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History:-
The earliest forms of the state emerged whenever it became possible to centralize
power in a durable way. Agriculture and writing are almost everywhere associated
with this process: agriculture because it allowed for the emergence of a social
class of people who did not have to spend most of their time providing for their
own subsistence, and writing (or an equivalent of writing, like Inca quipus)
because it made possible the centralization of vital information.[1]
The first known states were created in Ancient
Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and others, but it is
only in relatively modern times that states have almost completely displaced
alternative "stateless" forms of political organization of societies all over
the planet.[2] Roving bands of hunter-gatherers and even fairly sizable and
complex tribal societies based on herding or agriculture have existed without any
full-time specialized state organization, and these "stateless" forms of political
organization have in fact prevailed for all of the prehistory and much of the history
of the human species and civilization.[2]
Initially states emerged over territories built by conquest in which one culture, one
set of ideals and one set of laws have been imposed by force or threat over
diverse nations by a civilian and military bureaucracy.[2] Currently, that is not
always the case and there are multinational states, federated states and autonomous
areas within states.
Since the late 19th century, virtually the entirety of the world's inhabitable land has
been parcelled up into areas with more or less definite borders claimed by various
states. Earlier, quite large land areas had been either unclaimed or uninhabited, or
inhabited by nomadic peoples who were not organised as states. However, even
within present-day states there are vast areas of wilderness, like the Amazon
rainforest, which are uninhabited or inhabited solely or mostly by indigenous
people (and some of them remain uncontacted). Also, there are states which do not
hold de facto control over all of their claimed territory or where this control is
challenged. Currently the international community comprises around
200 sovereign states, the vast majority of which are represented in the United
Nations.
A state is a type of polity that is an organized political community living under a
single system of government. A study of world history shows that states have
arisen at different times in different countries. They assumed different forms and
organizations in different countries of the people, and of government and law at
different ties and places. State has evolved from time to time and from place to
place. One state has gone a step back, another has gone two steps forward. That is
why we do not find any uniformity and continuity in evolution of the states in
different countries and people.
1. The early transition in human society from tribal communities into larger
political organizations. Studies of this topic, often in anthropology, explore
the initial development of basic administrative structures in areas where
states developed from stateless societies.[3] Although state formation was an
active research agenda in anthropology and archaeology until the 1980s,
some of the effort has changed to focus not on why these states formed but
on how they operated.[4]
2. In contrast, studies in political science and in sociology have focused
significantly on the formation of the modern state.[5]
For most of human history, people have lived in stateless societies, characterized
by a lack of concentrated authority, and the absence of large inequalities in
economic and political power.
The anthropologist Tim Ingold writes:
It is not enough to observe, in a now rather dated anthropological idiom,
that hunter gatherers live in 'stateless societies', as though their social lives were
somehow lacking or unfinished, waiting to be completed by the evolutionary
development of a state apparatus. Rather, the principal of their socialty, as Pierre
Clastres has put it, is fundamentally against the state.[6]
We know that the earliest human society was matriarchal in form. when Man
began to produce things by labour of his hands and had invented tools and
techniques to produce them, the matriarchal society changed slowly into a new
form, viz., the patriarchal society.
The patriarchal society of prehistory was still a Stateless society. It consisted of the
families, which were grouped into clans. Several clans formed a tribe. A family
was headed by its male member, father or grandfather, and consisted of his wife or
wives, and their children, along with a few slaves and dependents. Its aim was the
control of sex life and property of the group. It raised a number of problems for the
primitive patriarchal society, which led to the regulation of marriage and family
relations, the regulation of property relations, inheritance of family property, barter
or sale of goods, etc.
These problems were solved by exercising social control by the authority of the
eldest male head of the family or clan and regulated by tribal customs. In course of
time, this social control assumed a strictly political form when it was exercised by
the authority of the council of tribal elders and by a tribal chief. Besides sex and
property many other factors also, contributed to this transformation of social
control into political control. They were, briefly, religion and war. Religion was
mainly magic and consisted of ancestor-worship and nature. The whole clan or
tribe participated in religious rites, led by its elders and chiefs.
Common worship strengthened the unity of the tribe, created by its kinship
relations. Furthermore, unlike the earlier matriarchal society, the patriarchal
society was tom by the wars of the clans and tribes. Man began to kill man.
Common needs of defence and war necessitated military leadership and control.
Thus a successful military leader became the political head of the tribe. He was the
first king or ruler in the history of mankind. This is how the patriarchal society
gave rise to the tribal Statethe first State in human history. The map of the world
illustrates these changes even today. The primitive aborigines of Australia (the
Bushmen as the British colonizers call them) and the primitive people in Indonesia,
Malaya, etc., are still living in the matriarchal stage. They know nothing about
political organization or State. On the other hand, the savage communities and
peoples of South and East Asia, Africa and America had progressed up to the
patriarchal society and tribal State. But the civilised peoples of Asia, Europe and
North Africa had since long evolved higher forms of political organization.
These primitive tribal States or kingdoms still preserved many features of the
earlier Stateless societies from which they had grown up. The kings authority was
not absolute, but limited by the customs of the tribes and consent of the tribal
chiefs, they consultative body of the kingdom. The king was mostly chosen for the
qualities of leadership on the battlefield and in the consultative councils. Though
kingship was hereditary, but the successor of a deceased king was not necessarily
his son: he might be any relative who possessed the qualities of courage and
wisdom.
At first, these tribal kingdoms were confined to the cities and their environs, in
which they had risen to power. But from about 2000 B.C., a change occurred
among them. Some of the proto-historical city-based kingdoms became city-States
and other empires. So this evolution produced three distinct types of States in
antiquity. They were the ancient empires of the East (circa 200 B.C. to circa 500
A.D.) the city-States of ancient Greece, from about 800 to 336 B.C., and the
Roman Empire, from about 300 B.C. to 500 A.D.
The oriental empires became different from the earlier tribal State in many ways.
the oriental empire was based on conquest and force. The tribe was organised on
social equality, but the empire was organised on inequality. the tribal chief was
really the first among the equals, but the oriental king or emperor was the master of
all, and was even worshipped as a god.The membership of the tribal State was
determined by birth; but when a stranger once became a member, he enjoyed
almost equal right. The membership in the empire depended on conquest, force and
subjugation and did not entail any equality of right, social, economic or political.
On the contrary, rights and privileges depended upon the social status and class
position of a person.
Their economy was based on agriculture and slavery. The peasant is the most
conservative person in the world. he would tolerate all kinds of tyranny and
misrule. For him the distance between God and the king was one degree that is
why the peasants of the oriental empires tolerated their emperors and kings. This
was the secret of the stability and permanence of the ancient empires of the East.
A Theory of their origins: Karl a. Wittfogel, a German social historian, has given
theory of the origins of the Oriental Empires, whom the two things: firstly, large
work-force of free slave labourers, in order to build dams, dig canals and maintain
them for irrigation and flood control purposes, and, secondly, a large ruling class
of officers, supervisors, and others class consisted of both the bureaucratic
managers and officers, military commanders and also the influential priests to
manage, supervise and direct the free and slave work-force. This. Over and above
this elite class stood the supreme ruler of emperor. tribal kingdoms of the river
valleys were transformed into the vast oriental empires, which ruled over several
river valleys and their hydraulic society.
Though socially stable, the oriental empires were politically weak and unstable.
They were governed by hereditary and despotic monarchs,
The citizens were the warrior nobles and the priestly classes possessed wealth and
social and political privileges. The subjects, consisting of the peasants, had no
rights and privileges. The citizens and the subjects had no political rights or liberty.
They had to obey the ruler and pay taxes to him. The ruler appeared to them really
as a slave-driver and a tax-collector. Neither unity in the State nor liberty of the
individual was possible under such conditions. emperor, regarded the State as his
property and the people as slaves.
In spite of all their wars of conquest and expansion, they did not progress
politically, socially or economically for centuries. The power of the ruler was
based on the military and priestly classes. The society was divided into two classes,
the slave and the free; but even the free men had not much of freedom. They were
the subjects of the king, with little or no civil rights and political liberty. The
authority of the ruler presented a strange picture. unlimited at the capital, but weak
and unstable in distant provinces. Hence the provincial governors often became
independent rulers themselves whenever a weak emperor came to the throne. That
is why political power shifted. The oriental empires, they presented a strange
mixture of strength and weakness, anarchy and order, instability and stagnation.
They never developed beyond royal despotism.
There were some of their merits. Firstly, the autocracy of the oriental kings was
limited by custom, religion and tradition. His word was not always law, for law
was derived really from custom or religion.
Secondly, for all its weakness and instability, the oriental empire created
conditions of peace and order over vast areas of the ancient world, in ages when
mankind had not yet invented means of rapid communication and social control. It
disciplined vast populations into obedience and peace. Thirdly, though politically
unstable, the oriental empires created a stable society in which arts of peace and
culture were greatly developed. These are also some of the reasons why this type
of the State survived down to the recent times in the East
The ancienl Greek city-State was quite different from oriental empires of the
ancient East. oriental empires were based upon the despotism of the ruler but the
Greek city-State was based on the liberty of the individual and the free and equal
participation of the citizens in the government which means democracy in the real
sense.
It implied a direct and active co-operation in all the functions of civil and military
life. A citizen was normally every thing. While the oriental empires failed
completely to solve the fundamental problem of politics, viz., the problem of
adjusting authority and liberty into a permanent governmental form, the Greek
city-States achieved this end to a great extent and for a long time.
They were the first democratic States in the history of mankind, This was the
glory that was Greece. For the first time in human history, the governed were not
only the governed but also the governors. They were also citizens, free and equal
in all matters of State.
Their political life was based upon the maxim, the political writings and
philosophies of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and other Greek thinkers of ancient
patriotism, love of liberty and independence, self- government or democracy and
freedom of thought and intellect were some of the sublime features of Greek life.
In this relative freedom from priest craft the Greeks were able to cultivate their
many interests, including science, philosophy, history as we know them Basic to
all these was their free curious, and critical spirit.
The unexamined life is not worth living, Socrates was to say simplyso simply
that it is hard to realize how profoundly revolutionary this creed was (and still is).
In political life the Greeks accordingly refused to deify their rulers and sought to
rationalize authority. They developed their characteristic polls, a republican city-
State. Although they might be misgoverned by oligarchies or tyrants, they always
had some voice in their government and some recognised liberties. Although state-
forms existed before the rise of the Ancient Greek empire, the Greeks were the first
people known to have explicitly formulated a political philosophy of the state, and
to have rationally analyzed political institutions. Prior to this, states were described
and justified in terms of religious myths.[7]
Several important political innovations of classical antiquity came from the Greek
city-states and the Roman Republic. The Greek city-states before the 4th century
granted citizenship rights to their free population, and in Athens these rights were
combined with a directly democratic form of government that was to have a long
afterlife in political thought and history.
demerits
Thirdly, although Greek democracy was direct, it was not universal. The resident
aliens, the slaves, and the women were not given the rights and liberty of
citizenship. Naturalization was not known to them. Fourthly, the small size of the
city States became, in the long run, a source of weakness. Their life was intense
and active, but it became narrow and parochial. The self-government degenerated
into misgovernment and enabled their powerful neighbours, Macedon and Rome,
to conquer them all. Fifthly, the ancient Greeks, regarded themselves as the only
civilized people and all other nations as barbarians, and, therefore, believed
themselves to be a superior race-a very common trait of the Aryan race. Lastly, the
ancient Greeks could not create a system of universal law and administration, as
did the Romans after them.
It lasted for several centuries, which was in itself a great achievement. Trade and
commerce, industry and agriculture flourished over vast territories of Europe, Asia
and Africa under these conditions of universal peace. These achievements are the
contributions of the Roman Empire to political science. They are, for example the
Roman Law, the ideal of world peace and unity, international law and strong
administration. But the Roman Empire type has also revealed certain weaknesses.
They were the denial of political liberty, the destruction of local self-government, a
soulless bureaucracy, heavy taxation, depraved ruling classes, slavery, religious
persecutions, and irresponsible despotism. These weakness and deflects became
the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
[6] Ingold, Tim (1999). "On the social relations of the hunter-gatherer band". In
Lee, Richard B.; Daly, Richard Heywood. The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters
and gatherers. Cambridge University Press. p. 408. ISBN 978-0-521-57109-8.