privileged classes. See Hobsbawm, Eric J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 18ff.Google Scholar; this principle holds true for the “political nation” that dominated in Western Europe; the Central and East European Kultumation was less egalitarian, see Alter, Peter, Nationalism (London, 1989), pp. 14ffGoogle Scholar.

37 Mann, Michael, The Sources of Social Power. Vol. II: Tlte Rise of Classes and Nation-states, 1760–1914 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 373, 393CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Foucault's surveillance, Tocqueville's pouvoir tutélaire.

39 See the survey of the recent literature in Jacob, Margaret C., “The Mental Landscape of the Public Sphere: A European Perspective”, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 28 (1994), pp. 95113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Palmer, R. R., The Age of the Democratic Revolution, 2 vols (Princeton, 1959)Google Scholar.

41 In between, a smaller wave of revolutions occurred in 1830, see Church, Clive H., Europe in 1830 (London, 1983)Google Scholar.

42 Tilly, Charles, The Contentious French. Four Centuries of Popular Struggle (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), pp. 392393CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 For example, see Luebbert, Gregory M., Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy. Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar; Katznelson, Ira and Zolberg, Aristide R. (eds), Working-Class Formation. Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton, 1986)Google Scholar; Breuilly, John, Labour and Liberalism in Nineteenth Century Europe (Manchester, 1992)Google Scholar; Kocka, Jürgen (ed.), Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert. Deutschland im Europtäischen Vergleich, 3 vols (Munich, 1988)Google Scholar. I have discussed this issue in more detail in Stuurman, Siep, “Liberalism, Labour and State-Formation in Nineteenth-Century Europe,” International Review of Social History, 39 (1993), pp. 7784CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 See the critiques of the self-interest paradigm in Mansbridge, Jane J. (ed.), Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago and London, 1990)Google Scholar.