The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically — John Shaqi
The State: Its History and Development Viewed SociologicallyOppenheimer, Franz
History
The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically
Oppenheimer, Franz
State, The
“The expeditions of the great hordes of nomads contrast with this
movement, drop by drop and step by step, since they overflow with
tremendous power, especially Central Asia and all neighboring
countries. The nomads of this district, as of Arabia and Northern
Africa, unite mobility in their way of life with an organization
holding together their entire mass for one single object. It seems to
be a characteristic of the nomads that they easily develop despotic
power and far-reaching might from the patriarchal cohesion of the
tribe. Mass governments thereby come into being, which compare with
other movements among men in the same way that swollen streams compare
with the steady but diffused flow of a tributary. The history of China,
India, and Persia, no less than that of Europe, shows their historical
importance. Just as they moved about on their ranges with their wives
and children, slaves and carts, herds and all their paraphernalia, so
they inundated the borderlands. While this ballast may have deprived
them of speed it increased their momentum. The frightened inhabitants
were driven before them, and like a wave they rolled over the conquered
countries, absorbing their wealth. Since they carried everything with
them, their new abodes were equipped with all their possessions, and
thus their final settlements were of an ethnographic importance. After
this manner, the Magyars flooded Hungary, the Manchus invaded China,
the Turks, the countries from Persia to the Adriatic.”[28]
What has been said here of Hamites, Semites and Mongolians, may be said
also, at least in part, of the Arian tribes of herdsmen. It applies
also to the true negroes, at least to those who live entirely from
their herds: “The mobile, warlike tribes of the Kafirs possess a power
of expansion which needs only an enticing object in order to attain
violent effects and to overturn the ethnologic relations of vast
districts. Eastern Africa offers such an object. Here the climate did
not forbid stock raising, as in the countries of the interior, and did
not paralyze from the start, the power of impact of the nomads, while
nevertheless numerous peaceable agricultural peoples found room for
their development. Wandering tribes of Kafirs poured like devastating
streams into the fruitful lands of the Zambesi, and up to the highlands
between the Tanganyika and the coast. Here they met the advance guard
of the Watusi, a wave of Hamite eruption, coming from the north. The
former inhabitants of these districts were either exterminated, or as
serfs cultivated the lands which they formerly owned; or they still
continued to fight; or again, they remained undisturbed in settlements
left on one side by the stream of conquest.”[29]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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