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Historisk tidskrift 123:2 • 2003

Innehåll (Contents) 2003:2

Uppsatser (Articles)

Syntesens roll och världshistorien. Samhällelig komplexitet och imperiernas historia

Janken Myrdal

Fulltext (pdf)

Summary

World History and the Role of Synthesis. Social Complexity and the History of Empires

The basic characteristic of every synthesis is that it has to present something new built on present knowledge. The major syntheses thus have to include results from other scholars, often in a context and with interpretations that perhaps do not perfectly agree with their original intentions. This article is an example of such a synthesis on a very general level. It deals with the size of states.

A mega-trend throughout history is a growing social complexity in society with increasing and more diversified contacts between people. The growing social complexity is mainly explained by population growth and by a more elaborate division of labour in society.

An indication of this growing social complexity is the expansion of empires and states. Implicit is the assumption that a state is functional at least in that it can handle the level of social complexity in the region it controls. A state also has other aims – it can be oppressive, dysfunctional for the economy, serving a small group, etc. But a largely dysfunctional state will normally dissolve after some time.

Another reason to study the size of states and empires is that this variable can be measured further back in history than most other variables. Three different variables are presented: the area of the three largest states, the area of all well organized and large states, and the number of inhabitants in the two largest states. Each variable offers a new aspect of the general development.

Rein Taagepera presented in the late 1960s and in the 1970s data on the area of all large states, which he called empires. He also made a curve over the largest state and the three largest states in the world (fig 1). This curve shows a steady growth of the total land area controlled by the three largest states in the world. However after World War II this curve has fallen, which could indicate a shift in the general trend or a temporary change.

If one instead looks at the area under control of all well organized states in the world (table 1), this resembles the development of the three largest states up to the eighteenth century, but then the area controlled by all large, well organized states increases dramatically. At the end of the nineteenth century most of the world’s land area was under these states’ control. This tremendous change started mainly as colonialism, but when the former colonies became independent states, they became more legitimate among there own populations.

The third variable is based on the proportion of the world population living in the largest states, and it is mainly based on the figures presented by Colin McEvedy Table 2). Figures are given for the largest and the second largest states (if it had 15 per cent or more of the total population). The picture given here is totally different from that in Diagram 1. Over the last 2000 years there is no general tendency for the largest states to control an increasing part of the world population. Between 30–50 per cent of the world population lived in the two largest states during the whole period. The two peak periods when two thirds of the world population lived in the four largest empires are: 1) the first century after the birth of Christ (Rome, Parthia, the Kushan Empire and China) and 2) around AD 1900 (Great Britain, France, Russia and China). A constant during the entire period is that China nearly always has been the state with the largest population.

This last variable must be considered as more important than the other two as an indication of social complexity. Several decisive steps in the growth of states end empires can be identified and can be combined with other major changes, such as new technology. Two of these stand out among others. The first is when the first large empires were formed – , the centuries before the birth of Christ (Fig 2). Thereafter, the building of empires became a political and military venture. The second decisive step came during the last two hundred years when the entire world has been brought under firm control of organized states.