Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the third edition
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Introduction to the second edition
- Map
- EURASIA
- EUROPE
- 3 Technological drift
- 4 The Discoveries and ghost acreage
- 5 The market economy
- 6 The states system
- 7 Nation-states
- THE WORLD
- ASIA
- EURASIA
- Afterword to the third edition
- Annotated bibliographical guide to Eurasian economic history in the very long term
- Bibliography
- Supplementary bibliographical guide
- Index
7 - Nation-states
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the third edition
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Introduction to the second edition
- Map
- EURASIA
- EUROPE
- 3 Technological drift
- 4 The Discoveries and ghost acreage
- 5 The market economy
- 6 The states system
- 7 Nation-states
- THE WORLD
- ASIA
- EURASIA
- Afterword to the third edition
- Annotated bibliographical guide to Eurasian economic history in the very long term
- Bibliography
- Supplementary bibliographical guide
- Index
Summary
Europe, too, was in its own time born, and … the circumstances of its birth were no less extraordinary and perhaps a good deal more paradigmatic than those of the newer nations
Benjamin Barberthe notion-state is nowadays the unit of affairs. It is a purely European form which has been exported to parts of the world that had hitherto known only tribalism. We may look on national income accounting as if it deals in categories both natural and proper, but nation-states are not God-given. They are the creations of post-feudal Europe. By the time the political arithmeticians of the late seventeenth century began to study economic activity, nation-states had become the dominant vehicles of policy and the most convenient receptacles for quantitative data. Whereas once states had been federations or amalgams of provinces each of which adapted instructions from the centre to fit an individual view of its needs, by that time most of Europe had been organised into centralised states. These states were engaged in modernising themselves, extending the market system albeit by political means and for political ends.
The earliest European states had been the products of dynastic rule by the leaders of warrior bands. These men gathered and stabilised groups of followers with similar ethnic origins, customs, and languages or dialects. As political expansion drew in less similar peoples, common organisation was relied on to make them more alike (Strayer 1966; 1970).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The European MiracleEnvironments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia, pp. 127 - 150Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003