SUBJECT: Political Science

ASSIGNMENT TOPIC: - Historical Evolution Of The State

SUBMITTED TO: Mrs. Shahida Amir Chandio
SUBMITTED BY: Shabab Hussain Mahesar
Roll No: PO-0117-56
CLASS: B.S part 1
 Index

S.no Topic Page no

1 History 01
2 Stages of evolution of State 02
3 The Stateless societies of the primitive times 02
4 The Tribal kingdoms 04
5 The Oriental Empires 04
6 The Greek City-State 06
7 The Roman Empire 08
8 The Feudal States 09
9 The National States of the modern times 10
11 Reference 11
 Historical Evolution of The State

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]

The state has evolved through the following forms or stages: -

Stateless Societies of the Primitive Times.
The Tribal kingdoms.
The Oriental Empires.
The Greek City-State.
The Roman Empire.
The Feudal States.
The National States of the modern times.

The Stateless societies of the primitive times:-

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.

The Tribal Kingdoms:-

The tribal kingdoms of the proto-historical times came into being, first of all, in the
river-valleys of Africa and Asia, such as those of the river Nile in Egypt, of the
Euphrates and Tigris in ancient Sumeria (southern Iraq), of the river Indus in Indo-
Pak sub-continent at Harappa and Monjodero or of the Yellow River in ancient
China. At first, these tribal kingdoms were confined to the cities in which they rose
about 5000 B.C.

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 Empire

the inventive genius of man transformed the tribal States into city stales. But,
unlike the Greek city States, these oriental city States quickly evolved empires.
Such empires existed in ancieot Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and China. They arose in the
river valleys of the Nile, the Tigro- Euphrates, the Ganges, and the Yang-tze,
which are, therefore, called the cradles of civilisation Warm climate, fertile soil,
abundance of water and the unbroken plains around these river-valleys enabled a
powerful and aggressive tribe or city to conquer vast territories and enslave large
populations and thus become an empire. The city is the first condition of empire.
It became a centre of wealth and thereby a centre of power. The early empires of
the world, e.g., Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian, Chinese, were established
by peoples who had first learnt the art of city-life.

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 Greek city-State or Polis:-

ancient Greece was evolved a new type of State, the city-State or polls, as the
ancient Greeks called it Geographically, It is a land divided by sea and mountains-
into innumerable islands and valleys, where peoples and communities lived a
separate but not isolated life. This fact inclined the ancient Greeks towards an
intense love of independence and liberty, which was one of the most important
features of their political life.
their love of freedom was also expressed in a spirit of free enquiry in politics,
philosophy and in all other fields of human interest. A spirit of free enquiry and
search for Truth, Beauty and Virtue were important features of the ancient Greeks,
which distinguished them from the other ancient peoples who were bound by the
trammels of religion and custom, autocracy and despotism. The Greek city-State
gradually evolved and changed from monarchy to aristocracy and to democracy, as
in Athens.

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

Firstly, their love of liberty and independence, or patriotism, degenerated into

constant rivalry and feuds among them. Classes and parties in every Greek city
quarrelled with one another, cities fought with the cities. They could never unite
Their perpetual feuds and wars enabled at first Macedonian Kings and then Rome
to destroy their independence and conquer them. Secondly, Greek society and
economy were based on slavery. Even the greatest minds of ancient Greece, like
Aristotle, justified the exploitation and misery of the slaves, as necessary for the
leisure and happiness of the free classes.

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.

The Roman Empire:-

The Roman Empire: A Brief History. From its founding in 625 BC to its fall in AD
476, the Roman Empire conquered and integrated dozens of cultures. The
influence of these cultures can be seen in objects, such as oil lamps, made and used
throughout the Empire. Like the Greek city-States, Rome also began as a monarchy
and then became an aristocracy, and a republic and, finally, an empire. By this
transformation it repeated, to some extent, the history of despotism of the ancient
oriental empires. But there were also differences between .the two. Unlike the
oriental empires, the Roman Empire was, to some extent, a city-State writ large.
The Roman ruling classes realised very early in their career of conquest and
expansion that their vast empire thus they preserved only by extending the rights
and privileges of citizenship to the cqnquered peoples also. So they were made
citizens and not subjects.
But they were given civil rights only and not political rights, which were reserved
for the old citizens of Rome only. Another achievement of ancient Rome was her
system of universal laws before which all citizens were equal. The Roman Law
was based on the law of nature and of nations. The Romans also created a strong
and firm administrative machinery. Thus they preserved peace and order over
Europe, Asia and North Africa, called Pax Romana.

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. The Feudal States:-

During Medieval times in Europe, the state was organized on the principle
of feudalism, and the relationship between lord and vassal became central to social
organization. Feudalism led to the development of greater social hierarchies.[8]
The formalization of the struggles over taxation between the monarch and other
elements of society (especially the nobility and the cities) gave rise to what is now
called the Standestaat, or the state of Estates, characterized by parliaments in
which key social groups negotiated with the king about legal and economic
matters. These estates of the realm sometimes evolved in the direction of fully-
fledged parliaments, but sometimes lost out in their struggles with the monarch,
leading to greater centralization of lawmaking and military power in his hands.
Beginning in the 15th century, this centralizing process gives rise to
the absolutist state.[9]
7. The National States of the modern times:-
Cultural and national homogenization figured prominently in the rise of the
modern state system. Since the absolutist period, states have largely been
organized on a national basis. The concept of a national state, however, is not
synonymous with nation state. Even in the most ethnically homogeneous societies
there is not always a complete correspondence between state and nation, hence the
active role often taken by the state to promote nationalism through emphasis on
shared symbols and national identity.[10] Modern concept of State is absolutely
different from that of the ancient times and of Medieval Europe. States can also be
distinguished from the concept of a "nation", where "nation" refers to a cultural-
political community of people. A nation state is a type of state that joins the
political entity of a state to the cultural entity of a nation, from which it aims to
derive its political legitimacy to rule and potentially its status as a sovereign
state. A state is specifically a political and geopolitical entity, whilst a nation is
a cultural and ethnic one. The term "nation state" implies that the two coincide, in
that a state has chosen to adopt and endorse a specific cultural group as associated
with it.
The concept of a nation state can be compared and contrasted with that of
the multinational state, city state, empire, confederation, and other state formations
with which it may overlap. The key distinction is the identification of a people with
a polity in the "nation state. Since its advent in the 15th century Europe the nation
state has assumed several distinct forms. They are briefly, absolute monarchy,
representative democracy, clonial empire, fascist dictatorship, and now in some
parts of the world, a communist state.
Absolute monarchy:-
Absolute monarchy, or despotic monarchy, is a form of monarchy in which one
ruler has supreme authority and where that authority is not restricted by any written
laws, legislature, or customs. These are often, but not always, hereditary
monarchies. In contrast, in constitutional monarchies, the head of state's authority
derives from and is legally bounded or restricted by a constitution or legislature.[4]
Some monarchies have weak or symbolic legislatures and other governmental
bodies the monarch can alter or dissolve at will. Countries where monarchs still
maintain absolute power are: Brunei, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia,
, Swaziland, Vatican City and the individual emirates composing the United Arab
Emirates, which itself is a free association of such monarchies a federal
monarchy.
 Reference

[1] Giddens, Anthony. 1987. Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. 3

vols. Vol. II: The Nation-State and Violence. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0-
520-06039-3. See chapter 2

[2] klaus kstle. "Countries of the World". Nationsonline.org. Retrieved 2013-02-

20.

[3] Spruyt 2002, p. 129.

[4] Jump up^ Marcus & Feinman 1998, p. 3.

[5] Jump up^ Spruyt 2002, p. 131.

[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.

[7] Nelson, 2006: p. 17

[8] Jones, Rhys (2007). People/states/territories: the political geographies of British
state transformation. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 5253. ISBN 978-1-4051-4033-1. ...
see also pp. 54-... where Jones discusses problems with common conceptions of
feudalism.
[9] Poggi, G. 1978. The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological
Introduction. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
[10] Breuilly, John. 1993. Nationalism and the State. New York: St. Martin's Press.
ISBN SBN0719038006.
Other sources
Awami politics.com
Wikipedia.com
And google.pk