Suchergebnisse

AbstractIn this article I explain a nexus between slavery and state formation in Africa, proceeding from initial demographic and institutional conditions to an external demand shift, individual state responses, and their collective systemic consequences. Historically, African rulers faced distinctive challenges: low population density prioritized control of people more than territory, and internal disintegration was often a greater threat than external conquest. A massive expansion in the demand for slaves offered African rulers increased opportunities to use external resources for "outside-in" state building. Many did so by creating highly militarized predatory slaving states. The collective consequence was heightened systemic insecurity. Variation in the timing of these developments reflected regional and historical variation in the expansion of the demand for slaves. Slaving states appeared first in West Africa, reflecting the late-seventeenth-century expansion of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, before spreading to East Africa a century later, following the parallel later increase in the Indian Ocean slave trade. This "outside-in" path to state formation both parallels and contrasts with contemporary postcolonial state formation.

The making of the international system from c. 1500 reflected distinctively maritime dynamics, especially "gunboat diplomacy," or the use of naval force for commercial gain. Comparisons between civilizations and across time show, first, that gunboat diplomacy was peculiarly European and, second, that it evolved through stages. For the majority of the modern era, violence was central to the commercial strategies of European state, private, and hybrid actors alike in the wider world. In contrast, large and small non-Western polities almost never sought to advance mercantile aims through naval coercion. European exceptionalism reflected a structural trade deficit, regional systemic dynamics favoring armed trade, and mercantilist beliefs. Changes in international norms later restricted the practice of gunboat diplomacy to states, as private navies became illegitimate. More generally, a maritime perspective suggests the need for a reappraisal of fundamental conceptual divisions and shows how the capital- and technology-intensive nature of naval war allowed relatively small European powers to be global players. It also explains how European expansion and the creation of the first global international system was built on dominance at sea centuries before Europeans' general military superiority on land.

This article critiques explanations of the rise of the West in the early modern period premised on the thesis that military competition drove the development of gunpowder technology, new tactics, and the Westphalian state, innovations that enabled European trans-continental conquests. Even theories in International Relations and other fields that posit economic or social root causes of Western expansion often rely on this "military revolution" thesis as a crucial intervening variable. Yet, the factors that defined the military revolution in Europe were absent in European expeditions to Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and conventional accounts are often marred by Eurocentric biases. Given the insignificance of military innovations, Western expansion prior to the Industrial Revolution is best explained by Europeans' ability to garner local support and allies, but especially by their deference to powerful non-Western polities.

Much International Relations theory explains the dominance of the sovereign state within the international system by a process of competitive selection. By analogy, the selection effects of market competition in promoting better-adapted firms are said to illustrate the selection effects of security competition under anarchy in promoting better-adapted units, specifically sovereign states. In critiquing this analogy, the article argues instead that the historical diffusion and current dominance of sovereign states is better explained by a sociological institutionalist logic. Units secure social acceptance, and incidentally survival, through conformity to promote legitimacy. This position is justified on three grounds. First, survival and violent elimination from the international system over the last two centuries are unrelated to military capacity, but highly correlated with legitimacy. Second, selection-by-learning rests on a series of highly demanding and unrealistic assumptions; the sociological alternative requires much less heroic assumptions. Finally, a qualitative study of micro-states, most-likely cases for competitive elimination, demonstrates their attempts to conform to idealized templates of the modern state.

The growing body of literature on hierarchy in international relations has overlooked instances of contemporary imperial governance. These imperial arrangements constitute a strong test of rationalist contractual theories of hierarchy. They support the contention that some polities will eschew sovereign prerogatives, or even renounce sovereignty altogether. Contrary to historical instances of empire, current dependencies receive prominent material benefits from the continuation of their relationship with the metropole. But the failure of the metropoles to obtain equivalent benefits shows why contractual scholarship on hierarchy is incomplete in failing to incorporate logics of appropriateness. Thus the primary theoretical goal of the article is to show that such scholarship is right in claiming that there is more to the international system than just sovereign-like units under anarchy, but also that it is too narrow in seeking to explain all instances of hierarchy as mutually beneficial bargains. Evidence is taken from fieldwork and interviews in dependencies of the Netherlands, Denmark and New Zealand. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Ltd. & ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research.]

The growing body of literature on hierarchy in international relations has overlooked instances of contemporary imperial governance. These imperial arrangements constitute a strong test of rationalist contractual theories of hierarchy. They support the contention that some polities will eschew sovereign prerogatives, or even renounce sovereignty altogether. Contrary to historical instances of empire, current dependencies receive prominent material benefits from the continuation of their relationship with the metropole. But the failure of the metropoles to obtain equivalent benefits shows why contractual scholarship on hierarchy is incomplete in failing to incorporate logics of appropriateness. Thus the primary theoretical goal of the article is to show that such scholarship is right in claiming that there is more to the international system than just sovereign-like units under anarchy, but also that it is too narrow in seeking to explain all instances of hierarchy as mutually beneficial bargains. Evidence is taken from fieldwork and interviews in dependencies of the Netherlands, Denmark and New Zealand.