The State: Its History and Development Viewed SociologicallyOppenheimer, Franz
History
The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically
Oppenheimer, Franz
State, The
The same tried order, handed down from untold ages, regulates
the warlike march of the tribe of herdsmen while on the hunt, in
war and in peaceable wandering. Thus they become professional
fighters, irresistible until the state develops higher and mightier
organizations. Herdsman and warrior become identical concepts. Ratzel’s
statement concerning the Central Asiatic Nomads applies to them all:
“The nomad is, as herdsman, an economic, as warrior, a political
concept. It is easy for him to turn from any activity to that of the
warrior and robber. Everything in life has for him a pacific and
war-like, an honest and robber-like, side; according to circumstances,
the one or the other of these phases appears uppermost. Even fishing
and navigation, at the hands of the East Caspian Turkomans, developed
into piracy.... The activities of the apparently pacific existence as
a herdsman determine those of the warrior; the pastoral crook becomes
a fighting implement. In the fall, when the horses return strengthened
from the pasture and the second cropping of the sheep is completed,
the nomads’ minds turn to some feud or robbing expedition (_Baranta_,
literally, to make cattle, to lift cattle), adjourned to that time.
This is an expression of the right of self help, which in contentions
over points of law, or in quarrels affecting dignity, or in blood
feuds, seeks both requital and surety in the most valuable things that
the enemy possesses, namely, the animals of his herd. Young men who
have not been on a _baranta_ must first acquire the name _batir_, hero,
and thus earn the claim to honor and respect. The pleasure of ownership
joined to the desire for adventure develops the triple descending
gradation of avenger, hero and robber.”[20]
An identical development takes place with the sea nomads, the
“Vikings,” as with the land nomads. This is quite natural, since in the
most important cases noted in the history of mankind, sea nomads are
simply land nomads taking to the sea.
We have noted above one of the innumerable examples which indicate that
the herdsman does not long hesitate to use for marauding expeditions,
instead of the horse or the “ship of the desert,” the “horses of the
sea.” This case is exemplified by the East Caspian Turkomans.[21]
Another example is furnished by the Scythians: “From the moment when
they learn from their neighbors the art of navigating the seas, these
wandering herdsmen, whom Homer (_Iliad_, XIII, 3) calls ‘respected
horsemen, milk-eaters and poor, the most just of men,’ change into
daring navigators like their Baltic and Scandinavian brethren. Strabo
(_Cas._, 301) complains: ‘Since they have ventured on the sea,
carrying on piracy and murdering foreigners, they have become worse;
and associating with many peoples, they adopt their petty trading and
spendthrift habits.’”[22]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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