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A review by jpegben
Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990-1992 by Charles Tilly
I don't generally review works I read for academic purposes, but I thought I'd detail a few thoughts on this one. Charles Tilly's work is seminal at this point and it's difficult to overstate its influence. The idea of the state as a protection-racket or a "coercion-yielding" organisation has come to guide the way in which so many think about the state. Yes, this work is replete with simplifications, generalisations, and even a little starry-eyed naïveté, but the core insight about the reciprocal relationship between the development and expansion of the state's organisational capacity and the exigencies brought on by the need to wage war remain piercing and important.
At its core, the observation that the administrative apparatus of the state arose from the need to mobilise resources for war is correct, but simplistic. Likewise, the notion that the course of development states followed depended on the resources they controlled, particularly how capital was concentrated and economies were constituted, has broad resonance. Tilly efficaciously demonstrates how the concessions leaders made to other stakeholders within states be they forms of institutional representation, the provision of goods, or bargaining over how resources were allocated and redistributed, profoundly influenced how institutions, legal arrangements, and bureaucracies emerged and consolidated. Regardless of whether this is entirely accurate or not - I'm sceptical it is in all examples - Tilly makes a powerful point in the sense that he resists the black box approach when it comes to treating the state in overly monolithic or discrete terms. Tilly's most important contribution is undoubtedly his historicisation of the development of states, of how history has not only shaped their institutions, but created a degree of path dependence even if the national state model did eventually prevail.
However, I did think the coercive-centric and capital-centric dichotomy, particularly in terms of how broad these categories are, did lend itself to reducing quite idiosyncratic processes to fit a broad theoretical model. It works in terms of the general Longue Duree across Europe, but can be very easily problematised when the examples Tilly adduces are placed under close scrutiny. Drawing on the example I know best, Russia, I did feel like Tilly diminished the complex process of Russian state formation to one of a straightforward story of centralising consolidation which was an afterthought that followed warmaking. War and capital are the be all and end all in his schema. There is little or no room for the administrative legacies of the Tartar yoke and repeated incursions. Tilly, unlike many historians of Russia including Stephen Kotkin and others, assumes that the ponderous form that the Russian state assumed was an ad hoc response to warmaking. Yet, in many ways, statemaking in Russia preceded warmaking as warmaking itself was a means to make the existing state safe due to its precarious geostragetic position. In other words, Russia expanded to create buffers and pre-empt attacks on the state heartland. Additionally, he doesn't acknowledge the central role that cossacks, merchants - particularly the Stroganov family - and free landholders played in Russia's initial eastward expansion into Siberia which doesn't easily align with his narrative of Russia as a coercion-centric state and more closely approximates some of the capital-centric forms of expansion which prevailed in states like the Netherlands. Finally, and this can be applied more generally, he fails to seriously account for the power of ideas and how they can distinctly impact the direction of state development. The Russian Revolution is reduced to a mere byproduct of defeat in the First World War, in essence state failure, while the causational role of revolutionary agitation and conspiracy informed by one of the most radical strands of Enlightenment thought is virtually overlooked.
This bespeaks the primary problem with Tilly today. It's difficult to locate agency in his systemic analysis. At times, he'll make a passing concession to how an individual actor or group of actors profoundly influenced the course of development, but he doesn't address this in any rigorous or systematic way. Even when examining the earliest period of state development, patrimonialism, Tilly displays a tendency to characterise armies as a unitary actor rather than an agglomeration of local, sometimes opposing interests. This does not undermine Tilly's core insights, but it reflects a particular systemic approach which is difficult to square with meaningful historical agency for individuals and many stakeholder groups
At its core, the observation that the administrative apparatus of the state arose from the need to mobilise resources for war is correct, but simplistic. Likewise, the notion that the course of development states followed depended on the resources they controlled, particularly how capital was concentrated and economies were constituted, has broad resonance. Tilly efficaciously demonstrates how the concessions leaders made to other stakeholders within states be they forms of institutional representation, the provision of goods, or bargaining over how resources were allocated and redistributed, profoundly influenced how institutions, legal arrangements, and bureaucracies emerged and consolidated. Regardless of whether this is entirely accurate or not - I'm sceptical it is in all examples - Tilly makes a powerful point in the sense that he resists the black box approach when it comes to treating the state in overly monolithic or discrete terms. Tilly's most important contribution is undoubtedly his historicisation of the development of states, of how history has not only shaped their institutions, but created a degree of path dependence even if the national state model did eventually prevail.
However, I did think the coercive-centric and capital-centric dichotomy, particularly in terms of how broad these categories are, did lend itself to reducing quite idiosyncratic processes to fit a broad theoretical model. It works in terms of the general Longue Duree across Europe, but can be very easily problematised when the examples Tilly adduces are placed under close scrutiny. Drawing on the example I know best, Russia, I did feel like Tilly diminished the complex process of Russian state formation to one of a straightforward story of centralising consolidation which was an afterthought that followed warmaking. War and capital are the be all and end all in his schema. There is little or no room for the administrative legacies of the Tartar yoke and repeated incursions. Tilly, unlike many historians of Russia including Stephen Kotkin and others, assumes that the ponderous form that the Russian state assumed was an ad hoc response to warmaking. Yet, in many ways, statemaking in Russia preceded warmaking as warmaking itself was a means to make the existing state safe due to its precarious geostragetic position. In other words, Russia expanded to create buffers and pre-empt attacks on the state heartland. Additionally, he doesn't acknowledge the central role that cossacks, merchants - particularly the Stroganov family - and free landholders played in Russia's initial eastward expansion into Siberia which doesn't easily align with his narrative of Russia as a coercion-centric state and more closely approximates some of the capital-centric forms of expansion which prevailed in states like the Netherlands. Finally, and this can be applied more generally, he fails to seriously account for the power of ideas and how they can distinctly impact the direction of state development. The Russian Revolution is reduced to a mere byproduct of defeat in the First World War, in essence state failure, while the causational role of revolutionary agitation and conspiracy informed by one of the most radical strands of Enlightenment thought is virtually overlooked.
This bespeaks the primary problem with Tilly today. It's difficult to locate agency in his systemic analysis. At times, he'll make a passing concession to how an individual actor or group of actors profoundly influenced the course of development, but he doesn't address this in any rigorous or systematic way. Even when examining the earliest period of state development, patrimonialism, Tilly displays a tendency to characterise armies as a unitary actor rather than an agglomeration of local, sometimes opposing interests. This does not undermine Tilly's core insights, but it reflects a particular systemic approach which is difficult to square with meaningful historical agency for individuals and many stakeholder groups