The State and the Tributary Mode of Production

by HALDON, JOHN F.

• ISBN13: 9780860916611
• ISBN10: 0860916618
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-03-17
• Publisher: Verso
• More Book Details
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Summary

In this groundbreaking critique of both traditional and Marxist notions of feudalism and of the pre-capitalist state, John Haldon considers the configuration of state and social relations in medieval Europe and Mughal India as well as in Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire. He argues that a Marxist reading of the pre-capitalist state can take account of the autonomy of power relations and avoid economic reductionism while still focusing on the forms of tribute which sustained the ruling power. Haldon explores the conflicts to which these gave rise and shows the Ottoman state elite, often held to be a clear example of independence from underlying social relations, to be deeply enmeshed in economic relationships and the extraction of tribute.

Haldon argues that feudalism was the specifically European form of a much more widely diffused tributary mode, whose characteristic social relations and structural constraints can be seen at work in the Byzantine, Ottoman and Mughal empires as well. While acknowledging the range of ideological and cultural variation within and between these examples of the tributary mode, Haldon denies the thesis that such “superstructural” variations themselves yielded fundamentally contrasting social relations.

Author Biography

John Haldon is Professor of Byzantine History and Hellenic Studies at the University of Princeton. He is the author of Byzantine Praetorians, Byzantium in the Seventh Century and (in Greek) Marxism and Historiography.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Introduction	p. 1
State Theory and the Tributary State: Some Comparative Perspectives	p. 14
The Tributary Mode: the Dominant Mode of Production in Pre-Capitalist Class Societies	p. 70
Tributary States, Ruling Elites and State Autonomy	p. 140
State Formation and the Struggle for Surplus	p. 203
Conclusion: Absolute or Relative Autonomy?	p. 266
Notes	p. 274
Index	p. 332
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