The study of comparative politics is currently invigorated by a world-wide perspective. There is now a lively concern with the politics of societies hitherto little regarded or left comfortably to specialists, and these societies often challenge familiar assumptions based on Western experience. Efforts to understand unfamiliar institutions or why formally similar political institutions perform differently in different societies inevitably forces attention outward from the political focus into wider reaches of each society.

There are very few states today which do not aspire to modernity. The day of rulers who were indifferent to the archaism of the society which they governed has almost disappeared. The leaders of nearly every state—both the old established states as well as the new states of Asia and Africa—feel a pressing necessity of espousing policies which will bring them well within the circle of modernity. Much of the opposition which they encounter among their politically interested countrymen contends that they are not modern enough. Many traditionalists are constrained to assert that only by cleaving to the essence of older traditions can a genuine and stable modernity be attained.

Modern states must be “dynamic”, above all else. To be modern, an elite, as the elites of the new states see it, must not fear change; on the contrary, it umst strive to bring it about. It does not wish to remain as it is. It is against the ancien regime; even where it affirms the past of the country, it stresses its adaptability to the needs of the pressent. “Dynamic” is one of the favorite adjectives of the elites of the new states. The elites pride themselves on their dynamism and they claim that the mass of the population demands it of them. Almost everything else which they esteem presupposes this praise of change.

In an age of crumbling empires, when many former colonial territories are becoming politically independent, it may still be instructive to study the processes by which empires and nations have been built up. What political forms have been involved and how have they been modified and developed? The new nations of Africa and Asia now emerging have political structures that bear a generic resemblance to the established democracies and dictatorships of Europe. These forms of organization seem to be a necessary requirement for membership of the United Nations, and are widely held to be essential if there is to be a flexible industrial and commercial economy, centralized administration and widespread literacy. None of the United Nations enjoys an entirely subsistence economy or relies only on communication by word of mouth. They all have courts of law, standing armies and at least the beginnings of a bureaucracy.

The elites of the new states are seeking to a greater extent than ever before to create something new. Their aspirations are cast on a more drastic and more comprehensive scale even than those of the European revolutionaries who have flourished since 1789. They are working to a model, which however vague in its details, is more elaborate and more exogenous than those which guided the formation of the modern state in Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States. These were, of course, influenced by models drawn from outside their own territories and their own current culture. The models of the Roman Republic, of the China of the Mandarins, of the British Constitution as portrayed by Montesquieu have played their parts in the formation of modern Western states. They were, however, only fragments accepted in isolation or as parts of a larger program which was constructed largely from elements already existent and accepted in the situation to be reformed. There was moreover very much in their current situation which they were prepared to accept.

The traditional explanations of Italy's post-Renaissance decline are almost too well-known to bear repeating: northern economic competition, the opening of new trade routes bypassing the Mediterranean, the French and Spanish invasions and eventual Spanish domination of much of the peninsula, and so on. There is no doubt they were of significance. But explicit in all of them are “foreign” influences of one sort or another: Italy is pictured as simply an unwilling but helpless victim of the rise of the European nationstates. It is suggested that the northern Italian states also posessed within themselves the seeds of decline. Inherent in their economy, in the structure of their society, and in their political institutions were forces which, together with forces from outside, shaped the character of post-Renaissance Italy. It is suggested further that these forces were discernible in many states by the end of the fifteenth century.

This paper concerns an idea in which the writer became interested while trying to understand the political institutions of one people – the Baganda of East Africa.1 Fundamentally, however, it is a comparative idea which requires to be tested against a much wider range of data than one person commands. In such circumstances one attempts to achieve a measure of comparative perspective through “reading around” in the history of such other times and places as seem relevant, but amateur groping of this kind is no substitute for criticism by the uniquely wide range of specialists who constitute the clientele of this journal. It is therefore with more than the usual sincerity that the writer invites criticism.

British imperial policy during the first three quarters of the nineteenth century was increasingly dominated by men of business and industry who prided themselves upon their clear-headed devotion to sound economic principles. The world in which they lived had no place for maudlin sentimentality. The industrial system which had made Britain the wealthiest and most powerful state in the world must not be trammeled by artificial restrictions nor should its expansion be slowed by uneconomic burdens. Their religion was Material Progress, and its high priests – Cobden, Bright, Merivale, and others – preached that the Empire was an anachronism, an expensive relic of a by-gone day. Few were disposed to sever the bonds between Britain and its colonies; but these colonies must be made to pay their own way.

At the First Asian Socialist Conference, held in Rangoon in January 1953, members of the two wings of the then split Japanese Socialist Party viewed the Burmese Socialists and their successful movement in Burma with interest and amazement1 The Japanese right-wing Socialists were pleased with the Burmese emphasis on “democratic socialism” and denunciation of “Soviet imperialism,” though a somewhat patronizing air could be detected in their attitudes toward the younger Burmese who were relative new-comers to the ranks of the international socialist movement. The Japanese left-wing Socialist delegation wanted very much to identify themselves with the rising socialist elements in Asia but were surprised to find out how watered-down Burmese socialism was, from their point of view.2 Class analysis had not been given much attention and the stipulated goal of Pyidawtha (the “Happy Land”) appeared to be little more than the kind of mixed economy usually associated with Scandinavian welfare states.

The student of Aztec “aristocracy” in its colonial period (1519–1810) confronts an historical situation of which the abstract conditions are familiar from other (and often much better known) instances of conquest and long-term adaptation. Romans and Barbarians, Moslems and Christians, Whites and Negroes, and additional examples will immediately suggest themselves. The situation is one wherein a given society, previously independent, suffers subjugation under an external society to the extent that its whole hierarchy of class stratification is subordinated to a new and foreign upper class. The society is demoted as a whole, and whereas for lower classes this entails only a further degradation, for ruling classes the change is absolute, from a dominant to a subordinate rank. Theoretically, at least, one could expect stimulus and response in greatest degree and greatest incidence in the group whose position is most seriously affected.

This paper attempts to differentiate the forms of political regime that held sway in the city of Florence over the century following the formation of the Florentine constitution in 1282. It aims to establish certain pragmatic criteria for distinguishing between these Signorie, and to incorporate these into a framework that may be of some value in subsequent comparative study of the politics of the Italian city state in the later Middle Ages. The method employed is inductive. The more conventional deductive approach is rejected because the setting up of definitions at the outset is likely to create the illusion that political forms existed in a pure state. Dictatorship, oligarchy and popular government did not exist in the form of “ideal types” but rather were characterized by frequent changes of form and function. During periods of challenge and struggle their true nature became more clearly discernible than in eras of relative quiescence and this fact in part explains the conflicting interpretations that have arisen.

There has been an overriding if not always explicit tendency to see Britain as the prototype of industrial revolutions wherever they have appeared. In one sense this tradition is not incorrect. An industrial revolution does require, generally speaking, a common set of basic preconditions and, as it proceeds, does generate a rather common set of general consequences. Nevertheless, the variety of possibilities are, within limits, substantial. As Professor Gerschenkron has reminded us, the very timing of the process of industrialization in one country as related to others is in itself very likely to produce different paths by which industrialization is achieved. This is partly the result of exposure to previous industrializations, the consequence of a “demonstration effect”, and partly the consequence of the changed international economic environment that succeeding economies face as a result of the industrialization that has gone before. Moreover, preexisting social institutions will to some extent modify the path and character of each nation's industrial development.

The kingdom of Buganda, which extends over some seventeen thousand square miles of very fertile country to the north-west of Lake Victoria, was the original nucleus of the British Protectorate to which it has given its name. It was, indeed, the first firm base which the British possessed in the interior of East Africa, and it provided the model, and to a large extent the personnel, for the administration of the surrounding areas. Buganda was also the first part of as East Africa in which Christian teaching took root, and the centre from which Christian beliefs were diffused among a wide range of heathen tribes. The Baganda were the first people in the region to become literate, and the first to take part, with any degree of willingness and success, in the cultivation of exportable crops.

An attempt at a synopsis of Mr. Becker's and Mr. Hicks' findings requires an enlargement of focus. They have much in common in their approaches: both are sympathetic to reactions in Italian scholarship against a school which had conceived the history of the Italian city-states chiefly in terms of social clashes caused by antagonistic economic class interests. About 1900 that had been the perspective shared by most students. During the late 13th century (it was then argued), the half-chivalric magnati, owners of landed property, were replaced by the capitalistic merchants and industrialists of the arti maggiori; these, in turn, by the middle of the 14th century were followed by the artisans of the arti minori who, for a short revolutionary period in 1378, opened the door for the laborers of the great textile industries, the Ciompi. After class struggle had thus sapped the public spirit, Florence and other cities were ripe for the heavy, but pacifying hand of despotism.

The characteristics of nobilities vary considerably. However, they share the attribute which permits their identification. This quality is deference; and the nobility in any society are those who are deferred to most in most fields. A community without gradations of rank, formal or informal, is virtually inconceivable. Doubtless, the primitive tribe whose distinctions of rank are limited to specific situations and dissolve with them does not have an identifiable nobility. This, however, is best regarded as part of their lack of specialisation. Once division of labour emerges, so also does a nobility. The variable characteristics can be considered as symbols which indicate that their wielder is to receive deference, and which change with changing circumstances. Such characteristics are, for example, birth, rank and title. In studying the nobility of a community our problem is to identify the conditions which are associated with the various characteristics.

The effectiveness of a protest movement, such as trade unionism, depends on its ability to overcome the widespread disapproval and opposition it engenders. The worker's demands and their methods of enforcing them must somehow become egitimate in the eyes of the employers, the government, the public, and the workers themselves. The present article analyzes the British and German coal miners' struggles to overcome opposition to their endeavors to rise from traditional submission to the employer to some sort of partnership in industrial government. Its main emphasis is on the development of protest ideologies over a period of time, from the late 18th century to the first World War, which spans the industrial revolution in both countries. Although many of the aspects discussed apply to the countries as a whole, it is hoped that by focussing on a specific and rather distinct group with a long history, some of the contrasting elements will stand out more sharply. Britain will be discussed first, and then Germany, each case starting with employer-worker relations during the pre-industrial period and tracing the broad patterns of the protest movement through the period of viable unionism.

Over a century ago, Tocqueville named slavery as the source of the American prejudice against the Negro. Contrary to the situation in antiquity, he remarked: “Among the moderns the abstract and transient fact of slavery is fatally united with the physical and permanent fact of color.” Furthermore, he wrote, though “slavery recedes” in some portions of the United States, “the prejudice to which it has given birth is immovable”. More modern observers of the American past have also stressed this causal connection between the institution of slavery and the color prejudice of Americans. Moreover, it is patent to anyone conversant with the nature of American slavery, particularly as it functioned in the nineteenth century, that the impress of bondage upon the character and future of the Negro in the United States has been both deep and enduring.

One of the most serious problems facing the post-revolutionary Indonesian political élite has turned out to be the maintenance of mutual understanding between themselves and the mass of the peasant population. The attempt to build up a modern national state out of a plurality of distinct regional cultures has been hampered by the difficulty of communication between people still largely absorbed in those cultures and the metropolitan-based nationalist leadership more oriented to the international patterns of intelligentsia culture common to ruling groups in all the new Bandung countries. On the one hand, the activist white-collar nationalists of the large cities are attempting to construct an integrated Indonesian state along generally western parliamentary lines; on the other, the peasants of the Javanese, Sundanese, Achenese, Buginese, etc. culture areas cling to the patterns of local community organization and belief with which they are intimately familiar.

American and British writers have reinterpreted the English, American, French and Russian revolutions, but, since Motley,2 have had little new to say about the Revolt of the Netherlands. My hypothesis is that the Revolt of the Netherlands was indeed a revolution comparable to and deserving a place of priority in the list of great revolutions which have ushered in modern times.

Motley liked to compare the Revolt of the Netherlands with the American Revolution, but what appealed to him in both movements was that they were as he saw them really not very revolutionary. The claims of traditional states' rights were asserted against the innovations of a centralizing monarchy. Neither the Dutch nor the American movement was carried away by a Jacobin zeal for unity. Both were directed against a government which was distant and foreign: the struggle against foreign domination therefore filled the center of the picture of both rebellions, and obscured domestic changes which may have been drastic enough to deserve the term “revolutionary.”

The basic Chiliastic character of the Taborite articles was recognized by scholars a long time ago. A. Hauck deals with the problem in his Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, in which he introduces the problem to the general public. His knowledge of the subject is based solely on the Latin sources, since he did not read Czech. When German and Czechoslovakian scholars dealt with the problem questions of sectarian influence, such as the Waldensian, and of nationalism tended to prevail. However after 1945 the young Marxian historiography of the CSR tried to discover the social roots of these ideas, focussing attention on certain social and economic questions which even the bourgeois historians had admitted to be relevant.

Starting with the perception of Marx and Engels that the existence of revolutionary ideas in a given epoch presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class J. Macek came to the conclusion that urban and rural poverty were the driving forces of the Hussite revolution and that Chiliasm was the appropriate ideology for the movement. He denied foreign sectarian influence, and explained Chiliastic Taborism solely by the Bohemian environment.

Reflecting upon the career in the colonial government of Formosa that was to win him world-wide fame in the early twentieth century, Baron Shimpei Goto once remarked that “Japan had made no preparations whatever for the administration of the island at the time of its acquisition”. Underscoring this neglect, he added, was “the fact that, in the case of other nations confronted by a similar occasion, elaborate schemes are generally formulated to meet contingencies connected with the occupation of a new territory”. One may wonder whether the Baron included among the “elaborate schemers” the “absent-minded” builders of the British Empire.

It does not matter whether Baron Goto was aware of the complex historical processes, of the actions and accidents, involved in the creation of great empires. It is not even important whether he really believed that the colonial programs of the imperial powers were, like the war plans carefully devised by army general staffs, drawn from secret files as occasions demanded. Goto was primarily interested in the formulation and implementation of a colonial policy for Japan. His observation on his government's lack of preparedness to assume control and direction of Formosan affairs should thus be taken not simply as a confession and condemnation but rather as a statement of purpose.