Thread by @BretDevereaux

An interesting article over at @AncientWorldMag on the idea of 'states' in the ancient world: ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/state…

I think it both presents an interesting argument and a solid summation of scholarly perspectives on the question, but I don't quite buy the argument. 1/21

Hall's main point: that 'state'-ness is necessarily a fuzzy set is valid and well made. Was Rome a 'state' in 477 when the Fabii fell against Veii? Probably not.

The state is defined as an entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force... 2/21

...for the Fabii to fight this way suggests that the Roman Republic itself didn't yet have that monopoly.

And of course even in the modern period we have developed terms to express some of the fuzziness of the 'state' set. We thus talk about 'failed states' for... 3/21

...entities which had the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force but lost it.

And of course, even modern states don't truly have absolute such monopolies - just read about revenge killings among street gangs where the law fails (e.g. amazon.com/Ghettoside-Tru… ). 4/21

Moreover, we need to caveat that the ancients often don't speak in terms of states: not Athens, but the Athenians, no the Seleucid Empire, but Antiochus or Seleucus does things.

And Hall makes these arguments very well, and they are worth making. 5/21

But there are other points I don't fully follow.

First off, I think it's probably a bit overeager to talk about the 'dismissal' of the notion of a hoplite army in early Rome.

The irony here is that I am myself somewhat skeptical about an early hoplite Roman army... 6/21

...and I tend to avoid making any kind of pronouncements prior to Polybius kicking in because the evidence is really 🤷‍♂️

But early Italian hoplite-esque combat is still regularly asserted, e.g. @DrMichaelJTayl1 "Panoply and Identity During the Roman Republic" PBSR (2020). 7/21

I think it is a bit premature to call a position 'dismissed' which is still standard in narratives for the early republic and continues to appear in the scholarship of specialists in the field.

Maybe that's coming, but it doesn't seem to be here yet. 8/21

Second - I don't know if Hall would endorse M.H. Hansen's definition of a state needing to be "public power above both ruler and ruled" but I think that added rider isn't very helpful, as it moves to exclude states built around truly personal rulership. 8/21

But history is full of states which achieved a monopoly on the legitimate use of force while still being personal possessions of an individual or a family; we still have some of these (e.g. Saudi Arabia).

I don't think the state as an abstract beyond the ruler is necessary. 9/21

And I think an excessively narrow definition of the 'state,' when they emerge and are used, has an unfortunately tendency to 'define out' non-Western states where the definition is otherwise met. 10/21

More to the center of the argument, the proscription of abandoning 'state' for 'community' I think still airbrushes an important distinction for comparing and understanding different polities. 11/21

Working at the meeting point of the Middle Roman Republic - where the state/non-state/proto-state question-marks of the sixth and fifth century had long since resolved into a clear state (perched atop a tributary empire and so complex in form) and truly non-state peoples... 12/21

...like those of much of Gaul and Spain, the state/non-state typology still has tremendous value for understanding differences in the structures of these communities. 13/21

The idea of 'state formation' is also valuable in situating Iberian and Gallic communities on a continuum of social change w/ Rome, at different points, rather than treating as completely alien forms of social org. because in many ways they are more similar than different. 14/21

Moreover, abandoning the 'state' label completely makes the process of state formation - with its tendency to 'ripple' outward as non-state peoples form states to compete with neighboring states - harder for the student to discern. 15/21

Of course we should stress in our scholarship and to students that state-formation is not one way!

The Roman state forms, fails, reforms, fails *again*, reforms and then fragments leaving successor states and a large zone of non-state polities over western Europe. 16/21

And I certainly endorse the idea, advanced by Hall that we should think in terms of "a world of individuals making choices which impact their contemporary space of time."

Any serious discussion of states knows that they are not singular actors, but composite entities. 17/21

I think a focus on webs of power is important, but I'd leaven that with some Hannah Arendt: force and violence are not power (and so 'military power' as used here, is almost but not quite a contradiction in terms). 18/21

States use power to generate force, and can use force to generate power, but the are not the same; this is not a case of one kind of power being transmuted into another but of the interaction of two quite different things (see H. Arendt, "On Violence") 19/21

In the end, I think ditching the idea of states, even for the ancient world, obscures more than clarifies.

That said, think this article is a good place to start talking about states and the use of the label though - it makes some very good arguments - well worth a read.

end/21