The Origins of Political Order and the Anglo-Saxon State (original) (raw)
Related papers
‘No Caesar or Charlemagne ever presided over a dominion so peculiar’, exclaimed Benjamin Disraeli in a speech of April 1878 on what he imagined to be the singular diversity of the nineteenth-century British empire. But what about the Plantagenets? In the later Middle Ages, the Plantagenet kings of England ruled, or claimed to rule, a consortium of insular and continental possessions that extended well outside the kingdom of England itself. At various times between the treaty of Paris in 1259 and the expulsion of the English from France (other than the Pale of Calais) in 1453, those claims to dominion stretched to Scotland in the north, Wales and Ireland in the west, Aquitaine (or, more specifically, Gascony) in the south of France, and a good deal else in between. By the standards of the ‘universal empires’ of antiquity or the globe-girdling empires of the modern era, the late-medieval English ‘empire’ was a small-scale affair. It was no less heterogeneous for its relatively modest size. Rather it was a motley aggregation of hybrid settler colonies gained by conquest, and lands (mostly within the kingdom of France) claimed by inheritance though held by the sword. The constitutional relationship of the constituent parts to the crown of England was vaguely defined. There were marked differences in law and custom between the dominions, and variations in the legal status of the king’s subjects. Across—indeed within—the dominions, administration was geographically fragmented, and there were marked modulations in the intensity of government. Given all the diversity and flux, one might well query whether ‘empire’ is the appropriate word at all. This essay starts from the assumption that it is the very peculiarity of the wider realm of the Plantagenet monarchs that makes it typical when considered in comparative terms as an empire. Among the structures that provided a degree of cohesion more than sufficient to warrant the ascription of that label was the royal bureaucracy. The ‘transnational’ nature of this bureaucracy, and its role in creating a political culture and a shared imperial ‘space’, are key themes in the pages that follow. A second theme, paradoxically, is the brittleness of that same bureaucracy. The overseas empire of the Plantagenets was unusual in the late Middle Ages for its capacity to mobilise resources and co-ordinate action across geographically dispersed territories. By comparison, the Catalan overseas ‘empire’ of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries has been shown to be a chimera. And yet, for all the sophistication of its military and bureaucratic apparatus, the administrative reach of England’s medieval empire was frequently beyond its grasp. Many of the lands that came into Plantagenet possession, whether through inheritance or conquest or a combination of the two, were subsequently lost—sometimes wrested away in wars of re-conquest (as occurred in Scotland and France), sometimes lost by piecemeal nibbling at the edges (as occurred across much of Ireland). The final part of the chapter seeks to show that an explanation for this brittleness must take account of the markedly different attitudes of officialdom towards the various peoples subject to the English crown. The key question is not to what extent was the English ‘official mind’ willing to devolve power upon local elites in general, but rather which particular ethnic groups were deemed sufficiently responsible and civilized to exercise the offices of government, and how did the ‘rule of difference’ constrain the Plantagenets’ exercise of power across their empire.
Government, Power and Authority, 1300-1540
D. Palliser, ed., Cambridge Urban History of Britain, volume I, 2000
Looks at the major changes in the government of English, Welsh and Scottish towns and asks if government became more or less 'oligarchic'.
The Historiography of the Late Anglo-Saxon State
This essay has two aims: firstly, to examine how historians' opinions on the late Anglo-Saxon state have developed, and to critically assess relevant literature; secondly, to examine and assess how historians have conceived of the phenomena which some have labelled the state, and if the word state is appropriate for (early) medieval political structures. The essay takes a chronological approach, beginning with the view that the Anglo-Saxons were degenerates and proceeding from there through the reassessments of the twentieth century, culminating with the maximum view of James Campbell and its subsequent critiques and refinements. The paper also examines how Anglo-Saxonists, and medieval historians more generally, have conceived of the medieval state; it examines debates between proponents and critics of the term state. Though they, to an extent, problematised the term state, these debates ultimately proved fruitful. This essay demonstrates how drastically opinions on the late Anglo-Saxon state have changed since the nineteenth century. It also argues that, whilst it is not possible to resolve the debate over the state, and the term is in some respects problematic, it is an acceptable term for historians to use; provided they define their terminology and elucidate how they perceive of medieval political organisation.
The project of European political integration led by the European Union (EU) has provoked much speculation about what kind of political entity the EU will turn out to be. Recent scholarship has suggested that the EU can be seen as a form of empire and compared to earlier imperial formations. This review evaluates one such recent claim by Jan Zielonka that the EU resembles a 'neo-medieval empire'. In addition, two works which frame world politics in terms of civilisations are considered. It is argued that the concepts of civilisation and empire are compatible and applicable to studying the EU. While the concept of empire captures the strategic implications of European integration, the analysis of civilisations adds a cultural dimension and highlights the interconnectedness of Europe with its neighbours. Both concepts, as mobilised by the authors reviewed here, emphasise the radical pluralism and polycentric character of contemporary politics beyond the state. Books Reviewed: Jan Zielonka. Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union, Oxford University Press (2006) Martin Hall and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (ed.s). Civilizational Identity: The Production and Reproduction of "Civilizations" in International Relations, Palgrave Macmillan (2007) John M. Hobson. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, Cambridge University Press (2004)
Published in Mauro Lenci e Calmelo Calabrò, eds Viaggio nella democrazia (Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 2010), pp. 105-24. I This paper attempts to sketch how democracy came to be an integral if still deeply contested part of British political discourse between 1760 and 1830. It is a complex story. There is linguistic change: the reference of the term 'democracy' changes from ancient small city-states in which the people rule directly, to the idea of representative institutions serving states of often considerable territory and scale. This is coupled with a shift from a largely pejorative understanding of democracy, to one in which it is contrasted favourably with other regimes. There are also deeper changes, with ordinary people coming to see the political system as something in which they have interests and corresponding claims that they begin to articulate against the established order. This is associated with a growing rhetoric of political equality that motivates and articulates demands for political inclusion and helps develop, albeit rather gradually, a hostility to social groups that are seen as denying this equalitypredominantly, the aristocracy. Moreover, these changes in British political culture are accompanied by institutional developmentssuch as the rise of artisan associations, trade unions, and movements for reformthat embody aspirations for political inclusion in their very organisation. Indeed, political involvement and the articulation of political interests are not necessarily restricted to groups and organisations that attempt explicitly to change the status quo in more democratic directions, but can be found even among those apparently opposed to the principles of reform.
Discussions on the nature and evolution of pre-modern European polities are as old as history itself as an academic discipline. When the scholarly enquiry into the past found a home in universities, first in the German-speaking world with the efflorescence of Historismus in the early nineteenth century and soon after in other parts of the world, historians were first and foremost preoccupied with tracing the genealogies of their own political projects, that is, the nineteenth-century states. Leaning heavily on the reflections of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) on language, collective identities and historical change, historians such as Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) imagined history as a great pageant in which language communities evolved into national communities, which in turn developed modern states as the container and protector of national interests. 1 In consequence, early research on ancien régime polities often carried considerable ideological ballast. Glossing over persistently problematic concepts of nations and nationalism and ignoring the imperial aspirations of many polities to rule over multiple national communities, historians were prone to hold up the trajectories of England and France, for example, as exemplars of early and successful nation-states, while the relatively late unification of German principalities, for example, into a larger political project provoked much hand-wringing reflections about a Sonderweg in the panoply of European histories. 2 In the twentieth century, and especially in postwar scholarship, historians worked hard to unburden political history from inherited ideological commitments and questionable assumptions, but for all this intellectual house-cleaning, current debates still bear the stamp of these older traditions. On the one hand, many historians are persistently prone to imagine pre-modern European polities as "states", a conceptualisation that usually rests on Max Weber's (1864-1920) famous definition of modern states as institutions with a monopoly on the use of legitimate violence-public order management as opposed to socially
Governmentality and the Genealogy of Politics
The Birkbeck Centre for Law and the Humanities THE FOUCAULT EFFECT 1991-2011 A Conference at Birkbeck College, University of London Reflecting on 20 years of The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality This is the unabridged text of my talk given in June 2011 at this conference. I don’t have the competence to survey, still less to assess the vast and varied body of studies in governmentality which have been undertaken since we published The Foucault Effect. What I would like to offer instead, by way of an introduction, is a brief personal afterthought on our book, with the benefit of hindsight, in the light of subsequent history and publications, and with an eye to our current interests and problems. What did we (and I) miss or overlook that might have helped in writing the history of later presents? (I will look here especially at the first lectures of the 1979 series: liberalism and liberty, ways of limiting government, the liberal international order.) Conversely, what things did we notice and highlight, which may have subsequently been given less attention to date than they merit? (I will mention the idea of a collective, continuous history of governmentality, some points about law and neoliberalism, and some challenges about socialist governmentality and the culture of contemporary political critique). This brings me to my main topic. A lot of discussion focussed on ideas of stand‐off or disjunction between Foucault’s notion of governmentality and some thing or things (such as sovereignty, the juridical, rights and political theory) which function as governmentality’s other. I know I am not alone in feeling that, without lapsing into undifferentiated eclectic blandness, we need to move beyond some of these disjunctions and the brand‐differentiated sectarian silos they might be at risk of imprisoning us in. I want to argue here in particular that the vast wealth of posthumous Foucault publication now allows us to see a number of ways in which the history of governmentality which Foucault and others undertook enables, implies and demands an accompanying genealogy of politics, that is to say of political culture, conduct, sociability and subjectivity. To start with, we can look at a number of suggestions in Foucault’s lectures about instances of what one might call the multiple births of politics. Along with these hints, I will draw here on some key, complementary sources outside the 78‐79 lectures which became available after TFE was published (notably ‘What is critique?’ and ‘Society must be defended’), look rapidly at the implications of the novel reflections on philosophy and the political developed in the recently published lectures of 1983‐4, and reflect on that basis about what Foucault might have been planning to do next, having promised his audience, in early 1984, an imminent ending of his ‘Greco‐Roman trip’. Reading that promise today is a reminder of the simple fact that Foucault’s work was unfinished, and, as a consequence, that alongside the ever‐valid option to instrumentalise Foucault’s work, in whatever area one chooses and with as much freedom, inventiveness and faithful infidelity as one is capable of, there is also the possibility, within the limits of our powers, of trying to finish what Foucault left unfinished, or at least of taking up some of what may have been his work’s unfulfilled aims and ambitions. Hints or clues to how this might be attempted include some points of useful connectivity with other scholars’ work on the history of early modern thought and politics (Donald Kelley and Peter Donaldson) and some brief but promising encounters with the governmentality theme in some other important currents of contemporary work (Ann Stoler, Duncan Ivison, Keith Baker, Benedict Anderson and Partha Chatterjee). Finally I will ask how and under what conditions this kind of genealogy can make a useful contribution to public discourse. References Ann Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (1995) Donald R Kelley, The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French Reformation. (1981) Peter S Donaldson, Machiavelli and Mystery of State (1992) Benedict Anderson Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983, 2006) and ‘Nationalism, Identity and the Logic of Seriality’ in The Spectre of Comparisons (1998) Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (2004) Keith Baker, “A Foucauldian French Revolution?” in Foucault and the Writing of History. Ed. Jan Goldstein (1994)