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Kamil Galeev
Galeev Kamil Ramilevich is a 3rd year student of the HSE Faculty of History.
Book Review: Reinert Sophus A. Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011. 438 p. (ISBN 0674061519)
The book under review by Harvard historian Sophus Reinert is devoted to the history of the emergence of political economy. The value of his work is that it helps to understand the political background of economic life and economic science, and therefore to question the theory that ignores this background. This book is not only about the fact that once in the past ideas were circulated about which we know little. The author shows that any nation-state, no matter what its ideology, no matter how cosmopolitan and universal it proclaims itself, pursues a policy of tough struggle for its own interests.
"Europe carried out its industrialization,
adhering to theories and implementing measures,
who basically had little to do with
to the historiography of political economy,
coined retrospectively in Britain
in the second half of the 19th century.
"Europe generally, industrialized while adhering to theories and pursuing policies
which have little to do with the historiography of political economy invented
retroactively in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century” (p. 3).
The book of the Harvard historian Sophus Reinert "Translating empire: emulation and the origins of political economy" has not been translated into Russian. A pity - this is an excellent work on intellectual history. As the name implies, it is devoted to the history of the emergence of political economy. The word "translating" was not used by chance - the author examines the history of the development of a new discipline through the prism of the history of translations and reprints of economic works of the XVII-XVIII centuries. The plot is built around an almost forgotten, but most important work for understanding the history of the Enlightenment - "Essay on the state of England" by John Carey.
Sophus Reinert is the real son of his father, the Norwegian economist Eric Reinert, and his ideological follower. One of the main theses of the works of Reinert Sr. is the presence in the European tradition of the New Age, along with the orthodox liberal canon of economic theory (laissez faire - laissez passer), of an “other”, earlier than liberal, protectionist canon.
The underlying premise of this "other" canon is as follows. Different types of economic activity have different “technological capacity”, that is, different potential for rationalization and innovation and, ultimately, for economic growth. This leads to the conclusion that economic success depends to a large extent on the correct choice of the field of activity. In general, we can say that agriculture and the extraction of raw materials are bad areas of specialization, leading to poverty, while industry is good, and it leads to wealth. This contradicts the basic premise of the neoclassical tradition, which the Nobel laureate James Buchanan formulated as the "equality assumption" - the investment of an equal amount of labor and material resources in different activities brings the same return. Increasing returns to scale and QWERTY effects, primarily due to the fact that “bad” economic activities not only absorb innovations poorly, but also produce them poorly, lead to the fact that new players in “good” markets will lose out to the old ones. . This means that governments of countries that want to achieve prosperity should artificially stimulate growth in the “right” industries. This is possible by closing the market by introducing customs duties, paying export subsidies, government support for borrowing foreign technologies, including industrial espionage, etc.
The “other” canon was followed by every country without exception that had ever achieved economic prosperity. Having achieved success, the developed countries, however, each time tried to prohibit competing countries from following their example. In the words of the German-American economist Friedrich List, the leading industrial power, England, sought to "throw the ladder behind itself." Sometimes this happened by force: in the early stages, the industry of competing countries was simply destroyed, as the British destroyed the textile industry of Ireland (“The Wool Act” (Wool Act) of the English Parliament of 1699 forbade the export of finished woolen goods from Ireland), at later stages - it was crushed by softer methods, such as, for example, cotton spinning in India, Chinese industry (the so-called "gunboat diplomacy") and, less well known, southern Europe.
An important role in "rejecting the ladder" was also played by "esoteric" liberal economic theories (recipes) intended only for export. Thus, Adam Smith categorically did not advise Americans to build their own industry, arguing that this would lead to a drop in American incomes. And John Carey recommended that the Irish and the inhabitants of other English colonies concentrate on agriculture - he called for completely different measures in England.
Sophus Reinert shares in general both the ideas of Reinert the Elder and his interest in old, obscure writings on economic theory. But their approaches differ: Reinert Sr. is an economist, and Reinert Jr. is a historian. Despite Erik Reinert's broad and unprecedented erudition for an economist, the main subject of his interest is the model, and historical context- only empirical material to prove the main thesis. For Sophus, on the other hand, the historical context is the most important, and in itself deserves detailed consideration. Books by Reinert Jr. are designed for a more prepared reader. The manner of his narration, and indeed of his writing, is reminiscent of the baroque style of Jacob Burckhardt, if that can be said of the text written in academic English at all.
The book has five parts. The first, "Emulation and translation", is devoted to the general historical and intellectual context of the era, the second to the English original of Carey's book, the subsequent ones, respectively, to the French, Italian and German translations, which differ from the original both in content and in political context, which means that and political meaning.
Even in Montesquieu one can meet a very common misconception so far. The French philosopher contrasts the cruel realm of war and politics, in which there are always winners and losers (and woe to the vanquished!), to the peaceful realm of doux commerce, "innocent commerce" - an area of mutual cooperation, harmony and mutual enrichment. To what extent does the picture drawn by the French enlightener reflect reality?
Observations and plots of an economic nature can be found even in ancient authors - remember how Marx wrote in Capital about the "bourgeois instinct of Xenophon". But until the early modern period, economic problems were not given even a hundredth of the attention that they began to be given with his advent. What is it connected with?
The fact is that only in the XVI-XVII centuries. economic policy began to be seen as a way to achieve power - not the power of one individual over another, but the power of one country over others. This answer to the question about the secrets of power, so familiar to us, was not obvious to people of previous eras. Ancient authors believed that the dominant position of the state is ensured by valor and simplicity of morals. Even Tacitus, who wrote about the Roman arcana imperii (secrets of domination), which ensured Roman domination, had in mind, first of all, precisely virtu - a concept that has no analogue in the Russian language. This is both valor and virtue, and certainly public, expressed in participation in the life of the state, and, of course, male - it is no coincidence that virtu is formed from vir. Those authors of the Renaissance who followed the classical tradition, from Machiavelli to Michalon Litvin, shared this point of view.
From the 16th century in Europe, the idea that arcana imperii lies in the field of economics is becoming more and more widespread. Casanova, describing in her "Chinese Spy" the ancient Punic Wars, in which the military power - Rome, defeated the commercial - Carthage, notes that in modern conditions the outcome of the struggle would be completely different. This conclusion is not surprising for a contemporary of the Seven Years' War and a witness to the death of the first French colonial empire. From all the experience and observations of Casanova followed a disappointing forecast for France regarding the outcome of her confrontation with England. Unless, of course, France can surpass England also in the field of commerce.
What were these new arcana imperii according to early modern people? It is difficult for a modern person to understand this without knowing the language and terminology of the era.
As noted above, Reinert's attention is drawn to the history of translation and the history of the spread of economic ideas, and thus to the history of language and theoretical concepts. Entire sections of the book are devoted to these concepts - common in the 17th-18th centuries, but forgotten in our time: the concept of "jealousy of trade" (p. 18), the classic idiom "dicere leges victis" (p. 24), acquired in 18th century new sound, and, finally, the idea of “emulation” (p. 31) – it is no coincidence that this word is placed in the title of the book.
Jealousy of trade. A concept that is difficult to literally translate into Russian. The prepared reader will guess that we are talking about protectionist measures to protect their own trade and industry, but without knowing the philosophical context of the era, one cannot guess that “jealosy of trade” is a reference to Hobbes' key metaphor. According to Hobbes, the world consists of warring states - Behemoths and Leviathans, which are in relation to each other in a "state of nature", a state of war, and guided by their own "jealousies". The “jealousy of trade” metaphor reveals the political underpinnings of economic competition – the world is divided into friends and enemies, in a trade competition there are winners and losers, and these are not individuals, but entire states.
No less important, equally forgotten metaphor of the era "dicere leges victis" to give laws to the vanquished. The ultimate meaning of any war lies in the right to dictate one's laws to the vanquished, to impose juris-diction on him. Ancient authors emphasized that no success in any area of human activity makes sense if there is no victory in the war, because everything that the vanquished, including themselves, has, goes to the winner. This metaphor was widespread not only in the writings of the ancient Romans, but also in the works of Europeans of the New Age - Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, Locke, etc. It is enough to note that the translation of the expression "to give the laws" was given in the dictionaries of that time, for example, in English -Spanish dictionary of 1797.
But only in modern times did the Europeans come to understand that it was possible to give their laws to the vanquished without making conquests, simply by winning the economic competition. Already after the Battle of Blenheim (one of the largest battles of the War of the Spanish Succession, in which the troops of the Duke of Marlborough defeated the Franco-Bavarian coalition), the fear spread in Europe that the British would dictate the laws of all Europe, and after the Peace of Utrecht it develops into firm confidence. Casanova and Gudar, in The Chinese Spy, describing the fictitious journey of the Chinese emissary Cham-pi-pi across Europe, put into the mouth of their hero, who saw the English coast on the horizon, the exclamation: “So here it is - that famous mighty state that dominates the seas and is now giving its laws to several great nations!” (p. 68).
So, war and commerce are different sides of the same phenomenon - interstate rivalry. The stakes in this rivalry, whether on the field of commerce or on the battlefield, are equally great - the winner dictates his laws to the vanquished.
The third concept of Enlightenment is emulation (from Latin aemulari). Dictionaries define emulation as the desire to surpass someone or as "noble jealousy". According to Hobbes, Emulation is the opposite of Envy. This desire to achieve the benefits that the object of "emulation" possesses, and it is inherent in "young and noble" (Young and Magnanimous) people. There was a widespread belief that the state could only succeed by "emulating" more successful rivals.
JohnCarey. "Essay on the State of England"
“The English model is Janus, who owned
imagination of 18th-century European economists.
Trade could unite the world through cultural
and commercial connections, but she could also bring
to the enslavement and devastation of entire countries."
“The English model was a Janus-faced phenomenon that haunted the economic imagination
of eighteenth-century Europe. Trade could unite humanity with bonds of culture and commerce,
But it could also cause the enslavement and desolation of the entire countries” (p. 141).
The turn of the XVII-XVIII century. - a time of fundamental changes in the history of England. In our historiography, it is customary to speak of this period as the era of the Glorious Revolution of 1689, when the Stuarts were overthrown and the Dutch stadtholder William of Orange ascended the English throne. In English-language literature, the broader term is more often used - Williamite Revolution, which includes all the transformations during the thirteen years of the reign of William of Orange. This is the time of the formation of the English army and, more importantly, the Royal Navy. The royal power was significantly limited by the Bill of Rights, which was an important step towards turning the country into a parliamentary monarchy. England entered the era of nationalism and aggressive expansionism, which led to a sharp increase in military spending (the tax burden in the country was almost the heaviest in Europe).
The exact dates of John Carey's birth and death are unknown. He began his career as an apprentice weaver in Bristol, made a fortune in the textile trade, and organized trading expeditions to the West Indies. He was a delegate of the English Parliament in Ireland and took part in the Williamite Settlement - the confiscation of land from Catholics and its transfer to Protestants. It is believed that it was Carey who initiated the adoption of the Wool Act of 1699, which banned the export of woolen fabrics from Ireland, so as not to create competition for English textiles. Little is known about the last years of Carey's life - in 1720 he goes to prison, and his traces are lost.
Essay on the State of England is the largest and most significant work of the Bristol merchant. It is notable for the fact that the author is an empiricist, based only on his personal experience as a merchant and statesman. Criticizing the state structure of France, he speaks of the "unlimited power" of the French king. He does not mention the idea of "universal monarchy", about which English authors of his day wrote so much. Carey has no references to ancient authors - he is outside this tradition. Two letters from his correspondence with Locke are highly indicative. Carey accused Locke of miscalculating the exchange rate in one of his writings, and he reproached Carey for not knowing Latin grammar. Carey is a very "Kiplingian" character in her aesthetic. In the absence of any reference to ancient and modern Carey intellectual traditions, his work is replete with biblical metaphors.
The content of Carey's book can be reduced to the following thesis. The power of the state depends on its well-being, and this is achieved through specialization in the production of goods with high added value, which is inextricably linked with the introduction of technical improvements. Manufacturing and trade are the only sources of prosperity, and the extraction of raw materials is a sure path to poverty. Thus, the Spanish kingdom is poor, despite its vast colonial possessions, since goods are brought there from England. The labor of the Spanish workers adds nothing to the price of the commodity. Therefore, England must focus precisely on production: importing raw materials and exporting the products of her industry.
Carey argued with those writers who considered it necessary to lower the wages of labor in England in order to make English goods more competitive. The high earnings of the British, he believed, did not lead to a loss in the competitive struggle. Low prices for goods are ensured not by low wages, but by the mechanization of labor: “Silk Stockings are woven instead of knitted; Tobacco is cut with Gears, not Knives, Books are printed, not written by hand... Lead is smelted in reverberatory furnaces, not Hand Bellows... all this saves the labor of many Hands, so that the wages of workers do not need to be cut » (p. 85) . Moreover, high earnings lead to increased consumption and, as a result, to an increase in demand. It is quite surprising to find such "Fordist" ideas in a late 17th-century author, Dr.
What, according to Carey, was the role of the state in economic growth?
First, it must impose a high duty on the export of raw materials.
Secondly, to abolish duties on the import of raw materials and the export of manufactured goods.
Thirdly, to protect English trade from the encroachment of enemies.
Fourth, abolish monopoly privileges.
And, finally, fifthly, the government should, through the conclusion of "treaties and other agreements", ensure that foreign states adhere to the opposite strategy - the export of raw materials and the import of finished goods.
The greatest danger to England, from his point of view, was that other states would do the same. The French minister Colbert followed the example of the English king Edward III, who banned the export of wool from England in order to develop his own textile production. As a result, France became the largest supplier of luxury goods to England. Fortunately, the Portuguese were unable or unwilling to follow the French example, and the rulers of what was once the greatest colonial empire became "as bad sailors as they were industrialists" (p. 93).
The best illustration of John Carey's political convictions and economic views is his position on the Irish question. Ireland was then one of the three kingdoms that later made up Great Britain. Like England and Scotland, it had its own parliament. But Scotland united with England through a dynastic union and retained independence in all matters of internal government: they were united only by the presence of a common monarch. Ireland was conquered by force of arms and became subject to the English Parliament.
There is nothing surprising in the fact that a staunch Protestant and English nationalist, Carey viewed Ireland as the enemy of England - "the cradle of papism and slavery." Carey believed that Ireland should have been "reduced to the state of a colony" (p. 108).
Such a position towards the defeated country is unlikely to surprise the reader. Much more curiously, the disenfranchisement, according to Carey, should have extended not only to Irish Catholics as a population, but also to Ireland as a territory, with everyone who lived there. We are talking about the issue of Irish self-government and representation, which was so acute at the turn of the century.
Irish Protestants - especially Molinet - the largest Irish publicist of the era, did not mind the defeat in the rights of Catholics. They were satisfied with the provision according to which Catholics were excluded from any participation in public administration and were de facto deprived of representation in the Irish Parliament by virtue of the so-called. "Punitive Laws" (Penal Laws), adopted gradually during the XVI-XVII centuries. and finally secured after the Battle of the Boyne. But the unlimited domination of the Protestant colonists in the conquered country was compensated by the complete subordination of the country as a whole to the English Parliament, where the Protestant Irish had no representation.
Molinet considered this state of affairs absurd. “The ancient Irish,” he wrote, “were once subdued by force of arms, and therefore lost their freedom” (p. 109). However, now the descendants of the "ancient Irish" make up only a minority of the country's population, the majority are the descendants of the English colonists: the soldiers of Cromwell and William of Orange. Why should they be disenfranchised?
Because, Carey answered him, that the kingdom in which they live is a territory subject to England. If it pleases the Anglo-Irish to call their "colonial assembly" a parliament, please, it is a matter of taste. But they will never have voting rights while they live in Ireland. In order to participate in government, they should move to England (Ibid). How can one not recall the excellent definition of the term "colony" given by Carl Schmitt: a colony is the territory of the country, from the point of view of international law, but - abroad, from the point of view of internal law.
Why did the English Parliament so stubbornly hold on to its complete dominion over Ireland, and why were the Irish so desperate to maintain at least partial self-government? What was the point of contention between Molinet and Carey?
From Carey's point of view, Ireland was England's rival in textile production. This means that this branch of its economy should be destroyed and replaced by another where the Irish cannot compete with the British. Carey compared England and her "Plantations" to a huge human body, in which England played, of course, the role of the head. Therefore, she had every right to extract income (draw Profits) from her colonies. Ultimately, this was necessary to maintain imperial power - for the common good of the empire. In addition, "the True Interest of Ireland" was to engage in agriculture, preferably animal husbandry, and the population of the country should be reduced to three hundred thousand people.
Molinet himself had no particular illusions about the outcome of his struggle. He wrote that “England will certainly not allow us to enrich ourselves through the wool trade. This is their Dear Beloved and they will be jealous of any rival” (p. 109) . And so it happened - in 1699 a law was passed prohibiting the export of woolen products from Ireland, and a year later a ban on the import of Indian chintz fabrics into England followed.
Already in 1704, the economic situation of Ireland deteriorated significantly - during all the years following the adoption of the Wool Act, the Irish trade balance remained steadily negative. Carey was sent by Parliament to Ireland at the head of a commission to study the situation. He concluded that the only way out for Ireland was to establish there "an industry that would in no way compete with that of England." It was about the establishment of a linen industry there: over the next century, the production of Ireland was concentrated on the manufacture of linen yarn - a semi-finished product for English manufactories.
Translations
Butel-Dumont. "An Essay on the State of Commerce in England"
After the Spanish (1701-1714) and Austrian (1740-1748) succession wars, France was exhausted. She was forced to accept the terms of the British - the recognition of the Hanoverian dynasty and the expulsion of the Stuarts from the French possessions, the withdrawal from Newfoundland, the destruction of the coastal fortifications of Dunkirk. The largest agricultural state in Europe suffered from regular crop failures and outbreaks of famine. Public finances were in such a deplorable state that a desperate government entrusted the salvation of the country to the Scottish swindler John Law - with predictable results.
France was clearly losing the colonial race to the British. The British won the long-standing undeclared war over Newfoundland and, faced with resistance from the French settlers in Acadia, deported them. Constant clashes between French and English ships in the Atlantic in the 1730s-1740s. ended with a powerful blow from the British. In the mid 1750s. The English fleet, without declaring war, destroyed most of the French merchant fleet, which was the main cause of the Seven Years' War.
It is in this context that the French political economy of the 18th century should be taken. If English political economy was a recipe book for aggressive expansionism, then French political economy was to become, in Reinert's phrase, "the cure for the ills of the French state" (p. 134). England was an object of hatred and admiration for French thinkers - an example that they certainly would like to follow.
The most powerful intellectual center in the field of political economy in France in the mid-eighteenth century. there was a circle of Gournay (Gournay) - the state intendant of finance. It is to him that the well-known saying “laissez passer, laissez faire” is attributed, which is why he was mistakenly ranked among the physiocrats and supporters of free trade. One of the members of the Gournet circle was Butel-Dumont, a lawyer who came from a Parisian merchant family, the author of a work on the history of trade in the North American colonies of England.
In 1755 he translated John Carey's book into French. The resulting text was not a literal translation from English - it increased significantly in volume. Butel-Dumont embellished it with references to ancient and modern thinkers and significantly revised the concept. Butel-Dumont's book was a historical treatise - a complete history of the economic development of England.
Butel-Dumont had access to a huge array of legal documents, statistics and works of English authors necessary for his work. He began by describing the miserable condition of England in the Middle Ages and the protectionist measures taken by the English rulers, beginning with Edward III, to change that situation. It was primarily about the development of the wool industry. By copying the production of more developed industrial centers like Italy or Flanders, the British managed to become the greatest power in Europe. Butel-Dumont emphasized that all this became possible only thanks to state interventionism: "the government did not stop at any measures for the development of any kind of production" (p. 164).
It is quite understandable why Butel-Dumont paid more attention to history than John Carey - France still had to go a significant part of the path already covered by the British. With regard to the theoretical, the French author fully shared the ideas of Carey and argued with the adherents of the physiocratic school, who believed that the true source of wealth is exclusively the soil, and not industry.
Genovesi. "History of Commerce in Great Britain"
Ever since the 16th century. Italian political thought constantly returned to the problem of the thanatology of nations. The country was fragmented, subjected to invasions of "barbarians" from the Alps and from Spain, gradually losing its leading economic position in Europe.
The richest tradition of political economy flourished in the Kingdom of Naples - at the beginning of the 17th century. here lived Antonio Serra, to whom another book by Sophus Reinert is dedicated. In the XVIII century. in the Kingdom of Naples, the first department of political economy in Europe (or rather, "Commerce and Mechanics") was established. It was founded by the manager of the estates of the Dukes of the Medici, Bartolomeo Intieri, the head of the local political and economic circle, which included Antonio Genovesi from Salerno, who studied with Giambattista Vico.
When the French translation of Carey's book came into Genovesi's hands, he decided to translate it into Italian. And again - the text has grown significantly. If Butel-Dumont's book was a thousand-page two-volume book, then with Genovesi it turned into a three-volume book with a volume of more than one and a half thousand pages. He supplied his book with a complete translation of the Acts of Navigation, added to the record of the empirical experience of a Bristol merchant and the historical study of a French lawyer the theoretical construction of Antonio Serra. Serra argued that labor invested in agriculture could not bring as much wealth as labor invested in production, because productivity in agriculture decreased as new resources were invested, while in production it increased. Therefore, these activities brought income of a completely different order.
Genovesi's book became extremely popular in Italy. It was reprinted in Naples and Venice. When, on the eve of the Napoleonic invasion, Pope Pius VI thought about improving the economy of the papal region, his adviser Paolo Vergani brought him not Adam Smith, but Genovesi. One could see a smile of fate in this - the composition of a fierce enemy of Catholicism and a fighter for the "Protestant Interest in Europe" Carey served the benefit of the Holy See.
Wichmann. "Economic and political commentary"
The fate of the German translation of Carey's book was not as successful as in France or in Italy. in Germany in the 18th century. there already existed a rich tradition of cameralism (Kameralwissenschaft) - a comprehensive art of public administration, which included not only law or political economy, but also the natural sciences, agriculture, mining, etc. This tradition, codified by Sockendorf, was noticeable not only in the German states, but also in Scandinavia, which is closely connected with them.
The political philosophy of the cameralists lay in line with the Aristotelian tradition - the ruler was regarded as the "father of the family", albeit a large one. They leaned towards spontaneous protectionism, not supported by any theoretical basis. Thus, the adviser to Frederick II Justi wrote that customs duties are necessary because newcomers to the business of industry can never compete on an equal footing with those who entered this field earlier.
The Scandinavian states, which were hard pressed by the decline of their empires, sought to copy the useful experience of the continent in order to catch up with the leading powers, if not in political influence, then at least in wealth. Peter Christian Schumacher, chamberlain of the Danish king and former ambassador to Morocco and St. Petersburg, traveled across the continent, along the well-known Grand Tour route, studying local experience (he observed, in particular, the failed experiments of the Physiocrats in Tuscany and Baden) and collecting essays on political economy. In Italy, he bought Genovesi's book and, on his way back to Denmark, stopped in Leipzig, Germany's largest book trade center, and left it for translation by Christian August Wichmann.
He approached the matter with German pedantry. Not satisfied with the translation of the translation, like Genovesi, he collected all three texts - English, French and Italian, translated them and provided a detailed bibliographic commentary. Where Genovesi referred to the author without mentioning a specific work, Wichmann found a citation and indicated a specific edition. He decided to create a kind of metatext with a detailed commentary on all three editions. Of course, the work remained unfinished. And what he managed to do turned out to be useless.
Neat and titanically efficient Wichmann failed to understand what exactly he was translating and commenting on. Being an adherent of the physiocratic school, he attributed similar views to the translated authors - even to Butel-Demon, who argued with the physiocrats, although it seems that in this case it was impossible to make such a mistake.
The German translation of Carey's book, unlike the previous two, was never subsequently reprinted. Suffice it to mention that Herder quoted in his writings the work of Genovesi, but never his compatriot Wichmann.
Conclusion
"While production, entrepreneurship
and technological change are the keys to growth,
they are not always the results of market mechanisms.
The economy by its very nature is the realm of the political.
"While production, entrepreneurship and technological change are the keys to growth, they
are not necessarily outcomes of market mechanisms. The economy is internally political” (p. 219).
The ideas and theories that contributed to the economic development of Europe in the early modern period are completely forgotten today. We do not have a language not only to describe them, but even to designate them. The term "mercantilism" distorts the content of these ideas, the concept of "cameralism" inevitably refers us to the German and Scandinavian traditions, while England was their homeland.
It was England, the first of all the nation-states of Europe, to begin pursuing a policy of economic expansion in which economic and non-economic measures were so closely intertwined that their very separation appears here to be artificial and unreasonable. England strove to import raw materials and export manufactured goods, and saw to it that the colonies and foreign states followed the opposite policy. It paid premiums for the export of its own textiles and prohibited its export from Ireland (it also prohibited the export of raw wool from England), maintained high import duties and bombed the coastlines of those states that tried to copy this policy; was the largest intermediary in transit maritime trade and defended itself against competitors in this field by prohibiting foreign mediation in its own trade.
We call such measures "protectionist" when they should be called "expansionist." However, the traditional designation was not chosen by chance - the countries that went the same way were forced to copy English politics under much less favorable conditions, protecting their markets from the English.
The value of Sophus Reinert's work as a philosophical work lies in the fact that it helps us understand the political background of economic life and economic science, and therefore casts doubt on a theory that ignores this background. This book is not only about the fact that once in the past there were ideas about which we know little, and not about the fact that these ideas are much more valuable and correct than modern ones. Reinert shows that any nation-state, no matter what its ideology, no matter how cosmopolitan and universal it may proclaim itself, is (even if he does not use this metaphor) "Thrasimachus' utopia". Interstate rivalry - both political and economic - is usually a zero-sum game. It is conducted in conditions of imperfect competition, when any gain of the overtaking player undermines the position of the monopoly leader. The only way the victor can protect himself from his rivals is by dicere leges, which forbid the vanquished from following his example.
Notes:
Sophus Reinert teaches at Harvard Business School as Assistant Professor of Business Administration. Among his notable works is Serra A. (2011). A short treatise on the wealth and poverty of nations (1613). /Transl. J. Hunt; ed. S.A. Reinert. L., N.Y.: Anthem Press. This edition of the book of the Neapolitan thinker of the XVII century. Antonio Serra - "A short treatise on the causes that can make kingdoms abundant in gold and silver even in the absence of mines."
Eric S. Reinert is the head of the Other Canon Foundation and author of the famous book How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor.
The modern Cambridge economist Ha Jun Chang used this expression of List in the title of one of his main works - "Kicking away the ladder: development strategies in historical perspective" (Chang H.-J. . Kicking away the ladder: development strategy in historical perspective. L .: Anthem).
He was referring to the story from the Cyropedia. Having captured Babylon, Cyrus the Great was amazed at the unprecedented high quality of his goods. Xenophon explains it this way. In small settlements, one person cannot support himself by doing only one trade, he must be alternately a potter, carpenter, etc., and therefore cannot bring his skills to perfection. And in big cities, narrow specialization leads to an increase in the quality of products. This reasoning is quite in the spirit of Adam Smith.
Reinert in this case has no references to ancient authors - we mean Plato's Laws and Xenophon's Cyropaedia.
This is the final pacification of Ireland and the suppression of the unrest of the Scots, the Nine Years' War against Louis XIV, etc. Northern Irish Protestants are still celebrating the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, where William of Orange defeated the Catholic army of James II, consisting of the Irish. And Walter Scott mourned the Glencoe Massacre - the destruction of the Scottish MacDonald clan by the soldiers of the Duke of Argyll from the Protestant Campbell clan precisely for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to William of Orange.
The confiscations of 1700 were directed primarily against the Catholic aristocracy. The repressions of Cromwell and the Penal Laws of William of Orange affected both the Celtic population and the "Old English" equally.
From all of the above, it follows that "mercantilism" is an extremely unfortunate term for the intellectual movement to which Carey belonged. A positive balance of trade for him is only a symptom of the healthy productive activity of society.
“Silk-Stockings are wove instead of knit; Tobacco is cut by Engines instead of Knives, Books are printed instead of written… Lead is smelted by Wind-Furnaces instead of blowing with Bellows… all which save the labor of many Hands, so the Wages of those imployed need not be lessened."
Carey is a nationalist, of course, in the English sense of the word. The concept of "nationalism" in English, as in most European languages, appeals not so much to ethnic self-identification as to identification in relation to the state - to the political nation. After the overthrow of the Stuarts, the British begin to feel like a single polity, which is united by the confrontation both with all its neighbors and with world papism in the face of not Spain, as in the time of Cromwell, but France.
“England most certainly will never let us thrive by the Wollen trade. This is their Darling Mistris and they are jealous of any rivals".
Butel Dumont. "Essai sur l'Etat du Commerce d'Angleterre".
Reinert considers the exaltation of the physiocratic school unreasonable. Their experiments in France, Baden and Tuscany led to the most dire consequences. The Physiocrats lost on all fields, except for one - the historiographic one. This is not surprising, since the school, which considers agriculture the only source of wealth and naturally tends to free trade (they do not see the need to develop their own industry), is undoubtedly regarded as the ideological predecessor of modern economic liberalism. P. 179.
Genovese. "Storia del commercio della Gran Brettagna".
wichmann. "Ökonomisch-politischer Commentarius".
Xenophobia does not appear by accident. Hatred for people of a different religion, different skin color, with different traditions is a completely natural phenomenon in society, which allows you to transform your view of history for state and political purposes. Many historians think so, and the child, the author of the article below, came to a similar conclusion. It can be used as material for discussions about how patriotism differs from xenophobia.
Kamil Galeev,
student of the State Educational Institution "Boarding School "Intellectual""
Xenophobia or patriotism?
I reviewed a number of textbooks recommended for schools. In all of them, it is possible to single out key historical periods and historical events, about which the authors are obviously more biased than about everything else. It may seem strange that in my review such long periods as Rus' before the invasion and short events like the Battle of Kulikovo are put on the same row. This is done because it is precisely around these periods and events that a mixture of ideological postulates of Marxist, sovereign, and in some places even clericalist postulates has been built up. In fact, these historians, in full accordance with the phenomenon described in George Orwell's Notes on Nationalism, "do not write about what happened, but about what should have happened according to various party doctrines." The purpose of my work is to reveal the dogmas imposed by textbooks.
Slavs. Rus' before the invasion
All the demagogy about the fact that the Varangians were South Baltic Slavs is an indicator that A.N. Sakharov does not want to admit in History of Russia from Ancient Times to the End of the 16th Century that the Slavs were subjugated by the Scandinavians. The clearly Germanic origin of the names Askold, Dir, Oleg (Helg) does not tell him anything.
All authors state Eastern Slavs called Ancient or Kievan Rus. It seems to me that this does not give a completely correct idea of \u200b\u200bit - the inhabitants of this state could not call it Kievan Rus, and even more so Ancient. Askold took the title of kagan, maybe the Kiev state should be called the Kyiv Kaganate? Given that Askold took the Turkic title, and not the title of king or king (although the kingdoms in Scandinavia already existed), we can say that the influence of Scandinavia was not as great here as the influence of the Turks represented by the Khazars. This allows you to look at the history of the Scandinavian colonies inhabited by Slavs in a completely different way. And the Slavic lands were precisely the colonies of the Vikings, albeit independent of the metropolises. In addition, which is usually not mentioned in the school curriculum, the Vikings did not perform any "progressive" role (in relation to the Slavs). The agrarian economy of the peoples in the area north of the Alps in Western Europe and from Khazaria and Georgia in Eastern Europe in the early Middle Ages was so underdeveloped that they did not need trade at all - no economic ties connected Kiev, let's say, Novgorod. They existed almost independently. Russian cities (as well as the Frankish ones, and those Chinese ones north of the Great Wall of China) were simply fortresses - tribute collection points, and they practically did not carry an economic function.
The state of the Russians was a typical early feudal robber-trading state, like the state of the Jurgens or Khazaria in the early stages of development, and the authors' non-recognition of this is extremely strange. Any Turkic or Finno-Ugric state with the same structure would certainly be called such. An ordinary large-scale robber Svyatoslav appears as a noble paladin. Svyatoslav's campaigns had no other goals, even conquest. Volga Bulgaria and the lands of the Khazars were not annexed - the transfer of the capital to Pereyaslavets was not intended to fulfill economic or geopolitical tasks, but only to build a luxurious residence for the prince himself. It can be compared with Timur, but the campaigns of the latter had an incomparably greater influence (also negative) on the development of world civilization.
Sakharov and Buganov believe that Rus' in the 10th century was European country, and Monomakh's campaign against the Kipchaks was "the left flank of the all-European offensive to the East" (!). The Kipchaks, leaving the steppes, hired themselves to the service of David the Builder and defeated the Seljuks, who were unable to continue active resistance to the crusaders. But in order to foresee this, Monomakh had to have the gift of clairvoyance. Paradoxically, but at the beginning of the crusades, the Kipchaks acted as opponents of the Muslims.
Invasion of Batu Khan.Mongol-Tatar yoke
The campaigns of Batu Khan are described as devastating, destroying most of the population of Rus'. This omits two important details:
1) Less than 0.5% of the population of Rus' lived in cities. Even if Batu Khan slaughtered all the inhabitants of the cities, then this, no matter how cynical it may sound, would not be a great human loss.
2) There was no particular cruelty towards the captured cities. In many Russian cities, stone churches have been preserved (in fact, they were the only stone buildings at that time). If the Mongols really burned the cities they took, then the churches would not have survived the heat. The cruelty of the Mongols is exaggerated everywhere - they often confuse the demolition of the fortifications of the city and its destruction. Fortifications were indeed destroyed everywhere, and as a rule, there was no point in burning the city. Another thing is that only cities that surrendered immediately or during a short siege were spared. During the Khwarezmian campaign, Genghis Khan sentenced his own son-in-law to death for sacking the city, which had surrendered to Jeba and Subedei. Then the sentence was replaced by a mitigated version of the execution - when the battering rams made a hole in the wall of Samarkand, he was let in at the forefront of the first assault column. Although the city could only surrender before the assault began - after the first arrow was fired, it was doomed. The surviving fragments of Yasa show that unnecessary mercy was punishable by death, as was excessive cruelty.
It is not necessary to idealize Genghis Khan - by the standards of our time, this is a very cruel commander. But let's compare his actions with events closer to him in time. So, Svyatoslav did not leave stone unturned from Khazaria, Chinese and Kyrgyz troops completely burned the Uighur cities of Xinjiang in the 11th century. The European armies of the Middle Ages are no better (for example, the actions of the crusaders in Palestine and in relation to the Baltic peoples, as well as the events of the Hundred Years War). Against their background, the Genghisides, who made it possible to surrender, look like the most humane commanders.
Again and again, the old idea, expressed by Pushkin, is repeated that the Mongols were afraid to leave Rus' in the rear, and therefore Genghis Khan's testament to seize the world remained unfulfilled. That is, Rus' defended Europe - and therefore hopelessly lagged behind.
But:
Firstly, as I.N. Danilevsky, this hypothesis is meaningless. About 5 million people lived in Rus', and after the conquest of Rus' and the Song Empire, almost 300 million conquered remained behind the Mongols - for some reason they were not afraid to leave them behind, although they often lived in much more inaccessible areas than Russian forests - for example, in the Xi-Xia and Sichuan mountains.
Secondly, it is completely overlooked that the empire of Genghis Khan, of course, was the most progressive state of that time. Only in the uluses of his descendants did such innovations exist as, for example, the prohibition of torture (during investigation, of course, and not during execution), which arose in Europe only in the 18th century (in Prussia by decree of Frederick the Great, which, by the way, is also condemned by domestic historians as a militarist and enemy of Russia). In the empire of Genghis Khan and his descendants, taxes were the lowest from that time to this day - tithe. It was generally the only fee, with the exception of a duty of 5% of the value of goods when crossing the border. Those who like to talk about gravity Mongolian yoke, apparently, it is not clear that the income tax in modern Russia is 13% (while being very low for income tax). There are a huge number of other fees and taxes, including indirect ones. In the states of that time, taxes were also much higher. In Khorezm, destroyed by Genghis Khan, the kharaj alone accounted for 1/3 of the harvest, and in Western Europe, only the church tax was 10%. It is not noticed at all that the lagging behind Western Europe (which, by the way, was a relatively backward region) began in the 11th century. Even the minting of coins ceased. Apparently, this happened after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, when the Byzantines lost almost all of Asia Minor, and the richest provinces were devastated by the Seljuks. There was no longer a serious demand for honey, slaves, fur, wax - and the prince's treasury was empty. This, however, is only one of the versions. By the way, for 250 years of the "yoke" the population of Rus' more than doubled - from 5 million during the invasion to 10-12 million by the reign of Ivan III.
Our standards have always been and remain extremely militarized. The whole story is full of battles. Nothing but battles has ever interested us, it seems that people lived only for this, to kill each other. We do not even think about what value system we are laying in the child. I understand that we have always had a history of the state, that the state has always had to justify its existence, to legitimize it. Now the situation has changed, but we continue the same line, in my opinion, not the best. Victor Shnirelman, |
The authors of textbooks tend to portray the Mongols (by which we mean the Turkic peoples of Transbaikalia and Xinjiang) as barbarians four centuries behind Rus'. This is absolutely not true. By the 12th century, giant empires had already arisen six times among the Mongols. Both Turkic and Uyghur Khaganates were states with a developed urban culture, and in the Uyghur Khaganate the cities performed (unlike Rus', where cities are primarily fortresses - points of political control and tribute collection) primarily economic functions.
Indeed, by the 11th century, the Mongols did not have a single state. But this is not due to delay, but to the peculiarities of the economy - to subdue the nomads, who at any moment can migrate from the unpopular khan, is much more difficult than the settled population. However, due to the low awareness of the main part of the population on this issue, the attempt to present the Mongols as barbarians of the late Neolithic, as a rule, passes.
In this case, for the first time in textbooks, the thesis that Rus' was more progressive than anyone else slips through. This is not the first time that the thesis of resentment of the Slavs has arisen (earlier it was said about the German onslaught on the East). It is said that Rus' was thrown back, that “Asian cruelty” was brought into it (I.N. Ionov “Russian Civilization”) (!). Europe at that moment, blazing with the fire of the Inquisition and much more actively using torture, was much more "Asian" civilization than Rus'. It is forgotten that in terms of punishments, Rus', and then Muscovy up to Peter I, was much softer than Europe. So, Alexei Mikhailovich, suppressing the Razin uprising, destroyed about 100 thousand people, which is completely unprecedented for Russia. Cromwell, while suppressing the Irish uprising, destroyed almost 1 million people, which was, in general, normal for Western Europe. This is a very characteristic idea - if today's European civilization is certainly the most advanced, then it has always been advanced.
In addition, it is constantly emphasized that the heroic defenders of Rus' fought with countless hordes (65-400 thousand). This is a lie, not a mistake. The authors of textbooks (if they undertake to write them at all) should have known that Rus' was attacked by three tumens, and there were 10,000 fighters in the tumens.
Battle on the Ice
Perhaps one of the main accents (especially in Belyaev’s book “Days of Russia’s Military Glory”) is that Alexander Nevsky was supported by the “rabble”, and the traitors of the boyars opposed him, exiled him to Pereyaslavl-Zalessky. It is noted that six Pskov traitors were boyars, that "Alexander could be sure that after a series of previous failures, the lower classes of the city would not allow the boyars to disrupt the military preparations of Novgorod." It looks like some kind of wrecking machinations of the Stalin era. At the same time, Alexander Nevsky received the support of the boyar council of the "golden belts", and he was forced to flee to Pereyaslavl after the majority at the people's assembly opposed him. That is, Alexander Nevsky was in no way a people's protege. This is a good old Soviet tradition - any historical figure who is considered positive is certainly supported by the "pre-proletariat", well, in any case, by the poorest sections of the population.
The endless patriotism of the masses is emphasized in every possible way. In general, it is assumed that the Russians were aware of themselves in that era as a nation, it is said that there was a “Russian cause”! This is a huge drawback of many works on the Battle of the Ice and especially on the Battle of Kulikovo - unwillingness to understand that in the Middle Ages the concept of a nation, national interests, national liberation (except, of course, China and some countries of Indochina) did not exist, and Tverdilo Ivanovich, who went over to the side Livonians, can be perceived as a traitor to the prince (Pskov was then part of the Novgorod principality), as a traitor to Novgorod and the Vecha, as a traitor to the Orthodox Church, but not as a traitor to the nation - this is a thoughtless transfer of concepts that arose in Russia no earlier than the end of the 16th century to the Middle Ages. And Alexander hanged six Pskov boyars rather for personal betrayal of himself, and not of Russia.
The peoples in medieval Europe were perceived in fact as the property of monarchs. They could be bequeathed (according to the will of Charles V, Flanders, Holland, Lombardy passed to Spain), given as a dowry - as Charles the Bold made Flanders and the Netherlands a dowry of his daughter, part of Austria, and in general - to treat lands and peoples as real estate with dynastic marriages. Often one monarch ruled several countries (during the reign of Charles V, Austria and Spain were one state, and then divided into the possessions of his son and brother), we can cite the example of Wenceslas II - the king of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. With the constant redistribution of territories, if a German knight from Czech Silesia, for example, fought against Brandenburg, this was by no means considered a betrayal - loyalty to the overlord was higher than loyalty to the nation.
Battle of Kulikovo
As noted above, the interpretation of this historical event shows an absolute misunderstanding of the fact that in 1380 the concept of the interests of the nation, in principle, could not yet exist. It is unlikely that Moscow could then consider itself the center of the unification of Russian lands, since by 1380 more than half of the territory of the Russian principalities was owned by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russia, during the “great zamyatna” in the Horde of 1357–1380, which captured vast territories of the former vassals of the Khan. The fact that Jagiello came out in support of Mamai, and his two brothers, who, by the way, were Jagiello's vassals, supported Dmitry, clearly shows that this battle was not at all a "battle of nations". Rather, it was the culmination of a twenty-year war inside the Ulus of Jochi, in which Russian and Lithuanian princes intervened. Already after the end of this war in 1399, the Lithuanians supported the already deposed Tokhtamysh and were defeated by Idegei in August on the Vorskla River.
These were wars within the same ecumene of Eastern Europe. Yes, and Mamai's campaign cannot be considered a punitive campaign. By 1380, Mamai already owned only the right-bank Horde. In fact, before the battle, under his control was only a large part of the steppe on the right bank of the Volga, the Crimea and the Caucasus. If we turn to the Bulgarian sources, it becomes clear that Mamai was losing power. Apparently, this campaign was the last attempt to pay salaries to the troops and find a new source of income and troops in the fight against the victorious Tokhtamysh. The number of Mamai's troops could not reach 60-300 thousand people by definition - there were not so many adult men in the territory controlled by Mamai: most of the large cities and the only agricultural region - Bulgaria - were under the control of Tokhtamysh. The number of Bulgar troops from the "Kazan Tarikha" of Mohammedyar Bu-Yurgan is known - five thousand people and two guns. The only densely populated region of the Ulus Jochi, after a twenty-year civil war, was able to field only five thousand soldiers. By the way, this is a lot - Henry V landed in France a little later with a huge army of 5 thousand people, of which less than a thousand were knights.
There was no conscious liberation of Rus' in that period. Dmitry Donskoy managed to recruit a significant army only thanks to the support of other princes. When, two years later, Dmitry refused to pay tribute to Tokhtamysh and participate in his campaigns, he burned Moscow. Dmitry himself fled without receiving support. At the same time, Tokhtamysh's troops were very small. Tokhtamysh did not even have enough troops to take Moscow (a very small city then) - having ruined part of Moscow, he sets fire to it. Further, in 1403, Idegei, who after the defeat of Tokhtamysh in the war with Timur became the ruler of the Ulus of Jochi, in response to the burning of Bulgar by the Ushkuins, began a punitive campaign - "Edigeev's army". He gathered a very considerable force, yet he was resisted. Idegei laid siege to Moscow, but lifted the siege due to an uprising against him in the steppe.
An interesting fact can be noted here: twice the Russian princes resisted the serious forces of the rulers of the Jochi Ulus - not the khans. Moreover, in the second case, this force was so serious that the stone Moscow Kremlin was almost taken. However, there was no resistance to a small detachment of Khan Tokhtamysh.
Dmitry in this case left Moscow, and from this we can conclude: he and his vassals considered Genghis Khan their legitimate ruler. This does not seem strange at all, given that the text of “Zadonshchina” emphasizes the difference between Mamai, who is a “prince” and whom Dmitry does not obey, and Tokhtamysh, who is “king” - Dmitry’s legitimate overlord. And the mention of Rus' as the "Zalesskaya horde" gives a fairly complete picture of the consciousness of the chronicler of the late XIV century. Rus' is part of the Horde, and Mamai is "lawless" only because he is a usurper, not a khan. And since the end of the 15th century, in connection with the break of Ivan III with the Great Horde, a new idea has arisen - that the dynasty of Genghis Khan is not legitimate in itself, but is only a temporary punishment sent by God to Rus'.
A similar point of view can be found by reading the article by A.A. Gorsky “On the title “king” in medieval Rus' (until the middle of the 16th century)” ( http://lants.tellur.ru).
The problem of counteracting the militarization of the consciousness of schoolchildren is one of the most important for the school history course, especially domestic history. This militarization appears in extremely different guises. This is also the formation of the "image of the enemy", and the "enemies" are most often neighboring peoples, maintaining good relations with which is especially important in modern society. This is the praise of "their" warriors, regardless of the goals and objectives of their campaigns. This is the promotion of military leaders to the fore as goodies and role models. This is also the persistent emphasis on militancy as the most important positive feature of a people or a historical character. This is both an exaggeration of Russian military successes, and an uncritical story about Russian conquests solely from the point of view of their benefit to the state and without taking into account their “price” both for the Russian people and for the peoples annexed to Russia. This problem is closely related to another - the problem of interethnic relations in Russia and Russia's relations with its closest neighbors. It is necessary to counteract the militarization of children's consciousness from the very beginning of the study of national history. Igor DANILEVSKY, |
Feudal war in Rus'
The authors of the textbooks are trying to disguise the complete mediocrity of Vasily II, explaining his defeat from Kazan by Shemyaka's betrayal. But the detachment of Ulug-Muhammed (Kazan army) in 1445 reached Vladimir - at the walls of Suzdal, the khan defeated the troops of Moscow, and Prince Vasily II himself and Prince Vereisky were captured. Ulug-Muhammed took them to his headquarters in Nizhny Novgorod, where a peace treaty was signed. It was insanely humiliating for the Russians - such that the submission of Muscovy to the Kazan Khanate became even greater than the former submission to the khans of the Ulus Jochi. The rebellion of Dmitry Shemyaka can also be interpreted as an outburst of indignation at such an agreement. And there were reasons for this.
But the most important thing is not even that. The main argument of the author is that centralization in the person of Vasily II is definitely better than decentralization in the person of Yuri Dmitrievich. This Byzantine notion is taken as an axiom. The author's only argument is that centralization was in the interests of the church. Indeed, the Orthodox Church, by its very structure, desired the centralization of the country, but it seems to me that the author confuses the interests of the country with the interests of the priestly caste.
It is highly debatable what is preferable - the constant princely squabbles of a decentralized medieval country, as in the Holy Roman Empire, or the ugly bureaucratic apparatus of a centralized one, devouring all the resources of the country, as in Muscovy or Byzantium.
Accession of Kazan, Astrakhanand Siberia
turmoil
Vasily Shuisky and his reign are negatively described - it is stipulated that he wanted to limit his power, since he was a representative of a specific tradition. In the Byzantine tradition, any desire for decentralization is criminal, which means that the restriction of power generated by it is vicious. It is forgotten that in any country in Western Europe, liberalism and democracy (except, perhaps, Sweden and France) arose as a by-product of the struggle of the elites of a decentralized state for power.
In general, the end of the Troubles was unfortunate for Muscovy. Twice (under Vasily Shuisky and at the Zemsky Sobor) the chance was missed to turn Muscovy into a country with limited autocracy, gradually moving towards constitutional institutions. Of course, one can object that the oath at the accession to the throne of Vasily Shuisky spoke only about the rights of the highest boyar aristocracy. But even in the Magna Carta, which paved the way for English liberalism, no one's rights, except for the rights of the highest chivalry (not lower than a baron), were mentioned. In the short term, the Magna Carta (like Shuisky's declaration) is a highly regressive document, but in the long term it opens the way to a constitutional monarchy.
Azov campaigns. North War
It is extremely characteristic that no intelligible explanations for the Azov campaign are given. Russia could not get access to the Mediterranean. In order for access to the Black Sea to give at least some benefits, it was necessary to take Istanbul. Peter was not so stupid as to believe that Turkey was so weak that he could defeat her. The Azov campaigns were a means of satisfying the personal ambitions of the king, and not a means of fulfilling some geopolitical tasks. 
The merits of Peter in the reform of the Russian army are highly valued. It is completely forgotten that according to the painting of 1681, 90,035 people were present in the regiments of the foreign system, and 52,614 in the regiments of the old type. In essence, these regiments differed little from the Peter's army. Admirers of Peter's reforms, as a rule, do not know that it was Peter who introduced the Inquisition into the army, modeled on European armies.
Again, it is silent that, compared with the working conditions in the factories of Peter, the working conditions in the English factories described by Dickens are just a fairy tale. Suffice it to say that the workers and soldiers who left the Yekaterinburg plant mostly went to the Bashkirs, although they understood that they would be sold into slavery in Turkey. Workers in Russia took a mortal risk to become slaves in Turkey. Peter made the already difficult living conditions of the peasants simply unbearable by introducing a completely ugly tax - the poll tax, increased taxes three times. Frankly speaking, Peter I was a tyrant who destroyed 14 percent of his own population.
Pugachev's uprising
All authors admit that Pugachev's uprising was of a liberating nature. This, I think, is the Soviet legacy of Russian historiography. At the same time, there is no mention of Suvorov as the executioner of the Pugachev and Polish uprisings. Why, then, in Soviet and modern historiography, no assessments are given to him, with which the biographies of the generals who fought against Russia abound? Yes, because the Soviet ideology is a funny mixture of Marxism and ordinary ethnocentrism - since Suvorov fought for Russia, he cannot be called what he is, namely, a narrow-minded monarchist, a bloody executioner, a gendarme in the service of despotism. But his most important crime is not mentioned at all in the textbooks - this is the genocide of the Nogais. Suvorov wrote to Catherine II: "All the Nogais were killed and thrown into Sunzha." The Nogai steppes were deserted - part of the Nogais managed to leave for Turkey and the Caucasus, but the largest people of the Kipchak group was practically destroyed.
If you do not recognize this act of Catherine II and Suvorov as criminal as the extermination of Jews and Gypsies by the Nazis, then it turns out that Jews and Gypsies are fundamentally better than Nogais in some way. It can, of course, be objected that such actions were widespread. But in fact, there are not so many crimes of this magnitude in world history. These are the extermination of the Prussians by the Teutons (although, far from being on such a scale - most of the Prussians were assimilated by the Germans), the extermination of the Oirats and Dzhungars by the Manchurian-Chinese emperor in 1756-1757 (more than 2 million killed), the extermination of the Zakubans and peoples of the Black Sea Caucasus by Russian troops in the 19th century and the genocide of the Indians of Central and South America the Spaniards and the Portuguese.
Conclusion
In each of the reviewed textbooks, it is possible to single out general groups of theses - ideas that the authors are trying to impose on the reader. Interestingly, the theses of one group often contradict each other:
1. We all won. We are a heroic nation.
And the contradictory statement: We were all offended. We are surrounded by enemies. We are in a bad position.
The second thesis seeks to explain Russia's failures and lagging behind by invasions and geographical disadvantages. This is an attempt to shield elementary aggressive intentions, explaining them by active defense or the desire to correct an unfavorable geographical location.
2. We are the most progressive or, in any case, more progressive than our neighbors.
And the contradictory statement: And even if not more progressive, then our spirituality and morality are higher.
3. Religion is a cementing mortar for statehood; it performs the utilitarian functions of uniting the people.
And the contradictory statement: Religion is important in itself, as a path to God, as the core of original Russian culture.
4.We are Europe from the beginning of time and are on an eternal crusade against the wild Asians. All our troubles are from the yoke.
And the contradictory statement: We are at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. We do not take steps towards Asia because of its backwardness and do not become Europe because of its lack of spirituality.
The following two theses are consistent:
5.Russians are a brave and courageous people.
All defeats do not come from the mediocrity of commanders, technical backwardness, the unpopularity of the war among the people, etc., but from someone's personal betrayal (the exception is the Crimean War).
Characteristic of the Leninist-Marxist ideology.
6.Centralization is essential. Nothing can be achieved without the iron hand of the king-leader.
These are the main theses expressed by the authors of the textbooks. It can be objected that the goal of the school history course is to educate patriots: they say, in the name of a lofty goal, one can lie.
Only it is necessary to be clearly aware of the fact that in this case a dense consciousness is implanted, mythologized and absolutely incapable of thinking critically, the psychological atmosphere of a besieged fortress is inflated. The consciousness of modern Russians is, on the whole, a hostage of the totalitarian-Marxist and sovereign-Orthodox ideologies, and the mythologized history, which has not been radically revised over the past 100 years, is the tool of this planting.
It is amazing, but authoritarian and over-centralized regimes, positioning themselves as guarantors of stability and consolidation in the fight against an external enemy, in practice most often demonstrate fragility that is surprising for outside observers. The experience of the last centuries shows that it is precisely such political structures that tend to collapse for no apparent reason.
Democracy is the only working mechanism for long-term planning. Therefore, non-democratic organizations artificially create within themselves oases of democracy - the think tanks necessary for decision-making. Suffice it to recall what a huge role debating clubs play in Anglo-Saxon universities. Students should split into two equal teams and defend opposing points of view. The main thing here is to create a relative balance of power, ensuring that all key arguments are considered during the debate. As a result, students are not only resistant to brainwashing, but also able to infect others: the vast majority of the mind lords of the last century have come from democratically organized universities.
It should not be thought that the masters of the minds of the past were any different in this respect. The most ancient and cultured corporations on the planet have always paid tribute to democratic principles. The traditional canonization procedure adopted by Catholics from the 16th to the 20th centuries is indicative. In order to determine whether the deceased should be canonized, the ecclesiastical authorities appointed two lawyers: the "lawyer of God" and the "lawyer of the devil", so that the first would select arguments in favor of canonization, and the second - against it.
Why are competitive democratic institutions so important to policy-making? Because they are the brain of any organization. Thus, in the Orthodox Church, there has historically been no competition in the canonization process, which means that the decision to canonize as a saint comes down in finished form. But where does it come from? It turns out that the decision depends on the whim of a single person.
The helplessness of non-democratic regimes is most clearly manifested in their dependence on intellectual imports. They are unable to produce their own paradigms or critically examine others (for this they need democratic oases), and can only be mechanically infected by popular theories in more “soft” countries. This explains the neoliberal turn in late Soviet and Russian history.
The British Marxist historian Hobsbawm lamented that the USSR collapsed precisely at the moment when followers of the Austrian school dominated Western economics. This, in his opinion, determined the sad results of the reforms. Significantly, the historian placed the responsibility solely on the current intellectual fashion, and not on the leaders who followed it.
Plans for future radical reforms in the early 1990s had been developed under the patronage of the KGB since the first half of the 1980s. Paradoxical at first glance, the situation when neoliberal transformations are planned by state security agencies can be explained quite simply. The USSR was a structure devoid of a "democratic brain", unable even to make a qualified choice of a foreign theoretical product. In the absence of their own qualified expertise, its rulers, at the first sign of failure, completely trusted one of the Western schools and began to put its provisions into practice with the same ruthlessness with which they used to understand Marxist postulates in a peculiar way.
The current "state" rhetoric of our authorities cannot disguise their fundamental distrust of both the classical Weberian bureaucracy and public politics. They are seriously striving to organize all the constructive activities of the state according to the patterns of the corporate sector: hence the experiments like ASI, state corporations, the mass introduction of KPI in public administration, etc. The new creed, which seems to be adhered to by the leadership of the country, postulates the ineradicable depravity of traditional political institutions, which, if possible, should be replaced by corporate institutions. This religious faith, which has spread in government offices and ignores all the empirical experience accumulated by Western civilization, does not bode well for our country.
The theory of the hydraulic state by K. Wittfogel and its modern criticism
Kamil Galeev*
Annotation. K. Wittfogel (1886-1988) - German and American sinologist, sociologist and historian, who was seriously influenced by Marxism. Shortly after World War II, he created the theory of the hydraulic state, according to which the despotism of non-European societies and their lagging behind Europe are explained by the influence of the social structures necessary for irrigation agriculture.
This theory was brought to completion in Oriental despotism: a comparative study of total power (1957). The article is devoted to modern (after 1991) criticism and interpretation of Wittfogel's ideas in English-language periodicals and dissertations. Wittfogel remains a widely cited author, whose ideas, however, are rarely discussed in substance. One way or another, the hydraulic theory has been developed, although its modern interpretations may differ greatly from the original, in particular, it is interpreted as an exclusively political economy theory and is applied, including to European societies.
Keywords. Wittfogel, irrigation, Marxism, comparative studies, Oriental studies, Eastern despotism, Asiatic mode of production.
Carl August Wittfogel (1886-1988) was a German and American sinologist, sociologist and historian who was heavily influenced by Marxism. Back in the 1920s, as one of the prominent thinkers of the German Communist Party, he was interested in the relationship between the natural environment and social development (Bassin, 1996). Wittfogel spent 1933-1934 in a concentration camp, which subsequently seriously influenced his views. After his release, he emigrated to the UK and then to the US.
In the 1930s, when Wittfogel was studying the history of China, he was already interested in the theory of the Asian mode of production. This is evidenced by his article "Die Theorie der orientalischen Gesellschaft" (Wittfogel, 1938). In it, Wittfogel developed Marx's provisions on a special socio-economic formation based on irrigation agriculture.
By the end of World War II, Wittfogel became a staunch anti-communist and actively participated in the work of the McCarran committee. At the same time, he finally formulated the theory of the hydraulic state, which appeared in its final form in the book "Oriental despotism: a comparative study of total power" (Wittfogel, 1957).
This book provoked a strong reaction immediately after its publication (Beloff, 1958: 186187; East, 1960: 80-81; Eberhardt, 1958: 446-448; Eisenstadt, 1958: 435-446; Gerhardt, 1958: 264-270; Macrae , 1959: 103-104; Palerm, 1958: 440-441; Pulleyblank, 1958: 351-353; Stamp,
* Galeev Kamil Ramilevich - student of the Faculty of History, National Research University Higher School of Economics, [email protected]© Galeev K. R., 2011
© Center for Fundamental Sociology, 2011
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1958: 334-335). At first, the reviews were mostly positive, but criticism subsequently began to prevail.
Works that develop Wittfogel's ideas or criticize them have been published in many languages of the world. In Russia, despite the low popularity of Wittfogel's ideas, his legacy is also discussed1.
Russian researchers generally accepted only one aspect of his ideas, namely, the institutional one. The opposition between “private property” as a Western phenomenon and “power-property” as an Oriental phenomenon was adopted by Russian economists (Nureev, Latov, 2007), perhaps because it reflects modern Russian (rather than Eastern) realities. The geographical aspect of the hydraulic theory did not arouse any interest. Apparently, this is due to the fact that there have never been large irrigation farms in Russia, and the question of their influence on historical development seems to be irrelevant here (unlike Bangladesh or Korea).
The purpose of our work is to clarify the nature of modern criticism of Wittfogel. Since it is impossible to consider both Russian-language and English-language criticism of Wittfogel within the framework of one article, we limited ourselves to English-language periodicals and dissertations published after 1991. This date was chosen because after the collapse of the USSR, Wittfogel's theory became politically less relevant, and from that moment on, criticism focuses exclusively on the scientific side of the hydraulic theory.
We searched the databases of Project Muse, ProQuest, SAGE Journals Online, Springer Link, Web of Knowledge, Science Direct, Jstor, Wiley InterScience, InfoTrac OneFile, Cambridge Journals Online, Taylor & Francis for articles and dissertations related to hydraulic theory. Searches have shown that Wittfogel remains a widely cited author. We managed to find over 500 references to Wittfogel's hydraulic theory, references to relevant works in English-language periodicals over the past 20 years, references to Wittfogel's ideological influence on the authors of certain books in reviews of them (Davis, 1999: 29; Glick, 1998: 564-566; Horesh, 2009: 18-32; Hugill, 2000: 566-568; Landes, 2000: 105-111; Lipsett-Rivera, 2000: 365-366; Lalande, 2001: 115; Singer, 2002: 445- 447; Squatriti, 1999: 507-508) and four dissertations (Hafiz, 1998; Price, 1993; Sidky, 1994; Siegmund, 1999) on the problems of hydraulic societies.
The relevance of Wittfogel's theory is questioned only in the article "Telling otherwise: a historical anthropology of tank irrigation technology in South India". Its author Eshi Shah believes that Wittfogel's theory is no longer a subject of discussion (Shah, 2008).
In most of the papers we analyzed and in all dissertations, Wittfogel's theory is treated not as an incident from the history of ideas, but as a research tool, even if its suitability is disputed.
1. While Wittfogel adhered to Marxist views, his works were published in Russia, for example, "Geopolitics, geographical materialism and Marxism" (Under the banner of Marxism. 1929. Nos. 2-3, 6-8). However, the theory of the hydraulic state was formulated by him after the departure from Marxist positions and remained unknown in the USSR. "Eastern Despotism" has not been translated into Russian.
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However, ten articles (Butzer, 1996; Davies, 2009; Kang, 2006; Lansing, 2009; Lees, 1994; Midlarsky, 1995; Olsson, 2005; Price, 1994; Sayer, 2009; Stride, 2009) and two dissertations (Sidky, 1994; Siegmund, 1999) one can come across a reasoned criticism or, on the contrary, an apology for the hydraulic theory. Most of the rest contain only mentions of Wittfogel's theory, references to him, fragmentary judgments or remarks that his ideas stimulated scientific research in the field of irrigation, the connection of the natural environment and economic technology with the political system (Swyngedouw, 2009: 59).
Hydraulic state theory
According to Wittfogel's concept, irrigation farming is the most likely response of a pre-industrial society to the difficulties of farming in an arid climate. The need for organized collective work associated with this mode of economy leads to the development of bureaucracy and, as a result, to the strengthening of authoritarianism. This is how the eastern despotism, or the “hydraulic state” arises - a special type of social structure, characterized by extreme anti-humanism and inability to progress (power blocks development).
The degree of water availability is a factor that determines (with a high degree of probability) the nature of the development of society, but not the only one necessary for its survival. Successful farming requires the coincidence of several conditions: the presence of cultivated plants, suitable soil, a certain climate that does not interfere with agriculture. terrain (Wittfogel, 1957: 11).
All these factors are absolutely (and therefore equally) necessary. The only difference is how successfully a person can influence them, have a “compensating effect” (compensating action): “The effectiveness of a human compensating effect depends on how easily an unfavorable factor can be changed. Some factors can be regarded as immutable, since under the existing technological conditions they are not amenable to human influence. Others succumb to it more easily” (Wittfogel, 1957: 13). So, some factors (climate) are still practically not regulated by man, others (relief) were not actually regulated in the pre-industrial era (the area of terraced agriculture was insignificant relative to the total area of cultivated land). However, a person can influence some factors: bring cultivated plants into a certain area, fertilize and cultivate the soil. He can do all this alone (or as part of a small group).
Thus, we can distinguish two main types of agricultural factors: those that are easy for a person to change, and those that he cannot change (or could not change for most of his history). Only one natural factor, necessary for agriculture, does not fit into any of these groups. It succumbed to the influence of human society in the pre-industrial era, but only with a radical change in the organization of this society did a person need to radically change
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organization of their work. This factor is water. “Water is different from the rest of the natural factors of agriculture ... It is not too rare and not too heavy, which allows a person to manage it. In this respect, it is similar to soil and plants. But it differs fundamentally from them in the degree of its accessibility to movement and the techniques necessary for this movement” (Wittfogel, 1957: 15).
Water accumulates on the surface of the earth very unevenly. This is not particularly important for agriculture in regions with high rainfall, but it is extremely important in arid regions (and the most fertile regions of the globe are all in the arid climate zone). Therefore, its delivery to the fields can be solved in only one way - mass organized labor. The latter is especially important, since some non-irrigation activities (for example, clearing forests) can be very time-consuming, but do not require clear coordination, since the cost of error in their implementation is much lower.
Irrigation works are not only about providing enough water, but also about protecting against too much water (dams, drainage, etc.). All these operations, according to Wittfogel, require the subordination of the bulk of the population to a small number of functionaries. “Effective management of these works requires the creation of an organizational system that includes either the entire population of the country, or at least its most active part. As a result, those who control this system are uniquely positioned to achieve supreme political power” (Wittfogel, 1957: 27).
It should be noted that the need to maintain a calendar and astronomical observations also contributes to the allocation of a class of functionaries. In the ancient irrigation states, the bureaucracy is closely connected with the priesthood (these may be the same people as in Ancient Egypt or China).
This is how the hydraulic (hydraulic), or managerial (managerial) despotic state arises - the most common form of social organization throughout most of human history.
Naturally, the state, which arose as a result of the need to organize public works in the agrarian sector, is highly likely to use the institution of forced labor (Wittfogel uses the Spanish term “corvee” here) in other cases as well. Hence the grandiose structures of ancient states: monumental (temples, tombs, etc., the most striking example is the Egyptian pyramids), defensive (the Great Wall of China) and utilitarian (Roman roads and aqueducts)2.
The managerial state, according to Wittfogel, is stronger than society and is able to maintain complete control over it. To this end, special measures are taken, such as, for example, the order of succession in equal shares, splitting up possessions
2. Wittfogel believed that Rome in the early republican period was not a hydraulic state, but later, having conquered Egypt and Syria, began to adopt eastern traditions of government and turned into a marginal hydraulic state. With this, the second period of Roman history, those structures are associated that are associated with Rome in the mass consciousness: roads, aqueducts, amphitheatres, etc.
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and preventing the emergence of large owners dangerous to power (Wittfogel, 1957: 79).
Property in the hydraulic state is therefore fundamentally different from European property. In despotic states, land is only a source of income, while in European states it is also political power (Wittfogel, 1957: 318). With this lack of political meaning of land ownership is connected the phenomenon of "land ownership in the absence" (absentee landlordism), when the owner of the land does not live on it, which hinders the development of agriculture in Asia.
Wittfogel identifies three types of property relations (patterns of property) in hydraulic societies: complex (complex), medium (semicomplex) and simple (simple):
1) If private property is not distributed either in the form of movable or immovable property, then we are dealing with a simple hydraulic type of property relations.
2) If private property is developed in the sphere of production and commerce, then this is the middle type.
3) Finally, if private property is significant in both sectors, then it is a complex type (Wittfogel, 1957: 230-231).
Wittfogel emphasizes that hydraulic societies are not always devoid of seemingly attractive democratic features. These traits, such as the independence of communities, egalitarianism, religious tolerance, elements of elective democracy, are manifestations of "democracy of beggars" (beggars democracy), dependent on the central government for everything. The election of the authorities, according to Wittfogel, is quite compatible with despotism (e.g. the Mongol Empire).
Wittfogel believes that hydraulic society is so suppressed by the state that there can be no class struggle in it, despite the presence of social antagonism.
Accordingly, the degree of freedom that exists in a hydraulic society depends on the strength of the state (a strong state may allow subjects to enjoy a certain amount of freedom). Wittfogel tries to explain the unusually high degree of development of private ownership of land in China by the simultaneous appearance in this country of bulls, iron and the art of riding and, as a result, the instant strengthening of the state: “... it seems obvious that China has gone further than any other large Eastern civilization in strengthening private ownership of land. Can it be assumed that the simultaneous emergence of new methods of agriculture, new techniques of warfare and rapid communication (and the confidence in state control that the last two innovations gave) prompted the rulers of China to fearlessly experiment with extremely free forms of landed property? (Wittfogel,
Thanks to its exceptional organizational power, the hydraulic state copes with tasks that were impossible for other pre-industrial societies (for example, the creation of a large and disciplined army).
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Wittfogel is not a geographical determinist. From his point of view, the influence of social conditions may be more significant than the influence of geographical conditions.
Society, according to Wittfogel, is not an object, but a subject in its interaction with the natural environment. This interaction leads to the emergence of a hydraulic state only under certain social conditions (society is above the primitive communal stage, but has not reached the industrial stage of development, and is not under the influence of civilizations based on rain farming) (Wittfogel, 1957: 12).
Wittfogel actually leaves room for free will. A society living in an arid climate will not necessarily become irrigated. Moreover, Wittfogel believes that it may well give up this prospect in order to preserve its freedoms. “Many primitive peoples who have gone through years and eras of famine without a decisive transition to agriculture demonstrate the enduring attraction of non-material values in conditions where material well-being can be achieved only at the cost of political, economic and cultural subjugation” (Wittfogel, 1957: 17).
However, considering how many different societies independently created hydraulic economies, we can talk about a certain regularity: “Obviously, a person does not have an insurmountable need to use the opportunities that nature provides him. This is an open situation and the hydro-agricultural course is just one of several possibilities. Nevertheless, man has chosen this course so often and in such different regions of the planet that we can conclude that there is a pattern” (Wittfogel, 1957: 16).
Hydraulic states covered most of the inhabited spaces, not because all the inhabitants of these territories had switched to a hydraulic type of management, but because those who did not (rainfall farmers, hunters, gatherers and pastoralists) were forced out or conquered by hydraulic states.
At the same time, not all regions of the Earth (and not even all areas of hydraulic states) are suitable for irrigation agriculture. The question arises, what happens to a non-hydraulic country after it has been conquered by a hydraulic state? Wittfogel answers it as follows: the social and political institutions that emerged in the central (core) irrigated areas are transferred to non-irrigated ones.
Wittfogel divides hydraulic societies into two conditional types ("compact" and "loose"). The first form when the hydraulic "heart" of the state, along with political and social dominance, also achieves complete economic hegemony over the non-hydraulic outskirts, and the second - when it does not have such economic superiority. Once again, we note that the boundary between these two types is arbitrary - Wittfogel himself draws it according to the ratio of the crop harvested in the hydraulic and non-hydraulic regions of the country. If in
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If more than half of the country's crop is harvested in hydraulic areas, then it refers to "compact", and if less, then to "loose".
Wittfogel divides these types, in turn, into four subtypes, according to the nature of the irrigation systems and the degree of economic dominance of the hydraulic core over the non-hydraulic periphery: continuous compact hydraulic systems (C1), fragmented compact hydraulic systems (C2), regional economic hegemony of the center (L1) and finally, the absence of even the regional economic hegemony of the hydraulic center (L2).
The following examples of societies belonging to each of these types are given:
C1: Pueblo tribes, coastal city-states of ancient Peru, Ancient Egypt.
C2: City-states of Lower Mesopotamia and possibly Qin in China.
L1: Chagga tribes, Assyria, Chinese Qi and possibly Chu.
L2: Tribal Civilizations - Souk in East Africa, Zuni in New Mexico. Civilizations with Statehood: Hawaii, States of Ancient Mexico (Wittfogel, 1957: 166).
Wittfogel considered it possible for hydraulic institutions to penetrate into countries where irrigation is not practiced or is poorly practiced, and hydraulic institutions are of exogenous origin. Such societies he attributed to the marginal zone (marginal zone) of despotism. He included Byzantium, post-Mongolian Russia, the Mayan states and the Liao empire in China.
Behind the marginal zone, it is natural to assume the existence of a submarginal one - in the states of this zone, certain features of the hydraulic device are observed in the absence of a basis. The submarginal hydraulic states include, according to Wittfogel, the Cretan-Mycenaean civilization, Rome in the most ancient era of its existence, Japan, Kievan Rus.
It is curious that Wittfogel referred to Japan, where irrigation was practiced, as a submarginal zone, and post-Mongolian Russia, where it was not practiced, as a marginal one (i.e., Russia is a more hydraulic country). The fact is that Japanese agriculture, according to Wittfogel, is hydroagricultural (hydroagricultural), and not hydraulic (hydraulic), that is, it is carried out entirely by peasant communities, without anyone's control. “Japanese irrigation systems were controlled not so much by national or regional leaders as by local leaders; hydraulic development trends were significant only at the local level and only during the first phase of the recorded history of the country” (Wittfogel, 1957: 195). Therefore, Japanese irrigation did not lead to the creation of a hydraulic society. Russia, having found itself under the rule of the Mongols, took over all those hydraulic institutions that did not take root well in the previous, Kiev period of its history.
Wittfogel associated the managerial type of state with the USSR and Nazi Germany, believing that in these societies the tendencies of Eastern despotism found their fullest embodiment. If he argues for such an assessment of the USSR, albeit not very convincingly, then the accusations of Nazi Germany in structural similarity with hydraulic regimes sound unfounded. In essence, one
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The main argument he makes in support of the thesis about the despotic nature of the Nazi regime is the following: “No observer will call the Hitler government democratic because its treatment of Jewish property was in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws. Nor will he deny the absolutist nature of the early Soviet state on the grounds that it bought grain from the peasants at their own set prices” (Wittfogel, 1957: 313). This argument is unconvincing. The fact that Hitler's government was not democratic does not mean that it was hydraulic.
The argument in support of the thesis about the Asian character of the USSR boils down to two points:
1) The 1917 revolution was the return of the old Asian heritage in a new guise.
2) The socialist society described by the theoreticians of communism is very similar to the model of the Asian mode of production.
It should be noted that, according to Wittfogel, the classics of Marxism themselves noticed this similarity and that is why in their later works they did not mention the Asian mode of production among the socio-economic formations.
Review of modern criticism of the hydraulic state theory
In Irrigation and Society (Lees, 1994: 361), Suzanne Lees writes that many of Wittfogel's critics (in particular, Carneiro and Adams) criticize Wittfogel's hydraulic theory unreasonably by attributing ideas to him that he did not express. They believe that the development of irrigation systems, according to Wittfogel's theory, preceded political centralization. From the point of view of Lees, this is an incorrect statement: Wittfogel did not write such a thing. According to Lees, Wittfogel views the centralization and growth of irrigation facilities as interdependent processes, i.e. phenomena with positive feedback (Lees, 1994: 364).
The differences between Lees, on the one hand, and Carneiro and Adams, on the other, are understandable. Wittfogel's views on the development of Eastern societies changed over time and appeared in a finished form as a theory of Eastern despotism only in his magnum opus - "Oriental despotism" (1957). In this book, he did not express himself specifically on this issue.
While defending Wittfogel from what she sees as unjustified criticism, Lees nevertheless casts doubt on Wittfogel's thesis that the high efficiency of irrigated agriculture was the cause of Asia's stagnation. According to Wittfogel, irrigation (hydraulic) agriculture needs a developed bureaucracy that organizes the construction of canals, dams, reservoirs, etc. Such an economy is extremely productive, but the bureaucratization and hierarchization of society necessary for its conduct block economic and social development.
Lees believes that only small, locally controlled facilities can be said to be effective. Large ones, supported by the state, are extremely inefficient. This conclusion is the main result
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research, which she writes about in her article (and ineffective, in her opinion, are large-scale state structures not only of ancient civilizations, but even modern ones, such as: the irrigation systems of Brazil or the US West, which everywhere lead to the growth of bureaucracy and nowhere justify expenses). Thus, from Lees' point of view, the ultimate cause of backwardness in Asian societies is not the high, but the low efficiency of state-run hydraulic systems (this is by no means the case for small private or communal structures) (Lees, 1994: 368-370).
Roxanne Hafiz, in her dissertation After the flood: hydraulic society, capital and poverty (Hafiz, 1998), develops similar propositions using another example. She believes that the reason for the poverty and backwardness of Bangladesh is the irrigation economy and, as a result, the hydraulic economic and social system. This system has features that Marx and Wittfogel considered characteristic of the Asiatic mode of production. Moreover, according to Hafiz, capitalism and Western (that is, rain, according to Wittfogel) institutions are not an antidote to the hydraulic system and the poverty and stagnation that accompany it, but only strengthen them.
The facts presented by Hafiz could be considered a counterexample against Wittfogel's theory (although she did not treat them in this way) if Wittfogel believed that colonialism destroys hydraulic institutions. But he (unlike Marx) wrote in Oriental Despotism that the Asiatic mode of production persists even under European political domination.
David Price's article "Wittfogel's neglected hydraulic/hydroagricultural distinction" (Price, 1994) also defends Wittfogel against criticism based on misunderstanding of his ideas. Price believes that the main mistake of Wittfogel's critics, such as Hunt, is that they do not notice the difference between the two types of societies that Wittfogel clearly distinguishes: hydraulic (hydraulic) and hydroagricultural (hydroagricultural). The economy of the former is based on large-scale and state-controlled irrigation works, while the latter is based on small-scale and community-controlled ones.
Price writes: “In the past few decades, Wittfogel's theories have been completely dismissed by critics who have argued that small irrigation works have been created around the world without leading to the development of hydraulic states predicted by Wittfogel. I believe that Wittfogel's critics have made an unfair simplification of his ideas, not noticing the difference between hydraulic and hydro-agricultural societies" (Price, 1994: 187). By ignoring this difference, Wittfogel's critics find imaginary contradictions, finding features in hydroagricultural societies that, according to Wittfogel, are not inherent in hydraulic societies.
Similar considerations can be found in Price's dissertation "The evolution of irrigation in Egypt's Fayoum Oasis: state, village and conveyance loss". In addition, the dissertation proves the importance of external coordination for the implementation of irrigation activities (dependence on the supra-local coordination of irrigation activities) in the Fayum oasis and the direct relationship between the political centralization of Egypt and the development of irrigation in this area (Price, 1993).
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The applicability of the Wittfogel theory is also defended by Homayoun Sidky in his dissertation “Irrigation and state formation in Hunza: the cultural ecology of a hydraulic kingdom” (Sidky, 1994). From his point of view, Wittfogel's hydraulic theory best explains the development of this Afghan state.
Manus Midlarsky in his article "Environmental influences on democracy: aridity, warfare, and a reversal of the causal arrow" proposes to reconsider both the usual interpretation of Wittfogel's theory and some of the assumptions on which it is based. On the one hand, he argues that the theory of the hydraulic state explains not the emergence of the state, but its transformation into despotism, and failure to understand this fact, according to Midlarsky, leads to an erroneous perception of the entire theory of Wittfogel (Midlarsky, 1995: 226).
Midlarsky goes further than Wittfogel: he argues that the correlation between the level of development of irrigation and the degree of despotism is observed in capitalist European societies (for example, he notes that the largest irrigation facilities in Europe of the 20th century were built in Spain under the dictator Primo de Rivera and in Italy under Mussolini) (Midlarsky, 1995: 227). However, Midlarsky believes that the main reason for the development of authoritarianism in most societies is not an arid climate (hence the need for irrigation), but the presence of long land borders that need to be protected. He considers four ancient societies in succession: Sumer, the Mayan states, Crete and China, and comes to the conclusion that the most ancient irrigation societies did not know strong power, and on the islands (in Crete and in the Mayan island city-states off the coast of Yucatan) egalitarian traditions were preserved much longer. longer. In assessing the Minoan society, Midlarsky disagrees with Wittfogel: he considers Crete as an oriental despotism, and Midlarsky draws our attention to the fact that among the huge number of surviving frescoes in the palaces of Crete there is not a single image of royal exploits. Even the throne rooms do not differ from other rooms of the palace. Midlarsky concludes that there is no reason to consider Crete a despotism (or even a hereditary monarchy) (Midlarsky, 1995: 234).
Midlarsky cites the example of England and Prussia as an illustration of the importance of the continental island factor (Midlarsky, 1995: 241-242). Both countries seemed to have equal prerequisites for the development of democracy: heavy rainfall, European position (Midlarsky considers it important because of the synergistic effect), etc. Only one factor made a difference: England is located on an island (and very early subordinated its neighbors), and Prussia is surrounded on three sides by land. Therefore, Prussia was forced to bear immeasurably large military expenses, and this hindered the development of democratic institutions.
Note that Midlarsky disagrees with Wittfogel in his assessment of not only societies that do not belong to Wittfogel's area of interest (Crete or Maya), but also China. From Midlarsky's point of view, the Shang state (the oldest dynasty, whose existence is proved archaeologically) was not despotic, but the system of two royal dynasties who alternately nominated the heir to the throne, he even compares with the two-party system of modern democracies (Midlarsky, 1995: 235).
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But Midlarsky does not deny the importance of Wittfogel's conclusions. From his point of view, the emergence of the oldest despotisms in Mesopotamia was caused by a combination of two contributing factors to "autocracy in imperial form" (autocracy in imperial form) factors: an arid climate and the absence of water borders - barriers to conquerors.
As the title of Bong W. Kang's article "Large-scale reservoir construction and political centralization: a case study from ancient Korea" (Kang, 2006) suggests, he refutes Wittfogel's theory using the example of reservoir construction in early medieval Korea (namely, in the kingdom of Silla). Kang seeks to demonstrate the inapplicability of Wittfogel's conclusions by arguing that political centralization took place in Korea before major irrigation works began. He points out that the mobilization of workers for large-scale construction could only be done by an already existing strong power: “The fact that the royal government was able to mobilize workers for at least 60 days indicates that the kingdom of Silla was already an established and highly centralized political entity even before before construction of the reservoir began” (Kang, 2005: 212). In addition, the construction of the reservoirs required a developed bureaucratic hierarchy - we have evidence that the official who oversaw the construction of the reservoir had the twelfth rank of the sixteen that existed, which speaks of Silla as a centralized aristocratic state (Kang, 2005: 212-213).
Kang's criticism of Wittfogel on this point sounds unconvincing, in essence, he only shows that the construction of reservoirs in Korea became possible only after the creation of strong hierarchized states. This thesis does not contradict Wittfogel's theory, since, according to it, the processes of strengthening the state and developing irrigation are phased and interrelated. Thus, the creation of structures of a certain complexity and size, according to Wittfogel, requires a certain degree of organization of the state, in turn, due to the previous development of irrigation.
However, we can find in Kang a more interesting consideration. If irrigation played a key role in the creation of the Korean states, then their political centers would have to coincide with the areas where irrigation facilities were built. Meanwhile, the capitals of all Korean states (not only Silla) were located far from the reservoirs. Therefore, irrigation was not a key factor in the formation of these states (Kang, 2005: 211-212).
Stefan Lansing, Murray Cox, Sean Downey, Marco Lanssen, and John Schoenfelder, in their article "A robust budding model of Balinese water temple networks", reject the two dominant irrigation models in the social sciences: Wittfogel's hydraulic state theory and “community-based irrigation systems” (Lansing et al., 2009: 113) and propose a third, based on the results of archaeological excavations in Bali.
According to their model, complex irrigation systems are the sum of independent systems created by individual communities (Lansing et al., 2009: 114).
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Curiously, in this model we find similarities with the ideas of Lees (Lees, 1994). In both cases, direct state intervention is regarded as ineffective. The only difference is that in the budding model, the state can encourage the development of local irrigation systems without compromising farm efficiency. The authors of the article do not rule out that the state may directly intervene in irrigation, but this, in their opinion, will lead to the decline of the system (Lansing et al., 2009: 114).
Sebastian Stride, Bernardo Rondelli and Simone Mantellini in the article "Canals versus horses: political power in the oasis of Samarkand" (Stride, Rondelli, Mantellini, 2009) criticize Wittfogel's hydraulic theory (as well as the ideas of Soviet archaeologists, in particular Tolstov), based on Materials of archaeological excavations of the Dargum Canal in the Zeravshan Valley.
Wittfogel and Tolstov differed in their assessment of the irrigation societies of Central Asia. Wittfogel considered the construction of "large-scale irrigation systems" in pre-industrial societies as a sign of a special Asiatic mode of production (or Oriental despotism). Tolstov, on the other hand, believed that the social structure of Central Asian societies could be described in terms of slavery or feudalism. Tolstov, of course, adhered to the five-term scheme of development, but Wittfogel did not.
Nevertheless, they agreed on one issue - both considered the construction of irrigation facilities to be closely related to the development of the state. Tolstov even used the term “oriental despotism” in relation to such a state, although he put a different meaning into this concept, since he considered it compatible with feudalism (Stride, Rondelli, Mantellini, 2009: 74).
Thus, both Wittfogel and Soviet scientists saw a causal relationship in the construction of irrigation canals and state control over the population. The difference was that if Wittfogel believed that the strengthening of the state was the result of such construction, then Soviet archaeologists, on the contrary, explained the construction of irrigation facilities by the development of productive forces (and hence the control of the state over them) (Stride, Rondelli, Mantellini, 2009: 74-75) .
According to the authors of the article, both Soviet archaeologists and Wittfogel are mistaken in interpreting the irrigation economy and its connection with political power. Firstly, as the excavations in the Zeravshan valley showed, the local irrigation system was built over a long period of time by the efforts of individual communities and was not the result of a state decision. Its length of more than 100 km and the irrigated area of more than 1000 km2 make it possible to classify the local economy only as a “compact” (compact) hydraulic economy, according to Wittfogel’s classification (in his terminology, the concept of “compact” does not refer to the size of the economy, but to the degree of irrigation intensity and specific weight of irrigated agricultural products in relation to the total mass of agricultural products). The authors of the article come to the conclusion that the construction of irrigation systems was the result of spontaneous centuries-old construction, and not the implementation of a predetermined plan (Stride, Rondelli, Mantellini, 2009: 78).
Secondly, the period of maximum development of irrigation, when the actions of local communities begin to be regulated from the outside (the Sogdian era), is also (according to
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recognized by Soviet archaeologists) as the period of maximum political decentralization known to Central Asia. Moreover, in this era, a social system is emerging here very close to European feudalism: “The Sogdian period is the period of canal construction, or at least the period of its most intensive exploitation. Thus, this is a key period for understanding the relationship between the political structure and the irrigation system of Samarkand. The archaeological landscape of this period testifies ... to the extreme decentralization of state power and the coexistence of at least two worlds. On the one hand, it is the world of castles, which is sometimes compared to the world of European feudalism. On the other hand, this is a world of autonomous city-states, in which the king was only the first among equals, in which the throne was not always transferred to heirs, and which had their own jurisdiction, in some cases even minting their own coin” (Stride, Rondelli, Mantellini, 2009 : 78).
Thirdly, the boundaries of medieval Central Asian states did not coincide with hydrological boundaries, which suggests non-hydraulic sources of social stratification and political power (Stride, Rondelli, Mantellini, 2009: 79).
And finally, fourthly, local communities continued to maintain old and build new irrigation systems even after the Russian conquest, without receiving any support from the state. From this we can conclude that the local peasants did not previously need a state organization for the construction of canals (Stride, Rondelli, Mantellini, 2009: 80).
According to the authors of the article, the main source of power in Central Asia was not control over irrigation, but reliance on the military power of nomads. They draw attention to the fact that all the dynasties of Samarkand, with the exception of the Samanids, were of nomadic origin (Stride, Rondelli, Mantellini, 2009: 83).
Thus, the main mistake of Wittfogel and Tolstov, according to the authors of the article, is that they take the oases of Central Asia for "miniature Mesopotamia", while these oases were surrounded by vast steppe spaces and therefore the nomadic factor was the main factor for their political development (Stride, Rondelli, Mantellini, 2009: 83).
From Wittfogel's point of view, the hydraulic superstructure had a causal relationship with the hydraulic basis. Another example of a society where Wittfogel found a hydraulic political superstructure that studies show lacks a hydraulic basis is found in Mandana Limbert's article "The senses of water in an Omani town" (Limbert, 2001). In Oman, unlike Wittfogel's ideal hydraulic society, the distribution of water is not centrally controlled. Wittfogel did not analyze the traditional Omani economy, but since he considered Muslim societies to be hydraulic, Oman can be considered a counterexample to his theory: “Unlike Wittfogel's 'hydraulic state', water, the main means of production, is not controlled here by a centralized authority. Although it is easier for the wealthy to buy or lease some of the water-time canals, large property is quickly fragmented by inheritance. In addition, it is difficult to raise rental rates at the discretion of the owners, on the one hand, due to the fact that they have established
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vayutsya at the auction, on the other - because of the ban on profit. The greatest beneficiaries are mosques whose ownership cannot be fragmented and which can lease excess canal capacity” (Limbert, 2001: 45).
A counterexample of a different nature (there is a hydraulic basis, but no corresponding superstructure) is given by Stephen Kotkin in the article “Mongol commonwealth? Exchange and governance across the post-Mongol space”. He believes that Wittfogel's concept is wrong and will remain so even if we discard its dubious geographical aspect (the term "Oriental despotism"). According to Kotkin, we have no evidence that irrigation was the cause of institutional differences between East and West. Wittfogel considered the irrigation type of economy to be the cause of the development of despotism in China, and other researchers considered the cause of the emergence of Dutch democracy (Kotkin, 2007: 513).
However, Wittfogel believed that the hydraulic economy leads to the creation of a hydraulic state only outside the zone of influence of the large centers of the rain economy. So the absence of hydraulic institutions in Holland does not contradict his theory.
In Geography and institutions: plausible and implausible linkages (Olsson, 2005), Ola Olsson examines various theories of geographic determinism, including Wittfogel's theory, and raises a number of objections. She notes that India, in which Wittfogel finds hydraulic institutions, was divided by natural barriers, like Europe, so that a single hydraulic empire never arose in it (recall that Wittfogel explained the absence of a hydraulic state in Japan by the geographical fragmentation of the country, which did not allow unify irrigation systems): “Throughout its history, the Indian continent has been fragmented, as has Europe; there was no unified empire based on irrigation” (Olsson, 2005: 181-182).
Egypt, according to Olsson, not supported, however, by any arguments, was influenced by the same cultural and natural environment (Mediterranean) as the Greeks and Romans (Olsson, 2005: 182). From her point of view, Wittfogel's theory is best suited to describe China, which he studied well (Olsson, 2005: 181-182).
Duncan Sayer, in Medieval waterways and hydraulic economics: monasteries, towns and the East Anglian fen (Sayer, 2009), shows that the Wittfogel model of hydraulic economics (but not the state) is applicable even to those societies to which Wittfogel himself did not attribute it. The innovation of Sayer's approach lies in the fact that he divides Wittfogel's theory of hydraulic society into two independent concepts: the hydraulic economy and the hydraulic state proper. He treats the second with great skepticism, and not only accepts the first, but also takes it beyond the scope of its applicability according to Wittfogel.
Wittfogel believed that Europe did not know hydraulic states: Wittfogel's only example of such a state in Europe (Muslim Spain) is an exogenous system. Sayer, on the other hand, argues that Wittfogel's description of the hydraulic system corresponds to the state of affairs in medieval English Fenland.
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As Sayer writes, the five main features of a hydraulic society, named by Wittfogel, were: 1) the acquaintance of society with agriculture; 2) the presence of rivers that can be used to improve the efficiency of agriculture; 3) organized labor for the construction and operation of irrigation facilities;
4) the presence of a political organization; 5) the presence of social stratification and professional bureaucracy. The English Fenland society met all five requirements (Sayer, 2009: 145).
In Fenland, as in the hydraulic state of Wittfogel, the function of the organizer of forced irrigation work is taken over by corporations of clergy, in this case monasteries. Both in the eastern despotism and in Fenland, these organizations directly exploit the peasant communities: “The construction of a sea dam, without which the reclamation of swamps would be impossible, and the construction of large canals were necessary for the Fenland economy. In the 12th century, monks from Ely Monastery dug a "ten-mile river," diverting the Ouse Cam River to Vis Beh to avoid silting up in the riverbed. These examples show the need for an administrative elite in this swampy area. As in the cases described by Wittfogel, this was both an administrative and religious elite, ruling over many small dependent communities” (Sayer, 2009: 146)3.
The fact that Wittfogel considered the hydraulic economy as a social response to the difficulties of the economy in an arid climate, and Fenland, on the contrary, was a wet area, according to Sayer, is of little importance. Farming in a swampy area, as well as in a semi-desert one, requires huge labor costs to carry out preparatory work, even if in the first case it is irrigation, and in the second it is primarily drainage and the construction of drainage channels (Sayer, 2009:
So, the economic bases of the Fenland society and the Wittfogel hydraulic society are identical, but the political superstructures are not, and therefore the Fenland, according to Sayer, is not a hydraulic society, if such a society exists at all (Sayer, 2009: 146).
All of the above raises doubts about the correctness of Wittfogel's theory. According to this theory, the hydraulic economy causes the emergence of the hydraulic state, while in Fenland this type of economy coexists with the feudal political system.
Thus, Sayer shows that Wittfogel's updated and rethought theory, in which only its healthy economic core is left, has much wider limits of applicability than Wittfogel himself thought: "The theory of hydraulic society may be wrong, but the economic model proposed by Wittfogel may be used to describe situations
3. Wittfogel expressed similar considerations about the character of the medieval church as social institution. In Oriental Despotism, he explains the organizational strength of the church and its ability to erect monumental structures by saying that it was "an institution which, unlike all other significant institutions of the West, practiced both feudal and hydraulic models of organization and management" (Wittfogel, 1957 : 45). However, he does not develop this idea further.
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at regional and national levels... this applies not only to desert or semi-desert societies, but also to the economy of marshy regions in the already stratified Germanic feudal societies” (Sayer, 2009: 146). The remark about the applicability of Wittfogel's theory to the description of stratified societies is particularly interesting. Sayer (unlike Midlarsky) perceives Wittfogel's theory of Eastern despotism as a model for the transformation of a classless society into a despotic one (Sayer, 2009: 134-135).
Perhaps the most extravagant interpretation of Wittfogel's theory is that of Ralf Sigmund. Analyzing various theories explaining the emergence of the Egyptian state, in his dissertation "A critical review of theories about the origin of the ancient Egyptian state" (Siegmund, 1999), he calls Wittfogel's theory descriptive (mere descriptive of common aspects), while other authors believed that this theory is designed to explain the cause-and-effect relationships. Such an interpretation of the hydraulic theory is all the more surprising since Wittfogel in Oriental Despotism, with rare exceptions (such as the already mentioned quasi-hydraulic character of the church), weaves his observations into causal constructions.
Matthew Davies in his article "Wittfogel's dilemma: heterarchy and ethnographic approaches to irrigation management in Eastern Africa and Mesopotamia" (Davies, 2009), analyzing the criticism of Wittfogel's theory, comes to the conclusion that the actual objections of ethnographers and archaeologists contradict each other: "Archaeologists' theories regarding the links between irrigation and social stratification that emerged in response to the theory of the hydraulic state often contradict the ethnographic data also used to criticize Wittfogel's theory” (Davies, 2009: 19).
The essence of this paradox, which he calls "Wittfogel's dilemma", is as follows. Ethnographers, studying modern (in particular, East African) tribes practicing irrigation, come to the conclusion that such an economy does not require centralized power at all: “... Numerous East African tribes demonstrate the absence of centralized control in managing irrigation systems and maintaining them in working order” (Davies, 2009: 17).
The power in such “hydraulic” tribes belongs, on the one hand, to the assemblies of all men, and, on the other hand, to the councils of elders (Davies, 2009: 22). Wittfogel was of a different opinion on this matter simply because he did not carefully read the report of an English colonial official on the Pokot tribe in North-East Kenya (Davies, 2009: 17). He cited it as an example of a leader's despotism, while it is the clearest illustration of a collective mode of government.
Another argument against Wittfogel's theory is the equal distribution of land among all sons, even in the primitive irrigation tribes of Pokot and Marakwet (Davies, 2009: 25). Recall that Wittfogel considered the equal distribution of property as a tool in the hands of the state to weaken the owners. There is no state in the mentioned tribes.
We do not have data to show that irrigation contributes to property stratification and the emergence of a class society.
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Rather, natural conditions conducive to the development of irrigation hinder social stratification, since the have nots, i.e., those excluded from water, simply cannot survive in a semi-desert climate (Davies, 2009: 25).
At the same time, the evidence-based notion prevails in the archaeological environment that irrigation construction was a by-product of political centralization (Davies, 2009: 18).
Various schemes have been used to explain the relationship between irrigation and political centralization. All of them ran into the contradiction mentioned above: despotic power arose in ancient societies, while ethnographic evidence suggests that irrigation leads to an increase in corporate power.
To resolve this dilemma, Davis proposes the following model for the emergence of a stratified hierarchical society on the basis of an irrigation non-stratified one.
Irrigation contributes to the emergence of decentralized collective power. This leads to the development of other, authoritarian loci of power not directly related to irrigation (based, for example, on personal charisma or religious authority). And these new sources of power subdue the entire system of tribal "bureaucracy" of elders based on irrigation.
Thus, we must discard the notion of a single hierarchy as the sole source of political power in any society. Then we can correctly assess the role of irrigation and other sources of power, thus resolving the “Wittfogel dilemma” (Davies, 2009: 27).
Overgeneralizations, Factual Errors and Alogisms in Wittfogel's Theory
Many factual inaccuracies and errors can be found in Wittfogel's theory (some of which have already been mentioned). This applies both to a rather narrow factual base (Wittfogel, apparently, is well acquainted only with sources on the history of China), and to a more than free interpretation of the sources he has.
Sometimes Wittfogel's tendency to overgeneralize cannot be explained by his ignorance. Being a Sinologist, he could not have been unaware of the social structure of the Spring and Autumn era in China, reminiscent of the structure of feudal Europe. Nevertheless, Wittfogel does not take this case seriously, limiting himself to a single mention of the censuses conducted in Zhou (Wittfogel, 1957: 51) (which can hardly be an argument in favor of a fundamental difference between the European and Western Zhou social systems).
In addition, he drops the remark that the "free forms of landed property" that prevailed during the Western Zhou period were subsequently curtailed under the influence of "Inner Asian forces". “In the early stages of the development of the Chinese state, it [private property] was as insignificant as in pre-Columbian America; under the influence of intra-Asian forces, China temporarily abandoned free forms of land ownership, which prevailed
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at the end of the Zhou era, and during the reign of the Qin and Han dynasties, regulated forms of landed property prevailed again” (Wittfogel, 1957: 305-306).
This sounds very strange. Earlier, Wittfogel wrote that hydraulic models of social organization appear in regions of irrigated agriculture. In this case, it would be logical if the restriction of property rights was the result of China's influence on Central Asia, and not vice versa. If, however, the hydraulic state is considered the result of the influence of nomads, then the whole theory should be radically revised.
Since Wittfogel does not return to this thought, we cannot establish what exactly he had in mind. Perhaps he considered the state of Qin, which achieved the greatest success in the hydraulic economy and eventually united China, as the heir to nomadic traditions. Then we can accuse Wittfogel of what he accused Marx of - a deliberate avoidance of continuing the chain of reasoning if the supposed conclusions contradict the once accepted concept.
As an example of a dubious interpretation of the data, Wittfogel's statement that the peasant reform of 1861 in Russia manifested the subordination of the proprietary interests of the Russian nobility to their bureaucratic interests (Wittfogel, 1957: 342).
No less artificial is the distinction between taxes in democratic and despotic societies on the basis of Wittfogel's criterion of efficiency. According to Wittfogel, in a democracy: “Incomes of private persons, going to the maintenance of the state apparatus, are used only to cover those expenses, the necessity of which is proved, since the owners are able to keep the state under control” (Wittfogel, 1957: 310). This thesis needs proof.
There are also several examples of generalizations that seem to be due to Wittfogel's lack of awareness:
1) "The status of the Islamic ruler (caliph or sultan) changed many times, but never lost its religious significance" (Wittfogel, 1957: 97). He gives the example of Islamic states to demonstrate the role of religion in legitimizing hydraulic states. However, this generalization is questionable. The Ottoman sultan proclaimed himself caliph only in 1517, while the Seljuk, Mamluk and all other pre-Ottoman sultans were purely secular monarchs. The Abbasid caliphs at their courts did not have any power, de jure remaining the leaders of the Muslim ummah.
2) “Being established unilaterally, constitutional provisions are also changed unilaterally” (Wittfogel, 1957: 102).
What Wittfogel means is that the "constitutional" institutions of despotic regimes were easy for the ruler to violate. This is perhaps an overly broad generalization. You can give a counterexample - Yasa. Its violation could lead to the death of the ruler, as in the case of the Chagatai Khan Mubarak (he converted to Islam and moved to the city). Or it might not have, as in the case of the Golden Horde Khan Uzbek (but Uzbek could not break the tradition with a wave of his hand - he had to endure a difficult civil war with the pagan beks and exterminate a significant part of the nomadic
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howl of the aristocracy). One way or another, the constitution was indeed established one-sidely, but it was not so easy to cancel it one-sidely.
3) Wittfogel writes that in despotic countries there were no forces capable of opposing the authorities, although he himself quoted from Arthashastra, where the ruler is not advised to persecute people who are backed by powerful cliques (Wittfogel,
4) Wittfogel develops the concept of the "right to rebel" in despotic societies (Wittfogel, 1957: 104). Here, apparently, his experience as a sinologist was reflected. We cannot say with complete certainty that his extrapolation of the Chinese Mandate of Heaven theory to other hydraulic societies is completely incorrect. However, this is indicated by the fact that Wittfogel does not give any other examples than Chinese.
The only practice that even remotely resembles Chinese is late Ottoman. Six Ottoman sultans in the 17th-18th centuries they were overthrown according to the same scenario: the Sheikh-ul-Islam issued a fatwa declaring the Sultan an apostate, and the Janissaries (usually with the support of the townspeople) overthrew him.
But these were military coups, and besides, the practice of overthrowing the sultans was not supported by any special theory (by analogy with the theory of the Mandate of Heaven).
Thus, Wittfogel, at least in part, is prone to unjustified generalizations and the reduction of the entire variety of the "hydraulic" world to the Chinese model.
5) A separate and very important aspect of Wittfogel's theory is his class theory (and, accordingly, the theory of property). In his opinion, the ruling class in hydraulic states is the bureaucracy, and the distinguishing feature of these states is the systematic weakening of private property.
As Wittfogel writes, the Inca laws restricting luxury deepened the gap between the elite and the people: “... the gap between the two classes widened due to the laws that made the possession of gold, silver, precious stones. the privilege of rulers” (Wittfogel, 1957: 130).
Even before this, Wittfogel had emphasized repeatedly, beginning on page 60, that equal inheritance laws in hydraulic societies were aimed at fragmenting and weakening property. We would like to make three points about this.
First, restrictions on luxury consumption are ubiquitous (think of European luxury laws). Both European and Inca laws were intended to protect the prestige of the legally privileged members of the ruling elite from the wealthy members of the legally unprivileged groups. So the Inca example does not seem to prove anything.
Secondly, Wittfogel systematically confuses two types of private property: the property of the producer and the property of the exploiter (only this can explain the thesis that the restriction of luxury increased the distance between the “commoners” and the elite). There is only one exception - once he mentions that in most hydraulic states private ownership of land
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was predominantly landlord, and in China - peasant. He never again distinguishes between property alienated and not alienated from producers.
Thirdly, the example cited by Wittfogel - allowing Russian nobles to transfer land to all sons - can in no way be considered an example of hydraulic policy, if only because the abolition of the primacy in Russia was only one of the stages in the transformation of a conditional noble holding into real property, which should not be allowed by a despotic mode.
6) Wittfogel attributes almost all the social evils he mentions to despotism (or its pale shadow in the form of European absolutism). This applies, in particular, to the question of the persecution of witches. “There is no doubt that the fragmentation of medieval society led both to heresies and to a fanatical desire to eradicate them; but only within the framework of increasing absolutism did these tendencies lead to the establishment of the Inquisition” (Wittfogel, 1957: 166). Torquemada or Karptsov, indeed, were representatives of the royal power. However, the Inquisition existed not only in the absolutist states, but also in the republics.
If the presence of the tribunal in Venice can be considered the result of the influence of absolutist states, then many other facts, such as the trial of the Salem witches in New England, cannot be explained in this way. Strictly speaking, it is not clear how belief in witchcraft depends on the degree of despotism.
Wittfogel's concept is quite original: initially starting from Marxism (this can be seen already from the fact that he operates with Marxist concepts), he came to completely non-Marxist conclusions. Thus, according to Wittfogel, the hydraulic superstructure can be transferred to societies where there is no hydraulic basis (China - the Mongol Empire - Russia).
However, we could not find in him a clear answer to the question why it was possible to introduce despotism in Russia, but not in Japan, despite thousands of years of ties with China. The absence of despotism in Japan cannot be explained by the fact that it was not conquered by despotism. Despotism may well penetrate the country through cultural diffusion, as happened in Rome, and the cultural influence of Asia (not only China) on Japan was colossal. Moreover, attempts to establish despotism in Japan were made (reforms of Taiko and Tokugawa). Wittfogel attributed their failure to the fact that the Japanese irrigation system was decentralized. But even in Russia there were no conditions for creating a huge agro-management economy. So the question of the reasons for the Japanese resistance to despotism remains open.
Wittfogel also departs from Marxist ideas on the question of the determining factor of development. From his point of view, geographic, technical or economic factors are not enough for the emergence of a hydraulic society - cultural factors are also needed (Wittfogel, 1957: 161). Wittfogel adheres to the principle of "free will of the communities" (he naturally does not formulate it in this way). According to him
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It is believed that many societies rejected the irrigation mode of production in order to preserve their freedoms.
Perhaps the weakest point of Wittfogel's work is not the demonization of the East, but the idealization of the West. (We are referring to his uncritical acceptance of some dubious ideal schemes for the development of the West.) Wittfogel examines in detail various aspects of the life of hydraulic societies in order to establish whether certain phenomena existed in them. But to argue that these traits were endemic to them, a more thorough analysis of the history of European rain economies would have to be made. Then Wittfogel might have discovered that, for example, "bureaucratic capitalism", closely associated with the state, including those performing administrative functions (such as tax collection), and whose main resource is political power, is not at all an attribute of despotism. If you use Braudel's terminology, then this is the only type of capitalism that has ever existed in this world, everything else is not capitalism at all, but a market economy.
As for the modern criticism of Wittfogel, the dispute is not only about the truth of certain of his provisions, but also about their interpretation. Thus, there is a discussion whether the concept of the hydraulic state should be understood as a model of state formation based on a classless society (as Midlarsky believed), or as a model for the degeneration of an already stratified society into despotism (as Sayer perceived this theory).
The ideas expressed in the articles we found can be reduced to several provisions.
Wittfogel made factual errors and misinterpreted the data. Thus, Midlarsky believes that Wittfogel was mistaken in assessing the structure of Crete. Bong W. Kang raised the archaeologists' traditional objection to Wittfogel that centralization preceded irrigation and that political centers did not coincide with irrigation centers. On the other hand, the authors of the article “Canals versus Horses: political power in the oasis of Samarkand” believe that irrigation systems, as a rule, do not need state control at all, and therefore the level of irrigation intensity does not correlate with the level of political centralization.
Wittfogel's ideas should be improved. Midlarsky proposes to introduce a new geographical factor into the Wittfogel model - the presence of land borders. A more original approach is taken by the authors of the article Medieval waterways and hydraulic economics: monasteries, towns and the East Anglian fen. They believe that the political component of the Wittfogel model should be discarded and only its economic part should be used. In this case, it will describe a much wider range of phenomena than Wittfogel himself thought.
There is also an apologetics of Wittfogel: both an apologetics of his entire concept (in Price) and a defense of his ideas against individual unfair arguments of Wittfogel's opponents (in Liis).
We can also find a critique of Wittfogel, which suggests new model descriptions of the same phenomena (Lansing et al., 2009).
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Two articles (Lansing et al., 2009; Lees, 1994) share similar ideas: large, state-regulated irrigation systems are inefficient under capitalism as well. This idea is developed by Roxana Hafiz in her dissertation (Hafiz, 1998). From her point of view, the hydraulic structure of society is preserved under capitalist economic relations, continuing, albeit in a different form, to conserve the old social structure and the poverty of the masses.
The politicization of Wittfogel's theory is recognized even by his apologist David Goldfrank. In Muscovy and the Mongols: what’s what and what’s maybe, he notes that the ideologization of the concept of the hydraulic state spoiled Wittfogel’s sometimes brilliant analysis and ultimately led to the rejection of the very concept of despotism (Goldfrank, 2000).
It is curious that the implicitly politicized subtext of Wittfogel's theory seems to be recognized even by those authors of articles who do not write about it. “Comparative studies of the mid-twentieth century gave the world Carl Wittfogel’s ‘A comparative study of total terror’ [‘A comparative study of total terror1’ instead of ‘A comparative study of total power1’], a book that stimulated in-depth research on irrigation farming around the world” (Westcoat, 2009: 63). The mistake made in the title of Wittfogel's book is all the more remarkable because it is correctly indicated in the bibliography. Probably, the author perceives the content of this book exactly as he wrote in the text, and not in the bibliography, tying Wittfogel's concept to the current political context.
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