Herman Mark Schwartz in Phenomenal World:
Herman Mark Schwartz: We tend to think of empires as a set of power relations that can be physically described on a map, coloring in the territorial reach of the Roman or the British Empire. This assumes that the empire depicted has some sort of clear beginning and end—everything not colored in is therefore not part of the empire. I think that is a fundamentally wrong understanding of how empires work. There is a gradient of declining cooperation and rising coercion moving out from the center.
The history of human civilization is in large part a history of empires: large-scale societies mobilizing enormous volumes of resources and exerting control over other human beings, whether by directing labor or regulating behavior in accordance with imperial objectives. At the root of this is the connection between violence and trade—between states and markets. All empires arise through control of long-distance trade.
States seeking to tax their populations often found that the most efficient and profitable strategy was to control long-distance trade and the circulation of luxury goods. Their scarcity made such goods valuable sources of revenue and, critically, these resources were extracted from the elites. Universally consumed commodities—most notably salt—became extraordinarily profitable once brought under centralized control. (This is why we saw salt monopolies in large-scale durable empires like those in China.) But the principal threat to central authority in large empires came from internal elites, and one of the most effective ways to extract resources from them—as they often resisted taxation—was through luxury goods. That’s what the tribute system was about: by controlling external trade, the state secured access to scarce goods and used their distribution to extract wealth via taxation, thereby maintaining leverage over potential internal rivals.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.