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.