The State: Its History and Development Viewed SociologicallyOppenheimer, Franz
History
The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically
Oppenheimer, Franz
State, The
This stage is first reached by the herdsmen. The forces of one family,
lacking outside assistance, suffice to hold together a herd of very
limited size, and to protect it from attacks of beasts of prey or human
enemies. Until the political means is brought into play, auxiliary
forces are found very sparingly; such as the poorer members of the
clan already mentioned, together with runaways from foreign tribes,
who are found all over the world as protected dependents in the suite
of the greater owners of herds.[11] In some cases, an entire poor
clan of herdsmen enters, half freely, into the service of some rich
tribe. “Entire peoples take positions corresponding to their relative
wealth. Thus the Tungusen, who are very poor, try to live near the
settlements of the Tschuktsches, because they find occupation as
herdsmen of the reindeer belonging to the wealthy Tschuktsches; they
are paid in reindeer. And the subjection of the Ural-Samojedes by the
Sirjaenes came about through the gradual occupation of their pasturing
grounds.”[12]
Excepting, however, the last named case, which is already very
state-like, the few existing labor forces, without capital, are not
sufficient to permit the clan to keep very large herds. Furthermore,
methods of herding themselves compel division. For a pasture may
not, as they say in the Swiss Alps, be “overpushed,” that is to say,
have too many cattle on it. The danger of losing the entire stock
is reduced by the measure in which it is distributed over various
pastures. For cattle plagues, storms, etc., can affect only a part;
while even the enemy from abroad can not drive off all at once. For
that reason, the Hereros, for example, “find every well-to-do owner
forced to keep, besides the main herd, several other subsidiary herds.
Younger brothers or other near relatives, or in want of these, tried
old servants, watch them.”[13]
For that reason, the developed nomad spares his captured enemy; he can
use him as a slave on his pasture. We may note this transition from
killing to enslaving in a customary rite of the Scythians: they offered
up at their places of sacrifice one out of every hundred captured
enemies. Lippert, who reports this, sees in it “the beginning of a
limitation, and the reason thereof is evidently to be found in the
value which a captured enemy has acquired by becoming the servant of a
tribal herdsman.”[14]
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