Revolution: Structure and Meaning in World History - Rilegato

Arjomand, Sad Amir

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0226026833 ISBN 13: 9780226026831

Casa editrice: Univ of Chicago Pr, 2019

Riassunto

A revolution is a discontinuity: one political order replaces another, typically through whatever violent means are available. Modern theories of revolutions tend neatly to bracket the French Revolution of 1789 with the fall of the Soviet Union two hundred years later, but contemporary global uprisings—with their truly multivalent causes and consequences—can overwhelm our ability to make sense of them.

In this authoritative new book, Saïd Amir Arjomand reaches back to antiquity to propose a unified theory of revolution. Revolution illuminates the stories of premodern rebellions from the ancient world, as well as medieval European revolts and more recent events, up to the Arab Spring of 2011. Arjomand categorizes revolutions in two groups: ones that expand the existing body politic and power structure, and ones that aim to erode—but paradoxically augment—their authority. The revolutions of the past, he tells us, can shed light on the causes of those of the present and future: as long as centralized states remain powerful, there will be room for greater, and perhaps forceful, integration of the politically disenfranchised.
 

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Saïd Amir Arjomand is distinguished service professor of sociology at Stony Brook University and the author of The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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Revolution

Structure and Meaning in World History

By Saïd Amir Arjomand

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2019 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-02683-1

Contents

List of Abbreviations, 
INTRODUCTION / Revolution in Comparative and Historical Sociology, 
ONE / The Akkadian Constitutive Revolution and the Establishment of Universal Monarchy in Mesopotamia, 
TWO / The Athenian Constitutive Revolution and Subsequent Revolutions of Ancient Greece, 
THREE / Revolution in the Roman Republic, 
FOUR / Revolution in the Roman Principate and Its Transformation into Imperial Constitutional Autocracy, 
FIVE / The Last Roman Integrative Revolution, 
SIX / Rise of the Sasanian Empire: A Feudal Integrative Revolution in Late Antiquity, 
SEVEN / Rise of Islam: The Constitutive Revolution of Late Antiquity, 
EIGHT / Islam's Integrative Social Revolution, 
NINE / The Papal Revolution and Its Export: The Crusades, 
TEN / The Mongolian Integrative Revolution in Eurasia, 
CONCLUSION / World-Historical and Theoretical Significance of Premodern Revolutions, 
EPILOGUE / Revolutions of the Last Hundred Years in the Light of My Typology, 
Notes, 
References, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

The Akkadian Constitutive Revolution and the Establishment of Universal Monarchy in Mesopotamia

Revolution, defined as structural transformation that is outstanding because of the significance of its consequences in world history, though a phenomenon of infrequent occurrence, is nevertheless as old as civilization. According to this definition, the rise of Sargon of Akkad and the unification of the parochial city-states of Mesopotamia around 2340 BCE constitute the first documented revolution in world history. Our information about this momentous event at the dawn of the historical age is extremely scant and fragmentary. The dire necessity of making do with bare facts, however, can be turned into an advantage. Rich documentation often induces historians to compile an infinitely regressive list of causes of revolutions which matter very little, given the multiple and conjunctural nature of the causality involved. Lack of information on the specific antecedents upon which Sargon's success was contingent may in fact be a blessing, as it eliminates such a distraction. By precluding a detailed causal analysis, the documents force us to focus our attention on the consequences of revolution as an abrupt change in the structure of political power that opened a new developmental path in world history. The Akkadian Revolution stands out in its basic outlines as an integrative revolution that broke down the insular barriers of the local Mesopotamian temple polities and unified them into a much larger political community, perhaps an empire, on the basis of the novel idea of universal monarchy. It was a constitutive revolution that, to an unprecedented extent, concentrated power in Mesopotamia in a newly founded (imperial) center, Agade.

Political Structure of Mesopotamian City-States and Their Common Culture

In the mid-third millennium BCE, southern Mesopotamia (Sumer) consisted of a number of contiguous agrarian city-states on the plain between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Land was irrigated by a network of canals from the rivers and their tributaries. Each city-state was a single temple community. The god of the city-state was its proprietor. The capital city and its surroundings were the exclusive domain of the god's family, while junior gods owned smaller domains around towns and villages (Jacobsen 1976:81–84). An official called ensi ruled the city-state as the steward and representative of its god. However, Sumer was a culturally integrated society; the gods of the city-states were all united under the overlordship of the god of Nippur, Enlil (god of storm), as the paterfamilias of an extended divine clan (Frankfort 1951; Steinkeller 1992).

No natural barriers defended Mesopotamia from invaders; and common dependence on the same source of water locked the cities in continuous struggle over irrigation. It is reasonable to attribute the emergence of kingship to these ecological conditions. With the increased use of metal in warfare, kingship stabilized itself in Sumer by superimposing military relationships upon the religiopolitical order of the temple communities (McNeill 1963:56–58). Presumably owing to its origin in military emergency, the office of the king had a limited tenure, being in principle revertible to the assembly of elders (Jacobsen 1943; Frankfort 1951:68–70), and the king held a secular title, lugal, which meant "great man" and also "owner." At the same time, the ownership of the city-states by the extended families of gods clearly implied that the borders between them were divinely sanctioned, making territorial expansion virtually impossible despite endemic intercity warfare (Steinkeller 1992). Given these features of the Sumerian culture, kingship remained a problematical institution and failed to become an instrument of unity (Frankfort 1951:70).

The cities of northern Mesopotamia (Akkad) had a different political system. Though pervaded by the influence of Sumerian culture, the temple played a more restricted role in socioeconomic life, and secular kingship was much more powerful and authoritarian. As a long-term consequence of the domination of the south by the northern city of Kish (2700–2600 BCE), the northern conception of kingship began to have an impact in the south, where several rulers are known to have assumed the title lugal Kish (king of Kish), very probably as a generic term for a new type of hegemonic kingship (Steinkeller 1993:120). The practice of hegemonic kingship grew as Urukreplaced Ur as the dominant southern city and culminated in the reign of Lugalzagesi, which marks the first step in the transition to empire. Several Uruk rulers used the title lugal kalam-ma (king of the Land). Nevertheless, they emphasized that they held two separate kingships — of Uruk and of Ur (Steinkeller 1993:129). The unification of the south under Lugalzagesi, the ensi of the city of Umma, who later became the king of Uruk, though a dramatic break with the past in practice, did not remove the ideological barriers to empire. This was to be done by a northern upstart, Sargon.

While Lugalzagesi was nurturing expansionist designs in Umma, Urukagina, the ensi of the neighboring city of Girsu, emerged as an upholder of the Sumerian theocratic political tradition (Frankfort 1951:72; Westenholz 1993:164). Like other local rulers, he was defeated by Lugalzagesi. The latter became the king of Uruk and claimed to have been legitimized by the patriarch of gods, Enlil, as the "king of the Land." Lugalzagesi further asserted that Enlil had rendered the foreign lands subject at his feet from the rising to the setting sun (Gadd 1971b:420–21). Nevertheless, his violation of the territorial integrity of the city-states counted against him. Though victorious, he was still denounced as follows: "Offense there was none in Urukagina, king of Girsu, but for Lugalzagesi, governor of Umma, may his goddess Nisaba make him carry his sin upon his neck" (cited in Gadd 1971a:143). She did, but only after he had reigned for twenty-five years. Further, though Lugalzagesi paid for his sin, the man who made him pay was but a holier sinner. History was for Sargon as tradition was against him.

The independent city-states of the third millennium BCE were nevertheless religioculturally unified. The standardization of writing and the numerical system and the technical repertory of material culture facilitated the prevalence of a common culture in the land between the two rivers. A similar standardization of the god lists of the city-states into a unified and hierarchical pantheon completed Mesopotamian cultural unity at the highest symbolic level. Mesopotamian city-states constituted an interacting "peer polity" system that consolidated this cultural unity by generating distinctive institutional homologies (Renfrew 1986). The formation of pan-Mesopotamian cultural institutions thus generated the ideal of unified government embodied in a universal monarch. "The absence of such a political entity," as Yoffee (2005:56) puts it, "did not preclude the conception that there should be a political domain to match and concretize the cultural ideal of a single Mesopotamian political system." The cultural unification of Mesopotamia in the third millennium BCE must therefore be considered the precondition sine qua non of the political unification brought about by the first revolution in world history — namely, that of Sargon of Kish.

The fundamental precondition of the Akkadian constitutive revolution was thus the lack of congruence between the Mesopotamian political order and its social and cultural foundations. The problem of effective government was at the core of this as of all subsequent revolutions. The political order — the system of autonomous petty city-states with its parochial theocratic authority structure and problematic, weakly legitimated kingship — was inadequate for Mesopotamia as a culturally homogeneous unit with economically interdependent irrigation networks and developed intercity trade. Religious sanctification of the borders of the god-owned cities made the system stable but also plagued it with warfare arising from endemic conflict over the control of water. Imperial kingship instituted by Sargon's revolution was an effective solution to the chronic political problem of the Sumerian city-states. In other words, unification of government through the enhancement of the authority of the hegemonic king was a solution to endemic conflict among the agrarian, interdependent city-states. The immediately pertinent precondition of this political unification was the religious and cultural homogeneity of Mesopotamia; the chief obstacle to it was the divine ownership of the city-states and its sanctification of city borders. This obstacle to political unity was overcome by the idea of universal monarchy and its subsequent institutionalization.

Revolutionary Unification of Mesopotamia and Transition to Empire

According to legend, Sargon was the unwanted son of a priestess by a wandering father and was found in a basket in a river by a palm gardener, who raised him and taught him the same profession. He became the cupbearer of the king of Kish, Ur-Zababa, but refused to carry out the king's sacrilegious order to "change the drink offering of Esagila." Divine favor was consequently transferred from the offending king of Kish to his cupbearer, who is referred to in the Sumerian Sargon legend as "Sargon, chosen of the gods" (cited in Cooper 1993:18). With this divine sanction, Sargon defected to found his own capital city of Agade. With the foundation of his new city, Sargon assumed the name "True [Legitimate] King" (sharru-kin= Sargon) (Gadd 1971b:420).

Sargon's unification of Mesopotamia was in no sense a conquest by foreigners or members of a different race (Jacobsen 1939). What is true is that the northern city of Kish was on the periphery of the Mesopotamian civilized universe, and it is reasonable to assume that the city of Agade, which has not yet been discovered, was even more so. It is therefore correct to state that "the Akkadians were in a favorable position to unite barbarian prowess with civilized technique to form a powerful military force; and in fact, Sargon was only one of the earliest of a long line of Lords Marchers who created empires by successfully exploiting a similarly strategic position on the frontier between civilization and barbarism" (McNeill 1963:61). This fact makes Sargon's conquests the first instance of a gradually progressing revolution which deliberately starts from the periphery but is constantly oriented toward the center of society.

The rise of Sargon was slow, and the unfolding of the Akkadian Revolution, gradual. While Lugalzagesi was building his empire in the south, Sargon was gradually gaining ascendance in the north. Sargon did not overthrow Ur-Zababa, after whom five more reigns in the same dynasty are recorded. This very number, however, indicates the instability that must have accompanied the rise of Sargon. Be that as it may, Sargon's power grew and he sought recognition from Lugalzagesi. Messengers were exchanged between them, but Lugalzagesi would not accept Sargon's overweening demands. Sargon stormed the city of Uruk and defeated its military commander, who was reportedly aided by the forces of fifty town-governors, before Lugalzagesi himself reached the battlefield to suffer the same fate. Sargon then completed the unification of the north and the south with the conquests of Ur, Lagash, and, finally, Umma. Another inscription records that he won thirty-four battles, as a result of which the Persian Gulf region was now in his power. He thus unified the north and the south into an empire ruled from his new capital, Agade. Though political unification stopped at the borders of "the Land"— that is, the civilized world between the two rivers — territorial expansion did not. After the unification of Mesopotamia, military mobilization was harnessed for imperial expansion. Sargon conquered the foreign land of the northwest, reaching as far north as Anatolia, though probably not as far south as Syria as claimed by the legend, and completing the circle with the conquest of Elam, an area on the eastern and southeastern periphery that had been penetrated by the Uruk expansion (Liverani 1993:53–54; Michalowski 1993:79–84; Steinkeller 1993:110–16). Sargon's instrument was the largest standing army ever assembled; with his retinue and army, "5400 men ate bread daily before him" (Gadd 1971b:424).

Sargon's firm orientation toward central Mesopotamian tradition is evident throughout the war of unification. After the conquest of Uruk, Sargon captured Lugalzagesi and brought him in a yoke to the gate of Enlil at Nippur as a trophy to the national god. The former king was thus shown to have forfeited Enlil's mandate to rule to Sargon, his new representative on earth as ensi-gal Enlil (Jacobsen 1939). After the conquest of Umma, Lugalzagesi, the ensi of Umma, and probably other captured local governors were led in triumph to mark the unification of Mesopotamia (Gadd 1971b:420–22). Southern city[states were turned into provinces but retained much of their independence. Sargon upheld the religion and culture of the fallen cities and enhanced the cultural homogeneity of Mesopotamia by introducing a uniform calendar (Frankfort 1951). Sargon's campaigns thus entailed no mere subjugation of Sumer by brute force. They were his main instrument for a constitutive revolution that integrated the hitherto [fragmented Mesopotamian political community under a single imperial monarchy.

Sargon's integrative revolution was not merely extensive but also had an intensive aspect. He made a bid for the loyalty of the lower classes by enhancing their legal rights. He changed the formula for oaths; the king's name could be invoked alongside the gods. This made the king the patron of all who swore by his name and made it possible for the common people — those without a patron to "overshadow" them — to find satisfaction in court for the first time (Frankfort 1951).

Mesopotamian Value-Ideas and the Ideology of the Akkadian Revolution

The cornerstone of the ideology of the Akkadian Revolution was the idea of universal monarchy. According to this ideology, the ruler was the charismatic center of a universal society. Sargon clearly claimed divine election and made "True King" his epithet. His rule was in accordance with the just command of the gods and was legally sanctioned by them. Using technical legal terms, Sargon's victory over Lugalzagesi was described as Enlil's "judgment" upon Sargon's law case (Jacobsen 1976:86). Sargon also appropriated the office of the high priestess of Nanna at Ur, establishing a tradition that was continued for centuries by the ruling kings of Sumer (Michalowski 1987). Last but not least, he called himself "he who rules the Four Quarters" (Frankfort 1948:228). His grandson and most important successor Naram-Sin made this phrase into the enduring title of King of the Four Quarters (shar kibratim arba?im). The long, baroque string of epithets of the pre-Sargonic kings was replaced by the terse regal titles of the dynasty of Agade that denoted sovereignty over the four quarters of the universe (Seux 1967:11nn3–4, 305–7).

The notion of universal kingship was conjoint with that of a universal political community. "The Land" already connoted such universality. It was reinforced by the idea of "the totality" (kishshatu). To this end, Sargon assumed the title of king of the Totality (sharr kishshati) (Seux 1967:308n233). The newpolitical community constructed by the Akkadian Revolution was the whole land, constituting the totality that comprised the four quarters of the civilized universe.

Another element of the Sargonic ideology was the justification for revolutionary change of dynastic rule. Though heteronomous, this implicit idea of revolution was not unimportant. The old idea of kingship as a temporary office, bala, was modified into a conception of legitimate dynastic rule of one city over the whole of Mesopotamia. The gods granted kingship to one city and its god for a time and then transferred it to another city and god. The dominion of Akkad was thus legitimated as "the term (bala) of Inanna [its goddess]" (Jacobsen 1943:167). The overthrow of an established dynasty was thus justified as the judgment of the assembly of gods upon the doomed imperial city whose god's mandate to rule had expired (Jacobsen 1976:87–91). Like other elements of the Sargonic heritage, this theory of the divine shift of sovereignty from one dynasty to another very likely was elaborated during the Third Dynasty of Ur, at the end of the third millennium, when the lament known as the "Curse of Agade" tells us that because of the sins of Naram-Sin in Nippur (the city of Enlil, the god who had killed Kish like the "Bull of Heaven" and given kingship to Sargon), "political legitimacy was removed from Agade." The great gods then "direct[ed] their face to the city [and] curse[d] Agade with a baleful curse" (Pritchard 1955:646–51 [lines 2–6], 142–47, 222–23; Cooper 1993:17).

(Continues...)

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Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Univ of Chicago Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2019
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0226026833
• ISBN 13: 9780226026831
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 394
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile