Hegemonic Decline

Present and Past

Jonathan Friedman, Christopher Chase-Dunn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781594510083
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317258230
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: Economics

Although the United States is currently the world's only military and economic superpower, the nation's superpower status may not last. The possible futures of the global system and the role of U.S. power are illuminated by careful study of the past. This book addresses the problems of conceptualizing and assessing hegemonic rise and decline in comparative and historical perspective. Several chapters are devoted to the study of hegemony in premodern world-systems. And several chapters scrutinize the contemporary position and trajectory of the United States in the larger world-system in comparison with the rise and decline of earlier great powers, such as the Dutch and British empires. Contributors: Kasja Ekholm, Johnny Persson, Norihisa Yamashita, Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly Silver, Karen Barkey, Jonathan Friedman, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Rebecca Giem, Andrew Jorgenson, John Rogers, Shoon Lio, Thomas Reifer, Peter Taylor, Albert Bergesen, Omar Lizardo, Thomas D. Hall.

PART I

ON THE WAY TO THE MODERN WORLD-SYSTEM

1

Escaping a Closed Universe

WORLD-SYSTEM CRISIS, REGIONAL DYNAMICS, AND THE RISE OF AEGEAN PALATIAL SOCIETY

Johnny Persson

Introduction

The rise of palatial society in Minoan Crete around 2000 B.C. has been a much-debated issue archaeologically speaking. Of course, what we are considering here is not the monumentality of architecture per se, but its economic, social, and political implications. In concise terms, each palace operated as a central place focusing on the activities (e.g., redistribution, trade, manufacture) controlled by some ruling elite. The Cretan example provides an intriguing test case for those processes generally considered vital to early or archaic state formation—many of which it seems blatantly to contradict. Thus, for instance, it has been argued that Crete was much smaller in terms of territorial size (Manning 1999: 476–7) and less politically centralized initially (Branigan 1988a; Dabney & Wright 1990; Dabney 1995). Other unique or anomalistic features are inferred from the fact that portraits of rulers and scenes of warfare are generally missing from Minoan iconography (see, e.g., Starr 1984; Davis 1995; Gates 1999; Weingarten 1999). This has usually been interpreted as suggesting a fundamentally peaceful society—internally as well as externally. However, some recent analyses arrive at much different conclusions (e.g., Cadogan 1986: 168, 170; Stos-Gale 1993: 119; Tsipopoulou 1999). Instead of viewing the destruction and burning of certain palaces as the result of seismic activity—a favorite explanation in the past—we are now asked to regard it as evidence of deliberate human endeavor connected with intergroup conflict, whether intrasocietal (rebellion) or a result of some outside source (warfare, invasion, foreign conquest). From the perspective advocated here, there is much that would seem to favor such a social understanding.¹

The principal aim of this article is to reassess the various factors considered responsible for the rise of Minoan palatial society by placing them within a more systematic analytical framework based on a modified version of world-systems theory. What such a novel approach might entail is discussed below. I shall argue, however, that Cretan development was, at least partly, the result of the major crisis then afflicting most areas of the eastern Mediterranean (Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc.).² Other sources of disturbance may have been internal to the Aegean itself, though operating mainly at a regional level. Thus, from the final stages of the Early Bronze Age onward, Minoan Crete shows all signs of “upward collapse” (Erasmus 1968) or “anastrophe” (Renfrew 1979). Both concepts imply that what would seem like a major disintegration at one level of society is, in fact, a “change for the better” at another, perhaps more significant level. For example, a certain type of economic growth may be accompanied by political fragmentation. The case at hand, however, would rather seem to indicate the opposite possibility. What I mean here is basically that a certain type of locally inescapable problems (world-system crisis, regional interlude) could have worked as a catalyst for centralization. This might also have occasioned a major transformation of most intersocietal relationships within the southern Aegean.

That Cretan development in Minoan times poses a major comparative difficulty is already suggested by the titles of two seminal papers addressing this particular issue—“Why Did Civilization Not Emerge More Often?” (Lewthwaite 1983) and “Why Was Crete Different?” (Cadogan 1986). In their intriguing attempts to answer these rather similar questions, both scholars are finally stressing the uniqueness of the case at hand in terms of peculiar historical circumstances. While Lewthwaite’s comparison with other contemporaneous Mediterranean island societies (the Balearics, Corsica, Sardinia, and Malta) concludes with a reference to locational factors vis-à-vis the principal Near Eastern civilizations, Cadogan opts for a more limited perspective, arguing for the specificity of Early Minoan Crete in strictly Aegean terms. Hence, what made this area so very different, in his understanding, was basically its cultural isolation from neighboring societies and its unique path of internal development. Cadogan seems finally perplexed by his own tantalizing question, having ultimately no real answer to provide.

In this chapter, I am going to propose a rather different solution to the same general problem, that is, what basic mechanisms might have contributed to the rise of Aegean palatial society. A discussion of the further development and subsequent demise of the Minoan state in Crete is planned for a later work. There I also intend to examine the series of events that supposedly led from Mycenaean “takeover” to the final collapse of Aegean palatial society as part of the massive disturbances assaulting the eastern Mediterranean world-system at the very end of the Bronze Age. Thus, rashly speaking, this kind of local religious-cum-political economy was born from one major crisis and succumbed to another. Its final demise, however, paved the way for an entirely new sequence of social forms leading from the Dark Age societies of Archaic Greece to the city-states of Classical Antiquity.

A Theoretical Framework

Regional dynamic, or what might also be called oscillatory bipolar models (Persson 1999: 11–38, 225–35) have become something of a hallmark of anthropological studies when it comes to explaining the social and political variation that occurs within particular geographical areas. By this I mean that local differences are understood as forming part of a larger cyclical process that goes well beyond the boundaries of single groups or societies of any ethnographic definition while still being contained within the limits of two extreme hypothetical cases.³

Beginning with Sir Edmund Leach’s (1954) classic study of the Kachin tribes of Highland Burma, such a dynamic and, in a sense, “pseudohistorical,” perspective has provided the inspiration for a number of subsequent analyses (Kirsch 1973; Geertz 1980; Fagan 1984; Lehman 1989; Friedman 1998). In all of these publications, we find rather similar depictions of “a regional mosaic whose social segments remain permanently in flux” (Adams 1974: 244), to use the earliest metaphor.⁴ No matter if our immediate analytical concern is the dynastic struggles that occurred within the precolonial Balinese state, Aztec military expansion as connected to human sacrifice, or, yet again, the fluctuating nature of Kachin politics, the explanation is essentially the same.⁵ The mechanisms responsible for producing the patterns observed—or, perhaps more correctly, logically deduced—are generally sought within the cosmological domain, primarily as related to major feasting events within the societies examined. Thus, for example, ceremonial distributions of wealth (local food and/or exotic items) in a competitive situation seem the favored means of demonstrating a superior connection to the ancestors (or other supernatural beings) who supposedly control fertility in whatever sense.

Some archaeologists have presented a similar perspective on the vast majority of European Bronze Age societies (e.g., Gilman 1991; Mathers & Stoddart 1994; Patton 1996; cf. also Manning 1999: 474 and fn. 37 for a particular example). From their standpoint, a constant alternation between more or less centralized modes of political organization was a characteristic feature of these ancient social forms. However, the sudden appearance of the first palaces in Minoan Crete around 2000 B.C. represents a significant historical departure from such a cyclical pattern. Here, it might be suggested, a society emerged that was capable of escaping the “vicious circle” of earlier chiefdom dynamics.⁶ What factors could have occasioned this exceptional case of Bronze Age “takeoff” provides the main focus of this article. In it, I argue for a regional and world-systems perspective on prehistoric Aegean societies that includes both a structural and strategic dimension. The basic assumptions behind this kind of analytical framework have been published elsewhere (Persson 1999), but let me recapitulate some of the major points, expanding it by adding a new conceptual tool.

Structures, Strategies, and Scenarios

The major theoretical weakness of those regional approaches mentioned earlier, I would argue, consists in their unrelenting search for some “underlying thematic structure” that supposedly explains the variation found in local social and political forms within a particular geographical area. What are the fundamental mechanisms or causative factors, one might ask, responsible for generating these concrete patterns? Seldom or ever, though, do we obtain a proper answer to this very important question. Most explanatory undertakings proceed from a linguistic metaphor where ordinary “speech,” as a microscopic historical act seemingly independent of particular languages, is ultimately produced by some grammatical faculty intrinsic to the human mind. Hence, regional ethnographic variation, from such a perspective, would similarly entail some kind of underlying social or cultural structure where concrete local societies are to be understood in a transformational sense. This, however, does not account for the generative factors involved—the camshaft of the mechanical saw that, according to Claude Lévi-Strauss (1977: 79–80) in his famous metaphor, will determine the individual form or precise shape of each piece of the overall jigsaw puzzle.⁷ Both local/internal conditions and real historical contacts must seriously be considered when attempting to explain regional variation in causal terms. If not, we are left with little more than pure description.

Thus, before trying to unravel the actual historical development of regional systems, whether ethnographic or archaeological, which may seem, in some cases, a virtually impossible task, we have to consider their structural properties. This would include a description of their short-range dynamic in terms of recurring cycles as discussed above. For analytical reasons, my earlier works on the Massim of Papua New Guinea (Persson 1983, 1988, 1999) closed at this particular stage. There, I also suggested the feasibility of reanalyzing Highland Burma and the American Northwest Coast along similar lines. There is enough empirical material, I believe, to warrant a novel perspective on the societies of these areas. However, when it comes to explaining the long-term historical or irreversible changes in Crete and the Aegean during the Early Bronze Age, we encounter some tricky problems, the most challenging of which is the lack of written primary sources. The Minoan texts (Linear A) are, as yet, undeciphered. It means a total reliance on archaeological information and interpretation.

As we are here obviously dealing with a number of more or less probable situations or developmental processes, it would clearly be a worthwhile task to create a conceptual framework that makes it a plausible undertaking to analyze such elusive phenomena. Thus, I argue for a basic distinction between structures, strategies, and scenarios. In the first case, we are dealing with aspects of local organization, whether social, economic, or political. By strategies, on the other hand, I mean those acts of recurrent nature aimed at achieving specific goals. Here, of course, it also becomes crucial to determine the types of individuals or groups involved.⁸ This enables us to link strategies to structures, as defined above, hence to scrutinize their larger social impact. As for scenarios, finally, it is a notion describing either whole situations or particular chains of events. Normally used as a tool for predicting some future development, it has equal utility, one might argue, when it comes to unraveling the past. Here, then, describing different scenarios becomes a case of retrodiction, especially helpful in situations where alternative interpretations of the same archaeological or historical material exist. These concepts, I would suggest, are situated at the same level of abstraction. Hence, separate acts or individual events, when considered in retrospect, are no more inherently factual than organizational aspects from such a perspective. They must all be analyzed in terms of an interpretive framework. Any discussion pertaining to past phenomena, whether social forms, acts, or events, necessitates historical reconstruction.⁹

The last notion, that of scenarios, implies that when structures and strategies are combined, in whatever constellation, we have provided a theoretical description of either the probable state of a particular system or its possible historical trajectory. Hence, in the case of Early to Middle Minoan Knossos (esp. EM III–MM IB), for example, two rather contrasting developmental models have been suggested. Either this process of transition was gradual, proceeding in a steplike fashion and perhaps beginning already in Neolithic times, or it was “revolutionary” in Cherry’s (1983) sense of the term, following the runaway pattern of exponential growth (see Manning 1994: 235 fig. 8.2, 1999: 482 pl. Cva). In between such extremes, a whole spectrum of social forms and historical trajectories are conceivable. Thus, it is possible that what is discussed here took a slightly different spin from that proposed by any of these radically opposed views. Prepalatial Knossos, for instance, may have fluctuated rather violently, politically speaking, before finally taking off into some proxy of true “archaic” statehood, whatever that might entail. The point I wish to make, however, is that such local sequences must be judged in terms of a holistic theoretical framework including both systemwide spatial and long-term temporal dimensions. In other words, we have first to contextualize or position them with regard to archaeological interpretations of contemporaneous events in other parts of the Aegean world of the Early Bronze Age—as well as beyond.

My concept of possible or alternative historical scenarios depends on the major difficulty of interpreting the archaeological information from a single anthropological standpoint when scarce or contradictory. Mostly, such attempts have understood the material remains as rather uncomplicated factual evidence of social organization, trade, warfare, and so on. I would propose, however, that an equally legitimate approach is to examine this information for whatever tendencies or trends it might indicate. What really matters here is the possibility of making “educated guesses” about past situations and events, that is, by developing a theoretical framework that allows for a number of alternative interpretations as well as proposing the most likely one(s). There already exist some unsystematic attempts at reconstructing what might have occurred in particular archaeological circumstances. For instance, several Minoan scholars (Kantor, Nowicki, Cadogan, Kopcke, Wiener, etc.) suggest how individual Minoan palace states might have encroached upon the territories of their neighbors without further evidence, it seems, than ceramic fragments and a good intuition obtained from years of contemplating the larger historical configurations indicated by such odd material remains. I do not question their expertise, however. Thus, in the case of Mallia, its territory may have been critically reduced by the joint attempts of Knossos and Phaistos, over the centuries, to expand their influence into eastern Crete, pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Introduction: Hegemonic Declines—Present and Past
• Part I: On the Way to the Modern World-System
• Part II: Comparing Modern Hegemonic Declines
• Part III: Hegemonic Decline and Resistance
• Index
• About the Contributors
• Series List