Page 67 - Encyclopedia Of World History

comparative history 417

Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of
nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant
and universal principles of human nature. • David Hume (1711–1776)

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the most shown that the challenges faced by state-makers in
successful states are those that can both gain wealth and Europe were in many ways distinct from those con-
monopolize the use of force.Tilly’s work suggests varia- fronting Chinese rulers. According to Wong (1997,
tions among European states in a dynamic process of 2002), the responses to these challenges were influenced
political transformations. in Europe by the claims elites could make upon their
Another influential approach to the formation of mod- rulers, whereas in China they were guided by the com-
ern states highlights the changing bases of political mon commitments rulers and elites made to sustain
authority in societies with hereditary rulers and in soci- social order.
eties in which rulers appeal to their subjects for legiti- Overseas colonial empires represented yet another
macy. Reinhard Bendix (1978) has studied changing kind of state that defined a set of relations between a
authority relations between states and subjects as the key metropole and its periphery. Nineteenth-century colo-
axis along which to observe the turn toward modern nialism suggests a different way in which European states
states in which people achieve popular sovereignty. Like reached other parts of the world: not as the benign pur-
Tilly, Bendix portrays variations among countries that all veyors of political principles and models of government,
undergo parallel processes of political change. However, but as overlords who divided up large parts of Africa and
both scholars also recognize connections among their Asia as an extension of state competition in Europe.
cases: Tilly’s polities are all part of a larger European state According to Lauren Benton (2002), these competing
system, and Bendix tracks the spread of ideas and insti- colonialisms produced a range of similar developments,
tutions basic to modern states from their points of origin including the introduction of various forms of pluralism
to other places. Bendix’s approach takes him beyond his as a means to accommodate cultural differences—
European cases of England, France, Germany, and Rus- sometimes in ways that led to an acceptance of colonial
sia: he analyzes Japan as an example of a country to rule in many nineteenth-century colonies.
which political concepts first forged in Western Europe Learning from European colonization programs, the
subsequently spread. Japanese state began to build its own colonial empire in
In contrast to studies that remain within Europe or the late nineteenth century.The Japanese results, however,
explore the export of practices from the West to other were different from the colonial empires of Western pow-
regions, Victor Lieberman (1997, 2004) has suggested ers, which had their colonies spread over vast distances.
that similar processes of change were taking place The Japanese colonial empire, beginning with Taiwan
between the mid-fifteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries and Korea and later Manchuria, was viewed by many in
across the East-West divide; he compares Burma, Siam, the Japanese government as a tightly knit regional polit-
and Vietnam with France, Russia, and Japan, arguing for ical and economic order designed to support Japan and
similar processes of political, economic, and cultural secure it from threats posed by Western powers. From an
changes in each case. Lieberman’s identification of par- East Asian perspective, the Japanese empire represented
allel dynamics of political and social change within and the creation of a new kind of political order replacing the
beyond Europe has been an important contribution to much looser symbolic order of tributary relations cen-
reframing the discussion about European historical tered on the agrarian empire. In place of ritual presenta-
change. tions of tribute and commercial exchanges under the
Complementing Lieberman’s insights is another tributary order, colonial empire imposed legally defined
approach to the particularities of European state forma- and bureaucratically organized control over subject pop-
tion that contrasts the European examples with the ulations who were subjected economically to extractive
dynamics of political evolution in another major political and unequal relationships to the colonizer. Both Chinese
system, the Chinese agrarian empire. R. Bin Wong has agrarian empire and Japanese colonial empire differed