The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically

by Franz Oppenheimer

We know accurately from the names of places (Salamis: Island of Peace, equivalent to Market-Island), from the names of heroes, from monuments, and from immediate tradition, that in many Greek harbors there existed Phœnician factories, while the hinterland was occupied by small feudal states with the typical articulation of nobles, common freemen, and slaves. It can not seriously be disputed that the development of the city states was powerfully advanced by foreign influences; and this is true, though no specific evidence can be adduced to show that any of the Phœnician, or of the still more powerful Carian merchants were either allowed to intermarry with the families of the resident nobility, or were made full citizens, or finally even became princes.

The same applies to Rome, concerning which Mommsen, a cautious author, states: “Rome owes its importance, if not its origin, to these commercial and strategic relations. Evidence of this is found in many traces of far greater value than the tales of historical novels pretending to be authentic. Take an instance of the primæval relations existing between Rome and Cære, which was for Etruria what Rome was for Latium, and thereafter was its nearest neighbor and commercial friend; or the uncommon importance attributed to the bridge over Tiber and the bridge building (Pontifex Maximus) in every part of the Roman State; or the galley in the municipal coat of arms. To this source may be traced the primitive Roman harbor dues to which, from early times, only those goods were subject which were intended for sale (promercale) and not what entered the harbor of Ostia, for the proper use of the charterer (usuarium), and which constituted therefore an impost on trade. For that reason we find the comparatively early use of minted money, and the commercial treaties of states oversea with Rome. In this sense, then, Rome may, as the story of its origin states, have been rather a created than a developed city, and among the Latin cities rather the youngest than the eldest.”[89]

It would require the work of a lifetime of historical research to investigate these possibilities, or rather these probabilities; and then to write the constitutional history of these preëminently important city states, and to draw thence the very necessary conclusions. It seems to me that along this path there would be found much information on many an obscure question, such as the Etruscan dominion in Rome, or the origin of the rich families of Plebeians, or concerning the Athenian metoikoi, and many other problems.

Here we can only follow the thread which holds out the hope of leading us through the labyrinth of historical tradition to the issue.

(d) ESSENCE AND ISSUE OF THE MARITIME STATES

All these are true “States” in the sociologic sense, whether they arose from the fortresses of sea-robbers, or from harbors of original land nomads as merchant colonies which obtained dominion or which amalgamated with the dominating group of the host people. For they are nothing but the organization of the political means, their form is domination, their content the economic exploitation of the subject by the master group.

So far as the principle is concerned, they are not to be differentiated from the States founded by land nomads; and yet they have taken a different form, both from internal and external reasons, and show a different psychology of classes.

One must not believe that class feeling was at all different in these and in the territorial states. Here as there the master class looks down with the same contempt on the subjects, on the “Rantuses,” on the “man with the blue fingernails,” as the German patrician in the Middle Ages looked on a being with whom, even when free born, no intermarriage or social intercourse was permitted. Little indeed does the class theory of the καλοκἀγαθοί (well-born) or of the patricians (children of ancestors) differ from that of the country squires. But other circumstances here bring about differences, consonant, naturally, with class interests. In any district ruled by merchants, highway robbery can not be tolerated, and therefore it is considered, e. g., among the maritime Greeks, a vulgar crime. The tale of Theseus would not in a territorial state have been pointed against the highwaymen. On the other hand, “piracy was regarded by them, in most remote times, as a trade nowise dishonorable ... of which ample proof may be found in the Homeric poems; while at a much later period Polycrates had organized a well developed robber state on the Island of Samos.” “In the Corpus Juris, mention is made of a law of Solon in which the association of pirates (ἐπὶ λείαν οἰχόμενοι) is recognized as a permissible company.”[90]

But quite apart from such details, mentioned only because they serve to cast a clear light on the growth of the “ideologic superstructure,”[N] the basic conditions of existence of maritime states, utterly different from those of territorial states, called into being two exceedingly important phenomena, which are of universal historical importance, viz., the growth of a democratic constitution, whereby the gigantic contest between the sultanism of the Orient and the civic freedom of the West was to be fought out (according to Mommsen the true content of universal history); and in the second place the development of capitalistic slave-work, which in the end was to annihilate all these states.