Conclusion

Summary

The Conclusion reviews the theoretical approaches that run through the volume, and reviews the essays through an historian’s eyes, looking for ways in which we might think about the global and deep time dimensions of the state simultaneously. We propose that the premodern state was “enchanted,” composite/tributary, and patrimonial. It was imbued with sacred authority, it grew by a federated system of encapsulating tribute polities, and it was almost always patrimonial in form. While the classical, western European transition to modernity involved a reversal of all of these qualities toward disenchantment, unified sovereignty, and bureaucratic governance, this transition was complicated by the power dynamics of empire-building in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. In particular, the United States – formed in direct tension with the tribute empire model, constructed a modern state form with a very complex multi-tiered sovereignty.