The empire has unified all the civilizations at last. After generations of battles, the last enemies have been defeated. Citizens of the empire can, it seems, look forward to permanent peace and prosperity. (Location 78)
Furthermore, the knowledge of the prediction must be withheld from the people whose collective behavior is predicted. (Location 90)
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Complex dynamic systems are inherently unpredictable in the long run because of “the butterfly effect.” Small causes might produce large effects. (Location 92)
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A science of history sounds cold and hard—wouldn’t it destroy our enjoyment of the wonderfully rich tapestry of the past? On a darker side, might not such a science enable some shadowy cabal to manipulate societies to a nefarious purpose? (Location 102)
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Is a science of history possible? Can we design a theory for the collapse of mighty empires that would be no worse than, say, our understanding of why earthquakes happen? (Location 109)
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An empire is a large, multiethnic territorial state with a complex power structure. (Location 116)
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Although the doings of empires dominate the historical records, we should not conclude that they are the norm in human history. (Location 130)
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Historical empires themselves, as often as not, were in the state of decline or even disintegration. (Location 132)
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The theoretical framework I have been developing for several years focuses not on human individuals, but on social groups through time. (Location 143)
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social groups are not simple collections of identical particles, readily described by statistical physics; they have complex internal structures. (Location 145)
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Ethnicity is the group use of any aspect of culture to create internal cohesion and differentiation from other groups. (Location 149)
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The ethnic boundary can use a variety of symbolic markers— language and dialect, religion and ritualistic behaviors, race, clothing, behavioral mannerisms, hairstyles, ornaments, and tattoos. (Location 151)
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but I prefer to call such entities metaethnic communities (from the Greek meta, “beyond,” and ethnos, “ethnic group” or “nation”). (Location 156)
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Typically, cultural difference is greatest between people belonging to different metaethnic communities; (Location 158)
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Asabiya refers to the capacity of a social group for concerted collective action. (Location 165)
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Each empire has at its core an imperial nation. (Some empires had more than one imperial nation for a time, but this structure appears to be unstable.) (Location 168)
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Groups with high asabiya arise on… (Location 171)
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A metaethnic frontier is an area where an imperial boundary coincides with a fault line between… (Location 172)
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Expansionist empires exert enormous military pressure on the peoples… (Location 173)
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In the pressure cooker of a metaethnic frontier, poorly integrated groups crumble and disappear, whereas groups based on… (Location 175)
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Empirical evidence shows that large aggressive empires do not… (Location 180)
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political boundaries separate culturally… (Location 181)
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My main argument, therefore, is that people originating on fault-line frontiers become characterized by cooperation and a high capacity for collective action, which in turn enables them… (Location 181)
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The critical assumption in my argument is that cooperation provides the basis… (Location 185)
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It cannot explain the puzzle of human ultrasociality—our ability to combine into cooperating groups consisting of… (Location 188)
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Two key adaptations enabled the evolution of… (Location 190)
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The first one was the moralist strategy: cooperate when enough members in the group are also cooperating and… (Location 191)
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The second adaptation, the human ability to use symbolic markers to define cooperating groups, allowed evolution of sociality to break… (Location 193)
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to-face interaction. The scale of human societies increased in a series of leaps, from the village and clan to the tribe and tribal confederation, and then… (Location 194)
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The very stability and internal peace that strong empires impose contain within them the… (Location 198)
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Stability and internal peace bring prosperity, and prosperity causes population increase. Demographic growth leads to overpopulation, overpopulation causes lower wages, higher land rents,… (Location 198)
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Declining standards of life breed discontent and strife. The elites turn to the state for employment and additional income, and drive up its expenditures at the same time that the tax revenues… (Location 201)
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Freed from all restraints, strife among the elites escalates into civil war, while the discontent among the poor… (Location 203)
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However, civil wars thin the ranks of… (Location 207)
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Intra-elite competition subsides, allowing the restoration of order. Stability and internal peace bring… (Location 209)
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As a sixteenth-century commentator put it, “So peace brings warre and… (Location 210)
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The typical period of a complete cycle, which consists of a benign integrative phase and the troubled disintegrative phase,… (Location 211)
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the poor grow poorer, the rich grow richer—this process is called the Matthew principle. (Location 220)
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A life cycle of a typical imperial nation extends over the course of two, three, or even four secular cycles. (Location 229)
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As a result, civil war tends to recur during the disintegrative phase with a period of 40 to 60 years. (Location 236)
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I discuss three central concepts: the metaethnic frontier theory, which explains asabiya cycles; the demographic-structural theory, which explains secular cycles; and the social-psychology theory, which explains the fathers-and-sons cycles. (Location 240)
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historical dynamics, or as I prefer to call it cliodynamics (from Clio, “muse of history,” and dynamics, “the study of processes that change with time”). (Location 242)
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The focus on groups rather than individuals is akin to the approach of statistical mechanics, which integrates over motions of myriads of particles to predict such properties of the ensemble as temperature or pressure. (Location 244)
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Cliodynamics owes an even greater debt to the discipline of nonlinear dynamics. Human societies and states can be modeled as dynamic systems, consisting of parts that interact with each other. (Location 248)
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Cycles exhibited by historical societies and states, however, are not the same as highly periodic, repeatable phenomena in physics, such as planetary motions or pendulum oscillation. (Location 253)
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Interactions between the asabiya, secular, and fathers-and-sons cycles can lead to such complex, chaotic dynamics. (Location 256)
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The dynamics of real human societies cannot be accurately predicted far in the future because of the nature of chaotic behavior, free will, and natural disasters. Hari Seldon was wrong. (Location 259)
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An understanding of the processes that bring a society to the brink of civil war might suggest policies to avert such a war. Such social engineering, of course, is still far in the future. (Location 262)
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The Stroganovs were the Russian counterparts of the Dutch and English merchant-adventurers and empire builders who founded trading companies in the East and West Indies. (Location 279)
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The Tatars was the generic name used by the Russians for Turko-Mongolic steppe nomads. (Location 284)
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The Tatars massacred the Russians (and the native allies of the Russians), captured many of their women (Location 287)
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and children, and then retired with this booty across the mountains. (Location 288)
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The first step was to obtain a formal permission from the tsar to extend their territory across the Urals. (Location 291)
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The Cossacks were rough-and-ready Russian frontiersmen inhabiting the lawless steppe regions between the borders of the Russian state and the territories controlled by the Crimean, Kazan, and Astrakhan Tatars. (Location 293)
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However, the Cossacks valued freedom above all else, and were known to lead rebellions against the central government. (Location 298)
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The Stroganovs sent a letter to the Cossacks, offering the company a chance to defend the eastern frontier of Christendom against the “heathens” and, at the same time, earn the tsar’s pardon. The Cossacks accepted. (Location 303)
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One of them, named Tauzak, was a member of the court of the tsar [here meaning Kuchum Khan, not the Russian tsar]; he told them all about the Siberian tsars and princes and horsemen and about Tsar Kuchum. (Location 318)
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The Cossacks saw an immense gathering of the heathen at their abatis and were in great consternation. They said to one another, ‘How can we stand against such a multitude?’ (Location 336)
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Fragmentation of Russia into dozens of tiny principalities and the inability of the Russians to unite against the external threat were one of the main reasons (perhaps the main one) why the Mongols were able to conquer Russia in the thirteenth century. (Location 404)
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The Mongols, by contrast, excelled at teamwork. Historians generally agree that the ability of the Mongols to crush all their opponents was not due to any technical advantage in weaponry, nor to their numbers. (Location 407)
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The Mongol army was a well-oiled social mechanism, capable of discipline and internal cohesion to the degree unknown in Europe since the Roman times. (Location 410)
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At the right moment, the whole army suddenly charged, yelling and shrieking like demons. Such tactics were extremely unnerving to their adversaries. (Location 412)
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Subotai, the general in charge of the invasion of Europe in 1241, thought nothing of coordinating columns operating in Poland with others pressing into Hungary, despite the Carpathian barrier between them. (Location 421)
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if ever do they revile each other, but if they should, the dispute never leads to blows. Wars, quarrels, the infliction of bodily harm, and manslaughter do not occur among them, and there are no large-scale thieves or robbers among them.” (Location 426)
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Cooperation is a “nice” word, and the Mongols of Chinggis Khan were most definitely not nice people. They slaughtered literally millions of men, women, and children, and enslaved millions of survivors. (Location 430)
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single person, no matter how physically impressive, cannot rule against the wishes of all of his subjects. As soon as he falls asleep, one of the people he has oppressed will end his tyranny by sticking a knife in him. (Location 437)
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Only groups can oppress other groups and whole societies, and to do that the “oppressor” group must be internally cohesive. In other words, oppression can only be accomplished from the basis of cooperation, paradoxical as it sounds. (Location 440)
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As a corollary, we tend to assume that nondemocratic societies are held together by force alone. (Location 443)
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In addition to force, the regime relied on cooperation from certain other groups: the core support came from Saddam’s clan, with the wider power base provided by the Sunni (Location 448)
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Arabs of Iraq. In addition, a more diffuse group, originating from other ethnic segments of the Iraqi population (the Shiite Arabs and the Sunni Kurds and Turkmen), had come to think of themselves as “Iraqis” first and members of their ethnic group second. (Location 449)
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But he can also be seen as a stern and wily tribal leader, who bestowed rich rewards on his people, while meting out harsh punishment to their enemies. The brutality of his secret service, of his sons, and of his very own actions can be seen as strength. Certainly this is how a significant minority of Iraqis saw him. And they were prepared to cooperate with him. (Location 463)
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Yet these later day Tatars were a very different people from their ancestors. Although enjoying a great numeric superiority, they could not defeat Ermak’s Cossacks. (Location 468)
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What we see here, then, is a complete reversal of the situation that pertained three centuries before. Now it was the turn of the Tatars to experience social dissolution in the face of the Russian monolith. (Location 478)
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When a piece of territory was added to the principality of Moscow, there it would stay. (Location 482)
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Russian lands with the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan khanates (1552-56). The tenacity of territorial acquisition can be illustrated with the course of events that followed the battle of Sibir. (Location 484)
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Sibir started as a private action, neither Ermak nor the Stroganovs considered establishing an independent princedom in Siberia for themselves. (Location 488)
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Although he lost the battle of Sibir, Kuchum Khan did not give up the struggle. The Tatars, however, were plagued by dissent. Several Tatar nobles and their following deserted Kuchum and went over to the son of the previous khan (whom Kuchum had killed in the civil war). Lacking strong forces to dislodge the Cossacks, Kuchum shifted to guerilla tactics. (Location 491)
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Unfortunately for the Tatars, their ultimate defeat was only postponed. Two years later, the Russians entered Siberia again. They proceeded in a systematic fashion, first building the fortified town of Tyumen (1586); then Tobolsk (1587), near the site of recaptured Sibir; Tara (1594); and, finally, Surgut, on the Ob River (also in 1594). (Location 499)
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When we stand back and take a long view at the course of this struggle, we are struck by the complete reversal in the fortunes of these two nations. (Location 504)
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Social cohesion, of course, is not the only factor we will need to explain the rise and fall of empires. History is too complex for single-factor explanations. (Location 507)
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One of the most important forces that has shaped Russian history is its location on the great steppe frontier of Europe. (Location 513)
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The woodland farmers and the steppe nomads were divided by a deep cultural chasm. To the nomads, farmers were dirt-grubbers, doers of women’s work, clumsy riders, and weak and cowardly opponents in battle. (Location 519)
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Farmers, however, possessed many things that the nomads coveted—grain, which the nomads could not grow themselves, wealth accumulated by their aristocrats and priests, and last, but not least, their very bodies, which could be sold at the Black Sea slave markets. (Location 521)
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Incidentally, in the modern Russian language, the word pagan has lost its original religious meaning and now just means “bad” or “evil.” (Location 528)
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The climatic and ecological boundary between the steppe and forest anchored a significant fault line between two very different civilizations. (Location 532)
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military advantage over the settled people. The need of the nomads for grain and their greater ability to take it by force could not help but create antagonistic relations between them and the farmers. (Location 535)
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Under certain conditions, the nomads could get what they needed by peaceful trading (especially if the farmers were protected by a strong state). (Location 537)
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Some intermarriage even occurred, usually at the aristocratic level. (Location 539)
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Any Ukrainian peasant foolish enough to move in was immediately killed, and his family taken to the Crimean slave markets, by the first marauding Tatar band that would chance upon them. (Location 547)
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Life settled down a bit under the Golden Horde, whose rulers were more interested in getting tribute than in murder and rapine. The population of northern Russia enjoyed a substantial recovery, despite the effects of a few punitive expeditions by the Tatars in response to urban uprisings against their tax collectors. (Location 552)
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In 1521, the Crimean Khan Mohammad-Girey, with a 100,000-man army, broke through the Russian defenses along the Oka River and invaded the Muscovite heartland. He did not attempt to assault the fortified cities, but instead laid waste to the countryside. The worst damage resulted from the enormous number of people the Tatars carried away. (Location 560)
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Muscovy could resist the onslaught from the steppe only by a concerted effort of the whole people, from the mighty boyar to the lowest peasant. (Location 572)
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Another sign of the willingness of people to sacrifice for the sake of the larger community was the periodic collections of money needed to buy out the Russian captives. (Location 576)
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peasants started moving into the area just in front of it (even though the authorities attempted to prevent such spontaneous colonization because they could not effectively protect these pioneers). (Location 595)
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up to protect the “Christian souls.” The government was forced to come up with resources to construct a new defensive line to the south that would protect the newly colonized territory. (Location 598)
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The khanate of Crimea enjoyed an advantageous geopolitical situation, which explains why the contest between it and Muscovy took three centuries to resolve. Its capital, Bakhchisarai, was located on the Crimean Peninsula, which could be attacked only after crossing an easily defended Isthmus of Perekop. (Location 609)
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When the besiegers started to die from a new disease recently arrived from Central Asia, they catapulted several of the diseased corpses into the town, and then departed. (Location 615)
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After a successful operation, when the Tatars were far enough in the steppes from the frontier not to worry about pursuit, they stopped to rest and reorganize. “During the interval of this week-long stop, they bring together all their booty, consisting of slaves and livestock, and divide the entire quantity among themselves. (Location 636)
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The brutality [of these Tatars] causes them to commit an infinite number of filthy acts, such as ravaging young girls, raping women in the presences of their fathers and husbands, and even circumcising children before their parents’ very eyes, so that they may be offered to Mohammed.” (Location 640)
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The great advantages enjoyed by the steppe horsemen were stealth, mobility, and surprise. It was extremely hard to defend against their depredations and, in fact, the Ukrainians and the Poles, unlike the Russians, were unable to make headway against the Crimeans. (Location 644)
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The obstacles also impeded rapid retreat of the Tatars laden with loot, cattle, and captives. Slowing their flight even by a few hours could allow the pursuit to catch up, spelling the difference between freedom and slavery for the unfortunates who were caught out in the open during the raid. (Location 656)
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All measures, no matter how petty, were taken to impede the raiders. For example, the grass south of the line was burned after the frost in late fall to deny fodder to the Tatar horses. (Location 660)
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The frontiersmen expended a remarkable effort, but it could not have happened without the full backing of the central government, which founded fortified towns on the steppe, recruited the garrisons from the central areas of Muscovy, and provided overall organization. (Location 664)
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station on the steppe. Unfortunately, the Tatars, annoyed at having to return empty-handed, decided to go back and search the area where the Cossacks kept watch. They caught Yakush and carried him away to the khan in Crimea. The subsequent fate of Yakush is unknown, but this little bit of recorded history gives us a glimpse of the everyday life on the edge, with its constant threat of the Tatar raids, the “posses” organized to pursue the robbers, and the precarious existence of the Cossacks serving as the frontier lookouts and guides. IN CHAPTER 1 I ASKED, HOW did a nation, Russia, transform itself from victim to empire? The outlines of an answer begin to emerge. The whole Russian people from the Cossacks patrolling the steppes to the farmers on the frontier and then on to the boyars in Moscow instinctively knew that they must cooperate against the threat posed by the (Location 679)
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Such an individually rational, but collectively foolish, response is well known to sociologists and economists; it has been dubbed the “tragedy of the commons.” (Location 693)
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The general social mechanism responsible for this change is discussed later; for now, I only want to establish the reality of the cultural shift. (Location 695)
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Much of the time people behave in a self-serving manner, but sometimes they do things not to gain a material reward or to avoid punishment, but simply because it is right. (Location 712)
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In the first army, however, soldiers are motivated only by these material inducements, whereas in the second army they believe that fighting the enemy is the right thing to do. (Location 716)
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Generally, in a struggle between two groups of people, the group with stronger norms promoting cooperation and the most people following such norms has a greater chance of winning. (Location 719)
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As ALL COMPLEX AGRARIAN CIVILIZATIONS, Muscovite society was organized as a hierarchy. From the point of view of the state, two main categories of people existed: those who paid taxes (peasants and townspeople) and those who rendered military service. (Location 726)
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musketeers, artillery personnel, and Cossacks. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the core regions of Muscovy developed a substantial degree of socioeconomic inequality. Large landowners occupied the top of society, slaves and landless peasants peopled the bottom. (Location 729)
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The frontier areas suffered from a chronic lack of population, so land was plentiful. There were no landless peasants, and anybody could cultivate as much land as needed. Sparse population also meant that military commanders had great difficulties in finding enough men for the garrisons guarding the frontier. (Location 733)
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Over time, there was a transfer of manpower from the category of taxpaying peasants to the category of hereditary servicemen. (Location 736)
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During the 1640s, the authorities confiscated the magnate-owned land within the frontier, freed the peasants, and enlisted them in dragoon regiments for garrison service. (Location 739)
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Great differences in rank and wealth are divisive. It is much easier for equals to (Location 743)
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achieve the unity of purpose and to develop a common course of action. Egalitarianism enables cooperation. (Location 744)
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western European visitors made disapproving comments about the weird habit of the Russians to wash every week, on Sunday, even in winter. (Everybody knows that bathing is bad for your health!) (Location 753)
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When insulted, instead of challenging to a duel, they sue in court! (This, unfortunately changed with time, and the dueling epidemic of the nineteenth century was to claim thousands of Russian noblemen’s lives, among them two of the language’s best poets, Pushkin and Lermontov.) (Location 754)
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frontier society was much more egalitarian than the central regions of Russia. In the central regions, however, the overall quality of the relations between lords and peasants changed quite dramatically from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. (Location 764)
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The economic oppression of the peasantry gradually increased, and reached its peak toward the end of the eighteenth century. Thus, there was a great difference between the free farmers of the fifteenth century, when Muscovy was a frontier society, and the unfree serfs of eighteenth-century imperial Russia, (Location 768)
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Human beings are capable both of incredible self-sacrifice and of breathtaking selfishness. (Location 775)
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Human life was as cheap in Russia as in any other premodern society, so torture and cruel and degrading punishments, such as impalement, were widespread. (Location 778)
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In fact, large-scale brutality, such as genocide, could be achieved in premodern societies, and perhaps even in modern times, only by internally cohesive groups. (Location 781)
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I HAVE ATTEMPTED TO SHOW THAT the dominant factor in the development of the Muscovite society was the frontier. (Location 784)
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willing cooperation between the peripheries and the center makes it much easier for an empire to extend its sway. (Location 792)
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the largest ones always involved some degree of cooperation (and when cooperation declined, the empires crumbled). The Russian Empire was not an exception. (Location 793)
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Cooperation is much easier to achieve among culturally similar people with similar goals, values, and behaviors. (Location 799)
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Of particular interest are the occasions when rulers of various principalities voluntarily entered the Moscow service. For example, in 1500, the princes (Location 801)
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of Novgorod-Severski, Chernigov, and Starodub deserted Lithuania and joined their lands to Muscovy. (Location 802)
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The Sech Cossacks organized themselves as a military democracy, in which officials were elected, and all the important decisions were made at a gathering of all the Cossacks. (Location 811)
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This is yet another example of the tendency to egalitarianism on the frontier. (Location 812)
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But are there any parallels between the American and Russian frontiers? What was the impact of the frontier on the European settlers who made their little homes on the American prairie? (Location 822)
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The Indians were more inventive in coming up with horrible tortures, but the settlers were ultimately more successful at exterminating the Indians. (Location 833)
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On the very first day of the first Indian War, between the Virginian settlers and the Powhattan Confederacy in 1622, the Indians massacred 347 men, women, and children out of the population of only 1,200. (Location 836)
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During the King Philip’s War, the Indian atrocities included “the raping and scalping of women, the cutting off of fingers and feet of men, the skinning of White captives, the ripping open the bellies of pregnant women, the cutting off of penises of the males,” (Location 842)
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“They made the Prisoner Sing and Dance for some Time, while six Gun Barrels were heating red hot in the Fire; after which they began to burn the Soals of the poor Wretches Feet until the Bones appeared, and they continued burning him by slow Degrees up to his Privites, where they took much Pains (Location 855)
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recent compilation counted more than 16,000 recorded atrocities committed by the Whites on the Indians, the Indians on the Whites, and the Indians on other Indians during the 268 years of conflict. (Location 870)
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Imagine hearing on CNN that yesterday yet another American town was wiped out by the “Reds.” (Let’s leave the precise identity of the enemy unspecified.) (Location 876)
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Indeed, when confronted with such obvious aliens as painted, bloodthirsty, heathen redskins, two European settlers, even if they came from different countries, could not help but feel that they were kin. (Location 882)
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As a result of the shared feeling that they belonged together, they and their descendants rapidly assimilated to a common American culture and language. (Location 885)
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The basis for cooperation among the Americans was the voluntary civil association. The political organization of the Americans, accordingly, was democratic, and after they became independent of the British, they immediately set up a republic to govern their affairs. (Location 908)
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Indeed, life is much more pleasant under a secular democracy than under an autocracy with strong theocratic elements. However, our ideological biases should not blind us to the basic fact that both societies, in their own ways, were extremely effective at solving the problems that they faced. (Location 916)
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People originating on fault-line frontiers become characterized by cooperation and high capacity for collective action, which in turn allows them to build large (Location 937)
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and powerful territorial states. In other words, we have the beginnings of the theory explaining how imperial nations rise to power. But could the association between fault lines and mighty states arising from them be a fluke? (Location 938)
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While the Romans were in such difficulties, the barbarians suddenly surrounded them on all sides at once, coming through the densest thickets, as they were acquainted with the paths. (Location 1029)
Upon setting out from there, they plunged into woods again, where they defended themselves against their assailants, but suffered their heaviest losses while doing so. (Location 1036)
Furthermore, the enemy’s forces had greatly increased, as many of those who had at first wavered now joined them, largely in the hope of plunder, and thus they could more easily encircle and strike down the Romans, whose ranks were now thinned, many having perished in the earlier fighting.” (Location 1042)
We have a fair amount of information about the war leader of the Germans who destroyed Varus and his three legions in the Teutoburg Forest. Arminius belonged to the most illustrious family of the Cherusci, which itself was one of the largest and most powerful tribes inhabiting the Weser region. (Location 1046)
His first-hand knowledge of the effect of the Roman conquest on the defeated tribes probably provided a motivation to resist the Roman subjugation of his homeland. Arminius was also an accomplished politician and a charismatic leader, an important factor because the military power of the Cherusci alone was, at best, a match for a single Roman legion (Location 1051)
Confederations uniting many tribes under a charismatic leader such as Arminius or Maroboduus were a novel form of political organization for the Germans, which arose only when they came in direct contact with the Roman Empire. (Location 1056)
The hair knot is a wonderful example of how people use appearance to declare the symbolic boundary between “us” and “them.” In fact, the very name Suebi basically means “us” (“those belonging to our group”). (Location 1067)
A tribal confederation, such as the Suebi, was still a fragile form of political organization during the time of Maroboduus and Arminius. The individual tribes could easily switch their allegiance from one leader to another. (Location 1073)
After the battle of the Teutoburg Forest, however, with Arminius’s reputation at its height, they switched their allegiance to him. Furthermore, the institution of kingship was not yet rooted in the culture of the Germans. Individual tribesmen were suspicious of the royal pretensions of their war leaders, and wary of giving them too much power, which they might use to oppress the commons. (Location 1076)
Arminius’s triumph was short-lived. “The Roman evacuation of Germany and the fall of Maroboduus had induced Arminius to aim at kingship. But his freedom-loving compatriots forcibly resisted. The fortunes of the fight fluctuated, but finally Arminius succumbed to treachery from his own relations.” (Location 1095)
As long as a powerful external force threatened the Germans, the tribes were capable of uniting and inflicting defeats on it. (Location 1099)
Individual tribesmen were wary of enormous power gathered by the leader, and when war was over, desired to limit this power or even to get rid of the leader himself. (Location 1101)
Yet, the Romans lost many battles in their long and illustrious career as imperialists, while always prevailing in the end. (That is, before they went into decline starting in the third century.) (Location 1104)
Beginning in A.D. 14, the Roman general Germanicus, with eight legions, conducted a series of campaigns into the lands east of the Rhine that culminated in a battle where Arminius and the Cherusci were soundly defeated. In A.D. 74, when the emperor Vespasian decided to optimize the frontier defenses, he annexed the territory east of the Rhine and south of the Main without any significant resistance from its inhabitants. (Location 1107)
Very little profit could be extracted from this land, inhabited by backward and tumultuous people. (Location 1114)
Accordingly, the Romans began to “domesticate” the Germanic tribes. Their decision to pension off Maroboduus was just one element of this policy. As a result, the Rhine frontier became stationary. (Location 1116)
During the next three or four centuries, the frontier transformed the social and political organization of the Germans. Small-scale tribes of the first century B.C., such as the Cherusci and the Chatti, gave way to powerful tribal confederations of the third and fourth centuries, such as the Franks, Alamanni, and Goths, who began expanding at the expense of the aging Roman Empire. Eventually one of these confederations, the Franks, evolved into the only state in European history that managed to unify most of western Europe—the Carolingian Empire. (Location 1118)
The wealthy and civilized society on the Roman side of the frontier produced many things that were coveted by the “barbarians”: bronze, silver, and gold ornaments and vessels; fine weapons and cloths; coins; pottery; and wine and olive oil. (Location 1133)
Thus, drinking wine was not only pleasurable because wine tastes good—it was also an act of “conspicuous consumption” that demonstrated the high status of the wine drinker. (Location 1135)
Whereas military pressure is a “push” factor, obliterating the weak and further strengthening the strong, a source of prestige goods is a “pull” factor. (Location 1140)
The Germans could obtain prestige goods from the Roman Empire by raiding, trading, or subsidies (rewards for good behavior). (Location 1142)
The frontier also exerted more subtle influences on the Germanic societies. The Empire was not only the source of prestige goods, but also of ideas, techniques, and other kinds of cultural elements. (Location 1150)
By the time the Franks began expanding into the Roman territory in the fifth century, they already realized the value of records and bureaucracy, so they employed the Roman administrators and accepted them as members of the nascent imperial aristocracy. (Location 1152)
The clearest evidence for this polarization comes from the religious changes on each side of the frontier. During the first centuries of contact, both peoples followed polytheistic religions that were fairly tolerant of other peoples’ beliefs. However, beginning with the reign of Constantine (306-337), the Romans converted to Christianity—a monotheistic religion that treated all other beliefs as (at best) an error, and (at worst) devil worship. (Location 1161)
War increasingly became the occupation of adult free men, whereas subsistence tasks were left to women and slaves. (The latter were constantly replenished from the pool of war captives.) (Location 1168)
Yggdrasil. During his nine-day ordeal, Odin learned rune magic; later he sacrificed an eye to drink from the Well of Mimir, which bestowed great knowledge. These experiences transformed a minor deity into the god of war, death, wisdom, and magic, and the chief among the gods. (Location 1177)
Although interesting parallels exist between the ordeal of Odin and the passion of the Christ, it is difficult to imagine two more different religions than Christianity and the cult of Odin. Jesus of Nazareth sacrificed himself to save humanity, whereas Odin sought wisdom and power for himself. (Location 1179)
Odin thrived on war, and could even cause one where none existed. He was a dour, merciless, and deceitful god. (Location 1185)
The cult of Odin was suited to the violent, unsettled, and treacherous conditions that existed in the Rhineland. Survival required banding together with trusted comrades to follow a war leader who could deliver an assured victory. (Location 1189)
Both provided symbolic “markers” for delineating “us” versus “them.” The cult of Odin, additionally, legitimated the military and political power of the Germanic sacral kings, solidifying previously loose tribal confederations into highly cohesive warrior nations. The frontier between the Romans and the Germans, thus, became a major fault line, similar in its intensity to the Russian-Tatar and American settler-Indian frontiers. (Location 1195)
Huntington was concerned exclusively with contemporary politics, but the concept of the “clash of civilizations” proves to be illuminating when we analyze the past. (Location 1205)
I prefer to use metaethnic community (from the Greek meta, “beyond,” and ethnos, “ethnic group” or “nation”) for large-scale supranational entities of this kind; this term includes both the traditional civilizations and cultural groupings that are not usually included in the standard lists of civilizations. (Location 1207)
However, the most important aspect of the metaethnic identity is the dividing line between “us” and “them.” (Location 1212)
IF WE DATE THE FIRST CLOSE encounter between the Romans and the Germans to be the conquest of Gaul by Caesar (the middle of the first century B.C.), then the frontier remained stationary and exerted its tranformative influence on the German tribes for roughly three centuries before detectable signs of the interaction emerged—large and powerful tribal confederations led by sacral kings. (Location 1218)
The appearance of these confederations coincided with (or, more likely, was triggered by) a period of political instability in the Roman Empire that followed the assassination of the emperor Severus Alexander in 235. (Location 1225)
The pretenders stripped the legions from the frontiers to be used in the civil war, and the German war parties poured across the frontier. (Location 1227)
THE MOST SUCCESSFUL GERMANIC EMPIRE was the Frankish. Whereas the Germanic invaders of the first wave (the Vandals and the Goths) dashed around in search of easy pickings within the dying empire, the second wave of invasions (the Franks, the Alamanni, and the Bavarians) involved masses of farmers quietly colonizing frontier regions in a much more lasting way. (Location 1238)
It is interesting to note that the Romans were unable to subdue the Alamanni, despite repeatedly defeating them in battle. By contrast, after they were forcibly joined to the Frankish Empire, the Alamanni served it quite loyally. (Location 1243)
The most likely explanation is that the ethnic gap between the Franks and Alamanni was fairly trivial compared to that between the Alamanni and the Romans. Both Franks and Alamanni spoke dialects of German that were recognizably related, and probably mutually comprehensible. Both peoples followed Odin (before they converted to Christianity) and had similar political organization. (Location 1244)
Bavarians. The political unification of the Germanic peoples under the Carolingian emperors laid the foundations for the modern German nation, although not all constituent elements of the Frankish Empire ended up within modern Germany. (By a twist of fate, the direct descendants of the Franks—the Flemish—are now in a separate state of their own.) (Location 1257)
The integrative process that created the medieval German identity, which took expression in the so-called Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, was a direct result of life on the Roman frontier and developed in three phases. (Location 1262)
provides a very clear case of frontier ethnogenesis (“the birth of a nation”) and imperiogenesis (“the birth of empire”). It was the interface along which two very distinct civilizations (actually, metaethnic communities) clashed and at the same time influenced each other: Romance-speaking Christian citizens of the Roman Empire against Germanic pagan, stateless societies. (Location 1271)
The history of the Byzantine Empire is not well known even among the well-educated Western public, and what is known is heavily mythologized—the Byzantine Empire is portrayed as an oriental despotism in a permanent state of decadence. (Location 1287)
The intellectual tradition of dumping on the Byzantines began in the eighteenth century with Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon begins his tale with the golden age of the Antonine emperors (the second century A.D.) and, according to him, it was all downhill from that point on—for more than 12 centuries! A “decline” of such long duration loses any utility as an analytical concept. (Location 1291)
Apart from the name, the Romans and the nation that we now call the Byzantines had almost nothing in common. They spoke different languages (Latin versus Greek), practiced different religions (paganism versus Christianity), and their core territories were in different parts of Europe. They also had a different political organization—the Byzantines were ruled by an avtokrator who, at least in theory, had a total power over all matters of life and death, whereas the Romans were a republican people. (Location 1309)
The collective psyche of the two nations also could not be more different. The Romans were a worldly and eminently practical people, whereas the Byzantine culture had very strong otherworldly and deeply mystical elements. (Location 1316)
In short, it seems incontrovertible that the Byzantines were an entirely new people, and therefore their empire was a new thing, not a lingering splinter of the Roman Empire. How did the Byzantine nation arise, then? (Location 1321)
The birth of a nation—ethnogenesis—is not an instantaneous event, but a process that usually takes many centuries. For the Byzantines, the beginning of the process can be traced to the first century, when the swath of northern Balkans south of the Lower Danube (Roman provinces of Illyria/Dalmatia, Moesia, and Thracia—roughly modern Serbia, Bulgaria, and European Turkey) became part of the Roman frontier. (Location 1323)
While Italians lost taste for the army service, the hardy Danubian frontiersmen took up the slack. In fact, as the historian Ramsay MacMullen wrote in Corruption and Decline of Rome, the longer a population enjoyed security, the less likely its youth would be enrolled in the legions. (Location 1330)
During the third century, the Roman Empire went through a catastrophic phase of political decentralization, marked by decades-long civil war between various aristocratic factions, popular uprisings, devastating epidemics, and barbarian invasions. (Location 1334)
With the collapse of the authority in the center, the frontier provinces were left to pick up the pieces and look toward their own defense. To legitimize their power, army commanders had their troops declare them as emperors. The process of social dissolution reached the peak during the reign of the emperor Gallienus (253-268), “the age of Thirty Tyrants.” (Location 1339)
but, more importantly, because the population inhabiting frontier areas had higher group solidarity than the central areas. (Location 1344)
Gallienus was a representative of the Italian senatorial class, and by all accounts not a bad emperor. By the third century, however, the Italians had become a weak reed upon which to build a power base. In 268, a cabal of his own officers, all originating from the Danubian frontier provinces, assassinated Gallienus and produced a string of capable emperors (the so-called “Illyrian soldier-emperors”) from their ranks who were gradually able to bring order to the empire. (Location 1348)
The importance of Christianity in Byzantine history cannot be overstressed. It permeated the whole society, philosophy, and art. Most importantly, it provided the glue that kept together the heterogeneous ethnic elements of which the Byzantine state was initially composed: (Location 1362)