Comparing World-Systems:
Empire
Upsweeps and Non-core marcher states Since the Bronze Age*
Targaryen Marcher Lord
Hiroko
Inoue, Alexis Álvarez,
E.N. Anderson,
Kirk Lawrence, Teresa
Neal, Dmytro Khutkyy,
Sandor Nagy, Walter DeWinter and Christopher Chase-Dunn
Institute
for Research on World-Systems
University of California-Riverside
National Science Foundation Grant #: NSF-HSD SES-0527720
To be presented at the annual
meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association, Oakland, CA ,
March
30-April 2, 2016 Marriott Downtown City Center draft v. 4-1-16, 11479 words.
This paper is available as IROWS Working Paper #56 https://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows56/irows56.htm
Appendix:
Classification of Empire Upsweeps https://irows.ucr.edu/cd/appendices/semipmarchers/semipmarchersapp.htm
*Thanks to Rein Taagepera, a prodigious and pioneering coder of the territorial sizes of polities.
Need more on the 17th and 18th Egyptian dynasties,
Abstract: This research examines one of the
implications of the hypothesis of semiperipheral development: that major
increases in the sizes of polities have been accomplished mainly by conquests
carried out by semiperipheral or peripheral marcher states. We use the
comparative evolutionary world-systems perspective to frame our study of
twenty-one upsweeps in the territorial size of the largest polities in four
regional world-systems and in the expanding Central Political/Military Network
since the Bronze Age. We seek to determine whether or not each of these
twenty-one upsweeps were instances in which a semiperipheral or peripheral
marcher state produced the polity size upsweep by means of conquest. The
hypothesis of semiperipheral development holds that polities that are not in
the core have been, and continue to be, unusually fertile locations for the
implementation of organizational and technological innovations that transform the
scale and the developmental logic of world-systems. This is because
semiperipheral and peripheral polities have less invested in older
institutional structures and than do core polities and they also have greater
incentives to take risks on new technologies and organizational forms. One
important manifestation of semiperipheral development is the marcher state
phenomenon: a recently founded sedentary polity out on the edge of an older
core region conquers the older core polities and puts together a core-wide
empire that is significantly larger than earlier polities have been. This
phenomenon has occurred repeatedly, but it is not the only way in which large
empires have emerged. We find that over
half of the twenty-one identified empire upsweeps were likely to have been
produced by marcher states from the semiperiphery (10) or from the periphery
(3). We also investigate those upsweeps that did not involve non-core conquest
to determine what caused them.
This paper is a part of a larger
project that is studying the growth/decline phases and upward sweeps of
settlement and polity sizes in order to test explanations of long-term patterns
of human socio-cultural evolution. We use the comparative and evolutionary
world-systems perspective first outlined by Chase-Dunn and Hall (1993,1997) as
our orienting theoretical approach. The focus is on interpolity systems
(world-systems) rather than on single polities.[1]
We study how sociocultural evolution occurred in systems of interacting
polities. We propose a somewhat revised definition and typology of semiperipherality based on our study of empire upsweeps.
The main focus of this article is on the evolutionary significance of semiperipherality since the period in the early Bronze Age
in which states first emerged.
Figure 1: Rein Taagepera’s (1979:118) East Asia Graph 600 BCE to 600 CE
Regions,
Political-Military Networks and Upward Sweeps
There
has been a long-term upward trend in which human polities have grown in
population and territorial size while the total number of sovereign polities
has decreased (Carneiro 1978).[2]
Human polities have evolved from bands to tribes to chiefdoms to states and
then to empires. This long-term trend has occurred in a series of events that
we call upward sweeps (upsweeps). Upsweeps are defined as those instances in
which a polity emerges that is at least 1/3 larger in territorial size than the
average of the three previous peaks of polity size (Inoue et al 2012).
All hierarchical world-systems have
experienced a cycle of centralization and decentralization in which a large
polity in an interpolity system emerged and then declined. This sequence of
rise and fall is seen in interpolity systems composed of chiefdoms (Anderson
1994), states, empires and modern hegemons. In such cycles most of the upward
phases result in a polity that is nearly the same size as the one that existed
at the previous peak of polity size. This we call a “normal rise.” An upsweep
involves a significant increase in the size of the largest polity relative to the
previous peak. These upsweeps are much less frequent than are normal
rises. But they are the events that
instantiate the long-term trend toward larger polities and so they are very
important for the evolution of sociocultural complexity.
The Settlements and Polities (SetPol) Research Working Group at the Institute of Research
on World-Systems[3]
has quantitatively identified twenty-one such polity upsweeps in five world
regions since the early Bronze Age (Inoue et
al 2012). In order to identify these polity upsweeps we have mainly used
Rein Taagepera’s (1978a, 1978b, 1979, 1997) estimates
of the territorial sizes of the largest states and empires in four world
regions and in the interpolity system that David Wilkinson (1987) has called
“Central Civilization.”[4]
Figure
2: Largest polities in the Mesopotamian PMN, 2800
BCE-1500 BCE (Square Megameters)[5]
Figure 2 shows the territorial sizes of
the largest polities in the Bronze Age Mesopotamian political-military network
(PMN) between 2800 BCE and 1500 BCE. A political-military network is a set of
fighting and allying polities. This is equivalent to what International
Relations Political Scientists call “the international system” except that they
rarely study such systems before the treaty of Westphalia in 1648 CE. Figure 2 illustrates the difference between
empire upsweeps and normal rises. Lagash carried out an upsweep because it
became significantly larger than the largest earlier polities had been. The
Akkadian Empire was a gigantic upsurge. The Babylon/Mitanni upsweep was not as
big as the Akkadian had been, but it was more than 1/3 larger than the average
of the three previous peaks and so qualifies as an upsweep. Around 1500 BCE the
Mesopotamian and Egyptian PMNs merged to become what we call the Central PMN.
We
contend that interaction networks, rather than homogenous cultural or
ecological regions, are the best way to bound evolving human systems for the
purposes of studying the causes of socio-cultural evolution (Chase-Dunn and
Jorgenson 2003)[6]. But one problem with using interaction
networks is that they expand (and contract) over time, which can make the
results of comparisons dependent on the decisions one has made about the timing
of changes in the spatial boundaries of networks. Our project uses four world
regional political-military networks (PMNs) and one expanding PMN – what we
call, following David Wilkinson (1987), the Central PMN (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Chronograph the expansion of the Central
PMN and its engulfment of regional PMNs since the Bronze Age. [revised from
Wilkinson (1987); the PMNs studied here
are underlined]
The
four regional PMNs are Mesopotamia, Egypt, East Asia and South Asia. The
Central PMN, a network of allying and warring states and empires, is bounded
following Wilkinson.[7]
It begins around 1500 BCE when the formerly separate Egyptian and Mesopotamian
interpolity systems merged and it then expanded to eventually become the
contemporary global international system (see Figure 3). Long-distance trade in
prestige goods linked the East Asian PMN with the Central PMN since the time of
the Roman and Han empires, but East Asia had a substantially separate
interpolity system (PMN) until China was surrounded and penetrated by the
European powers in the 19th century.[8]
Core/Periphery
Relations
The notion of core/periphery relations
has been a foundational concept in both the modern world-system perspective
(Wallerstein 1974) and in the comparative evolutionary world-systems
perspective (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1993, 1997; Chase-Dunn and Lerro
2014). World-systems are systems of interacting polities and they often (but
not always) are organized as interpolity hierarchies in which some polities
exploit and dominate other polities. Chase-Dunn and Hall redefined and expanded
the core/periphery concept to make it more useful for comparing the modern
world-system with earlier regional world-systems. The core/periphery
distinction is a relational concept.
In other words, what coreness, peripherality
and semiperipherality
are depends on the larger context in which they occur – the nature of
the polities that are interacting with one another and the nature of their
interactions.
When we use the idea of
core/periphery relations for comparing very different kinds of world-systems we
need to broaden the concept and to make an important distinction (see
below). But the most important point is
that we should not assume that all
world-systems have core/periphery hierarchies just because the modern
system does. It should be an empirical question in each case as to whether
core/periphery relations exist. Not
assuming that world-systems have core/periphery structures allows us to compare
very different kinds of systems and to study how core/periphery hierarchies
themselves have emerged and evolved.
The distinction between civilization and
barbarism (and savagery) has a long history as polities have engaged in
“othering” and in social science. We seek to replace disparaging terminologies
with less loaded concepts, but our search for empirical evidence of
core/periphery distinctions often encounters documents in which othering plays
an important part, and it is best to be aware of these issues in order to make
the best judgments about what was really going on.
For comparing
different kinds of systems it is also helpful to distinguish between core/periphery differentiation and core/periphery hierarchy. “Core/periphery differentiation” means that
polities with different population densities are interacting with one another.
As soon as we find village dwellers in sustained interaction with nomadic
neighbors we have core/periphery differentiation. “Core/periphery hierarchy” refers to the
nature of the relationships between polities.
Interpolity hierarchy exists when some polities are exploiting and/or
dominating the people in other polities. Well-known examples of interpolity
domination and exploitation include the British colonization and
deindustrialization of India, or the conquest and subjugation of Mesoamerica by
the Spaniards. But core/periphery hierarchy is not unique to the modern
Europe-centered world-system of recent centuries. Roman and Aztec imperialism
are also famous.[9]
Distinguishing between
core/periphery differentiation and core/periphery hierarchy allows us to deal
with situations in which larger and more population dense polities are
interacting with smaller ones, but are not exploiting them. It also allows us
to examine cases in which smaller, less dense polities were exploiting larger
and denser polities such as occurred in the long, and consequential,
interaction between the nomadic horse pastoralists of Central Asia and the
agrarian states and empires of China and Western Asia. The most famous case was
that of the Mongol Empire of Chingis Khan, but confederations
of Central Asian steppe nomads managed to extract tribute from agrarian states
long before the rise of Mongols (Barfield 1989).[10]
The question of
core/periphery status also should be considered with regard to different
spatial scales of interaction. Chase-Dunn and Hall (1993,1997) point out that
regional world-systems often were composed of important interaction networks
that had different spatial scales. They use a “place-centric” approach to
spatially bounding systemic interaction networks that estimates the fall-off of
interaction effects from a focal settlement or polity (Renfrew 1975). The
network is spatially bounded by deciding how many indirect links (degrees of
separation) are result in the fall-off
of regular and two-way interactions that have an important impacts on the
reproduction or transformation of institutions at the focal locale (Chase-Dunn
et al 2016). Bulk goods networks (in which everyday foods and raw materials
were exchanged) were usually smaller in extent relative to political-military
networks (PMNs) of allying and fighting polities. Prestige goods networks (in
which high value per weight goods were exchanged) usually were larger than
PMNs, as were Information Networks. Systems vary in terms of how important the
exchange of prestige goods and/or information are for the reproduction of
social institutions. The issue of
core/periphery status always needs to be asked for both the bulk goods and
political-military networks and should also be considered for prestige goods
and information networks when they are systemic.
Semiperipheral
Development
The semiperiphery concept was also
originally developed for the study the modern world-system (Wallerstein 1976).
But it too has been expanded for the purposes of comparing world-systems. For Immanuel
Wallerstein the semiperiphery is a middle stratum in the global hierarchy that
helps to reduce the strains that emerge from polarization. Chase-Dunn and Hall
(1997: Chapter 5) contend that semiperipheral polities are often the “seedbeds
of change” because some of them implement new technological and organizational
features that allow them to successfully compete with core polities. This is
thought to account for the phenomenon of uneven development and the movement of
core regions from their original locations (Chase-Dunn and Grell-Brisk
2016)..
Hub theories of innovation have been
popular among world historians (McNeill and McNeill 2003; Christian 2004) and
human ecologists (Hawley 1950). The hub theory holds that new ideas and
institutions tend to emerge in large and central settlements where information
cross-roads bring different ideas into interaction with one another. The hub
theory is undoubtedly partly correct, but it cannot explain some of the
long-term patterns of human sociocultural evolution, because if an information
cross-road was able to out-compete all contenders then the original information
hub would still be the center of the world. But that is not the case. We know
that cities and states first emerged in Bronze Age Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is
now Iraq. It had 100% of the world’s largest cities and the most powerful
polities on Earth in the Early Bronze Age (Morris 2010, 2012). Now it has
neither the largest cities nor the most powerful polities. Most of the regional
world-systems have undergone a process of uneven development in which the old
centers were eventually replaced by new centers out on the edge.
Chase-Dunn and Hall contend that it is
often polities out on the edge that transform the institutional structures and
accomplish the upsweeps. This hypothesis is part of a larger claim that
semiperipheral polities often play transformative roles that cause the
emergence of complexity and hierarchy within polities and in world-systems.
This is the most important justification of the claim that world-systems,
rather than single polities (or societies), are a necessary unit of analysis
for explaining human sociocultural evolution. [11]
The node theory does not well account for the spatially uneven nature of evolutionary change. The cutting edge of evolution moves. Old centers have often been transcended by polities out on the edge that were able to rewire network nodes in a way that expanded the spatial scale of networks.
The phenomenon of semiperipheral
development has taken various forms: semiperipheral marcher chiefdoms,
semiperipheral marcher states, semiperipheral capitalist city-states, the
semiperipheral position of Europe in the larger Afroeurasian
world-system, modern semiperipheral nation-states that have risen to hegemony,
and contemporary semiperipheral societies that are engaging in novel and
potentially transformative economic and political activities that may change
the nature of the contemporary global system.
Philippe Beaujard (2005:239) makes the point that core/periphery
relations often involve co-evolution. Even when exploitation and domination of
the non-core by the core occurs, polities in both zones are altered and
co-evolve. In many systems in Afroeurasia and the
Americas interactions between hunter-gatherers and farmers led to the emergence
of polities that specialized in pastoralism (Lattimore 1940; Barfield 1989; Honeychurch 2013; Hamalainen
2008). Some of the pastoralists were exploited and dominated by core polities
but others turned the tables and were able to extract resources from agrarian
states.
There
are several possible processes that might account for the phenomenon of
semiperipheral development. Randall Collins (1981) has
argued that the phenomenon of marcher states conquering other states to make
larger empires is due to the geopolitical “march land advantage.” Being out on
the edge of a core region of competing states allows more maneuverability
because it is not necessary to defend the rear. This geopolitical advantage
allows military resources to be concentrated on vulnerable neighbors. Peter Turchin (2003) argued that the relevant process is one in
which group solidarity is enhanced by being on a “metaethnic
frontier” in which the clash of contending cultures produces strong cohesion
and cooperation within frontier societies, thus promoting state formation and
empire formation (see also Turchin 2009). Turchin focuses especially on relations between polities
that face each other on a transition boundary between steppe and irrigated agricultural
ecological zones. His (2009)
mirror-empires model proposes that antagonistic interactions between nomadic
pastoralists and settled agriculturalists often resulted in an autocatalytic
process in which both nomadic and farming polities scaled up their polity
sizes.
Carroll Quigley (1961) distilled another version of the semiperipheral development hypothesis from the works of Arnold Toynbee. Another factor affecting within-group solidarity is the different degrees of internal stratification usually found in premodern systems between the core and the semiperiphery. Core societies often have old, crusty and bloated elites who rely on mercenaries and “foreigners” as subalterns, while semiperipheral leaders are more often charismatic individuals who attract strong loyalty from their soldiers. Less stratification can mean greater group solidarity. And this may be an important part of the semiperipheral advantage in systems in which within-polity inequality is greater in the core than in the non–core.
But Arnold Toynbee (1946) also suggested another way in which the peoples of
semiperipheral regions might be motivated to take risks with new ideas,
technologies and strategies. Semiperipheral polities are often located in
ecologically marginal regions that have poor soil and little water or other
natural disadvantages. Patrick Kirch relies on this
idea of ecological marginality in his depiction of the process by which
semiperipheral marcher chiefs were most often the conquerors that created
island-wide paramount chiefdoms in the Pacific (Kirch
1984). It is quite possible that all these features combine to produce what
Alexander Gershenkron (1962) called “the advantages
of backwardness” that allow some semiperipheral societies to transform and to
dominate regional world-systems.
Those new
technologies and organizational forms that transform the logic of development
and allow world-systems to get larger, more complex and more hierarchical, are
often invented and implemented by semiperipheral polities. Innovation and
implementation are separate, but connected issues. Owen Lattimore (1980)
contended that non-core polities are often the locus of important innovations.
But it is obvious that innovations occur within core societies as well. What
are perhaps more important are the decisions to implement and invest in new
ideas and organizational changes. While some innovations may emerge from
non-core polities, it is perhaps more important that polities out on the edge
have a greater incentive to take the risks involved in implementing new
technologies and organizational forms.
Semiperipheral polities are often involved in processes of
rapid internal class formation and state formation and they do not have large
investments in, and commitments to, doing things the way they have been done in
older core polities. They do not have institutional or infrastructural sunk
costs. So they are freer to implement new institutions and to experiment with
new technologies.
There are several different ways to be
semiperipheral (see below) and semiperipheral polities not only sometimes
transform systems but they also sometimes take over and become the new
predominant core polities. We have
already mentioned semiperipheral marcher chiefdoms. The chiefdoms that
conquered and unified a number of smaller chiefdoms into larger paramount
chiefdoms were usually from semiperipheral locations. Peripheral peoples did not usually have the
institutional and material resources that would allow them to implement new
adaptive strategies or to take over older core regions. It was in the semiperiphery that core and
peripheral social characteristics could be recombined in new ways. Sometimes this meant that more adaptive and
competitive techniques of power were strongly implemented in semiperipheral
polities.
Much better known than
semiperipheral marcher chiefdoms is the phenomenon of semiperipheral marcher states. Many of the largest empires in all
world regions were assembled by conquerors who came from semiperipheral
polities. The most famous examples are
the Achaemenid Persians, the Macedonians led by Alexander[12],
the Romans, the Islamic Caliphates, the Ottomans, the Manchus and the Aztecs.
But some semiperipheries
transform institutions, but do not take over the interpolity system of which
they are a part. The semiperipheral capitalist city-states operated on the
edges of the tributary empires where they bought and sold goods in widely
separate locations, encouraging farmers and craftsmen to produce a surplus for
trade (Chase-Dunn et al 2015). The Phoenician cities (e.g. Tyre, Sidon, Biblos, Carthage,
etc.), as well as Malacca, Venice, Genoa and the cities of the Hanseatic
League, spread commodification and expanded markets by producing manufactured
goods and trading them across great regions.[13] In this way the semiperipheral capitalist
city-states helped to commercialize the world of the tributary empires without
themselves becoming core powers.
The modern world-system has
experienced a sequence of the rise and fall of hegemonic core states. The
Dutch, the British and the U.S. were countries that had formerly been in
semiperipheral positions relative to the modern core/periphery hierarchy. And indeed the rise of Europe within the
larger Afroeurasian world-system was also a case of
semiperipheral development, one in which a formerly peripheral and then
semiperipheral region eventually rose to become a new core and to bring all the
regions into a now-global interpolity system (Chase-Dunn and Lerro 2014).[14]
Indicators
of Semiperipherality
The main purpose of this article is to
determine which, and how many, of the twenty-one quantitatively identified
empire upsweeps were brought about by semiperipheral marcher states. In order
to do this we need to specify what we mean by semiperipherality.
This is not a simple task because, as we have mentioned above, world-system
positions (core, periphery, semiperiphery) are relational concepts. In other
words, what semiperipherality is depends on the
larger context in which it occurs – the nature of the polities that are
interacting with one another and the nature of their interactions. The most
general definition of the semiperiphery
is: an intermediate location in an interpolity core/periphery structure. The
minimal definition of core/periphery relations, as mentioned above, is that
polities with different degrees of population density are interacting with one
another. This is what Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) have called “core/periphery
differentiation.” The idea of “core/periphery hierarchy” is more stringent. It
requires interpolity domination and exploitation. In this study we will be
looking for evidence that a polity that conquered other polities and was
responsible for an upward sweep in territorial size was semiperipheral relative
to the other polities it was interacting with before it started on the road to conquest. We will use four main
empirical indicators to make such determinations:
·
the geographical location of the society relative to other societies
that have greater or lesser amounts of population density. Is it out on the
edge of a region of core polities?;
·
the relative level of development: population density, which is usually
indicated by the sizes of settlements, the relative degree of complexity and
hierarchy, the mode of production: e.g foraging,
pastoralism, nomadism vs. sedentism, horticulture vs.
agriculture, the size of irrigation systems, etc. Foragers (hunter-gatherers)
and pastoralists are usually peripheral to more sedentary agriculturalists and
those who dwell in large settlements;
·
the recency of the adoption of sedentism,
agriculture, class formation and state formation; and
·
relative ecological marginality.
Core polities usually hold to best
locations in terms of soil and water. The semiperipheral marcher chiefdoms of
the Pacific Islands were typically from the dry side of the island where land
was steeper and soil was thinner (Kirch 1984). Of
course, which land is better depends on the kind of resources that are being
used and the technologies available for appropriating resources. But ecological
marginality is often an important aspect of semiperipherality.
Polities in ecologically marginal regions have a powerful incentive for taking
the risks of conquest.
The Aztecs are a proto-typical example
of a semiperipheral marcher state. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers who
migrated into the valley of Mexico and settled on an uninhabited island in Lake
Texcoco. There had already been large states and
empires in the valley of Mexico for centuries. The Aztecs hired themselves out
as mercenary soldiers, developed a class distinction between nobles and
commoners and claimed to have been descended from the Toltecs,
an earlier empire. Then they began conquering the older core states of the
valley of Mexico, strategically picking first on weak and unpopular states,
until they had gathered enough resources to “roll up the system.” The Aztec
story has all of the elements specified above that we will use in examining our
upsweep cases.
One issue that complicates the
determination of world-system position is: semiperipheral to what? A polity may
have different relationships with different other polities in the same
interpolity network. For example, Macedonia had one kind relationship with the
other Greek states, and a different kind of relationship with the Persian
Empire. Semiperipherality is relative to the system as a whole, but may also be affected by
important differences between other states in a system and by the existence of
different kinds of relations with those other states.
Philippe Beaujard (2005) makes good use of the semiperiphery concept
in his study of the emergence of a world-system surrounding the Indian Ocean. Beaujard (2005:442) mentions instances in which the
emergence of regional settlements that connected hinterlands with core areas
were facilitated by the presence of merchants and religious elites who were
migrants from core regions. Beaujard’s study of the emergence of unequal exchange
between the coastal Swahili cities and the interior of the East African
mainland notes that immigrants from the Arabian core helped to form commercial
ties, intermarried with local elites, and converted locals to Islam, thereby
promoting a process of class-formation that led to the emergence of
semiperipheral polities along the coast (see also Fleischer et al 2015). Beaujard
also affirms our point that innovations sometimes occur in semiperipheral
polities (445).
We have mainly focused on
the world-system positions of polities, but Beaujard’s
analysis of East Africa suggests that core/periphery relations may be involved
in important processes of social change even when individuals and families are
not in control of whole polities. We are interested in all the ways in which
core/periphery relations may be connected with social change.
The logical alternatives to semiperipherality are coreness and peripheralness. Core states are
older, more stratified, have bigger settlements, and they have had the
accoutrements of civilization, such as writing, longer. Peripheral polities are
often nomadic hunter-gatherers or pastoralists, hill people, forest people or
desert people. If they are sedentary, their villages are small relative to the
settlements of those with whom they are interacting. We also note that some conquest empires were
formed by peripheral marcher states or by old core states that made a comeback.
David Wilkinson’s (1991) survey of the core, peripheral and semiperipheral
zones of thirteen interpolity systems, is helpful in suggesting criteria for
designating these zones, but Wilkinson did not address the question we are
asking here: were the polities that produced empire upsweeps semiperipheral
before they did this?
We should also note that some large
empires have been formed by internal revolt in which a subordinate ethnic group
or caste revolted and took power in an existing state and then carried out an
expansion by conquest. The slave-soldiers of the Mamluk
Sultanate are an obvious example, and Norman Yoffee
(1991) has contended that the Akkadian empire was the result of an ethnic revolt
(but see our decisions about the Akkadian Empire in the Appendix). And some
territorial upsweeps have been generated by dynastic changes that were
generated by processes mainly internal to the polity that carried them out. A
dynastic coup can lead to a territorial upsweep. The point here is that there
are possible alternatives to the semiperipheral marcher state route to an
empire upsweep. We will also note cases
in which core/periphery relations are in some way involved even though it is
not a case of a semiperipheral marcher state.
We mentioned Beaujard’s
(2005) study of how migrants from the core to the semiperiphery led to social
changes. In the Sui-Tang upsweep discussed below Turkic generals from the
frontier led military coups that produced dynastic changes and territorial
upsweeps. And Peter Turchin’s (2009) mirror-empires model implies that an
upsweep could be caused by tensions generated along a steppe/sown edge that is
not a result of conquest of the sown by the steppe, but rather the expansion of
the sown polity that is a result of external threats from the steppe.
Demographic
structural cycles [also called “secular cycles” by Turchin
and Nefadov (2009)] are processes of demographic
growth and increasing population pressure within polities that cause class
conflict and state break-down. Turchin and Nefedov explicated Jack Goldstone’s (1991) model of the
secular cycle, an approximately 200 yearlong demographic cycle, in which
population grows and then decreases. Population pressures emerge because the
number of mouths to be fed and the size of the group of elites get too large
for the resource base, causing conflict and the disruption of the polity. Turchin and Nefedov (2009) tested their
formulation on a number of agrarian empires, confirming the principle that
cycles of population growth and elite overproduction led to sociopolitical
instability and regime transitions within states.
The
demographic structural cycle is understood to occur almost entirely within
polities, but the origin of this kind of model stems from Ibn Khaldun’s theory of both state formation and state
breakdown – dynastic cycles. Ibn Khaldun was a
Tunisian Arab from an Andalusian family.
In the 14th century CE he argued that dynasties typically
lasted three or four generations. A
dynasty would get old and corrupt, and “barbarians” (what we call
semiperipheral marcher states) would take over.
The leader of a “barbarian” marcher polity had to be generous,
charismatic, and a brilliant and sophisticated war leader as well as a good
manager of men in order to inspire his warriors and get their support. His followers thus developed ‘asabiyah, basically loyalty, but more than loyalty --
an obligation formed by the leader’s generosity (they owed him for feasting,
presents, etc.) and by respect for his ability and success. Thanks to genius and ‘asabiyah, a particular marcher polity could take over and
start a new dynasty. The first
generation went well. The leader was the
charismatic founder. There was lots of
land and loot, to say nothing of women and slaves, captured from the former
dynasty. The warriors were duly rewarded
for their ‘asabiyah by getting tons of
goodies. They settled down, but they
were still warlike enough to hold the state against all comers.
The
second generation was often a Golden Age, with the dynasty ruling over a realm
of peace and prosperity. Wealth derived
from using the land and other resources, producing taxes which were used to
support brilliant culture, science, and literature. The empire tended to expand at the expense of
neighbors and the population grew.
The
third generation was a time of decline.
The land filled up with people.
Production declined because of environmental degradation and taxes also
declined. The rulers therefore had to
extort more to keep going. Military
expansion hit a limit -- war now costs more than it is bringing in. The ratio
of war expenses to captured loot declined because of expanding frontiers and
more enemies. Meanwhile the court is now
far from its charismatic founder. The
royal family has expanded, and there are countless supernumerary princes
running around desperate for wealth. The
bureaucracy has expanded to try to control the mess. Princes and bureaucrats fall prey to
corruption. How else can they keep up their lifestyle? This means still more taxes on a population
that has expanded and thus is faced with a shrinking land base per capita.
The
fourth generation is overpopulated, corrupt, and broke. The population naturally begins to rebel, or
at best they are disloyal to their rulers.
The stage is set for the next set of barbarians to take over. The whole cycle takes 75-100 years
(generations are typically 25 years). Buildup of population and rural poverty,
failure of food production to keep up, environmental deterioration worse in
final decades than in earlier ones, corruption increases and military
adventuring becomes overstretched.
A
very sophisticated model of state formation is presented by Victor Lieberman (2003, 2009; see
also Turchin 2015) that combines both internal and
external factors to explain waves of cultural integration and how these played
out somewhat differently in regions of Eurasia depending on how exposed they
were to nomadic or seaborne invaders. While the demographic structural approach
focusses on state breakdown, Lieberman focusses on state-building projects and
their consequences for cultural integration and the emergence of national
identities. From his vantage point as an historian of Burma he focusses on
mainland Southeast Asia, and then, in a refreshing version of positionality,
uses his model to examine similar developments in other regions of Eurasia.
Lieberman’s
approach is relevant to our study of upsweeps of polity size and non-core
marcher states because he contends that the processes of integration differed
because some regions were less exposed to invasion than others. What he calls the six “protected rimlands” of Eurasia were regions that were on the edges of
earlier civilizational complexity, and that were less exposed to conquest
because of geographical barriers to nomadic or seaborne invaders. The six
protected rimlands are Burma, Siam, Vietnam, Russia,
France and Japan. Because these areas were less exposed to marcher states and
incursions they were able to forge strong states and strong national cultures.
On the other hand, China, much of Southwest Asia, the Indian subcontinent and
island Southeast Asia were vulnerable to maritime or nomadic invaders and so
integration was slowed down because of conquest by culturally different people
(Lieberman 2003: 79).
Lieberman
(2003: 44-5) presents a model of the causes of integration, but he is also
careful to note that:
External
and domestic factors remained influential throughout the period under study,
but their relative weights and interconnections varied widely by time and
place. I therefore argue less of a single lockstep pattern than for a loose
constellation of influences whose local contours must be determined empirically
and without prejudice.
His model is described thus (Lieberman
2003: 44-5) :
…: External, including
maritime, factors enhanced the economic and military advantages of privileged
lowland districts. In reciprocal fashion, multicausal
increases in population, domestic output, and local commodification aided
foreign trade, while widening further the material gap between incipient
heartlands and dependent districts. So too, by stimulating movements of
religious and social reform and by strengthening transportation and
communication circuits between emergent cores and outlying dependencies,
economic exchange enhanced easch core’s cultural
authority. As warfare between cohering polities grew in scale and expense, and
as the subjugation of more alien populations aggravated problems of imperial
control, those principalities that would survive were obliged systematically to
strengthen their patronage and military systems, to expand their tax bases, and
to promote official cultures over provincial and popular traditions. Insofar as sustained warfare increased popular
dependence on the throne, it heightened the appeal of ethnic and religious
patterns championed by the capital. Pacification and military reforms also had
a variety of unplanned economic and social effects generally sympathetic to
integration. ….
And he presents a diagram that also shows the
effects of climate change and epidemic diseases (Lieberman 2003:65):
Lieberman’s
model is probably relevant for earlier waves of political integration and state
expansion of the sort we are considering in Mesopotamia, Egypt and the early
Central PMN. His contention that external invasions slow down integration is
somewhat supported by the case of Egypt, where there relatively fewer
incursions. China, despite being exposed to Central Asia steppe nomads and
forest conquerors from Manchuria, managed to have some upsweeps that were
caused by internal dynastic processes.
And the Khmer Empire never really recovered after its first charter floration because its stronger and better integrated
neighbors (Siam and Vietnam) were able to prevent the reformation of a strong
Cambodian state. Lieberman’s model, when combined with the factors of the
demographic structural approach that explain state breakdown, provides us with
the best overall model for explaining waves of political consolidation, but it
does not explain well the rise of the West and the huge upsweep that was
the British Empire. Though Lieberman is
careful to consider the effects of economic integration and commodification on
local integration, he does not explain how centrality in global circuits of
trade and investment could eventually lead to the modern hegemonies.
Types
of Upsweeps
So we find five different kinds of
upsweeps:
1. semiperipheral
marcher state (SMS), a
polity that is in a semiperipheral position within a regional system conquers a
large area and produces a territorial upsweep;
2. peripheral
marcher state (PMS), in
which a polity that is peripheral in a regional system conquers the core, (e.g.
the Mongol Empire).
3. mirror-empire
(ME), in which a core state that is under pressure from a non-core polity
carries out a territorial expansion
4. internal
revolt (IR), a state
formed by an internal ethnic or class rebellion, such as what Yoffee (1991) argues for the Akkadian Empire, or the Mamluk Empire
5. internal
dynastic change (IDC), a coup carried
out by a rising faction within the
ruling class of a state leads to a territorial expansion.[15] The first three types involve relations among
polities, whereas the last two are mainly due to processes operating within polities.
Our review of the upsweeps also suggests
that there have been different kinds of semiperipheral marcher states that have
different combinations of the features discussed above. The summary of our
efforts to find evidence for each case is contained in the Appendix for this
article.[16] The effort to locate evidence in favor of, or
against, the semiperipheral origins of the upsweeps has been more difficult for
the earlier cases because evidence for them is circumstantial or lacking. Thus
the categorization of the origins of upsweeps must be qualified in terms of the
degree of certainty.
Table 1 shows the twenty-one cases
identified as empire upsweeps in our quantitative study (Inoue et al 2012). It also shows the results of our effort to
categorize each of these upsweeps into the five types of polity upsweeps
outlined above.
The Mongol empire is shown twice in
Table 1 because it was important for both the East Asian and the Central PMNs,
but it is not counted twice in Table 2 below. The first three upsweeps in Table
1 are from the Mesopotamian regional world-system (see also Figure 2 above).
Mesopotamia
2800 BCE to 1500 BCE
|
Peak Year |
Peak
Size (Sq.
Megameters) size |
Polity
name |
Type
of Upsweep |
|
-2400 |
0.05 |
probably an IDC |
|
|
-2250
|
0.8 |
SMS
and IR |
|
|
-1450 |
0.3 |
SMS |
Egypt 2850 BCE to 1500
BCE
|
Peak Year |
Peak
Size (Sq.
Megameters) |
Polity name |
Type of Upsweep |
|
-2400 |
0.4 |
probably
an IDC |
|
|
-1850 |
0.5 |
IDC |
|
|
-1650 |
0.65 |
SMS and IR |
Central
PMN 1500 BCE to 1991AD
|
Peak
Year |
Size Sq. Megameters |
Polity
name(s) |
Type
of Upsweep |
|
-1450 |
1 |
IDC |
|
|
-670 |
1.4 |
ME |
|
|
-480 |
5.4 |
SMS |
|
|
117 |
5 |
SMS |
|
|
750 |
11.1 |
Islamic
Empires |
SMS |
|
1294 |
29.4 |
PMS |
|
|
1936 |
34.5 |
SMS |
East
Asia 1300 BCE to 1830 AD
|
Peak Year |
Size in Sq. Megameters |
Polity name(s) |
Type of Upsweep |
|
-1050 |
1.25 |
Probably SMS |
|
|
-176 |
4.03 |
* |
|
|
Mongol-Yuan (same as above in Central
System. Counted only once) |
|||
Table 1:
World-system position origin of those polities that produced territorial
upsweeps
Table 2:
Count of the 21 upsweep cases in Table 1 with regard Type of Territorial Upsweep
The Egyptian 2nd- 5th dynasties[17]
The
increase in territorial size was based on that
wave of unification and state formation of Egypt that started toward the
end of the 2nd dynasty. [18]
Van de Mieroop’s (2011:50) review of the Old Kingdom
literature on the causes of the unification of lower and upper Egypt presents
different views, concluding that the most likely scenario was one in which “a regional elite expanded its power
gradually over the entirety of the country by eliminating other elites…” He says that scholars
agree that territorial unification happened, but no one explains well why it
happened. He contends that the most
likely of the competing interpretations focusses on internal state formation
processes that led to territorial expansion rather than external causes. Increased state formation toward the end of
the 2nd dynasty, and territorial and state expansion in the 3rd
through 5th dynasties are indicated by architectural evidence of the
enlarging monumental/mortuary buildings (see
also Beaujard 2112:176). [19]
Figure 4: Largest states and empires in the
Egyptian PMN, 2850 BCE-1500 BCE
More on 17th
and 18th dynasties here
dissertation, Interdepartmental
archaeology program, UCLA.
_____. 2005. “Power is in
the Details: Administrative Technology and the Growth of Ancient
Near Eastern Cores.” Pp. 75-91 in The Historical Evolution of World-Systems,
edited by
Christopher Chase-Dunn and E. N.
Anderson. New York and London: Palgrave.
Anderson,
David G. 1994 The Savannah River Chiefdoms. Tuscaloosa: University of
Alabama Press.
Anderson, E.
N., and Christopher Chase-Dunn.
2005. “The Rise and Fall of Great
Powers.” Pp. 1-
19 in C. Chase-Dunn and E. N.
Anderson (eds.): The Historical Evolution of World-Systems.
New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Pp. 1-19.
Barfield, Thomas J. 1989 The
Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China. Cambridge, MA.: Blackwell
Beaujard, Philippe.
2005 The Indian Ocean in Eurasian and African World-Systems Before
the
Sixteenth Century・ Journal of World History 16,4:411-465.
Eurasian
World-System.”Journal of World History
21:1(March):1-43.
_______________ 2112
Les mondes de l’océan
Indien Tome II:
L’océan Indien, au coeur des
globalisations de l’ancien Monde
du 7e au 15e sičcle. Paris: Armand Colin
Carneiro, Robert L.
1978. "Political Expansion
as an Expression of the Principle of Competitive
Exclusion." Pp. 205-23 in Origins of the State: the Anthropology of Political Evolution,
edited by
Ronald Cohen and Elman R. Service. Philadelphia:
Institute for the Study of Human
Chase-Dunn,
Christopher. 1988 "Comparing World Systems: Toward a
Theory of Semiperipheral
Development." Comparative
Civilizations Review 19(Fall):29-66.
Chase-Dunn,
C. and Andrew K. Jorgenson, “Regions and Interaction Networks: an institutional
materialist perspective,” 2003 International Journal of Comparative Sociology 44,1:433-450.
Chase-Dunn,
C. and Thomas D. Hall 1993 "Comparing world-systems: concepts and working
hypotheses" Social Forces 71,4 (June).
_____________________________. 1997 Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems.
Chase-Dunn,
Christopher, Daniel Pasciuti, Alexis Alvarez and
Thomas D. Hall 2006 “Waves of
globalization and semiperipheral
development in the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian
world-systems. Pp. 114-138 in Globalization and Global History edited
by Barry K. Gills and
William R. Thompson. London:Routledge.
Chase-Dunn,
C. and Bruce Lerro 2013 Social Change: Globalization From the Stone Age to the Present.
Chase-Dunn, C. E.
N. Anderson, Hiroko Inoue and Alexis Álvarez
2015 “The Evolution of
Economic Institutions: City-states
and forms of imperialism since the Bronze Age”
Presented at the International Studies Association 2015
annual meeting, New Orleans IROWS
Working Paper #79 available at https://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows79/irows79.htm
Chase-Dunn, C. and Marilyn Grell-Brisk
2016 “Uneven and Combined Development in
the
Sociocultural
Evolution of World-Systems” in Alex Anievas and Kamran Matin (eds.)
Historical
Sociology and World History. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield
Chase-Dunn, C and Bruce Lerro 2014 Social Change: Globalization
from the Stone Age to the
Present. Boulder,
CO: Paradigm
Boundaries, University of
California-Riverside, March 5.
Chase-Dunn,
C. and Hiroko Inoue 2016”Size upswings of
cities and polities: comparisons of world-
systems since
the Bronze Age” Presented at the annual meeting of the International
Studies
Association, Atlanta, Georgia, March
16, 2016
Collins,
Randall. 1981 “Long term social change
and the territorial power of states,” Pp.
71-106 in
R. Collins (ed.) Sociology Since Midcentury. New York:
Academic Press.
Dee, Michael,
David Wengrow , Andrew Shortland
, Alice Stevenson , Fiona Brock , Linus Girdland
Flink and
Christopher Bronk Ramsey 2013 “An absolute chronology
for early Egypt using
radiocarbon dating and Bayesian
statistical modelling” Proceedings of the Royal Society A 469:
20130395.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2013.0395
Ferguson, R.
Brian, and Neil L. Whitehead, eds.
1992 War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding
States and
Indigenous
Warfare. Santa Fe, NM:
School of American Research Press.
Fleisher,
Jeffrey; Paul Lane; Adria LaViolette; Mark Horton;
Edward Pollard; Eréndira Quintana
Morales; Thomas Vernet;
Annalisa Christie; Stephanie Wynne-Jones. 2015. “When Did the
Swahili Become Maritime?” American Anthropologist 117:100-115.
Goldstone,
Jack. 1991. Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World.
Berkeley: University of
Hall, Thomas
D. 2000 "Frontiers, Ethnogenesis, and World-Systems: Rethinking the
Theories."
Pp. 237-270 in A World-Systems Reader: New Perspectives on Gender, Urbanism, Cultures,
Indigenous
Peoples, and Ecology edited by Thomas D. Hall. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Chase-Dunn,
Christopher and Thomas D. Hall 2006 “Global social change in the
long run” Chapter 3
Cohn, Norman 1993 Cosmos, Chaos and the
World to Come: the Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith. New
Haven, CT:
Yale University Press.
Fang, Hui,
Gary M. Feinman and Linda M. Nicholas 2015 “Imperial
expansion, public investment Flammini, Roxana
2008 “ANCIENT
CORE-PERIPHERY INTERACTIONS: LOWER
NUBIA
DURING MIDDLE KINGDOM EGYPT (CA. 2050-1640 B.C.)” jOURNAL
OF wORLD-sYSTEMS
rESEARCH vOL 14, nUMBER 1.
http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jwsr/article/view/348
Hamalainen, Pekka 2008 The Comanche
Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Hassan,
Fekri A.1988 “The predynastic
of Egypt” Journal of World Prehistory Vol. 2, Number 2.: 135-
_____________ 1997 “Holocene paleoclimates of Africa”
African Archaeological Review 14,4: 213-230
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1022255800388
Hawley, Amos. 1950. Human Ecology: A Theory of
Community Structure. New York: Ronald
Honeychurch, William 2013 “The Nomad as State Builder: Historical
Theory and Material Evidence
from
Mongolia” Journal of World Prehistory
26:283–321
Hopkins,
Terence K. and Immanuel Wallerstein. 1987 "Capitalism and the
Incorporation of New
Zones Into the World-economy." Review 10:4(Fall):763-779.
Ibn Khaldun. 1958 Muqaddimah. Tr. Franz Rosenthal. New York: Pantheon.
Inoue,
Hiroko, Alexis Álvarez,
Kirk Lawrence, Anthony Roberts, Eugene N Anderson and
Christopher
Chase-Dunn 2012 “Polity scale shifts in world-systems since the Bronze Age: A
comparative inventory of upsweeps and collapses” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 53,3: 210-229.
Inoue,
Hiroko, Alexis Álvarez,
Eugene N. Anderson, Andrew Owen, Jared Ahmed and Christopher
Chase-Dunn 2015 “Settlement Scale Shifts Since the Bronze Age: Upsweeps, Collapses and Semiperipheral Development” Social Science History Volume 39 number 2, Summer
Kirch, Patrick 1984 The
Evolution of Polynesian Chiefdoms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Kradin, Nikolay N. 2002. “Nomadism, Evolution and
World-Systems: Pastoral Societies in
Theories of Historical
Development.” Journal of World-Systems
Research, 8,3.
Lattimore,
Owen 1940 Inner
Asian Frontiers of China. New
York: American Geographical Society,
republished
1951, 2nd ed. Boston: Beacon Press.
______________
1980 "The Periphery as Locus of
Innovations." Pp. 205-208 in Centre and
Periphery: Spatial Variation in Politics, edited by Jean Gottmann. Beverly Hills: Sage.
La Lone,
Darrell. 2000 "Rise, Fall, and Semiperipheral
Development in the Andean World-System"
Journal of World-Systems Research
6:1(Spring):68-99
Lawrence, Kirk. 2009 “Toward a democratic and collectively rational global
commonwealth:
semiperipheral
transformation in a post-peak
world-system” in Phoebe Moore and Owen
Worth, Globalization and the Semiperiphery: New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Lieberman, Victor. 2003. Strange
Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830.
Vol. 1: Integration on the
Mainland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 2009. Strange
Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830. Vol
2:
Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and
the islands. Cambridge:
Mann, Michael 1986. The
Sources of Social Power: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
McNeill, John R. and William H. McNeill 2003 The Human Web. New York: Norton.
Morris, Ian 2010 Why
The West Rules – For Now. New York: Farrer, Straus and Giroux
_____. 2012 The Measure of Civilization.
Princeton: Princeton University Press
process. The History of the East) Moscow: Territory of the Future
Publishing house
Quigley, Carroll 1961 The Evolution of Civilizations.
Indianapolis: Liberty Press.
Renfrew, Colin 1975 “Trade as Action
at a Distance: Questions of Integration and Communication”
In Ancient Civilization and Trade. Jeremy A. Sabloff
and C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, eds. Pp.
3-59. vol. 3.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Sanderson, Stephen K. 1990 Social Evolutionism. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Scheidel, Walter 2010 “The Xiongnu and the comparative study of empire”
Princeton/Stanford _____. 1978b "Size and duration of empires:
growth-decline curves, 3000 to 600 B.C." Social Science
_____.1979 "Size and duration of empires:
growth-decline curves, 600 B.C. to 600 A.D." Social
_____.1997 “Expansion and contraction patterns of large
polities: context for Russia.” International
Studies Quarterly 41,3:475-504.
Toynbee, Arnold. 1946. A Study of History (Somervell abridgement),
Oxford: Oxford University
Turchin, Peter. 2003. Historical Dynamics. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Turchin, Peter. 2006. War and Peace and War. New York: Pi
Books.
___________ 2009 “A theory for
formation of large empires” Journal of Global History 4 , pp. 191–
____________ 2015 Strange Parallels:
Patterns in Eurasian Social Evolution. Journal
of World-Systems
Research,
[S.l.], p. 538-552, aug. http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jwsr/article/view/405
___________ 2014 “The Circumscription Model of the Egyptian State” Social
Evolution Forum
Turchin, Peter, Jonathan M. Adams, and Thomas D. Hall 2006.
“East-West Orientation of
Historical Empires and Modern
States.” Journal of World-Systems
Research.12:2(December):218-
Turchin, Peter and
Sergey Nefadov. 2009. Secular Cycles. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Van De Mieroop,
Marc 2011 A History of Ancient Egypt.
Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell
World-Economy in the Sixteenth
Century. New
York: Academic Press.
__________________. 1976 “Semiperipheral countries and the
contemporary world crisis” Theory
Wengrow, David 2006 The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa,
10,000 to 2650 BC. Cambridge University Press, New
York
World-Systems Archive
(http://wsarch.ucr.edu)
Wilkinson, David. 1987 "Central
civilization" Comparative Civilizations Review 17:31-59 (Fall).
_____. 1991 “Cores, peripheries and civilizations” Pp.113-166 in C. Chase-Dunn and T.D. Hall
(eds.) Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds. Boulder, CO: Westview.
http://www.irows.ucr.edu/cd/books/c-p/chap4.htm
Yoffee, Norman 1991
“The collapse of ancient Mesopotamian states and civilization.” Pp. 44-68 in
Norman
Yoffee and George Cowgill (eds.) The Collapse of
Ancient States and Civilizations.