Chapter 3

Ancient India

Steven Muhlberger

In the period before ce 400, ancient India was home to a variety of self-governing
polities using quasi-democratic institutions comparable with those of the Greek city-
states of the same era. Indeed, Greek and Roman historians, relying on the reports
of Greek visitors, did not hesitate to say that the India they knew was largely
democratic. But although the evidence has been carefully analysed and the existence
of a multitude of republics has long been established, these republics and the political
culture that they represent are little known to anyone but specialists. The purpose of
this chapter is to set forth a brief summary of the history of republicanism in ancient
India.
There are good reasons for the obscurity of this Indian story. The ancient sources
for the life of the subcontinent are particularly difficult. Nearly all of them that
survive exist because they were religiously significant to some organised community.
There is no ancient historiography. The discovery of the ancient republican tradition
of India was a product of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Both
foreign and Indian scholars were systematically reading, translating and publishing
ancient sources. Research slowly revealed that the Indian past held more than passive
subjects ruled by absolute monarchs. At the turn of the twentieth century the British
expert, T. W. Rhys Davids, argued that the earliest Buddhist scriptures depicted
north India as a country in which there were many clans, dominating extensive and
populous territories, who made their public decisions in popular assemblies (Rhys
Davids 1903). This claim was all the more credible because investigation of
contemporary Indian village life by British officials had revealed an unanticipated
degree of popular government; at the same time early anthropologists had docu-
mented village self-government around the world (Maine [1889] 1974). The history
and nature of self-government in ancient India became a hot topic, with implications
not just for the subcontinent, but the entire world: the unchanging East was more
adaptable than it had been given credit for. For the next three decades, nationalist
historians and political scientists revisited and analysed the ancient sources and even
discovered new material. This effort did not result in consensus about the nature of
early Indian government, but has provided us with the bulk of our knowledge of
India’s republics and other manifestations of a strong non-monarchical tradition
(R. S. Sharma 1991: 1–13).
 ancient india 51

Vedic Councils and Post-Vedic Republics

It remains impossible to write a continuous history of the ancient subcontinent;
whatever aspect of Indian life we make our focus, we are dependent on difficult sources
that do not even provide a secure chronology. For instance, one relevant and very
ancient body of texts, Vedic literature, was created at various times over a thousand-
year span, c. 1500–500 bce. Vedic literature speaks directly only about the prayers,
rituals, incantations and sacrifices of the lost cultures of that vast period. Unsurpris-
ingly, scholars have come up with quite different reconstructions of ‘Vedic society’.
The most obvious political figures who emerge from the Vedas are rajas, who can be
seen as kings or (taking a less lofty view) elected war chieftains. Yet re-examination of
Vedic literature in the early twentieth century led some scholars to argue that Vedic
India was characterised by tribal societies which, like Greek, Roman or Iroquoian
societies, possessed a variety of assemblies and councils that not only expressed the
popular will, but also exercised a certain amount of authority in religion, war and
justice (R. S. Sharma 1991: 89–90). Experts have debated the definition and functions
of these bodies, notably those called the vidatha, the sabha and the samiti, but it seems
clear that even in monarchical communities, it was common enough to have a council
or an assembly or both. J. P. Sharma has argued that some non-monarchical
communities were led by a multitude of rajas instead of just one (J. P. Sharma
1968: 15–80). Today’s reader may not find these conclusions particularly exciting, but
in the 1910s this hint of self-government in the past was a subject for celebration.
India, even at a very early time, had participated in the common human pattern of
small-scale governance, what Walter Bagehot aptly called ‘government by discussion’
(Bagehot 1873: 158).
Between about 600 and 300 bce, sometimes called the post-Vedic period, sources
proliferate and we are much better informed about the politics and political geography
of the country. Unlike the kingdoms/chieftainships of early Vedic society, which give
the impression of being primitive, tribal, even nomadic, the post-Vedic kingdoms seem
much more substantial, with definite territories and rulers making claims to universal
domination. Important religious developments were underway. The theory of varna
(caste) had emerged, which gave divine endorsement to the position of the Brahmanas
(priests), Kshatriyas (warriors) and rajas drawn from the ranks of the Kshatriyas.
Varna asserted that Brahmanas and Kshatriyas were entitled to a hereditary lordship
over the Vaishyas (farmers, artisans and merchants) and the Shudras (labourers). At
the same time, there was a strong counter-current resisting this construct. There were
religious teachers who disputed the teachings of varna and the religious leadership of
the Brahmanas, and who preached equality before the divine. The most successful
movements of this sort evolved into Buddhism and Jainism (Wagle 1966).
Similarly, some communities rejected the claims of monarchy and its religious
justification. One manifestation of this opposition were the many corporate bodies
whose members enjoyed a certain equality and who governed themselves through
discussion and voting, in other words organisations that manifested varying degrees
of democratic practice. Panini’s Sanskrit grammar, an irreplaceable window into
ancient Indian life, indicates that there was at the dawn of the post-Vedic period a
52 pre-classical democracy

well-known terminology for the process of corporate decision making: Panini gives us
the terms for vote, decisions reached by voting and the completion of a quorum.
Another cluster of words indicates that the division of assemblies into political parties
was well known. Further, Panini and his commentators show that sometimes select
groups within a sangha had special functions: acting as an executive or perhaps as
committees for defined purposes. A specialised vocabulary described groups that ran
their own affairs: warrior bands, guilds and religious brotherhoods. The words gana
and sangha were the most important terms for such groups. Both words originally
meant ‘multitude’, but by the sixth century bce, they meant both a self-governing
multitude in which decisions were made by the members working in common, and
the style of government characteristic of such groups. The strongest of such groups,
which acted as sovereign governments, were the equivalent of the republics of the
contemporaneous Mediterranean (Agrawala 1963: 426–44; A. K. Majumdar 1980:
131; J. P. Sharma 1968: 8–14).

The Buddhist Evidence

The best account of the workings of quasi-democratic republics and other corporations
of this era concern the Buddhist monastic brotherhood, also called the sangha. The
earliest parts of the Buddhist scriptures, known as the Pali Canon, show us in detail
how the founder of this particular sangha was believed to have organised his followers
when he was preparing to die. The key organisational virtue was the full participation
of all the monks in the ritual and disciplinary acts of their group. To ensure that this
would be remembered, detailed rules concerning the voting in monastic assemblies,
their memberships and their quorums, were set down in the scriptures known as the
Mahavagga and the Kullavagga.
Business could be transacted legitimately only in a full assembly, by a vote of all the
members. If, for example, a candidate wanted the upasampada ordination, the question
(ñatti) was put to the sangha by a learned and competent member, and the other
members asked three times to indicate dissent. If there was none, the sangha was taken
to be in agreement with the ñatti (Rhys Davids and Oldenberg 1881: 169–70).
Of course, unanimity was not always possible. The Kullavagga provides other
techniques that were used in disputes especially dangerous to the unity of the sangha,
those which concerned interpretation of the monastic rule itself. If such a dispute
proved to be bitterly divisive, it could be decided by majority vote, or referred to a jury
or committee specially elected by the sangha to treat the matter at hand. If the members
of the sangha were concerned enough, the rules for taking votes sanctioned the
disallowance by the vote-taker of results that threatened the essential law of the sangha
or its unity (Rhys Davids and Oldenberg 1885: 20–65). Evidently, the usual principle
of full participation and the equality of the membership had to be balanced against
survival of the religious enterprise: disunity of the membership was the great fear of all
Indian republics and corporations (Altekar 1958: 129–30; A. K. Majumdar 1980: 140).
The rules of the Buddhist sangha are the best known of any gana or sangha of the
period. The exact structure and procedures used by political ganas are irrecoverable.
However, R. C. Majumdar’s early judgement remains convincing: the techniques seen
 ancient india 53

in the Buddhist sangha reflect a sophisticated and widespread political culture based on
the popular assembly (R. C. Majumdar [1918] 1969: 233–4).
That the Buddhist sangha and political gana shared similar principles can
be illustrated out of an important episode depicted in the early scriptures. The
story that begins the Maha-parinibbana-suttanta, among the oldest of Buddhist
texts, shows the Buddha outlining principles of measured self-government and
how they applied to his brotherhood and to the gana of the Vajjis (Vaggis), a
prominent republican confederation of northeast India. Asked by Vassakara the
Brahmana, the envoy of King Ajasastru, how the Vajjis could be conquered, the
Buddha answered indirectly, by discussing the strengths of their community with
his disciple Ananda:

‘Have you heard, Ananda, that the Vajjians hold full and frequent public assem-
blies?’
‘Lord, so I have heard,’ replied he.
‘So long, Ananda’, rejoined the Blessed One, ‘as the Vajjians hold these full and
frequent public assemblies; so long may they be expected not to decline, but to
prosper.’ (Rhys Davids 1881: 3)

In a series of rhetorical questions to Ananda, the Buddha outlines other require-

ments for the Vajjian prosperity:

So long, Ananda, as the Vajjians meet together in concord, and rise in concord,
and carry out their undertakings in concord . . . so long as they enact nothing not
already established, abrogate nothing that has been already enacted, and act in
accordance with the ancient institutions of the Vajjians as established in former
days . . . so long as they honour and esteem and revere and support the Vajjian
elders, and hold it a point of duty to hearken to their words . . . so long as no
women or girls belonging to their clans are detained among them by force or
abduction . . . so long as they honour and esteem and revere and support the
Vajjian shrines in town or country, and allow not the proper offerings and rites, as
formerly given and performed, to fall into desuetude . . . so long as the rightful
protection, defence and support shall be fully provided for the Arahats among
them, so that Arahats from a distance may enter the realm, and the Arahats therein
may live at ease – so long may the Vajjians be expected not to decline, but to
prosper. (Rhys Davids 1881: 3–4)

We may reasonably take this as a list of ideal republican virtues. There are two
important things about this list. First, the scripture writers not only have the Buddha
endorse these virtues, but claim them for his own, as his own teachings:

Then the Blessed One addressed Vassakara the Brahman, and said, ‘When I was
once staying, O Brahman, at Vesali at the Sarandada Temple, I taught the Vajjians
these conditions of welfare; and so long as those conditions shall continue to exist
among the Vajjians, so long as the Vajjians shall be well instructed in those
54 pre-classical democracy

conditions, so long may we expect them not to decline, but to prosper.’ (Rhys
Davids 1881: 4)

Secondly, the same story tells us that these republican virtues were very close to the
ideal organisational virtues applicable to the monastic life. Once the king’s envoy had
departed, the Buddha and Ananda went to meet the assembly of monks. The Buddha
told the monks that they too must observe seven conditions if they were to prosper.
Three of those conditions were specific to the monastic life, but the first four were
identical to those Buddha had imposed on Vajji: full and frequent assemblies; concord;
preserving and not abrogating established institutions; and honouring elders (Rhys
Davids 1881: 5–7). The preservation of these precepts and other adjurations to
monastic virtue that follow in further sets of seven, were the main point for the
monks who composed and transmitted the Maha-parinibbana-suttanta to us. For
students of Indian political thought of the time, it is striking that righteous and
prosperous communities, whether secular or monastic, rested upon the holding of ‘full
and frequent assemblies’. That first virtue in particular, was not an innovation of the
Buddhist tradition; rather it resembles and grew out of a pre-existing tradition of
‘government by discussion’, rather than by command and submission.
But who discussed? It has been argued elsewhere that it is logical and justifiable to
consider any form of government by discussion a potential subject for historians of
democracy (Muhlberger and Paine 1993). All historical democracies have grown from
less inclusive roots. Students of the Indian republics, however, put off by the
enthusiastic and extravagant claims to ancient democracy made by earlier nationalists
still feel obliged today to deny that the ancient republics, some of which were highly
oligarchic in structure and perhaps even in theory, have anything to do with democracy
(Jayaswal [1911–13] 1943; Singh 2009: 267).

Democracies or Oligarchies?
The ancient republics were far from being lost utopian democracies; indeed, the most
prominent in the sources can be classified as oligarchies dominated by the Kshatriyas,
the warrior class or varna. Indeed, political participation was sometimes further
restricted to a subset of all the Kshatriyas, to the members of a specific royal clan, the
rajanya (Agrawala 1963: 430–2). Enfranchised members of such republics identified
themselves with the slippery term raja, which suggests noble or even regal status, as
well as (a share of) executive power. The Lalitavistara, in a satirical jab, depicts Vesali,
the chief city of the Licchavi gana and of the Vajji confederacy of which it was part,
as being full of Licchavi rajans, each one thinking, ‘I am king, I am king’ (A. K.
Majumdar 1958: 140). In some places, it seems likely that political power was
restricted to the heads of a restricted number of ‘royal families’ (rajakulas) among
the ruling clans. The heads of these families were consecrated as rajas, and thereafter
took part in deliberations of state.
The sources, however, permit another perspective. Both sympathetic and unsym-
pathetic sources showed the republics as being characterised by inclusive, perhaps too
inclusive, politics. The Lalitavistara in the passage just cited presented Vesali as a
 ancient india 55

place where piety, age and rank were ignored; there were too many rajas, and the
worthy few had been pushed aside by a mob of upstarts. Furthermore, power in some
republics was vested in a large number of individuals. In a well-known Jataka tale we
are told that in Vesali there were 7,707 kings (rajas), 7,707 viceroys, 7,707 generals and
7,707 treasurers (Cowell [1895] 1957: I:316. III:1). These figures, since they come
from about half a millennium after the period they describe, have no precise
evidentiary value, but confirm what we find elsewhere: the rulers were many, in
some cases supposedly numbering in the tens of thousands (Agrawala 1963: 432;
Cowell [1895] 1957: IV:94, VI:266; J. P. Sharma 1968: 99). One wonders that if these
numbers were true, would the rajas be citizen/warriors? Certainly the memory of large
ganas can be found in other sources critical of republicanism. The Santi Parva section
of the Mahabharata, for instance, shows the participation of too many people in the
affairs of state as being a great flaw in the republican polity (R. C. Majumdar [1918]
1969: 247–52).
Other evidence also suggests that in some states the enfranchised group was quite
wide. Such a development is hinted at by Kautilya, who wrote a pioneering treatise in
political science. According to him, there were two kinds of janapadas (traditional
regions): ayudhiya-praya, those made up mostly of soldiers; and sreni-praya, those
comprising guilds of craftsmen, traders and agriculturalists (Agrawala 1963: 436–9).
The first were political entities where military tradition alone defined those worthy of
power, while the second would seem to be communities where wealth derived from
peaceful economic activity gave some access to the political process. Sometimes
corporate organisation encouraged secession, so that a political community more
responsive to the membership would be created. Panini’s most thorough modern
student believed that there was in the post-Vedic period ‘a craze for constituting new
republics’, which ‘had reached its climax in the Vahika country and northwest India
where clans constituting of as many as one hundred families only organised themselves
as Ganas’ (Agrawala 1963: 432). There was, indeed, an interesting and various political
tradition of self-government at work in post-Vedic north India, even if our sources give
us a shadowy picture in most cases.
Judging whether the ancient Indian republics were democracies or, better, whether
their history is relevant to the study of democracy depends on the definition of the
crucial term. Scholars rejecting the label democracy as irrelevant to the Indian
republics are engaging with Jayaswal’s rhetoric of a century ago, not with the
historiography of ancient democracy. What makes Indian republics look undemocratic
to us is primarily the fact that the franchise – the right to participate – was so restricted
by modern standards. No doubt the ruling group of most republics thought of their
gana as a closed club – but so did the citizens of Athens, who also defined themselves as
a hereditarily privileged group. We can interrogate the Greeks themselves as to the
relationship between Greek and north Indian ideas of government. Alexander the
Great invaded India in 326 bce, and afterwards Greek monarchs ruled parts of the
subcontinent and interacted with larger areas of it for centuries. As a result, quite a bit
of the history and geography of India survives in Greek, mostly in accounts of
Alexander’s conquests. Alexander’s historians mention a large number of republics of
various sizes, but only a handful of kings (Altekar 1958: 111). Although Greek
56 pre-classical democracy

descriptions of India sometimes featured exotic races, animals and plants, Greek
accounts of Indian politics lack exotic elements. Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander, which
is derived from the eyewitness accounts of Alexander’s companions, portrays him as
meeting many ‘free and independent’ Indian communities. What ‘free and indepen-
dent’ meant is illustrated from the case of Nysa, a city on the border of modern
Afghanistan and Pakistan that was ruled by a president named Aculphis and a council
of 300. After surrendering to Alexander, Aculphis used the city’s supposed connection
with the god Dionysus to seek lenient terms from the king:

The Nysaeans beseech thee, O king out of respect for Dionysus, to allow them to
remain free and independent; for when Dionysus had subjugated the nation of the
Indians . . . he founded this city from the soldiers who had become unfit for military
service . . . From that time we inhabit Nysa, a free city, and we ourselves are
independent, conducting our government with constitutional order. (R. C. Ma-
jumdar 1960: 20)

Nysa was an oligarchy, as further discussion between Alexander and Aculphis

reveals, and a single city-state; the set-up was familiar and the Nysaeans were distant
cousins with comprehensible, Greek-like values. There were other Indian states that
were both larger in area – confederations similar to those in fourth-century Greece –
and wider in franchise (R. C. Majumdar 1960: 47, 64–75). Q. Curtius Rufus and
Diodorus Siculus mention a people called the Sabarcae or Sambastai among whom ‘the
form of government was democratic and not regal’ (R. C. Majumdar 1960: 151). The
prevalence of republicanism and its democratic form is explicitly stated by Diodorus
Siculus. After describing the mythical monarchs who succeeded the god Dionysus as
rulers of India, he says: ‘At last, however, after many years had gone, most of the cities
adopted the democratic form of government, though some retained the kingly until the
invasion of the country by Alexander’ (R. C. Majumdar 1960: 180).
This statement seems to derive from a first-hand description of India by a Greek
traveller named Megasthenes. Around 300 bce, Megasthenes served as ambassador of
the Greek king Seleucus Nicator to the Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya, and in
the course of his duties crossed northern India to the eastern city of Patna, where he
lived for a while (Stein 1893: XV:1:232–3). His evaluation of the state of northern
India, and the existence of democracy there, is the statement of an experienced and
educated Greek politician. It is worth remembering that in the previous century the
grammarian Panini attested to a special term for the gana where ‘there was no
distinction between high and low’ (Agrawala 1963: 428).

The End of Ancient Republicanism

Scholars looking at the record as a whole have understandably been interested in the
ultimate failure of the ancient republics. This is more complicated than a simple story
of monarchical success. Comparison with recent scholarship on the Greek poleis is
instructive. Traditionally the end of the poleis style of government has been identified
with the defeat of Athens and its allies by the king of Macedon, Philip II, at Chaeronea
 ancient india 57

(338 bce); after that, the vast majority of Greek city-states were subject to one or
another Macedonian or Hellenistic king. Yet, as M. H. Hansen points out, the loss of
sovereignty was not the crucial factor for ancient Greek citizens that it has been for
modern historians. For the Greeks, as long as a polis enjoyed internal self-government,
it could consider itself ‘free and independent’. Hansen puts it this way:

In the Hellenistic kingdoms all poleis were actually subordinate to the ruling
monarch, but in different degrees. Many poleis were tribute-paying and so formally
subordinate to the king, but many were formally free, independent states. The
typical ‘independent’ polis was now a democracy (dēmokratia) that had its freedom
(eleutheria) and self-government (autonomia) guaranteed by royal rescript published
by the Hellenistic king in whose kingdom the city-state lay. (Hansen 2006: 50)

In contrast to our modern understanding of their situation, many Greeks of the

Hellenistic and even the Roman period believed they lived under a regime of
democracy. That local democracy was eroded over centuries as the imperial govern-
ment became more bureaucratic and interventionist, until the reign of Justinian saw
the last traces of what Hansen calls ‘the Greek city-state culture’ (Hansen 2006: 50).
There are some similarities in the evolution of the Indian republics. The Pali Canon
shows that already in the time of the Buddha and Mahavira, even major republics like
the Vajji were having a difficult time competing with monarchical warlords. The Vajji
confederation, based on the populous city of Vesali and dominated by the Licchavis,
seems to have attained for a short time hegemonic or imperial status like Sparta or
Athens briefly did; similarly, after the Vajjis were defeated and their federation broken
up, we hear of no more such hegemonic cities in northeastern India. There were large
republican federations in northwestern India with tens of thousands of rajas at the time
of Alexander, but, again, after his intervention we have no records of such. The larger
polities of post-Alexandrian times seem to have been monarchies.
Ganas survived nevertheless, as coins and inscriptions attest. Ancient Indian
empires were rather precarious, and the communities that they conquered revived
after the empires fell apart. The process of competition with imperial monarchies,
however, seems to have strengthened the always existing tendency towards oligarchy.
We have seen that many republics were content even in the earliest post-Vedic era with
a very exclusive definition of the political community. Intermarriage of leading
members of ganas with the royal clans of monarchies, recounted in the stories of
the Buddha’s lifetime, can only have encouraged such exclusivity. Later, states known
to be republics in earlier times were subject to hereditary executives. Like Medici
Florence, eventually such republics became monarchies (Altekar 1958: 137–8; A. K.
Majumdar 1980: 144). There should be no surprise that such a development was
possible, or that leading families of powerful republics should adopt aristocratic habits
and its scions pursue kingly or at the very least oligarchic ambitions. Not all citizens of
democracies are democrats.
An evolution away from egalitarianism can also be seen in the literature of politics
and religion. Later Brahmanical classics (300 bce–ce 200) such as the Mahabharata,
the writings of Kautilya and the Manu-Smrti opposed the gana–sangha type of
58 pre-classical democracy

government. Kautilya, who is traditionally identified with the chief minister of the
Mauryan conqueror Chandragupta Maurya (300 bce), is famous for advising monarchs
on how to tame or destroy ganas through subterfuge; more importantly, he formulated
a political science in which royalty was normal, even though his own text shows that
ganas were very important factors in the politics of his time (Kautilya [300 bce] 1951:
410). Similarly, the religious law book Manu-Smrti formulated a systematic view of
society where human equality was non-existent and unthinkable (Manu [200 bce–ce
200] 1886).
Members of ganas were encouraged to fit themselves into a hierarchical, mon-
archical framework by practical considerations, too. Warlord rajas with unique
religious claims could not only inspire fear, but also offer a sometimes welcome court
of last resort to competing ganas, whose claims to autonomy and self-determination
must often have come into conflict (as we see in the Italian communes of the High
Middle Ages). How were these claims to be sorted out other than by force? The king
had an answer to this question: if he were acknowledged as ‘the only monarch [i.e.,
raja, chief executive] of all the corporations’ he would commit himself to preserving
the legitimate privileges of each of them, and even protect the lesser members of each
gana from abuse of power by their leaders (Kautilya [300 bce] 1951: 410). It was a
tempting offer, and it was slowly accepted, sometimes freely, sometimes under
compulsion. The end result was the acceptance of a social order in which many
ganas and sanghas existed, but none were sovereign and none were committed to any
general egalitarian view of society. They were committed instead to a hierarchy in
which they were promised a secure place (R. C. Majumdar [1918] 1969: 42–59). Such a
notional hierarchy seems to have been constructed in north India by the fifth century
ce. Even the Buddhist sangha, perhaps the greatest ‘republican confederacy’ of all,
was chased out of the subcontinent.
Government by discussion must have continued within many ganas and sanghas, but
the ideas of hierarchy and inequality of caste were increasingly dominant. The degree
of corporate autonomy in later Indian society was considerable, but a corporation that
accepts itself as a subcaste in a great divine hierarchy is different from the more
pugnacious ganas and sanghas of the Pali Canon, Kautilya or even the Jataka stories.

Conclusion
The significance of the Indian republics and other forms of ‘government by discussion’
can be summed up in three points. First, there is enough information to show that even
in the supposed home of oriental despotism, there were in ancient times institutions
and practices that were created, named and commonly used to implement a degree of
equality among the members of self-governing communities. The ancient subconti-
nent, with its documented councils and assemblies, voting procedures and constitu-
tional awareness, shared in the worldwide human tendency to create quasi-democratic
organisations at the local level. Secondly, there is also evidence for a degree of
egalitarian doctrine associated with these practical developments. How many ancient
Indians were sincerely moved by democratic principles is difficult to say; in the ancient
subcontinent, as in ancient Greece, opponents of and sceptics about democracy
 ancient india 59

dominate our sources. Thirdly, the republican and the quasi-democratic history of
India, interesting in its own right, has had, like the history of classical Greece, a
significant effect on modern history, in that it has challenged people to look into their
historical experience and find in it inspiration for democratic change.

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Rhys Davids, T. W. (1903), Buddhist India, London: T. Fisher Unwin.
Rhys Davids, T. W. and H. Oldenberg (trans.) ([post-480 bce] 1881, 1882, 1885), Mahavagga,
Kullavagga, and Pattimokkha: Vinaya Texts, in F. Max Müller (ed.), Sacred Books of the East,
vols 13, 17, 20, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sharma, J. P. (1968), Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 b.c.–500 b.c., Leiden: Brill.
Sharma, R. S. (1991), Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India, 3rd edn, Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass.
Singh, U. (2009), A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th
Century, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Stein, O. (1893), Megasthenes, in A. von Pauly, G. Wissowa et al. (eds), Real-Encyclopädie der
classischen Altertumwissenschaft, vol. 2, Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler.
Wagle, N. K. (1966), Society at the Time of the Buddha, Bombay: Popular Prakashan.
 Chapter 4
Ancient China

Victoria Tin-bor Hui

Both Western and Chinese analysts often presume that democracy is unique to
Western civilisation and alien to the Chinese. The roots of Western dynamism are,
in turn, assumed to derive from the political complexity of Europe, whereas those of
Chinese stagnation from political unity. However, as this chapter illustrates, China in
fact experienced fluctuations between unification and division in history. Intense
international competition in the classical era (770–221 bce) gave rise to citizenship
rights defined as state–society bargains over the means of war. Although the devel-
opment of Chinese citizenship was aborted by Qin’s successful unification of the
Warring States system in 221 bce, the classical legacy continued to live on in the rest of
Chinese history, albeit in diminished forms. In subsequent eras of division, contending
regimes would be compelled to make concessions to society. Even in eras of unifica-
tion, formally unchecked emperors were subject to Confucian doctrines developed in
the classical period.

The Military Basis of Citizenship Rights

There is a general consensus that China’s political tradition is fundamentally anti-
democratic. Although Karl Marx’s notion of the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ and Karl
Wittfogel’s notion of ‘hydraulic despotism’ are no longer in vogue, most observers
would agree with R. Bin Wong that citizenship is ‘a culturally foreign concept’ in
China (Wong 1997: 93). Elizabeth Perry suggests that even if the classical concept of
Mandate of Heaven (divine right) provides for socio-economic rights, there is no place
for political rights or democracy in China’s political tradition. She argues that even the
recent explosion of rural and urban protests does not signify any new-found ‘rights
consciousness’, because such protests are typically ‘framed in a language more
reminiscent of Mencius or Mao than of Locke or Jefferson (Perry 2008: 43). This
understanding explains why generations of Chinese intellectuals have blamed the
Chinese tradition as being the source of backwardness, and why the current govern-
ment has promoted ‘democracy with Chinese characteristics’ in order to buttress one-
party dictatorship.
What this mainstream view overlooks is that China shares with Europe crucial
contingent developments conducive to the emergence of citizenship and democracy.
The Chinese political tradition is often taken to be Confucian, and the Confucian
 ancient india 59

dominate our sources. Thirdly, the republican and the quasi-democratic history of
India, interesting in its own right, has had, like the history of classical Greece, a
significant effect on modern history, in that it has challenged people to look into their
historical experience and find in it inspiration for democratic change.

References
Agrawala, V. S. (1963), India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the
Ashatadhyayi, 2nd edn, Varanasi: Prithvi Prakashan.
Altekar, A. S. (1958), State and Government in Ancient India, 3rd edn, Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass.
Bagehot, W. (1873), Physics and Politics, New York: D. Appleton.
Cowell, E. B. (ed.) ([1895] 1957), The Jataka, or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births, [380
bce], trans. Various, 6 vols, Oxford: Pali Text Society.
Hansen, M. H. (2006), Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Jayaswal, K. P. ([1911–13] 1943), Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu
Times, 2nd edn, Bangalore: Bangalore Printing & Publishing.
Kautilya ([300 bce] 1951), Kautilya’s Arthasastra, trans. R. Shamasastry, 4th edn, Mysore:
Mysore Printing & Publishing House.
Maine, H. S. ([1889] 1974), Village Communities in the East and West, New York: Arno Press.
Majumdar, A. K. (1980), Concise History of Ancient India, vol. 2: Political Theory, Adminis-
tration, and Economic Life, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.
Majumdar, R. C. (1960), The Classical Accounts of India, Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopad-
hyay.
Majumdar, R. C. ([1918] 1969), Corporate Life in Ancient India 3rd edn, Calcutta: Firma K. L.
Mukhopadhyay.
Manu ([200 bce–ce 200] 1886), The Laws of Manu, in F. Max Müller (ed.), Sacred Books of the
East, trans. G. Bühler, vol. 25, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Muhlberger, S. and P. Paine (1993), ‘Democracy’s Place in World History’, Journal of World
History, 4(1), 23–47.
Rhys Davids, T. W. (trans.) ([post-480 bce] 1881), The Maha-parinibbana-suttanta: Buddhist
Suttas vol. 1, in F. Max Müller (ed.), Sacred Books of the East, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Rhys Davids, T. W. (1903), Buddhist India, London: T. Fisher Unwin.
Rhys Davids, T. W. and H. Oldenberg (trans.) ([post-480 bce] 1881, 1882, 1885), Mahavagga,
Kullavagga, and Pattimokkha: Vinaya Texts, in F. Max Müller (ed.), Sacred Books of the East,
vols 13, 17, 20, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sharma, J. P. (1968), Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 b.c.–500 b.c., Leiden: Brill.
Sharma, R. S. (1991), Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India, 3rd edn, Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass.
Singh, U. (2009), A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th
Century, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Stein, O. (1893), Megasthenes, in A. von Pauly, G. Wissowa et al. (eds), Real-Encyclopädie der
classischen Altertumwissenschaft, vol. 2, Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler.
Wagle, N. K. (1966), Society at the Time of the Buddha, Bombay: Popular Prakashan.
 Chapter 4
Ancient China

Victoria Tin-bor Hui

Both Western and Chinese analysts often presume that democracy is unique to
Western civilisation and alien to the Chinese. The roots of Western dynamism are,
in turn, assumed to derive from the political complexity of Europe, whereas those of
Chinese stagnation from political unity. However, as this chapter illustrates, China in
fact experienced fluctuations between unification and division in history. Intense
international competition in the classical era (770–221 bce) gave rise to citizenship
rights defined as state–society bargains over the means of war. Although the devel-
opment of Chinese citizenship was aborted by Qin’s successful unification of the
Warring States system in 221 bce, the classical legacy continued to live on in the rest of
Chinese history, albeit in diminished forms. In subsequent eras of division, contending
regimes would be compelled to make concessions to society. Even in eras of unifica-
tion, formally unchecked emperors were subject to Confucian doctrines developed in
the classical period.

The Military Basis of Citizenship Rights

There is a general consensus that China’s political tradition is fundamentally anti-
democratic. Although Karl Marx’s notion of the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ and Karl
Wittfogel’s notion of ‘hydraulic despotism’ are no longer in vogue, most observers
would agree with R. Bin Wong that citizenship is ‘a culturally foreign concept’ in
China (Wong 1997: 93). Elizabeth Perry suggests that even if the classical concept of
Mandate of Heaven (divine right) provides for socio-economic rights, there is no place
for political rights or democracy in China’s political tradition. She argues that even the
recent explosion of rural and urban protests does not signify any new-found ‘rights
consciousness’, because such protests are typically ‘framed in a language more
reminiscent of Mencius or Mao than of Locke or Jefferson (Perry 2008: 43). This
understanding explains why generations of Chinese intellectuals have blamed the
Chinese tradition as being the source of backwardness, and why the current govern-
ment has promoted ‘democracy with Chinese characteristics’ in order to buttress one-
party dictatorship.
What this mainstream view overlooks is that China shares with Europe crucial
contingent developments conducive to the emergence of citizenship and democracy.
The Chinese political tradition is often taken to be Confucian, and the Confucian
 ancient china 61

tradition is taken to be fundamentally anti-democratic. However, as Chaibong Hahm

points out:

Confucianism was actually exceptional in the degree to which . . . it took a stand

against absolutism and autocracy. Yet Confucianism never had much more than
gossamer-thin institutional means with which to buttress principled opposition to
monarchs who had armies of soldiers and legions of officials at their back. (Hahm
2004: 105)

Of course, political dissenters in Europe also faced monarchs who claimed the divine
right to rule and who commanded enormous numbers of troops and bureaucrats. What
made it so difficult for European kings and princes to subjugate their populations in
the domestic realm was the fact that they had to fight other kings and princes in the
international realm at the same time. Scholars of European state formation have
highlighted the military basis of citizenship and democracy. Citizenship emerged in
Europe not because European rulers were more benign or their subjects had high levels
of ‘rights consciousness’, but because European rulers were compelled by fierce
international competition to bargain with domestic resource-holders. When we
examine historical trajectories, the focus should not be electoral democracy, a largely
twentieth-century phenomenon even in the West, but citizenship rights, a more
transhistorical development. If citizenship rights are defined as recognised enforceable
claims on the state that are themselves by-products of state–society bargaining over the
means of war (Tilly 1992: 101–2), then we can find both political and socio-economic
rights in the Chinese tradition.

Rethinking Chinese Unity

In China, as in Europe, the overwhelming coercive power of the state was most
effectively checked when a multitude of states competed against one another. This
point is overlooked in mainstream Sinology because analysts have uncritically
accepted the presumption of Chinese oneness. Instead, Chinese history books re-
construct history through clean dynastic cycles, which begin with Xia (a mythical
period), Shang (1600–1046 bce), and Zhou (1045–256 bce), through Qin (221–206
bce), Han (202 bce–ce 220), Jin (265–420), Sui (581–618), Tang (618–907), Song
(960–1279), Yuan (1279–1368), Ming (1368–1644), Qing (1644–1911), ending with
the Republic of China (1912–1949) and the People’s Republic (1949–present). Such a
presentation gives the impression of a linear history in which Chinese unity is the
norm and division is a deviance that is destined to be corrected. Contrary to this
received wisdom, a Chinese historical geographer Ge Jianxiong,1 points out that the
official founding of a new dynasty does not necessarily restore unification because
transitional periods between two dynasties are uniformly marked by armed struggles.
He suggests that there is no genuine unification whenever armed forces that fight for
the previous dynasty or their own ambitions persist; whenever regional power-
holders pledge nominal allegiance to the reigning dynasty, but assert semi-auton-
omous status and maintain armed forces; and whenever scattered peasant rebellions
62 pre-classical democracy

become organised, armed rebellions (Ge 1994: 85–6). It is remarkable that Ge’s
conceptualisation is consistent with Weber’s idea of the effective state as one ‘that
[successfully] claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a
given territory’ (Weber 1991: 78).
If we follow this Weberian–Ge understanding of the state, we need also to outline
what ‘a given territory’ means in the Chinese context. Historical China often refers to
the maximum territorial reach achieved under the Qing dynasty – which includes both
China Proper and the Periphery. While China Proper is roughly bounded by the
Yellow River in the northwest, the Yin Shan and the lower Liao River in the northeast,
the Sichuan basin in the west, the eastern edge of the Yunnan–Guizhou plateau in the
southwest, the Guangdong and Guangxi regions in the south, and the coastline in the
east, the Periphery refers to Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet (Tan 2000: 2–
4). It is noteworthy that, if unification is defined as the establishment of effective
central control over the Qing’s maximum territorial reach as outlined, then historical
China was unified for only eighty-one years from 1759 to 1840 (Ge 1994: 79). Ge thus
suggests a more limited definition: the establishment of effective central control over
China Proper without the Periphery. Even this narrower definition does not support
the mainstream view that unity was the norm in Chinese history, as it yields only 991
years of unification throughout the long span of Chinese history up to 2000. The figure
of 991 years represents 44.6 per cent of Chinese history if the baseline excludes the
classical era (i.e., a total of 2,221 years from Qin’s unification in 221 bce to ce 2000), or
a smaller fraction if the baseline includes the classical era, or an even smaller fraction if
the baseline refers to China’s supposed 5,000 years of civilisation. Indeed, it is often
overlooked that the Chinese term for ‘China’ (zhongguo) does not always mean the
unified and powerful ‘central (or middle) kingdom’. The term zhongguo originally
referred to ‘central states’ in the plural form during two periods of the Zhou Dynasty,
the Spring and Autumn period (770–403 bce) and the Warring States period (475–221
bce). It acquired the meaning of ‘central kingdom’ in the singular form only long
after Qin’s successful unification. Because the Chinese language does not distinguish
between the singular and plural forms, the initial meaning of zhongguo is easily lost in
modern retrospective thinking. If Chinese history contains more duality and diversity
than unity and uniformity, then the recurrence of war-induced state–society bargains
should not be underestimated.

War and Citizenship Rights in the Classical Era

The military basis of citizenship was most pronounced in the pristine Spring and
Autumn and Warring States periods. Ambitious Chinese rulers faced a daunting
challenge familiar to European rulers: how to motivate the people to fight and die in
war. International competition compelled three major state–society bargains (Hui
2005). The first bargain was peasant welfare. To mobilise resources for war, Chinese
rulers introduced national conscription and national taxation. This development
meant that the security of the state rested with the well-being of peasant soldiers
who paid taxes and fought wars. As hungry peasants could not afford grain tax or
military service, various states distributed land grants to ensure subsistence. To
 ancient china 63

improve productivity, states introduced intensive farming methods. To stabilise the

livelihood of peasants amid annual fluctuations in yields, states established grain
stores, provided disaster relief and introduced a counter-cyclical policy. Confucian and
Mencian thinkers of the time regarded the state’s provision of material welfare as
representing a conditional state–society relationship: if the basic economic needs of the
people were met, loyalty would ensue, and the state would be strong; if not, resentment
would ensue, and the state would be weakened (Brooks and Brooks 2002: 250, 259).
The second bargain was a justice-based definition of citizenship. As Xu Jinxiong
observes:

Rulers gradually promulgated laws which were meant to bind rulers and ruled alike
. . . Laws were originally tools used by aristocrats to arbitrarily suppress the people.
They gradually became the contractual basis on which the people would accept a
given rulership. (Xu 1988: 543)

E. Bruce Brooks calls this development ‘the new legal quid’ in exchange for ‘the new
military quo’ (Brooks 1998: 6). Transmitted texts and unearthed legal documents show
that the right of access to justice and the right of redress before higher judges existed at
least in the states of Qin, Chu and Qi by the late fourth century bce.
International competition further nurtured the third bargain: freedom of expression
akin to the Enlightenment, making classical thinkers, especially Mencius, closer to
Locke than to Mao (in Perry’s language). Ambitious rulers competed not just for the
support of peasant soldiers, but also the assistance of talented generals and strategists.
In the interest of the state, senior court ministers and free scholars were expected to
freely criticise rulers’ mistaken policies, an expectation that they met with little
hesitation. Wong argues that the European phenomenon of popular sovereignty had no
place in China’s late imperial state dynamics (Wong 1997: 101). He overlooks that the
Warring States era was a different world. The received wisdom that the Mandate of
Heaven rested with the Son of Heaven (divinely appointed Emperor) was a post-
unification construction by Han emperors. The Mandate of Heaven as originally
articulated in the classical era insisted on the ultimate sovereignty of the people. Most
notably, the Mencius unequivocally places the Mandate in the hands of the people
because ‘Heaven does not speak; it sees and hears as the people see and hear’ (Pines
2009: 75). In discussing the last Shang ruler, Mencius is quoted as saying: ‘I have heard
about the killing of the ordinary fellow Zhou, but I have not heard of the assassination
of any ruler’ (Brooks and Brooks 2002: 254). This passage is reminiscent of Thomas
Hobbes’ complaint about resistance theorists: ‘they say not regicide, that is, killing of a
king, but tyrannicide, that is, killing of a tyrant, is lawful’ (Hobbes [1651] 1992: 2.29).
The Zuo chuan similarly remarks that if a ruler ‘exhausts the people’s livelihood . . .
and betrays the hopes of the populace, then . . . what use is he? What can one do but
expel him?’ (Watson 1989: xv–xvi). Even the Xunzi, the classical text most supportive
of strong central authority, states that ‘the ruler is like a boat and the people are like the
water. While the water can float the boat, it can also capsize it’ (Pines 2009: 206).
Classical Chinese thinkers thus preceded modern European resistance theorists in
arguing that tyrants ceased to be rulers.
64 pre-classical democracy

Together, the three bargains of material welfare, legal protection and freedom of
expression marked the emergence of citizenship rights in classical China. Of course,
the Warring States were not democracies, and many rulers remained abusive of the
people (the same can be said of their European counterparts). Nevertheless, the very
existence of a multi-state system necessarily gave rise to the fourth citizenship right:
the ‘right of exit’, which made rulers aware of limits to repression lest the people move
to competing states. Europeanists argue that the right of exit served as an implicit
check on arbitrary power, and even a substitute for formal representation in modern
European politics (Jones 1981: 118; Moravcsik 1997: 518). In the Chinese context,
scholars, peasants and traders similarly could ‘vote with their feet’ and move to states
with the most open policies. As population size was the basis of military power and
economic wealth, the threat of talented citizens and peasant soldiers leaving for enemy
states was not taken lightly. As another classic, the Book of Odes, says to uncaring
rulers: ‘Never have you cared for my welfare. I shall leave you and journey to that
fortunate land’ (Kuhn 2002: 118).

Unification and Erosion of Citizenship Rights

Unfortunately, Qin’s unification of the Warring States system in 221 bce fundamen-
tally reversed state–society relations. Under the Qin dynasty (221–206 bce), all
elements of classical citizenship rights disappeared. Peasant welfare was abandoned
and the imperial court increased tax burdens and further drafted over 800,000 men to
expand to the northern and southern frontiers. The principle of justice was eroded,
with punishments becoming so harsh that there were about 1.4 million convicts to
provide forced labour to build the Emperor’s palaces and tomb. Freedom of expression
was similarly stifled, with all books, except Qin’s court records and those on medicine
and agriculture, were seized and burnt, and 460 scholars who expressed doubts about
the Emperor’s policies were persecuted. Beginning from 209 bce, Qin’s subjects
turned to the ultimate right under tyranny: the right to rebel.
At the Qin’s collapse, the most promising rebel leader, Xiang Yu, sought to revive
the pre-Qin states. A Chinese historian Shi Shi suggests that if Xiang had succeeded,
China could have developed a loose federal system more conducive to regional
autonomy and political freedom (Shi 2007). But Xiang Yu was overtaken by Liu
Bang, who established the Han dynasty (202 bce–ce 220) on the model of the Qin
dynasty. Chinese history books praise the Han for correcting Qin’s excesses and
promoting Confucianism. However, the imperial version of Confucianism advocated
by Dong Zhongshu (179–104 bce) for Emperor Wu (r. 141–87 bce) involved
important deviations from the classical version. Most of all, the Mandate of Heaven
was now reinterpreted as resting with the ‘Son of Heaven’ instead of the people. And
despite Confucianism’s prescription for benevolent rule, the Han criminal code largely
followed the harsh Qin code. As John K. Fairbank observed, although ‘the first Han
emperors took great pains to claim that their rule was based on the Confucian teachings
of social order . . . they used the methods of the Legalists as the basis for their
institutions and policy decisions’ (Fairbank 1974: 11). Shi even remarks that the key
difference between the Qin and the Han was pure coercion versus coercion masked by
 ancient china 65

deception (Shi 2007). Subsequent dynasties followed the Han model of ‘Legalism with
a Confucian façade’ (Hsiao 1977: 137).

The Legacy of Classical Citizenship Rights

The contrast between the Warring States period and the Qin–Han period leads
Michael Loewe to ask ‘to what extent the unified empires of Qin and Han maintained
easier conditions of living or imposed harsher burdens on the population than the
localised kingdoms of China that preceded or followed them’ (Loewe 1987: 18). Gu
Jiegang, a critical Chinese historian of the early twentieth century, once suggested
that political unification by the centralised empire had led to constriction and,
ultimately, decay, but the in-between periods of flux, chaos and competition were the
most creative eras of Chinese history (Duara 1995: 42). Indeed, in eras of division
after the Qin and Han, competing states would again be compelled by international
competition to introduce more open policies to attract new talents and develop
neglected regions to enlarge their tax bases. Of course, Chinese regimes remained
autocratic – just as early modern European regimes were absolutist. But it is worth
repeating that the very existence of a multi-state system always gave rise to the ‘right
of exit’, which presented a formidable check against arbitrary power. This ‘right of
exit’ has been overlooked in mainstream Sinology because analysts have uncritically
accepted the presumption of Chinese oneness. While state–society bargains would
always be revived to some extent in eras of division, they were not altogether lost in
eras of unification. Most notably, the underlying principles were kept alive in
Confucian rites and principles to which even all-powerful emperors were compelled
to at least pay lip service. Though formally unchecked, emperors could be trapped by
their own rhetoric. In seeking legitimacy in the Confucian tradition and the Mandate
of Heaven, Chinese emperors also subjected themselves to the higher authority of
Confucianism and Heaven. As Alan Wood observes: ‘Confucianism may have been
used to expand the power of the state, but it also provided moral limits to that power’
(Wood 1995: 11). Chu Ron Guey points out that, when Han’s first emperor Gaozu (r.
202–195 bce) offered sacrifice to Confucius, he not only legitimised his claim to rule,
but also ‘exposed himself to being regulated by’ the Confucian tradition (Chu 1998:
170). A number of historians have highlighted that, because Confucian rites fostered
a ‘constitutional culture limiting the exercise of dynastic rule’ (Chu 1998: 174), and
even ‘set limits on the actions and decisions of both the emperor and the bureaucracy
and ruled their relations with the population’ (Will 2009: 262), they served a
‘potentially constitutional function’ (Brooks and Brooks 1998: 117) which ‘occupie[d]
much of the space that in the modern West would be identified with a constitutional
order’ (Bary 1998b: 43). Moreover, in the Confucian order, however elevated the Son
of Heaven made himself, he was ultimately subordinate to Heaven. When Dong
Zhongshu reinterpreted the Mandate of Heaven to rest with the Son of Heaven for
Han’s Emperor Wu, he also ‘attempted to curb the arbitrary exercise of the ruler’s
power by threatening the intervention of Heaven in the form of natural portents
and disasters’ and by retaining the people’s ‘right to rebel’ (Wood 1995: 13, 154).
Pierre-Étienne Will calls this the idea of twin sovereignty: ‘the ruler is the master
66 pre-classical democracy

of men, but the people are ‘‘the master of the master of men’’ ’: that is, ‘the
people’s sovereignty is a given, whereas the ruler’s sovereignty is conditional’ (Will
2009: 273).
In the more open environment of the Song dynasty (960–1279) (which did not
achieve unification of China Proper and faced intense international competition), neo-
Confucian scholars further worked out a ‘doctrine of political rights’ (Wood 1995).
Song neo-Confucian scholars such as Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi moved away from Han
scholars’ emphasis on rites towards ‘heavenly principles’, which ‘transcended the ruler
and therefore obliged him to obey them’ (Wood 1995: xi). Alan Wood insists that the
theory of ‘heavenly principles’ is strikingly similar to the European conception of
natural law because both uphold the belief ‘that there exist certain laws or rules of
action that are inherent in human nature and that reflect the rationally apprehensible
order of the universe’ (Wood 1995: 136).
Such debates over Confucian rites and principles over the ages testify to the
continued existence of the classical bargain of freedom of expression in imperial times,
albeit in reduced form. Generations of Confucian scholars followed Xunzi’s dictum:
‘Follow the Way, do not follow the ruler’ (Pines 2009: 179). Will defines ‘freedom of
expression’ as ‘the right to remonstrate and to denounce, in memorials sent to the
throne, abuses of power’ (Will 2009: 270–1). Theodore de Bary also highlights
‘freedom of discussion’, both in terms of ‘the responsibility Confucian scholars felt
to speak out against the abuse of power’ and in terms of ‘the increasing recognition by
Neo-Confucians . . . of duly constituted institutions to protect this public discussion’
(Bary 1998c: 109). This ‘literati power’ to criticise emperors was not buttressed,
however, by the classical bargain of legal protection. As Will puts it: ‘one could be
brutally beaten on order of the emperor, thrown in one of the central governmental
jails to die, or at a minimum lose all of one’s ranks and titles. But, nevertheless, one had
such a right and one could always choose to exercise it’ (Will 2009: 271). In such a
harsh institutional environment, the ‘dissenting Confucian tradition’ was ‘unable
historically to prevail over the politically more dominant dynastic tradition’ (Bary
1998a: 22). Nevertheless, it does ‘constitute a significant line of Confucian thought
from Confucius and Mencius down through Song and Ming scholars to modern times
(Bary 1998c: 109).
The classical bargain of peasant welfare likewise persisted in the imperial era, again
in diminished form. Chinese emperors understood that political stability depended on
whether or not the people could maintain a decent livelihood. From the Han on,
emperors and officials would always profess to follow the Confucian policy of
promoting peasant well-being and maintaining light taxation. And a key government
function was to keep track of harvest conditions and grain prices so that famine relief
could be efficiently delivered. Nevertheless, the prevalence of tax rebellions testifies to
the fragility of this bargain in the imperial era.
A related Confucian ideal – that of local autonomy – was more consistently realised
in Chinese history. According to Bary, ‘From the Confucian viewpoint, a large sphere
of social activity was rightly governed by voluntary adherence to traditional rites
without the intervention of the state and its laws’ (Bary 1998c: 31). As Ho-fung Hung
explains, ‘mass Confucianism,’ as opposed to ‘imperial Confucianism’ was ‘reflected in
 ancient china 67

lineage organisations at the community level and also by pseudo-kinship or common-

local-origin ties’ (Hung 2009: 82). According to Will, Western visitors such as Father
Évariste Huc had indeed observed how village mayors were elected by fellow citizens
in the nineteenth century (Will 2005). Of course, such ‘village democracy’ was more
pro forma than substantive because the votes were always decided behind the scenes by
influential notables before the election dates – just as elections in the Western world
were not exactly ‘free and fair’ in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the very
existence of the electoral institution does attest to the relative autonomy of local
governance. This particular Confucian ideal was more extensively implemented in
imperial China partly because the imperial state had no capacity for direct rule at the
village level. The central court appointed magistrates down to the department and
county levels, but gave them such scanty resources that they had to rely on the
cooperation of ‘a range of extra-bureaucratic actors and groups, including local
militias, clan and lineage associations, and members of the local gentry’ (Thornton
2007: 24). Nor did the imperial state provide a budget for support staff so that
magistrates had to rely on a sub-bureaucratic staff of clerks, secretaries and tax
collectors who made their livings from imposing surtaxes and fees on local populations.
Because centrally appointed magistrates relied on local authority and local resources
they had to tolerate a certain degree of self-government. It was certainly not lost on
imperial officials that most peasant rebellions were started at village levels and led by
local notables.
Thus, the state–society bargains inherited from the classical era lingered on in the
rest of Chinese history, though they were more theoretical than substantive in eras of
unification. The bargain of peasant welfare was always upheld as a core ruling
principle. But the prevalence of peasant rebellions suggests that this bargain could
be readily discarded. The bargain of freedom of expression was sustained by gen-
erations of literati who gave primary loyalty to Confucian principles over the Son of
Heaven. But because the right to criticise was not buttressed by another bargain of
legal protection, Confucian scholars who exercised this right had to risk their lives.
Sinologists often argue that Confucian moral restraints were so weak because they
were not buttressed by any institutional support. However, as Bary points out, Huang
Zongxi (1610–95) already understood that one could not count on the emperor’s
capacity for self-restraint and thus sought to ‘limit the power of the ruler by defining
legal constraints and incorporating them in the organizational structure of govern-
ment’ (Bary 1998b: 49–50). Like previous reformist Confucian ideas, Huang’s
‘constitutional programme’ was not translated into policy.
Why did indigenous ideas of both natural law and constitutional constraints fail to
take root in China? The development of local autonomy from the Han on suggests that
the very emergence of checking institutions itself has to be explained – and that it was
as much a function of the balance of power between the state and the society as it was
the development of political ideas. This balance of forces could be altered only when an
imperial court faced intense international competition with equally powerful regimes,
as in the Song and other eras of division, or when a once powerful dynasty was in
decline, as in the late Ming and late Qing.
68 pre-classical democracy

The Chinese Enlightenment in the Civil War Era

China would experience an Enlightenment in the late Qing and Republican periods,
2,000 years after the classical era. In the Chinese nationalist narrative, modern Chinese
history is an episode of national humiliation, chaos and sufferings. Nevertheless, as
Stephen MacKinnon argues, fierce international competition ‘also politicized the
citizenry in a liberating sense’ (MacKinnon 1996: 943). The decades from the 1890s to
the 1930s represented a time when Chinese intellectuals openly debated the notions of
constitutional monarchy, republicanism and democracy. Philip Kuhn points out that
the first petition by the educated elite to the Qing court for popular representation in
1895 was ‘only conceivable under the duress of imminent foreign conquest’ (Kuhn
2002: 123). Orville Schell highlights that the May Fourth era (around 1919) was a great
‘Chinese Enlightenment’ (Schell 2004: 117). Arthur Waldron observes that the
Republican period under the Northern government of 1912–28 was ‘a period of
professedly parliamentary rule’, enjoying ‘substantial economic growth . . . freedom of
the press . . . and a flowering of culture’ (Waldron 2003: 264). Likewise, MacKinnon
points out that the short-lived Nationalist–Communist unity government at Hankou
in 1938 was marked by power-sharing among rival militarists and thus witnessed ‘the
absence of the repressive power of the state’ (MacKinnon 1996: 935). Against the
backdrop of Japanese invasion, ‘parliamentary-like debate’, ‘third-party movements’
(independent of both the Nationalists and Communists), the free press and the arts
flourished and ‘reached a twentieth-century zenith’ (MacKinnon 1996: 937). The
conclusion of the civil war, unfortunately, again aborted China’s democratic experi-
ments. After 1949, totalitarian states emerged on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Conclusion
In short, the roots of democracy are not alien to the Chinese tradition. The classical
Warring States period gave rise to citizenship rights defined as state–society bargains.
After Qin’s unification aborted the development of Chinese citizenship, classical
bargains were preserved in classical texts, though more as moral doctrines than as
actual policies. But the fact that China was more often divided than unified allowed
periodic revival of state–society bargains, especially the right of exit. If China has not
translated constitutional ideas and state–society bargains into democracy, it is not the
fault of the Chinese tradition in general or Confucianism in particular. China’s past in
fact provides immense resources to build a future that is simultaneously Chinese and
democratic. There is some hope that the twenty-first century will provide an
opportunity for those resources to be utilised and China’s democratic potential to
be fulfilled.

Note
1. Following the Chinese convention, Chinese names begin with surnames unless the scholars
in question publish in English and go by the English convention.
 ancient china 69

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 Chapter 6
Early Greece

Kurt A. Raaflaub

Greek democracy emerged in either late sixth- or mid-fifth-century1 Athens, with

strong arguments supporting both dates (Raaflaub et al. 2007). However, dēmokratia,
‘rule by the people’, was the result of a long evolution that affected other communities
as well (Robinson 1997). This chapter has two purposes. One is to trace the beginnings
of this evolution from the earliest extant evidence on Greek communities, institutions
and political reflection (in Homer’s epics and early laws) to the enactment of the first
known polis constitution in Sparta and the breakthrough of political and constitutional
thought in Solonian Athens. The other purpose is to explain in what ways these really
were steps towards democracy and why they were taken in archaic Greece, of all places.

Homer
Homer weaves into the Iliad’s dramatic narrative a series of political threads that focus
on problems of leadership worked out in the interaction among leaders in the council
and between leaders and community in the assembly (Homer [700 bce] 1950: 2.252–
335). The Odyssey explicitly addresses the importance of such institutions in the
description of the Cyclopes’ completely uncivilised ‘non-society’: they have ‘no
common norms, no meetings (agorai) for counsels’; they live independently in
mountain caves, ‘and each one is the law for his own wives and children, and cares
nothing about the others’ (Homer [700 bce] 1965: 9.112–15). The Phaeacians, an ideal
community, demonstrate that communal norms and meetings are typical of civilised
society (Homer [700 bce] 1965: 6–8, 13). They have a permanent assembly place: a
paved agora with polished stones as seats for councillors; leader, council and assembly
interact properly (Homer [700 bce] 1965: 6.266–7).
The marvellous shield of Achilles shows the agora as the setting for judicial disputes
and arbitration (Homer [700 bce] 1950: 18.497–508). The elders, sitting in a circle,
listen to two men who argue their case in turn, surrounded by a crowd of their
supporters who speak up for them and are kept in check by heralds. In the conceptual
design of the shield, this scene characterises a city in peace. Hence, in peace justice
rules; conflicts are resolved through arbitration amid an assembly of people in the
agora. The elders, ‘who safeguard the norms on behalf of Zeus’ (Homer [700 bce]
1950: 1.238–39), propose verdicts on which ordinary people express their opinions.
Such cases of explicit conceptualisation are rare. The evidence the epics offer lies
86 classical democracy

primarily in narrative and descriptive detail, and is often incidental – but plentiful. It is
part of the poet’s depiction of his actual social environment into which heroically
elevated events and actions are embedded. The society is essentially realistic and
historical, datable to around 700 bce (Finkelberg 2011: 359–61, 810–13). The epic
community is an early form of the polis, as yet without formalised institutions. The
polis was not a ‘city-state’, but a small, independent, face-to-face community,
encompassing settlements and territory, with its own customs, norms, cults and
government. The community of citizens was primary: Athens was a town, Attica a
territory; the polis was ‘the Athenians’. ‘The men are the polis’, says Thucydides
(Thucydides [400 bce] 1972: 7.77.7). He was anticipated by the poet Alcaeus around
600 (Campbell 1982: 112.10, 426). Thus, the polis was a ‘citizen-state’ (Davies 1997;
Hansen 1993: 7–29). Homer’s polis in nuce represents this principle (Raaflaub 1993).
The institutional structure of the polis is clearly visible. The paramount leader is a
primus inter pares; his position, based on household resources, personal qualities and
achievement, is firmly embedded in the community. The privileges of office oblige the
leaders to justify themselves through outstanding service (Homer [700 bce] 1950:
12.310–21; 1.117; 2.233–4). Agamemnon and Hector illustrate success and failure in
this respect. The dramatic narrative thus enables audiences to recognise good and bad
leadership, the qualities and behaviours associated with it and the consequences. Here,
and in the conceptualisations mentioned above, lie the beginnings of Greek political
reflection that focuses not least on debates in council and assembly (Balot 2006: 16–47;
Cartledge 2009: 29–40; Finkelberg 2011: 104, 143; Raaflaub 2000: 27–34). The men
meeting in assembly also fight in the army, playing an indispensable role even in
‘heroic’ battles (Raaflaub 2008).
In the epic period the agora is the centre of the polis where communal activities take
place, often legitimised by the presence of the demos (people). The assembly is an
indispensable part of communal life: the men involved are convened whenever a
decision needs to be made (Raaflaub 1997: 8–20). Detailed descriptions of meetings
illustrates the procedures. There is neither general debate nor vote, and the assembly
cannot take the initiative, but the men express their opinion unmistakably by voice or
feet. The leader can ignore their opinion (as Agamemnon does), but if he then fails he
is in trouble and in some situations it seems difficult to act against the firm will of
council or assembly (Homer [700 bce] 1950: 15.721–3; Homer [700 bce] 1965:
13.239). A good leader listens to advice and follows the best proposal. Consensus
and conflict resolution are crucial to maintaining communal peace, so the ideal leader
is explicitly characterised as the best at fighting and in speaking (Homer [700 bce]
1950: 1.274, 3.216–24, 9.440–3). Usually, it is the leaders who speak, but anyone who
has good advice to offer can be heard. A lowly person, Thersites, is disciplined not for
speaking out, but for doing so ‘against the order or norms’ (kosmos) (Homer [700 bce]
1950: 2.213–14). Hence, there are norms to be observed.
The assembly deals with public matters (dēmion) (Homer [700 bce] 1965: 2.32).
Arguing that the woes of his household, though private, should be of concern to the
community, Telemachus tries to mobilise public opinion against the suitors of his
mother (Homer [700 bce] 1965: 2.25–79). A friend blames the people for remaining
silent and not restraining the few suitors, ‘being yourselves so many’ (Homer [700 bce]
 early greece 87

1965: 2.239–41). Indeed, after trying to murder Telemachus, the suitors fear that the
people will expel them from the community (Homer [700 bce] 1965: 16.376–82, 424–
30). All this suggests that the assembly, and the people in general, might be (or
become) forces to be reckoned with.
In epic society, institutions are firmly established, communally indispensable and
function according to well-established norms. Politics is not institutionalised or guided
by laws, but performed in the communal interaction among leaders and men (Hammer
2002). The epic polis is already a community of citizens whose communal importance
is reflected in their roles as fighters and assemblymen. Although the poet usually
focuses on the leaders’ actions, these are embedded in and validated by the community.
Political developments in subsequent centuries have their roots in the structures and
relations fostered by the emerging polis as seen in Homer.
Hesiod (early seventh century) offers further valuable insights into the conceptua-
lisation of political values and political reflection concerning the qualities of leadership
and the crucial importance of justice for individual and communal well-being
(Raaflaub 2000: 34–7). But he does not focus on the polis or institutions, and it is
unclear whether the community has any influence. He can only urge both leaders and
commoners to act justly and trust in the ultimate power of Zeus’ justice. A century
later, Solon will refute and transcend some of Hesiod’s positions as is seen below.

Early Laws
Many of the laws the Greek poleis enact from the mid-seventh century deal with
political issues and government, presumably reacting to negative experiences. They
become more frequent in the sixth century and are important indicators for the process
of formalising institutions and ‘institutionalising’ the polis (Farenga 2006; Gagarin
1986; Gehrke 2000; Hölkeskamp 1994). The earliest extant law, from Dreros on Crete
dated about 650, begins with ‘this was decided by the polis’ (Fornara 1983: 11;
Koerner 1993: 90; Meiggs and Lewis 1988: 2; van Effenterre and Ruzé 1994: 81).
Decision by polis or demos recurs in several other laws. Hence, the collectivity of
citizens takes action and enacts laws – sometimes in elaborate ways (Effenterre and
Ruzé 1994: 41; Fornara 1983: 18; Herodotus [460 bce] 1972: 4.150–3; Meiggs and
Lewis 1988: 5). The Dreros law prohibits repetition within ten years of the chief office
of kosmos, imposes on the violator a fine and loss of active citizenship, and lists as
witnesses the kosmos, damioi and ‘twenty of the polis’. By 650, therefore, this small polis
had an apparatus of officials and regulated rotation in the chief office. Other laws
differentiate between citizens and foreigners, mention a variety of officials, a council of
elders, civic subdivisions, public funds and, by 550 on Chios, a ‘popular council’ with
specific responsibilities and powers (Fornara 1983: 19; Koerner 1993: 61; Meiggs and
Lewis 1988: 8; van Effenterre and Ruzé 1994: 62). Early lawgivers, sometimes enacting
clusters of laws, are attested in several poleis (Hölkeskamp 1999). An inscribed
collection of laws has survived in Gortyn, while much of Solon’s comprehensive
legislation is cited by later authors (Willetts 1967).
Early laws thus reflect poleis that acted with a communal will and voice, had a
differentiated government apparatus which they tried to regulate, and defined their
88 classical democracy

membership and relations with others. Laws were instruments to realise the com-
munity’s collective will and to change its order and institutions. They presuppose
political reflection and an awareness of the potential and consequences of thought and
action in the political realm. Laws were inscribed, mostly on stone monuments and
thus intended to be visible and last (Gagarin 2008). They were often placed in
sanctuaries under divine protection. Perhaps more than instructing a (mostly illiterate)
public, such monumentalisation demonstrated respect for the law and made it secure
(Eder 2005; Thomas 1996; Whitley 1998). The law also became changeable. Greek law
was not static but dynamic. Communities realised that they had control over their law
and recognised its significance for communal stability. Accordingly, they expanded,
refined and adapted it to changing needs. In contrast to Near Eastern antecedents,
Greek legal culture – like Greek culture in general – was developed from the middle of
citizen communities (Meier 2011; Raaflaub 2009: 41–8). This facilitated constitutional
creativity and reform.

Sparta’s ‘Great Rhetra’: The First Polis Constitution

Though later unique, seventh-century Sparta differed much less from other Greek
poleis than had long been believed (Cartledge 2001: 21–38; Finley 1982: ch. 2). Its
famous militarised system with its regimented education and lifestyle evolved in the
sixth and fifth centuries to meet specific challenges (Plutarch [75 ce] 1914; Xenophon
[380 bce] 1925). The mid-seventh-century poet Tyrtaeus witnessed some of its causes:
a crisis that was probably connected with a revolt of Messenia, a large territory Sparta
had conquered earlier (Cartledge 2002; West 1992: 169–84, 1994: 23–7;). In an elegy
entitled ‘Eunomia’, Tyrtaeus summarises a set of political regulations, cited also by
Plutarch and referring to the ‘Great Rhetra’ (Effenterre and Ruzé 1994: 61; Fornara
1983: 12; Plutarch [75 ce] 1914: 6; West 1992: 4). Scholars agree on the essential
authenticity of this account’s, though not on the details. Plutarch mentions a new
sanctuary, new civic subdivisions and a gerousia (council of elders) of thirty members,
including the two ‘kings’; assembly meetings are to be held regularly on the festival day
of Apollo at a specified place, ‘so as to propose and stand aside. But to the people shall
belong the authority to respond and power (kratos)’ (Plutarch [75 ce] 1914: 6). ‘Making
proposals’ is unproblematic, while ‘to stand aside’ seems corrupted; perhaps the demos
were entitled to respond to proposals made by others. Kratos is undisputed: power was
in the hands of the demos. Tyrtaeus’ summary of the Rhetra (West 1992: 4.3–10)
defines a hierarchy of speaking: first, the ‘kings’; second, the other members of the
gerousia; last, the commoners. The demos have the final decision (nikē) and in this sense
power (kratos).
The two documents complement each other, suggesting both civic/military and
political reform. New civic subdivisions elsewhere reflect organisational adjustments
necessitated by the formalisation of hoplite fighting (in a dense formation of heavily
armed infantrymen). The reform’s communal importance was emphasised by placing
it under the protection of Zeus and Athena. The institutions and process of decision
making were regulated. The gerousia now consisted specifically of thirty men,
distinguished by age and experience. The fixed number implies an election; the
 early greece 89

method was collective shouting (Plutarch [75 ce] 1914: 26). Although the demos
ultimately decided, the councillors spoke first and introduced proposals. Whether
there was open discussion remains unclear. An additional clause gave councillors some
kind of veto power (Plutarch [75 ce] 1914: 6.7–8). In addition, there were five ephors.
When they were introduced is debated. Elected for one-year terms by the assembly,
they somehow represented the demos and balanced the power of leaders and gerousia.
The Rhetra is the first polis constitution known from ancient Greece. The demos
were the Spartiates, a few thousand full citizens defined by landed property, and the
capacity to fight in the hoplite army that proved crucial in defeating the Messenians
and controlling this territory with its large slave population (helots). This explains the
formalisation of the Spartiates’ decision-making power and the ensuing evolution of
Sparta’s peculiar system, based on an elite of citizen-soldiers known as homoioi or
‘peers’ (Cartledge 2001: 68–75). Although impulses for further innovation did not
come from this polis, known for having few written laws and adhering to tradition, the
Rhetra is a singularly important document because, despite all its restrictions, it sealed
the demos’ sovereignty.

Solon of Athens: ‘Good Order’ and Civic Responsibility

Athens, too, had a problem with dependent labour and internal crisis. Its lawgiver,
Solon, left poetry that formulates his ideas and justifies his actions and laws
(Ruschenbusch 1966, 2010; West 1992: 139–65, 1994: 74–83). Apparently, widespread
social and economic crises and ruthless exploitation of debt resulted in social unrest,
and in 594 prompted the Athenians to appoint Solon as chief magistrate and mediator
and give him full power to enact necessary reforms (Blok and Lardinois 2006; Murray
1993; Wallace 2007). Such mediators played a crucial role at the time, offering a
peaceful alternative to civil strife or tyranny (Wallace 2009). They were connected with
the Delphic oracle (famous for advocating moderation); stood above the conflicting
parties, thus representing a ‘third position’; and as ‘sages’ they enjoyed far-reaching
authority (Meier 1990: 40–52). Importantly, they were appointed by the community
and acted on its behalf. Thus, Solon speaks as an Athenian and addresses his fellow
citizens, standing between the conflicting parties and preventing either from hurting
the other or profiting unjustly (West 1992: 4.1–8, 30; 36.1–2; 5; 36.20–7; 37).
In a programmatic elegy, later also entitled ‘Eunomia’, Solon establishes the
theoretical foundation of his reforms (West 1992: 4). Like Homer and Hesiod, he
emphasises that it is not the gods, but humans themselves that are responsible for their
fate (Homer [700 bce] 1965: 1.28–43; West 1992: 4.1–4). The citizens, particularly the
elite, driven by greed, commit abuses that cause stasis with disastrous consequences for
all (West 1992: 5–6, 18–25). Based on empirical observation, Solon constructs an
inescapable chain of cause and effect, comparable with the laws of nature (such as
thunder following upon lightning), that links socio-political wrongdoing by citizens
with harm suffered by the community (West 1992: 9, 4.5–25). Unlike Homer and
Hesiod, Solon places such consequences entirely on the socio-political level. In
Hesiod’s thought, justice is realised by the power of Zeus through whom his daughter,
Dike, exacts her revenge (Hesiod [700 bce] 1978: 256–62). Solon sees Dike as an
90 classical democracy

independent demon of revenge, acting on her own, almost as an abstract principle:

justice will prevail – with certainty (West 1992: 4.14–17). The entire city is affected;
nobody can escape (West 1992: 26–9). Hesiod’s advice, to avoid the public and focus
on the private sphere, proves to be ineffective (Hesiod [700 bce] 1978: 27–30, 299–
354).
For the first time, a political process was analysed entirely on the political level. This
represented a thrilling breakthrough in political thought (Meier 2011). Hesiod’s
appeals had been founded on myth, belief and hopes of divine intervention; Solon’s
proceeded from empirical knowledge, political analysis and theoretical understanding.
Knowing the causes of the communal problems, he aimed at eliminating them and thus
avoiding the aggravation or recurrence of the problem. The community, afflicted by
‘bad order’ (dysnomia) and ‘taught’ by the mediator (West 1992: 4.30), was enabled to
re-establish ‘good order’ (eunomia) (West 1992: 4.30–9); the aristocracy, equally
affected, found it in their own interest to collaborate (Eder 2005). Thus, in Hesiod,
Tyrtaeus and Solon, eunomia appears as a central communal value: lawgiver and
community, confronted with crisis and conflict (dysnomia), aimed at restoring eunomia
and that was the focus of early constitutional thought (Meier 1990: 160). The
combination of eunomia with ‘equality’ soon defined the key value characterising
Kleisthenes’ new constitution: isonomia (equal distribution, participation) (Raaflaub
1996).
Dealing with the immediate crisis, Solon cancelled debts and prohibited lending on
the security of the borrower’s person, thus abolishing debt bondage and guaranteeing
the citizens’ personal freedom (Raaflaub 2004: 45–53). Solon commented on his
legislation: ‘I wrote down ordinances for low and high alike, providing straight justice
fitted for each man (or case)’ (West 1992: 36.18–20). This approximates to the
principle of equality before the law, fully expressed later by isonomia. His priority
was to establish certainty of law, to give all citizens access to justice and to involve the
citizens in the jurisdiction: a special assembly served as a court for communally
important issues and any person who wished was empowered to take legal action on
behalf of an injured third party.
In the political sphere, Solon expanded the division of the citizens into ‘classes’,
which, based on military and economic capacity, determined their political status
(Hansen 1999: 29–32). Henceforth, wealth, not birth, would determine political
participation and access to political office. This made it more difficult for the
aristocracy to monopolise power and introduced more openness into politics. A
new council with 400 members, elected annually for one-year terms, was presumably
charged with preparing the assembly’s agenda (Rhodes 1981: 153–4). If authentic, this
council balanced the power of the aristocratic ‘Areopagus Council’ and enhanced the
role of the assembly. Some regulation of the assembly’s meetings and procedures is
thus likely. Finally, Solon protected the Athenian institutions from subversion,
outlawing tyranny and making it mandatory for citizens to take sides in the event
of stasis. All these measures served three purposes: to stabilise the community by
eliminating abuses and establishing a firm system of justice; to balance elite power by
creating avenues for political participation by non-elite citizens; and to prevent civil
discord with the potential result of tyranny. They are the logical consequence of
 early greece 91

Solon’s understanding of civic responsibility: if every citizen was to suffer from

political abuses, every citizen had to assume responsibility for the common good.

Early Constitutional Developments and Democracy

The juxtaposition, in Sparta’s ‘Rhetra,’ of demos and kratos reminds us of dēmokratia.
In both Sparta and Athens the assembly passed final decisions. Some scholars thus
date the beginning of democracy in this early period (Hansen 1994: 33; Ruschenbusch
1995). This seems mistaken, especially for Sparta, because many Greeks later looked to
Sparta as an ideal of oligarchy and because the assembly was severely constrained by
the council’s prerogatives (Raaflaub et al. 2007: 39–40; Rawson 1969). Although
sovereign, the demos were far from ruling the polis. Although Solon urged his fellow
citizens to assume political responsibility, his ideal was not democratic, but rather
conservative (Raaflaub et al. 2007: 142–4; Wallace 2007). He differentiated political
functions according to military and economic capacities, and endorsed the traditional
distribution of roles: the aristocracy was to lead; the demos, clearly not considered
capable of leading, was to follow (West 1992: 5–6). Whether or not active political
participation was restricted de facto to the propertied classes who were eligible for
service in the hoplite army, democracy in any meaningful sense was far beyond Solon’s
horizon (Raaflaub 2006: 404–23; Rhodes 1981: 140–1).
What matters, though, is that in a severe social crisis a person of exceptional political
insight developed a political theory and a programme of reform, ‘sold’ it to his fellow
citizens and, when endowed by them with full power, realised a broad and incisive
legislative agenda to fix the problems. Although Solon was unable to prevent the
recurrence of factional strife and eventually tyranny, he demonstrated what the
individual laws discussed above only suggested: that the community had itself become
the object of political action by the citizens. Through legislation enacted in the
assembly or by the delegation of power to an elected lawgiver, the citizens were able to
change and improve their communal order: they were in control of their community.
Overall, Solon’s accomplishment was huge: he provided protection to lower-class
citizens, guaranteed citizens’ rights to personal freedom, established the certainty of
law, improved equality before the law, made the political process more transparent and
involved the demos in communal responsibility. Some of his measures were crucial in
setting Athens on a path that led eventually to democracy.
From its emergence in the early archaic period, Greek literature paid attention to
politics and institutions and engaged in political reflection that focused, from a
strongly communal perspective, on leadership, the role of institutions and justice.
Early political laws and ‘constitutions’, decided upon or authorised by the assembly,
concentrated on the same issues. Political reforms enacted by elected lawgivers aimed
initially at restoring ‘good order’ based on justice, equitable distribution and popular
participation. Some of the earliest stages of this development, reflected in the epics,
have analogies in the ancient Near East. The next steps – formal legislation by
communal decision (not royal decree), constitutionalisation (Sparta) and reform based
on theoretical analysis (Solon) – lead beyond such analogies. Close comparison of
collective forms of government in Greece and the ancient Near East is useful (Fleming
92 classical democracy

2004; Isakhan and Stockwell 2011; Oswald 2009; Raaflaub 2009). The explanation for
the further Greek development lies in the conditions under which society and culture
in archaic Greece were formed, and in the specific nature of the Greek polis (Hall 2007;
Meier 2011; Osborne 1996; Snodgrass 1980; Starr 1977). Features typical of the
ancient Near East, such as centralised states, strong and religiously sanctioned
monarchies and vassal systems, were unknown in archaic Greece. Although the early
polis was structurally similar to emerging Near Eastern city-states, it quickly developed
in a different direction. Its paramount leader did not stand above the community, let
alone ‘rule’ it. Members of an emerging aristocracy were essentially equal, separated by
a relatively small gap from the majority of independent farmers who played an
indispensable communal role in army and assembly. The elite’s status and privileges
were embedded in the community because elite and commoners depended on each
other, hence, the polis rested on a strong egalitarian foundation (Morris 2000; Raaflaub
et al. 2007).
The Aegean World developed outside the power sphere of major empires. Poleis
developed in clusters, balancing each other. Some large poleis emerged, but were
unable to create even proto-imperial power formations. Lack of external pressure and
the limited role of war obviated the need for a strong and cohesive elite. Instead, elite
competition was intense and often destructive; it mobilised resistance among the demos
and often opened the way to tyranny: a weak and transient form of monarchy. In a
period of rapid change, the communal element in the polis was strengthened at the
expense of elite aspirations, as power and political procedures were formalised.
Overseas trade and emigration offered opportunities for profit and social mobility,
challenging traditional values and aristocratic leadership (Donlan 1999: 35–111).
Social and economic crisis and often violent confrontations between elite and non-
elite made it necessary to find new ways of resolving conflicts. In a striking move
unique to Greece, in such situations many poleis turned to mediators and lawgivers.
Although endowed with virtually autocratic power, they were appointed by the
community and acted on its behalf. Differences among poleis encouraged comparison
and reflection, and the foundation of new poleis abroad, with settlers of different
origins, made it necessary to experiment with new institutional solutions that, in turn,
influenced developments in the ‘old world’. As a result, a sophisticated culture of
political thinking emerged that generated remarkably complex and sometimes radical
solutions.

Conclusion
Whatever they thought of the power of gods and fate, the Greeks understood early on
that ultimately humans themselves were responsible for both their fortunes and
misfortunes. As enforcers of justice, too, the gods were needed only as long as no
sufficiently powerful human agency existed. Legislation, backed by communal en-
forcement, and Solon’s understanding of justice as an autonomous factor, pushed the
gods into the background in both the political and legal spheres – though not in that of
popular morality. The citizens assumed control, especially as a community. Hence, the
polis enacted laws – itself or through appointed lawgivers – not least in the political
 early greece 93

sphere, and engaged in comprehensive communal reform and rebuilding. Government

in Greece was not a suffered reality, but a communal project, the object of political
reflection, analysis and action. Homer suggests that the role of the demos was
potentially powerful early on. Intercommunal wars enhanced the commoners’ com-
munal importance. This trend reached a climax in Sparta where extraordinary conditions
– an enemy within the polis’ own boundaries – required constant military preparation and
facilitated the early enactment of a constitution that placed communal decisions formally
in the hands of the citizens. Elsewhere, elite abuses resulted in stasis, which, in the interest
of all, including the elite, could be resolved only by enhancing the citizens’ communal
responsibility, and formalising and adjusting the institutions. As a consequence, the polis,
placed on a broader foundation, was institutionalised and stabilised.
Institutions and their interplay, and constitutions in a broader sense, even politeia as
the entire way of life of a polis, thus became the focus of political thought and action,
even of first attempts at theorisation, and of laws by which such ideas could be realised.
Broad efforts in those directions were undertaken by Solon, whose work represents a
first highlight in the interactive development of the polis: ‘the political’ and political
thought (Cartledge 2009; Meier 1990). The next step, achieved decades later in many
poleis (Robinson 1997), and culminating in a magnificent edifice of comprehensive and
sophisticated structural reform in Kleisthenic Athens, aimed at fully integrating the
polis and institutionalising the equal participation of the citizens – democracy or,
perhaps rather, the last stage before it: ‘isonomy’.

Note
1. All dates in this chapter are bce.

References
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Blok, J. and A. Lardinois (eds) (2006), Solon of Athens, Leiden: Brill.
Campbell, D. A. (ed. and trans.) (1982), Greek Lyric, vol. I, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Cartledge, P. (2001), Spartan Reflections, London: Duckworth.
Cartledge, P. (2002), Sparta and Lakonia, 2nd edn, London: Routledge.
Cartledge, P. (2009), Ancient Greek Political Thought in Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Davies, J. K. (1997), ‘The ‘‘Origins of the Greek Polis’’: Where Should We be Looking?’, in L.
G. Mitchell and P. J. Rhodes (eds), The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece, London:
Routledge, pp. 24–38.
Donlan, W. (1999), The Aristocratic Ideal and Selected Papers, Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-
Carducci.
Eder, W. (2005), ‘The Political Significance of the Codification of Law in Archaic Societies’, in
K. Raaflaub (ed.), Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of the
Orders, Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 239–67.
Effenterre, H. van and F. Ruzé (eds) (1994), Nomima: Recueil d’inscriptions politiques et
juridiques de l’archaı̈sme grec, vol. I, Paris: École française de Rome.
 Chapter 7
Athens

David J. Phillips

The term dēmokratia most probably dates back to 508/71 (Ehrenberg 1950; Hansen
1986, 1991: 69–71; Sealey 1973). At that time in the Athenian polis (city-state), the
aristocratic Kleisthenes ‘took the people (demos) into his faction’ (Aristotle [332 bce]
1984: 20.1; Herodotus [460 bce] 1972: 5.66.2). He did so in order to gain the upper
hand in his struggle for political power with the aristocratic and Spartan-backed
Isagoras who had been elected as the eponymous archon for 508/7. These two men
contested power in the aftermath of the tyranny of the Peisistratids (545–511/10),
which had curbed the opportunities for aristocrats to seek honour through political
leadership. After the expulsion of the last tyrant, Hippias, contests for leadership
resumed in what was still an aristocratic polis. However, one of the consequences of the
tyranny was the consolidation and growth of the demos, especially those living in and
near the city (asty). Kleisthenes turned to this element of the population, promising to
lead the Athenian polis to a constitution (politeia) in which ultimate authority rested
with the demos. It would be dēmokratia – the rule of the people or as Thucydides
defines it: ‘Our constitution is called a democracy [dēmokratia] because power is the
hands not of a minority but of the whole people’ (Thucydides [400 bce] 1972: 2.37.1).
But how do we know these particular details? The study of the Athenian democracy
dates back to classical antiquity and the fifth and the fourth centuries during which
democracy in one form or another prevailed in Athens. Our earliest source is
Herodotus and his Histories which were written during the middle decades of the
fifth century (Herodotus [460 bce] 1972). He was primarily concerned with the wars
between the Greeks and the Persians, but made numerous digressions, particularly on
matters Athenian. Other ancient sources include historians such as Thucydides and
Xenophon, playwrights such as Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes, some mainly
fourth-century Athenian orators and inscriptions (Aeschylus [463 bce] 1930; Aris-
tophanes [422 bce] 1998; Euripides [423 bce] 1995; Marr and Rhodes 2008; Ober
1989; Rhodes and Osborne 2003; Thucydides [400 bce] 1972). Then, in the late
nineteenth century, the British Museum acquired four papyrus rolls, which contained
a near continuous text of Athenaion Politeia, the lost history of the Athenian
Constitution (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984; Fritz and Kapp 1950; Moore 1975). Previously
known from over 200 quotations in other works and from two small leaves of a papyrus
codex, this history of the Athenian constitution was attributed to Aristotle and may be
one of a collection of 158 histories of polis constitutions which supposedly formed the
98 classical democracy

research for Aristotle’s Politics. Several opening chapters dealing with the period of the
Athenian kings and the early aristocratic Athenian polis are lost and some of the
concluding chapters on the law courts (dikasteria) are damaged. Chapters 1–40 cover
the history of the Athenian constitution and the emergence of democracy from the
seventh century to the end of the fifth century. Chapter 41 summarises the changes in
the constitution from its early ‘tribal’ days and monarchy to the restoration of the
democracy in 403 after a nine-month period of extreme and violent oligarchy which
had been established, with Spartan backing, following the defeat of Athens and her
allies in the Peloponnesian War (Krentz 1982: 131–52). Chapters 42–69 give a detailed
account of the workings of the Athenian democracy as it was in the 330s and 320s – the
last two decades of fully functioning Athenian direct participatory democracy.

Modern Scholarship on Athenian Democracy

Significant modern scholarship on Athenian democracy begins with Charles Hignett,
who adopts a very sceptical approach to the sources and provides a legalistic
constitutional study of sixth- and fifth-century Athens devoid of political or social
context (Hignett 1952). Arnold Jones addresses some of these omissions by examining
the economic basis of the Athenian democracy, its social and political contexts, its
ideology, its critics and its day-to-day operations (Jones 1957). In 1962, Moses Finley
published a seminal paper on the Athenian demagogues in which he demonstrated that
the demagogoi (leaders of the demos/people) were an essential factor in the functioning
of the democracy (Finley 1962). Demagogos was a descriptive and neutral term that
assumed pejorative overtones only when used by critics of democracy (Connor 1971;
Ober 1989). A brief and sometimes overlooked study by William Forrest traced the
emergence of democracy in Greece, and particularly Athens, in its broad socio-
political and historical context (Forrest 1966). Inevitably, because the abundance of the
evidence is for Athens, the history of Greek democracy tends to be the history of
Athenian democracy, although evidence of democracies elsewhere in Greece grows
(Brock 2009; Brock and Hodkinson 2000; Carlsson 2010; Hansen and Nielsen 2004;
O’Neil 1995; Robinson 1997, 2011; Rutter 2000).
In the mid-1970s, the Danish scholar Mögens Hansen began an extensive series of
studies that culminated in 1991 with publication of The Athenian Democracy in the Age
of Demosthenes (Hansen 1991). A second edition in 1999 includes an invaluable
additional chapter: ‘One Hundred and Sixty Theses about Athenian Democracy’.
Hansen’s study is definitive and the starting point for any study of Athenian
democracy. Important further studies include monographs by Josiah Ober exploring
political leadership and the relationship between the masses and the elite, drawing
upon the evidence of the mainly fourth-century orators with a catalogue of extant
speeches (Ober 1989). He also gives the most comprehensive account of the classical
critics of Athenian democracy, pointing to the origins of Western political thought in
the opposition to the ideology of Athenian democracy, and his latest book analyses
Athenian political practice – what he calls democratic knowledge management – and
demonstrates why Athens worked as a direct, participatory democracy (Ober 1998,
2008).
 athens 99

Three different accounts of how, when and why democracy began to emerge at
Athens have been published together, reflecting the vital debate in this important area
(Raaflaub et al. 2007). Robert Wallace focuses on the beginning of the sixth century
when the crisis in the aristocratic polis resulted in the reforms of Solon (Aristotle [332
bce] 1984: 5–12). This was the first of ‘three rupture moments’ identified by Kurt
Raaflaub in his introduction. Ober focuses on the revolutionary actions of the demos
and the reforms of Kleisthenes in 508/7 (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 20.3; Ober 1993).
Raaflaub develops his earlier work to view events after the Persian Wars, and specific
changes to the constitution in 462/1 attributed to Ephialtes and his young supporter
Pericles, as marking the final emergence of the radical, naval-based democracy of the
later fifth and fourth centuries (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 25; Morris and Raaflaub
1998). Since the mid-1980s the Cambridge scholar Robin Osborne has carried on
Jones’s tradition of exploring the contexts of Athenian democracy, including the
religious and secular rituals which underpin it (Osborne 2010). In a similar vein are
studies on democracy, empire and the arts, and on warfare and democracy (Boedeker
and Raaflaub 1998; Pritchard 2010).
Beginning with Finley, there is a tradition in scholarship on Athenian democracy
that seeks to contribute to debates about the nature and future of modern democracy
(Finley 1985). These discussions have been particularly vigorous in the United States,
with some scholars advocating the utility of studies of Athenian democracy for modern
democracy, while others call for caution in the deployment of Athens in discussions of
democracy in the United States, a representative republic with a democratic ideology
and not a democracy per se (Ober and Hedrick 1996; Samons 2004). The two extremes
reflect divergent modern ideologies, liberal and neo-conservative, with the latter
following the anti-democratic tradition from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle through to
the Republican fathers of the United States and beyond (Roberts 1994).

Direct Participatory Democracy at Athens

The Greek polis was characterised by its small size and by a town centre connected to
its hinterland, which together constituted the polis-state. In terms of size and
complexity, Athens was not a typical polis (Cohen 2000). Its territory covered the
entire Attic peninsular, some 2,500 km2, and its population peaked in 431 at around
300,000, of which about 60,000 were adult male citizens. However, following the losses
of the Peloponnesian War (431–404) this number dropped to 25,000–30,000 citizens in
a total population of about 250,000 (Hansen and Nielsen 2004: 627). The majority of
the population were non-citizens: that is, women, children, foreign residents (metics)
and slaves. A more typical polis was smaller with less than 100 km2 and fewer than
1,000 adult males (Hansen 1991: 55–8).
The exclusions from citizenship which lead to negative judgements of Athenian
democracy need to be seen in historical perspective. Democracy in the early United
States co-existed with slavery. Nowhere, until the late nineteenth century, were
women given the right to vote, and modern states do not grant citizenship rights
to aliens unless they are naturalised (Kagan 2009: 98). It is the inclusions within
Athenian, and Greek, democracy that are significant. The usual constitutions of Greek
100 classical democracy

poleis were aristocratic or oligarchic: full participation and political power rested with a
few based on birth (the gennaioi, the aristoi) or wealth (the plousioi, the oligoi).
Democracy gave full political rights to the many (the plethoi, the demos) who were
native to the land.
In 508/7, three years after the overthrow of the Peisistratid tyranny and the
expulsion of Spartan-backed Isagoras and his supporters, Kleisthenes was recalled by
the demos to lay the foundations of democracy by creating ten new tribes (Aristotle [332
bce] 1984: 20–1; Herodotus [460 bce] 1972: 5.69). While some see a popular uprising
of the demos (Ober 1993), others view events more cynically and argue that Kleisthenes
used the opportunity to manipulate the tribal reorganisation to advantage himself and
his Alkmeonid genos or family (Bicknell 1972; Stanton 1984). All agree, however, that
what Kleisthenes established with his tribal reorganisation was a democracy that
embodied the principle of isonomia, that is, equality before the law (Ostwald 1986: 27).
Apart from wanting to prevail over Isagoras, Kleisthenes’ motives are not mentioned in
any extant source. After the passage of his reforms through the assembly, he disappears
from history. From the outset, the new system of popular government where the
assembly of citizens (ekklesia) was sovereign was called isonomia as well as dēmokratia
(Herodotus [460 bce] 1972: 3.80.6, 6.131.1). The tribes formed the basis of the
political and military organisation of the Athenian polis. Each tribe was composed of
demes (villages and city districts), of which there were 139 (Bicknell 1972). Member-
ship of a deme made one a citizen (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 42.1–2). The demes were
assigned by lot to a tribe with a selection from Attica’s three regions – city, shore and
inland – so the tribes were composed of a mix of citizens (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984:
21.4). Each tribe supplied equal numbers to the council (boule) of 500 and the board of
ten generals (strategoi), who were not only military leaders but also, by the 480s,
political leaders. Kleisthenes also introduced the law of ostracism which allowed a
leading Athenian politician to be banished for ten years, but without loss of citizenship
or confiscation of property (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 22.1; Phillips 1982). Ostensibly
designed to prevent tyranny, it was used on at least nine occasions during the fifth
century and possibly more (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 22.3). A vote on ostracism
(ostrakophoria) could be called only once a year and, although it remained on the
statutes, it was not used during the fourth century (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 43.5).
With adjustments over time, such as the appointment of the nine chief magistrates
(archons) by lot rather than by popular vote, Athenian democracy may have remained
essentially the same as it was at the beginning of the fifth century (Aristotle [332 bce]
1984: 22.5; 487/6). But events, not necessarily of the Athenians own choosing,
unfolded so that Athens became a naval power and the citizen rowers in the fleet
became a significant voice in the assembly. Persia, the most powerful empire in the
east, expanded westward in the 540s and gained control over Greek poleis in Asia
Minor, the eastern Aegean and parts of northern Greece. In the 490s, during the reign
of King Darius I (521–486), the Persians launched a large-scale invasion that saw the
capture of poleis in Euboea and the Cycladic Islands. Aegina in the Saronic Gulf,
almost within sight of Athens, had already gone over to the Persians. Athens’ exiled
tyrants, the Peistratidai, were with the Persians seeking to be installed once more
(Herodotus [460 bce] 1972: 6.94.1, 102, 107.1, 109.5). Against all odds the Athenians,
 athens 101

with their neighbour, Plataia, defeated the Persians at Marathon on the east coast of
Attica (Herodotus [460 bce] 1972: 6.102–3). Because of their religious scruples the
Spartans, the strongest force in the Greek world, did not join the Athenians at
Marathon. The standing of the Athenians in the eyes of both themselves and other
Greeks was greatly enhanced.
At the end of the 480s, after five ostracisms saw leaders exiled for supposed
tyrannical or Persian sympathies, Athens was once again facing a massive Persian
invasion by land and sea led by King Xerxes (Aristotle [332 bc] 1984: 22.5–7). This
time, however, Athens was joined by Sparta and many other poleis, and she was
prepared with a new navy of 200 triremes. The fleet was built with the income from
silver mined in southern Attica (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 22.7; Herodotus [460 bce]
1972: 7.144.1). The Athenian general Themistokles, who had proposed the building of
the ships, was able to deploy them at Salamis for a major victory against the Persian
fleet in September 480. Believing the power of the Persians to be unstoppable, the
Delphic oracle advised the Athenians to abandon Hellas (Herodotus [460 bce] 1972:
7.139.6–140). However, in 479 the Greeks were victorious at Plataia and Mycale
(Herodotus [460 bce] 1972: 9.28–73, 96–105). The Persian defeat saw the creation in
478 of a defensive naval alliance, the Delian League, headed by Athens. Its aim was to
prevent incursions of Persian forces into Greece, the Aegean and the poleis on the
shores of Asia Minor. Athens had become a naval power and in due course, as a
democracy, it headed an empire. The fleet became what has termed ‘the trireme school
of democracy’ (Strauss 1996).
The 470s and 460s saw a consolidation of Athenian power abroad and an increased
significance for the poorer (thetic) citizen rowers in the assembly. The thetes were the
lowest property class and constituted about 60 per cent of the citizenry. It was a period
when political leaders manoeuvred to win their support. The Areopagus, the tradi-
tional council composed mostly of former archons, was pitted against generals who
attacked its members and its powers (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 23.1, 25.1). Matters
came to a head in 462/1 when Ephialtes sponsored political reforms through the
assembly which stripped the Areopagus of most of its powers and assigned them to the
boule of 500, the assembly and the courts (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 25.2–3). The
Areopagus remained as a homicide court. The details of these changes are lost, but can
be inferred from the subsequent powers of these institutions (Ostwald 1986: 47–83;
Raaflaub et al. 2007: 105–54). At last Athens’ radical democracy was in place.
Changes did take place; Athenian democracy was not static (Rhodes 1979/80). The
late 450s saw the introduction of two significant new laws. First, Perikles confined
citizenship to individuals where both parents were citizens and not just the father as
had previously applied and, secondly, he introduced pay (misthos) for jurors (dikastai)
(Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 26.1, 42.1, 27.3, 4). There were also changes after two brutal
episodes of oligarchy (the 400 in 411 and the Thirty in 404/3) and after Athens was
finally defeated by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War (431–404). After the restoration of
the democracy in 410 and again in 403, commissions were set up to revise the laws and
that produced the last stages in the passage from popular sovereignty to sovereignty of
the law (Ostwald 1986; Sealey 1975). Mogens Herman Hansen too sees sovereignty
within the democracy as finally residing in the law courts (Hansen 1991: 299–303).
102 classical democracy

While decrees (psephismata) were always decided by the assembly, after 403 voting on
laws (nomoi) was handed to a panel appointed by lot from the annual pool of 6,000
dikastai (Jurors), which itself was chosen by chance from the full citizenry. In 403/2
pay for attendance at the assembly was introduced (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 41.3).
Initially paid at a rate of 1 obol per meeting, it was increased in the late 390s to 3 obols
(half a drachma), about one day’s wages for an unskilled labourer or rower in the fleet
(Phillips 1981: 30–1, 45–6).

Participatory Institutions and Practice

A number of scholars have investigated the workings of Athenian democracy with
particular attention to participation and political leadership (Hansen 1991; Jones 1957:
99–133; Phillips 1981; Sinclair 1988). Aristotle’s contemporaneous account begins
with citizenship and then turns to magistracies (archai), who were mostly appointed by
lot for one year while all military officers and some treasurers were appointed by show
of hands (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 42, 44.4, 61.1–7). The Athenaion Politeia then turns
to the boule of 500, which oversaw the day-to-day operations of the democracy and was
appointed by lot from the ten tribes, each tribe selecting fifty councillors over thirty
years of age who also served together as prytaneis, members of the executive board for
one-tenth of the year, a prytany. It appointed, also by lot, the epistates ton prytaneion
who served as the ‘president’ of the Athenian polis for twenty-four hours (Aristotle
[332 bce] 1984: 44.1–3). In the fourth century, the 450 councillors who were not in
prytany also selected by lot the proedroi, whose job it was to preside over meetings of
the boule and the assembly. The boule drafted the agendas for meetings of the assembly,
in the fourth century, four each prytany or forty each year (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984:
43). The boule received ambassadors and was addressed by the generals. It attended to
the commission and care of naval triremes and the welfare of the horses used by the
cavalry (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 46.1, 49.1). The boule also supervised magistrates,
who served as members of boards of ten or multiples of ten so each tribe was
represented (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 46–9). The chief archai were the ten generals
and the nine archons (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 55–9, 61.1–2). With the exception of
the generals and other military offices, a magistrate could only serve for one year in
each office. Bouleutai could only serve twice, but never consecutively. According to
Athenaion Politeia there were approximately seven hundred archai in the mid-fifth
century (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 24.3). There were also Athenian archai located in
the poleis of the Athenian allies in the Delian League. Magistrates’ duties ranged from
poletai, who granted public contracts to hodopoioi (commissioners for roads), and
sitophylakes (grain guards), who provided consumer protection (Aristotle [332 bce]
1984: 47.2–5, 51.3). Archai, such as the archon basileus (the ‘king’ archon), and boards of
hieropoioi (‘makers of sacrifices’) had major roles to play in the polis cult (Aristotle [332
bce] 1984: 57). Archai also administered legal proceedings in the law courts (Aristotle
[332 bce] 1984: 63–9).
The assembly was open to any Athenian citizen to attend and, if so inclined, to
address. It deliberated on all matters to do with foreign policy, declared wars, approved
peace treaties, sent out ambassadors and received foreign ambassadors. It also ensured
 athens 103

that the gods were honoured by the polis through the proper administration of ritual
and cult. Many of its enactments were leges sacrae, that is, sacred laws. Religion and the
polis were inextricably intertwined (Parker 1996, 2005). Epigraphically attested laws
and decrees from the fourth century demonstrate a considerable attention to detail,
division of responsibilities and the accountability of those administering laws and
decrees (Rhodes and Osborne 2003). There was no aspect of polis life, secular or
religious, that assembly, council or archai did not supervise. The Athenian democracy
had built in checks and balances. Each magistrate, councillor or anyone who spoke in
the assembly were held to account. Magistrates underwent an examination of their
suitability (dokimasia) before assuming office and a scrutiny (euthynai) at the end of
their term (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 55.3, 48.3–5). Many misdeeds attracted fines.
Generals were subject to scrutiny every prytany and could be impeached (eisangelia)
(Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 61.2). Magistrates and citizens were subject to legal
procedures, including the graphe paranomon where it could be alleged that a proposed
new law or decree contravened an existing law (Phillips 1981: 31–2; Roberts 1982)
The people’s courts (dikasteria) implemented and upheld the laws which were a
cornerstone of the Athenian democracy (MacDowell 1978; Todd 1993). The courts
were constituted from an annual panel of 6,000 dikastai (Jurors) who had been
appointed by lot (Hansen 1991: 225–45). A complex ballot procedure assigned dikastai
to juries and to specific courts (Aristotle [332 bce] 1984: 63–9). Trials were presided
over by an archon whose role was entirely administrative. He could not advise the
court. Both plaintiff and defendant were given equal amounts of speaking time and
large numbers of jurors (201, 401, 501 or more especially for political prosecutions)
tried the case. Having heard the arguments the dikastai participated in a secret vote. A
simple majority decided the case. Not every Athenian participated fully in the political
life his polis. There were many factors influencing participation: ambition, wealth,
leisure, education, military training and distance from the political centre (Phillips
1981; Sinclair 1988). Thucydides claims that in 411 ‘as many as 5,000 Athenians had
never yet assembled’ (Thucydides [400 bce] 1972: 8.72.1). In the fourth century there
was a quorum of 6,000 for the chief meeting of the assembly (kuria ekklesia) in each
prytany. Six thousand was also the quorum required for ostracism to be effective.
Probably most citizens attended some meetings of the assembly and served a term on
the boule. Political leadership of the people (prostasia tou demou), demagogia or acting as
a rhetor kai strategos (orator and general) was largely confined to the elite, although the
nexus between aristocratic birth and political leadership began to break down by the
last third of the fifth century.

Participatory Democracy and Ideology

The ideology of democracy was forged out of political practice and in response to
contemporaneous critics. No single text survives with an account of Athenian
democratic ideology. It needs to be inferred from the works of its critics such as
Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and The Old Oligarch (Marr and Rhodes 2008).
It can also be pieced together from favourable treatment in tragedies, such as the
different versions of The Suppliant Woman (Aeschylus [463 bce] 1930: 365–9, 397–9,
104 classical democracy

600–8, 946–9; Euripides [423 bce] 1995: 399–441). Comedies such as Aristophanes’
Wasps can also be helpful, as can funeral orations (epitaphioi) such as that given by
Pericles during the Peloponnesian War (Aristophanes [422 bce] 1998; Loraux 1986:
172–220; Thucydides [400 bce] 1972: 2.35–46).
While Herodotus’ ‘debate on constitutions’ was set in 521, it reflects the period 440–
420 when Herodotus wrote (Connor 1971: 199–206). Otanes promotes democracy:

The rule of the majority . . . not only has the most beautiful and powerful name of
all, equality, but in practice, the majority does not act at all like a monarch. Indeed,
the majority chooses its magistrates by lot, it holds all of these officials accountable
to an audit, and refers all resolutions to the authority of the public. (Herodotus [460
bce] 1972: 3.80–3)

Excellent discussions of Athenian democratic ideology are to be found in a number

of works (Balot 2006; Farrar 1988; Ober 1998; Raaflaub 1989). Key democratic
concepts include the sovereign assembly of citizens (ekklesia), equal legal rights
(isonomia), equal right to speak (isegoria), individual freedom (eleutheria), freedom
of speech (parrhesia), the power of the law, justice, accountability of magistrates,
rotation of magistracies, sortition (drawing of lots) and the payment of citizens for
some public services (Loraux 1986: 181; Ostwald 1969; Raaflaub 2004: 203–49).
Democracy was cast as the antithesis of tyranny from early Athenian democracy when
it dealt with the twin issues of Persian invasion and the return of the Peisistratid
tyrants (Herodotus [460 bce] 1972: 6.109.3–6).
Oligarchic criticisms of democracy are summarised in the pamphlet from around
420 known as The Old Oligarch attributed to pseudo-Xenophon (Marr and Rhodes
2008; Moore 1975). This brief work offers an elite, oligarchic discourse on democracy
in Athens. The work uses negative designations to effect: poneroi (base men); penetai
(the poor); demotikos (sympathetic to the common people); amathes (ignorant); kakiston
(worst elements); and kakoi (bad, vile). In contrast the elite are called: aristoi (best
men); gennaioi (noble); kaloi k’agathoi (beautiful/fair and good); chrestoi (good men);
eupatridae (well born); gnorimoi (notable, wealthy); dexiotatoi (cleverest); and duna-
totatoi (capable). Such men characterised themselves as having arête (virtue) and being
sophos (wise). Their oligarchic polity was noted for its eunomia (good order), a term
which oligarchic Sparta used to describe its constitution. By contrast, democracy was
characterised by dusnomia (lawlessness), the result of a bad constitution. Thus,
oligarchy was praised as the antithesis of democracy: ‘the safe and sound government
of the best men’ (Thucydides [400 bce] 1972: 3.82.8). Democracy, by contrast,
provided equality for the masses (to plethos) and was thus morally base. From the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment, whenever democracy has been debated, critics
have turned to the negative, oligarchic characterisation of democracy as an unruly,
lawless and destructive mob to undermine democracy as a preferred form of govern-
ment. The Founding Fathers of the United States of America, for example, turned to a
representative and collegial constitution that drew structurally more from the Roman
Republic than it did from the direct participatory model of the Athenian democracy
(Roberts 1994; Wood 1988).
 athens 105

Conclusion
Flawed it may have been, but the democracy created and maintained at Athens in the
fifth and fourth centuries was, in the words of Donald Kagan, a unique ‘flowering in
the jungle of human experience’ (Kagan 1991: 3). One of the benefits of democracy
often overlooked by oligarchs is the way it promoted unity by limiting distinctions
between wealthy and poor in Greece: ‘Democracy played a vital part in the class
struggle by mitigating the exploitation of poorer citizens by richer ones’ (Ste. Croix
1981: 284). Traditionally, Athenian democracy was said to have lasted for less than two
centuries (507/8–322), but it has been argued recently that their defeat in the Lamian
War in 322 did not see the end of democracy at Athens and that it was restored on a
number of occasions, most notably in 307, down to the end of the Chremonidean War
in 262 (Bayliss 2011).
In that time Athenian democracy coined the term dēmokratia, worked out a practical
set of institutions and procedures to allow for popular rule and direct, rather than
representative, democracy, and articulated the ideology of such popular rule. The
ideals of Athenian democracy and modern Western democracy remain in many ways
similar, though citizenship is now more inclusive, direct participation has been
replaced by representation and greater emphasis is placed on human rights. It is
unlikely that debates about whether or not studies of Athenian democracy can inform
and invigorate discussions about democracy in the twenty-first century will cease.
Athenian democracy is still a useful tool with which to think about democracy today.

Note
1. All dates in this chapter are bce.

References
Aeschylus ([463 bce] 1930), The Suppliant Women, trans. G. Murray, London: George Allen &
Unwin.
Aristophanes ([422 bce] 1998), The Clouds, Wasps, Birds, trans. P. Meineck, Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett.
Aristotle ([332 bce] 1984), The Athenian Constitution, trans. P. J. Rhodes, Harmondswoth:
Penguin.
Balot, R. (2006), Greek Political Thought, Oxford: Blackwell.
Bayliss, A. J. (2011), After Demosthenes: The Politics of Early Hellenistic Athens, London:
Continuum.
Bicknell, P. J. (1972), ‘Kleisthenes as a Politician: An Exploration’, Studies in Athenian Politics
and Genealogy, Historia Einzelschriften 19, Weisbaden: Steiner, pp. 1–53.
Boedeker, D. and K. Raaflaub (eds) (1998), Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century
Athens, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brock, R. (2009), ‘Did the Athenian Empire Promote Democracy?’, in J. Ma, J. Papazaradas
and R. Parker (eds), Interpreting the Athenian Empire, London: Duckworth, pp. 149–66.
Brock, R. and S. Hodkinson (eds) (2000), Alternatives to Athens: Varieties of Organization and
Community in Ancient Greece, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Chapter 16
The American Revolution

Andrew Shankman

To consensus era historians of the 1950s, democracy in late colonial British North
America scarcely needed to be explained. Colonists were middle class, jealous of their
liberties and determined to assert their rights in powerful colonial legislatures (Brown
1955; Greene 1963). Since the 1970s this story has been dismantled; it is now clear that
democracy was not inevitable in the region that became the United States. Between
1720 and 1760, from Massachusetts to Georgia, the colonies became more British in
their political practices, social relations and cultural tastes. Each colony produced
ruling elites who wielded economic power and monopolised political office (Kornblith
and Murrin 1993). By the mid-eighteenth century, colonists had replicated much of
English society, economy and politics. Most colonies had, to varying degrees, mixed
economies of agriculture, commerce and even manufacturing. They produced class
structures based on wage labour, unequal ownership of property, and educational and
cultural institutions modelled on British schools, universities and learned societies.
Colonists embraced British views about ideal forms of government, which made them
cautious, even ambivalent, about democracy. Sophisticated colonists, such as Bosto-
nian, James Otis, believed that absolute monarchies violated natural rights. But the
remedy was not government by majority or even allowing the institutional participa-
tion of the governed. Democracy was not a system of politics colonists believed, but
rather one part of a polity properly comprised of monarch, aristocracy and landowners:
the one, the few and the many (Maier 1972: 3–48; Wood 1991: 3–89).

Taxation, Representation and Democracy

Many landowners zealously cared for liberty, and vigilantly observed monarchy and
aristocracy to ensure they did not become despotic or oligarchic. Thankfully, the
mixed and balanced British constitution gave a meaningful voice to property-owning
subjects in Britain – the many whose rights to property would be violated if the one
and few misbehaved. Taxation with representation protected the rights of life, liberty
and property of Britons, while the mixed and balanced constitution ensured that the
people’s zeal for liberty would be responsibly tempered by the power and wisdom of
the one and few. In 1764, even as he protested Parliament’s Sugar Act, James Otis
proclaimed that ‘the British constitution in theory and in the present administration of
it, in general comes nearest the idea of perfection of any that has been reduced to
200 early modern democracy

practice’ (Otis 1764: 14–15). Yet distance and the Atlantic Ocean added complexity to
this constitution. Colonists valued their colonial legislatures and insisted that they
were vital to the proper functioning of a constitutional order that governed Britain and
its far-flung oceanic empire. The colonists were concerned that governments only
protected property when those who raised the taxation were chosen by taxpayers and
also had to pay the same taxes they imposed on others. Clearly, then, the House of
Commons in London could not tax the American colonists, for the colonists sent no
members to Parliament (Greene 1986).
In believing that Parliament could not tax them, the colonists were not advocating
democracy. Limiting Parliament’s authority did not require actual representation,
universal suffrage or even the right to vote for every taxpayer. Colonists like Maryland
lawyer Daniel Dulany, who wrote the most influential pamphlet to protest the 1765
Stamp Act, argued that the House of Commons virtually represented non-voting
taxpayers whenever those taxpayers owned property similar to property owned by
voting taxpayers (Dulany 1765). When the latter voted in ways that protected their
own property, they also protected the non-voters’ property. This virtual representation
was legitimate within Britain, but the House of Commons represented no colonists at
all so there would be none who could vote to protect themselves, and who, by doing so,
would protect non-voting taxpayers. Only if the colonial legislature of Maryland taxed
Maryland would the concept of virtual representation work in that colony as it did in
Britain (Dulany 1765). The eighteenth-century colonies, then, had the ingredients of
democratic politics. They possessed a language of rights and liberties. They were
devoted to legislatures and believed that only their elected representatives could
interfere with their property. Yet their acceptance of governors and upper houses
appointed by the Crown, and their acquiescence to governance by colonial elites shows
how far they were from democracy.
Britain’s emphatic victory over France in the Seven Years War (1756–63) encour-
aged reform of the empire. New laws, particularly unprecedented taxation of the
colonies, provoked an acrimonious argument about British liberty and Britain’s
relations with the American colonists. By 1775, what many in Britain saw as necessary
taxation, many in the colonies viewed as encroachment by a tyrannical imperial
government (Jensen 1968; Rakove 2010). The decade after 1765 shattered colonists’
illusions about their place in the empire. It also placed explosive and slippery words
such as liberty, equality, freedom, slavery and tyranny at the centre of American
culture. The colonists protested against parliamentary taxation and onerous legislation
by forcing a discussion about the nature of government and, eventually, by indicting
British forms of governance. Thomas Paine, in his 1776 pamphlet Common Sense,
summed up what many colonists had already concluded: Britain’s mixed and balanced
government had not prevented the king and his ministers from acting tyrannically
(Paine [1776] 1986). Since the British constitution was the best structure ever
conceived for constraining monarchy, the American experience showed that kings
could never be constrained. The answer was not simply independence. Independence
from Britain, Paine insisted, also required independence from things British, parti-
cularly hereditary governance (Paine [1776] 1986). By 1776 the vast majority of
colonists understood with Paine that their new nation must be a republic.
 the american revolution 201

But what sort of republic? Americans built theirs in a highly charged atmosphere
where devotion to liberty, equality, autonomy and freedom was common currency. Such
ideals were slippery and could be applied, defined and redefined based on place and
circumstance. Wealthy merchants defined these concepts differently to lowly artisans,
women, subsistence farmers or slaves (Countryman 2003). The colonies, with their
particular concentrations of wealth and power, had produced inequality, frustration and
resentment. Prior to the imperial crisis, colonial elites governed and even overawed
those below them. Yet these same elites felt it necessary to provoke a radically disruptive
conflict with Britain. To critique the empire, the elites placed concepts and language at
the cultural core of America that could be used to challenge their own hierarchical
positions. By 1776, it was clear that colonial elites could not start a revolution to
overthrow imperial authority without also having their own authority seriously tested.

Towards a Democratic Constitution

The revolution introduced the possibility of democracy to America. The protracted
warfare between 1775 and 1783 caused the disintegration of central authority. In New
York, for example, most rural communities became self-governing for years and
participated in the revolution by enacting laws, policing behaviour, setting wages and
prices, defending the local area, printing money and providing supplies for the war. In
Pennsylvania, where most of the Quaker colonial elite remained neutral, previously
obscure small property-holders seized power and transformed the state’s political
culture. These men enacted the new nation’s most radical experiment with democracy:
the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 enfranchised all adult, white male taxpayers,
and created an annually elected unicameral legislature and a weak plural executive. It
allowed the legislature to propose bills, but prevented those bills from becoming law
unless they received majority support in the next legislature (seated after the annual
election). In the interim, before the next election, prospective legislators had to take a
stand on the bills, which were printed and widely distributed. Thus, voters could
decide which bills would become law by choosing to vote for candidates who supported
that legislation. The Pennsylvania revolution showed that, though conservative elites
might favour a mixed and balanced constitution where the many were merely one of
three constituent parts, many others held that democracy alone was the only legitimate
system of politics (Countryman 1981; Ryerson 1981).
The American Revolution transformed government from a mixed, tripartite polity
to a democratic system that could legitimate the processes of republican politics.
During the 1780s, the decentralised nature of government under the Articles of
Confederation meant that most decision making took place at the state or local levels.
The more intimate and immediate nature of politics allowed for less exalted figures to
hold political office. In virtually every legislature, many officeholders in 1785 were less
educated, less wealthy and closer to the average citizen than they had been in 1765
(Main 1966). These developments reinforced the idea that government of the people
could and should be by the people and for the people, and that each voter, being a
rights-bearing citizen, was capable of governing. Though largely unexpected in 1776,
by the mid-1780s democracy in America was a visible and likely outcome of revolution.
202 early modern democracy

From the 1780s onwards, the general view of democracy switched from outright
dismissal to debate about what democracy was and how it would actually work.
Discussions explored the limits to a majority’s power, the powers and prerogatives of
minorities, the existence of fundamental natural rights that the majority was enjoined
from violating. These were not solely abstract concerns. Pennsylvanians stripped
neutral Quakers of the right to vote. Many state legislatures confiscated and redis-
tributed loyalist property. In addition, they created highly inflationary paper curren-
cies by printing massive amounts of notes. Legislatures then enacted laws requiring
creditors to accept the currency of little value as payment for private debts, even
though the debts had been borrowed in much more valuable currency prior to passage
of the inflationary currency laws. In effect, legislatures forgave large amounts of
privately contracted debt in democratised polities where debtor voters outnumbered
creditor voters (Holton 2005; Wood 1969).
This taste for majority rule also produced arguments about who precisely con-
stituted a legitimate majority. Some rural communities became so accustomed to self-
government that they questioned whether there could be any legitimate government
beyond the local community. As many states and communities explored democracy in
the 1780s, one possible conclusion was that democracy demanded a politics imme-
diately responsive to the demands of each majority within each small community. With
the most radical conceptions of democracy it was unclear how to justify any constraint
on local majorities or policy making at state, let alone national, level where government
could be viewed as too distant and unaccountable (Bouton 2000). The arguments
concerning whether to ratify the United States Constitution and the conflicts of the
1790s between the Federalist Party, led by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton
and John Adams, and the Democratic-Republican Party, led by Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison, were primarily about the desirability and structure of democracy.
Some supporters of the Constitution (also called Federalists) accepted democratic
developments, while many others did not. Many anti-Federalists opposed ratification
because they associated democracy with localism and feared a much more centralised
and strengthened national government. To a great extent, regardless of where one fell
on the question of ratification, one’s political stance in the 1790s could be predicted by
one’s views of the democratising trends of the 1780s. Those who could, at least to a
degree, accept democracy became Democratic-Republicans. Those who could not do
so became Federalists. For example, James Madison, a Federalist in 1787 because he
supported ratification, became a Democratic-Republican during the 1790s. Madison
believed the Constitution provided a framework for a responsible democracy and
feared that the Federalist Party of the 1790s used the new national government to
silence and overawe the people (Sheehan 2009). The American Revolution did not
turn everyone into a democrat, but it did ensure that conflict about the nature and
practicalities of democracy would be the driving force of American politics.

The Federalist Debates

Supporters of a stronger national government in the 1780s and 1790s confronted the
central question posed by democracy: could constraints be placed on the majority?
 the american revolution 203

After the revolution, the traditional methods of relying on the intervention of

monarchy and aristocracy to balance the democratic process were anathema. The
solution of those democratically inclined Federalists of the 1780s, such as Madison,
was to take the idea of democracy and popular sovereignty seriously. Madison argued
that the sovereign people alone could declare fundamental law, but he also insisted that
each citizen be protected from arbitrary treatment (Wood 1969). He reasoned that the
sovereign people, once they articulated their authoritative views in written constitu-
tions, had to be obeyed. The governments they created to efficiently enforce their
views had to operate within the people’s sovereign authority expressed in their
sovereign statements: their written constitutions (Wood 1969). Once the people in
their constitutions declared the right to the protection of property, the sanctity of
contracts and equal protection under the law – even for unpopular minorities – a
majority in a legislature was bound to obey the constitution. The constitution was the
direct expression of the people, a legislature a mere instrument of the people. The
instrument could not countermand the will of its wielder (Wood 1969).
This subtle and complex conceptualisation of popular sovereignty provided a
remedy for the tendency of majorities to abuse minorities, but it did so by drawing
on the most radical and democratic language to emerge from the revolution. Like so
many other revolutionary concepts, popular sovereignty was also slippery. With
ratification of the Constitution in 1788, popular sovereignty was universally embraced,
at least by constitutional ratifying conventions and in the written constitutions they
produced. For some, the concept of popular sovereignty allowed an elegant argument
for how the people produced the fundamental laws and documents by which all
citizens, individually and in groups, even very large groups, must live. For others, well
into the nineteenth century, popular sovereignty meant that even local majorities were
sovereign and could define acceptable behaviour within their communities (Fritz 2008;
Shalhope 2009). For James Madison, a written constitution emanated from popular
sovereignty and confined the people’s governments within the boundaries established
by the constitution, so for Madison this conception of popular sovereignty was
democracy (Wood 1969). Yet for Madison’s mercurial ally, then enemy, the Phila-
delphia newspaper editor William Duane, a constitution that was very difficult to alter,
that constrained even the largest popular majorities, was simply an act unable to be
repealed. Duane argued that the convention that imposed the constitution was little
better than an absolute monarchy (Shankman 2004: 157). Madison’s conception of
popular sovereignty, Duane concluded in the early nineteenth century, was the gravest
threat to true democracy. Yet while Madison and Duane had serious philosophical
disagreements, during the 1790s they were allies in the party led by Thomas Jefferson.
Both agreed that the Federalist Party posed a terrible threat to democracy, while
Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s treasurer and the most powerful mind among the
Federalists, believed that the revolution and subsequent democracy would make the
new republic ungovernable. The Federalists argued that the ancient republics showed
that too much liberty led to chaos and then people would accept tyranny in exchange
for restored order. Too much democracy, concluded the Federalists, destroyed the
conditions for liberty.
Federalists argued that the French Revolution illustrated the process of liberty
204 early modern democracy

giving way to anarchy and then despotism, and they concluded that the followers of
Jefferson, who supported the French Revolution and criticised the Federalists, were
enemies of order and the rule of law. With a series of financial policies and laws
regulating speech and immigration, over the course of the 1790s the Federalists sought
to restore something of the stable and deferential hierarchical society that had existed
before the revolution. Hamilton hoped to strengthen the new national government and
attach the wealthiest and most prominent American citizens to it. The core of the
Washington administration’s policies was Hamilton’s proposals for handling the $80
million debt left over from fighting the American Revolution (Shankman 2003).
During the economically depressed 1780s, many of the debt’s original holders, often
soldiers, farmers and artisans, had despaired of ever being repaid. They had sold their
debt very cheaply and by 1790 a much smaller number of the wealthiest Americans
owned most of the debt. Hamilton hoped to use the debt to reorganise American
society and so restore something of the lost social order destroyed by the American
Revolution (Roberts 2006).
In 1790 Hamilton proposed that the new government assume full responsibility for
the debt and fund it (that is, pay interest on the debt at 4 per cent). His proposals
quickly became law and enriched the wealthy speculators who had bought debt
cheaply. Now that the debt commanded regular interest payment, it quickly rose to its
face value, which was far above what most current holders had paid for it. Hamilton
next proposed that the debt should become the primary source of investment capital
for a large national bank and a grand manufacturing enterprise (Roberts 2006).
Congress and President Washington quickly created the Bank of the United States
and Hamilton oversaw the formation of the Society for Establishing Useful Manu-
factures, which was intended to be the largest industrial enterprise in the nation
(Shankman 2003). Hamilton hoped that as the nation’s financial system developed and
as its manufacturing capacity grew, both would be overseen from the top down by
substantial, sober and responsible citizens. Debt-holders were not hereditary aristo-
crats, but Hamilton was, in a sense, seeking to create a republican version of the few, a
small group of the economically and politically powerful and the socially and culturally
prominent who would direct the affairs of the nation on behalf of the over-zealous
many whose unthinking actions threatened ordered liberty. Hamilton’s ally John Jay, a
collaborator on the Federalist Papers and Supreme Court chief justice during the
Washington administration, summed up Federalist philosophy best when he explained
that ‘those who own the country are the most fit persons to participate in the
government of it’ (Kornblith and Murrin 1993: 29). The Federalist version of
republicanism insisted that the best republics kept the demos, the people, firmly in
their place (Roberts 2006; Shankman 2003; Wood 2009).

The Democratic Backlash

Federalist concerns intensified after 1792 when the French Revolution entered its
radical phase. In the mid-1790s many of the farmers and artisans, who were meant to
relearn deference under Hamilton’s system, instead formed Democratic-Republican
societies. These vocal political groups cheered the French Revolution and denounced
 the american revolution 205

Hamilton’s programmes and Federalist foreign policy, which favoured Britain over
France. Washington, in turn, denounced the societies as ‘self-created’, which he
considered a damning indictment. But in the democratised atmosphere of the early
republic, the President’s remarks revealed how ill-prepared the Federalists were to
function in a democratic society (Estes 2006; Hale 2009; Schoenbachler 1998). By the
mid-1790s the Federalists had provoked a diverse opposition. Southern planters such
as Jefferson and Madison associated independence with landowning and agriculture
and believed that republican institutions would survive only in a nation predominantly
of farmers. Madison’s favourite example of the connection between an agrarian society
and sound republican institutions was the plight of the London shoe-buckle makers
(Madison 1792). During the late eighteenth century, when the style suddenly changed
to ribbons and buttons for shoes, a whole class of skilled artisans became destitute.
Such men, concluded Madison, could never be truly independent because they
depended on the patronage of others. Therefore, they could never be reliable
republican citizens. But eating, Madison argued, never went out of style. Farmers
working land that they owned would always remain independent republican citizens.
‘Those who labor on the earth’, said Thomas Jefferson, Madison’s close friend and
mentor, ‘are the chosen people of God’ (Jefferson [1784]: 1954 164–5). Agrarians were
horrified by Hamilton’s programme, which seemed to imitate Britain and move the
United States away from an agrarian society and economy (McCoy 1980).
Craftsmen in the nation’s cities and smaller towns did not share the southern
planters’ agrarian sensibilities. But most craftsmen were just as infuriated by the
Federalists’ elitist methods for promoting manufacturing, methods that were intended
to turn craftsmen from independent artisans into employees of much larger manu-
facturing concerns funded by public debt. Artisans joined an opposition led by
southern agrarians, as did many small farmers attracted by the prospect of rapid
western settlement. Movement across space, allowing the recreation of the conditions
best suited for small, independent farms, was the core commitment of the Democratic-
Republican Party (McCoy 1980). After 1793, this opposition to the Federalists grew in
size and complexity as English and Irish immigrants poured into the United States.
This group became important, especially in states such as New York, Pennsylvania and
Maryland, and helped the opposition to gain strength outside the south. Radicals like
the Irish-American William Duane became leading spokesmen of the emerging
Democratic-Republican Party and led the charge against the Federalists. The con-
ditions of the 1790s consolidated the democratisation of American society and ensured
that the future would be much more hospitable to self-created societies than to
denunciations of them (Bric 2008; Durey 1997).
Facing conditions they could not control, the Federalists responded with repression,
and in 1798 passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Alien Act extended the period of
naturalisation before citizenship from five to fourteen years and was aimed at the
radical émigrés, particularly the Irish (Bric 2008). The Sedition Act sharply limited
criticism of the government by treating it as seditious libel. The laws hurt the
Federalist cause because the opposition argued that their most sinister depiction of the
Federalists was true. In reality, the Federalists’ inability to govern by the end of the
1790s showed just how quickly conditions were changing as the nation rapidly became
206 early modern democracy

much more a democracy (Kohn 1975). During the 1790s a majority of voters mobilised
to defeat the Federalists. Jefferson’s election to the presidency in 1800 helped to ensure
a democratised political culture, while questions remained about the nature of
American democracy and who would define it (Banning 1978; Waldstreicher
1997). Over the three decades after 1800 disagreements about the meaning of popular
sovereignty continued to produce political conflict. Yet the Madisonian conception of
popular sovereignty prompted the separation of powers and checks and balances
within government. Madisonians argued that the people were sovereign and that each
branch of government was equally not the people (Fritz 2008). Thus, the people’s will,
expressed in their written constitutions, was best protected when no branch could
overstep its duties and when the other branches could check it if it tried to do so. This
theory legitimated judicial review, gave credence to the important role played by the
Supreme Court in the early nineteenth century, and provided a way to argue that
legislatures made laws, executives enforced laws, and judiciaries interpreted and
reviewed them to ensure that they were in accordance with the people’s constitutions
– the expressions of their sovereignty (Fritz 2008).
This view of the separation of powers and of checks and balances did not go
unchallenged in the early nineteenth century and arguments arose as to how the less
accountable, unelected branches of government got to check the most democratic
branch. These years also saw rapid economic development, the rise of the cotton south,
the expansion of slavery and questions about who could be a voting and full rights-
bearing citizen (Morrison 1997; Wilentz 2005). Prior to 1776 the right to vote was
dependent on land ownership and high office was usually reserved for the wealthiest
voters. But the revolution had begun to dismantle this system and the increasingly
democratic language shaping American attitudes made it impossible to justify elites of
rich, white men in charge (Wilentz 2005). Next to go was the connection between
landowning and the franchise. After about 1810 it became even more imperative to
sever this connection because the boom and bust economy produced large numbers of
adult, white men who failed to meet the property requirements for voting rights. In a
polity increasingly saturated by democratic language and ideals, disenfranchising large
numbers of white men was unthinkable (Wilentz 2005). So if one traditional marker
could fall perhaps others could too: if hard economic times meant white men need not
own property to vote, then perhaps free, black men, with property or without, were
entitled to vote too (Egerton 2009; Morrison 1997; Nash 1988).

Conclusion
Democracy, it seemed, raised never-ending questions and prevented stable and
consensual definitions of even its most basic and fundamental concepts, such as
popular sovereignty, citizenship, majority rule and the right to vote. Demands for
democracy had initially proved to be quite subversive by allowing obscure, white men
to challenge the claims of traditional colonial elites. In effect, colonial elites had hoped
to challenge the authority of Britain while maintaining their own positions at the top of
a society of increasingly vertically organised households in their colonies. When,
beginning with the revolution, ordinary, white men thrust forward and demanded that
 the american revolution 207

they would also govern, they insisted that no citizen was more capable of governing, or
more deserving of respect and deference, than any other. In other words, they insisted
that relations among households should be much more horizontal, as befitting the
egalitarianism and equality among all white, male citizen heads of household in the
new republic. This commitment to horizontal social relations among heads of house-
hold even had a material dimension, as the land redistribution and paper money laws of
the 1780s show. In the nineteenth century, the demand for free western lands would
result from the effort to maintain these horizontal social relations among heads of
household (Foner 1971; Morrison 1997).
Yet as subversive of an older colonial social order as the demand for equality among
heads of household was, it was not the most potentially subversive possibility produced
by the advent of democracy. By the early nineteenth century, the radical and slippery
language that was the currency of democracy had permeated within the walls of each
household. In order for there to be horizontal relations among households, each head
of household had to keep a firm grip on the resources that sustained that household,
and keep them independent of the resources controlled by other heads of household.
He needed, therefore, sole claim to the land of his household and the labour necessary
to work it productively. A white, adult male head of household could maintain his
independence, and stand eye to eye with his fellow citizens, in part due to laws that
prevented married women from owning property and that allowed him sole control
over the labour of his wife and children. In more complex households, such as
plantations, laws rendering blacks property served the same function. Thus, once the
egalitarian language of democracy slid within the household walls, once the depen-
dants living within those walls began to imagine more horizontal social relations, not
just among households but also within them, the language of democracy could be
turned against even the ordinary. white men who were its earliest speakers (Zagarri
2007).
This development was only further encouraged by the decoupling of land own-
ership and voting rights: white men formerly considered dependent were now full
rights-bearing citizens, the conception of dependence and its relationship to citizen-
ship could be rethought more generally. Certainly, the slippery, egalitarian language of
the revolution provided Americans with the vocabulary for doing so. This most
unexpected legacy of democracy threatened to tear apart the nation’s most intimate
private relations. Of course, that mattered only if the structures of those intimate
relationships were worth preserving: where there was something important in how
parents should relate to children, husbands to wives or masters to slaves. Few would
have considered these to be political questions prior to the American Revolution.
Then, again, prior to the revolution few would have predicted that democracy would
become the only legitimate system of American politics. By 1830, it decidedly was, but
precisely what democracy meant, who would benefit and whether some would benefit
at the expense of others, were now important questions in what was clearly an
explosive, never-ending and thoroughly democratised conversation.
208 early modern democracy

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 Chapter 17
The French Revolution

John Markoff

On 17 June 1789, deputies elected to an old institution with an important but limited
purpose announced that they were forming a new body with a much broader purpose.
France’s Estates-General had been convened after a hiatus of 175 years as part of the
royal attempt to manage a severe financial crisis. But many deputies hoped to make this
crisis an occasion for significant reform, especially those who represented the Third
Estate. After several weeks of fruitless dealing with the deputies of the first two estates
– the nobility and the clergy – the Third Estate took a great leap into the unknown by
announcing themselves to be the National Assembly, invited the other deputies to join
them and soon proclaimed that they would undertake the writing of a constitution.
Without command of any armed force of its own and in danger of suppression by
military units summoned by the king, the new assembly’s existence was saved by a
popular uprising in Paris in mid-July, all of which became the stuff of instant legend.
The new body began issuing laws and decrees against a background of widespread
insurrection in town and country. On 26 August, the ‘representatives of the French
people constituted as a National Assembly’ adopted a Déclaration des droits de l’homme
et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen), setting out some
fundamental precepts for a new social and political order. This new order would
be one of personal freedom and equality since ‘Men are born and remain free and equal
in rights’; collective purposes could be realised because ‘The law is the expression of
the general will’ and ‘All citizens have the right to participate personally or through
their representatives in its formation’ (Déclaration 1789).
These words and actions have commonly been taken as foundational episodes for
modern democracy, not only because France was a large and powerful country, but
because the revolutionaries embodied core ideas in abstract terms that were mean-
ingful well beyond France, arousing hope and fear. Immediate expressions of
admiration in England, for example, triggered Edmund Burke’s condemnation of
1790, Reflections on the Revolution in France, which triggered in turn the following year
Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke’s Attack on the French
Revolution (Burke 1790; Paine [1791] 1985). The varied forms of political organisation
and action of the revolutionary decade continued to serve as inspiring or distressing
reference points for political debate as nineteenth-century revolutionaries and re-
actionaries claimed to have learned important lessons from French experience. At the
turn of the twenty-first century scholars could still find in aspects of that experience
 the french revolution 211

dramatic examples of democracy in multiple forms, and of multiple forms of anti-

democracy as well.

Representative Democracy
When the National Assembly declared that it acted as the ‘representatives of the
French people’, that ‘No body and no individual may exercise authority which does
not emanate expressly from [the Nation]’, and that citizens would participate ‘by
themselves or through their representatives’ (Déclaration 1789), it left unresolved the
ways in which citizens would choose representatives, how government would be
organised and in what ways citizens would participate in person. These matters proved
to be extremely contentious and were never definitively resolved in the changing
legislation of the revolutionary period, nor did any of the revolutionary models settle
the future form of French democracy. By one count, France adopted fifteen con-
stitutions between 1791 and 1959 (Woloch 1994: 21). At the onset of revolution, the
French already had significant experience with meetings at which local affairs were
discussed and decided. Villages and urban guilds commonly had participatory
institutions, although seventeenth- and eighteenth-century monarchs had largely
dismantled such mechanisms in town government. Such bodies varied enormously
from place to place in their authority, organisation and level of participation, as well as
the extent of their continuing vitality in the 1780s (Babeau 1893; Babeau [1878] 1978;
Jones 2003). In its increasingly desperate search for revenue, the French monarchy
began to institute a system of multi-level elective assemblies in 1787 with restrictive
suffrage in much of the country to provide representation for landowners in tax
allocation. This fledgling consultative structure was soon overtaken by the intensifying
crisis that led to the decision to call the Estates-General from which emerged the
revolutionary National Assembly.
The elections to the Estates-General were an amalgam of very different social
visions (Shapiro and Markoff 1998). Some argued that deputies should have full
powers to negotiate with the king; others that they should be bound by imperative
mandates to do the bidding of those who elected them. Some argued that deputies
represented France’s legally distinct statuses and recognised corporate groups so that
each of the three estates would have its own elections; others argued that deputies
represented the French people as a whole. It was generally accepted that the meetings
choosing deputies had the right to draw up statements of grievances, although there
was a great deal less agreement over whether those deputies were bound to follow that
document. Almost all of France’s 40,000 rural communities produced such statements,
a remarkable form of national popular consultation. After much debate, the election
regulations provided an extremely broad right to participate at these meetings. Not
only could almost all heads of rural households (who were sometimes women) attend a
primary assembly in the Third Estate’s multi-stage process, but ordinary priests as
well as bishops elected the clergy’s deputies, and most male nobles (and some female
nobles too), not just those of illustrious rank or ancient pedigree, could participate. Not
only did the entire complex process stimulate a national discussion on the meanings of
representation, but the elections and drafting of grievance lists engaged an extra-
212 early modern democracy

ordinary diversity of French people in collectively thinking through their views of a

better world at a moment of great crisis. Some of those thus engaged kept on meeting
and acting collectively after they had chosen their deputies. France thus lurched into
revolution with an intense nationwide experience of both election of deputies and local
collective deliberation.
The National Assembly’s declaration that all authority was to be exercised either by
citizens directly or through their representatives was a radical departure from a
political order that included authority that was inherited, purchased or appointed from
above. In the early years of revolution, an extremely significant deviation from the new
principle of popular sovereignty was the figure of the king, to whom, after considerable
debate, the new Constitution of 1791 gave a suspensive veto on legislation and the
authority to name ministers. Although broad categories of citizens were denied voting
rights, no distinctions by estate were recognised. Eligible voters were to participate in a
primary assembly that would name a variety of local officials and would also name
‘electors’: participants in a higher assembly that would chose both regional officials and
deputies to the new national Legislative Assembly. The electoral principle was quite
radical. Town councils, judges and prosecutors were to be elected. So were new priests
and bishops, and, in separate processes, National Guard officers and, later on, non-
commissioned military officers as well (Blaufarb 2002; Woloch 1994: 63). Elections
were extremely numerous throughout the entire revolutionary decade. In the view of
some, the people’s representatives were the supreme authority, with the role of other
citizens in government confined to the act of electing them. Governing was commonly
understood as the action of a united people finding the only course of action that
reasonable people could find, but debate was held as to the particular responsibility of
the people’s representatives. The primary assemblies that chose the electors, therefore,
were not supposed to be places of debate, only of voting, and there was no referendum
on the Constitution of 1791 once the people’s representatives had adopted it.
The idea of rival parties was anathema at first, a betrayal of the unitary ideal and
open campaigning for office was also taboo, so there were no approved party lists.
Voting was nominally secret, but, continuing the practice from the Estates-General
elections, carried out at the primary assembly which meant that the vote was observed
by others and, for the many illiterates, had to be said aloud to be recorded. Without
lists of eligible candidates, citizens had to write or state the names of fellow citizens
they hoped to elect. Since such a procedure might not yield the required majority for
anyone, let alone for all the many elective offices, there was a rather complicated multi-
ballot procedure (Aberdam et al. 2006; Gueniffey 1993; Rosanvallon 1992). Who got to
vote remained deeply contested. Despite the claim that all citizens were equal in rights,
the National Assembly quickly accepted the notion that there were ‘passive’ as well as
‘active’ citizens. Society was to serve all, but only some were to actively shape society.
Active citizens were those who had the faculty of independent judgement, something
that might be conferred by nature, shaped by education, reinforced by occupation and
supported by resources. Those with inappropriate dispositions or inadequate educa-
tions, in deferential occupations or deficient in resources were not suitable. On these
grounds women, domestic servants and those beneath a certain level of tax payments
were excluded. But the precise boundaries of inclusion and exclusion were readily
 the french revolution 213

challenged and expanded or contracted at many points. In December 1789, for

example, the National Assembly enacted civil equality for ‘non-Catholic’ citizens,
giving Protestants a vote, though Jews had to wait until September 1791 when they
were assimilated to the ‘active’ category if otherwise qualified (McCloy 1957: 78).
There were other, evolving requirements for voting, including willingness to serve
on juries and register in the National Guard. Since the actual voting procedure was
extremely protracted and the primary assemblies were held not in the local village but
at the centres of the newly created ‘cantons’, participation in electoral life was rather
demanding. It is therefore striking that turnout initially was as high as recent
historians have demonstrated: an average national turnout of about 40 per cent in
1790 with enormous variation from a high of 73 per cent in rural Aube to 16 per cent
in super-urban Paris (Crook 1996: 60; Edelstein 1994; Woloch 1994: 72). A
noteworthy generalisation is that turnout was considerably higher in rural France
than it was in urban France, which may owe something to continuities in collective
decision making in villages. But it may also derive from the greater engagement in
other forms of citizen action in urban areas, the rival vision of a more direct
democracy (discussed below). In later elections, turnout was notably lower. There is
no consensus on the degree to which the fall-off represents disillusionment with
revolution, the onerous character of voting in the revolution’s many elections, the
absence of campaigns between clearly distinguishable candidates and parties on
clearly distinguishable issues or, at many moments in many places, the sense that it
was safer to keep one’s preferences to oneself. Nonetheless, a large number of people
engaged in an even larger number of public acts as the result of elections during the
decade of revolution.
Every aspect of these electoral procedures occasioned conflict. Some were revised
several times. A women’s movement produced a Declaration of the Rights of Woman,
but never won voting rights (Gouges [1791] 1980). Income-based restrictions on the
right to vote in primary assemblies and even more stringent requirements for eligibility
for elective positions drew fierce criticism. When an uprising in Paris effectively
terminated the monarchy on 10 August 1792, elections for a Convention to write a new
constitution were called almost instantly, with radically expanded suffrage and no
restrictions on who qualified as electable. The voting age was lowered from twenty-
five to twenty-one and all men other than domestics, paupers and those without fixed
residence could now vote. The primary assemblies, moreover, now gave deputies
instructions and often deliberated and formulated policy resolutions. When the
Convention produced its new constitution in 1793, it organised a national referendum
with an extremely broad suffrage. In a few places, small numbers of women and
children participated, possibly a result of local sympathies for a broad understanding of
citizens’ equality, although the document on which they voted excluded them. But
democracy as envisaged in this most radical of the revolution’s constitutions, although
overwhelmingly approved, never came into force. The Convention, confronting a
series of grave crises – foreign invasion, collapse of the currency, insurrections,
defiance of Parisian authority by local governments, armed counter-revolutionary
mobilisation – empowered its Committee of Public Safety with renewable dictatorial
authority, which it used with great and violent effectiveness, curtailing or eliminating
214 early modern democracy

many of the rights that only shortly before had been hailed as great human achieve-
ments.
With the fall of the Committee, what was left of the Convention drafted yet another
constitution, held another plebiscite and produced yet another mode of government.
Avoiding the concentration of authority in a single legislative chamber, a bicameral
legislature now confronted a five-member executive Directory, tax qualifications were
reintroduced for voters and new restrictions on who could be elected were introduced
as well. In the first of the annual legislative elections, two-thirds had to be chosen from
members of the Convention. What is more, those in power, when faced with election
results not to their liking, quashed the results, arrested opponents or called in the
military to overturn the voters’ choices. Finally, the numerous officials elected locally
now shared power with others appointed from above and from Paris, an ongoing
transformation that culminated in a national system of centrally appointed adminis-
trators established after the seizure of power by General Bonaparte in 1799.

Direct Democracy
The convening of the Estates-General not only launched the revolution’s electoral
practices, but was a national experience of local meetings and deliberations as well.
Many electoral assemblies continued to meet and to correspond with their deputies. In
the spring and summer of 1789, not only was there an insurrectionary climate in Paris,
but in other cities local movements seized power. Over the next several years, elected
national officials had to contend with politically organised clubs, local governments
claiming independent authority, self-organised armed groups that went under the label
of National Guards, and other bodies as well. These organisations pressured local
governments, organised covert campaigns to support favoured candidates for office
despite the taboo against parties and sometimes supported insurrection. Political clubs
organised around the country, corresponded with one another and formed national
networks (Kennedy 1982). In many villages, peasants would gather, often after Sunday
Mass, and plan direct action in search of grain, or against an over-bearing lord or an
unsympathetic tax official (Markoff 1996). In larger cities, militant citizens ran their
neighbourhoods, attacked and intimidated those holding contrary views, and, from
time to time, attempted to pressure or even overturn the elected authority of the new
revolutionary institutions.
In early revolutionary Paris, to take the best-studied example, delegates were
elected to a town council, while the sixty neighbourhood districts into which Paris
had been divided for the elections to the Estates-General developed organs of self-
government that collectively claimed to be the legitimate local governing authorities
rather than their own elected council. The sixty districts were superseded by the
forty-eight ‘sections’, which claimed the right to meet ‘permanently’, that is to say,
when they chose, to arm themselves, debate national as well as local questions, issue
documents, negotiate with each other, make demands of the national legislature and
even pull down national governments not to their liking (Tønnesson 1988). The
overthrow of the monarchy in 1792 was largely organised by the radicalised sections
of Paris in collaboration with a large unit of National Guards that came up from
 the french revolution 215

Marseille, where local activists were busy making their own policies. In justifying
their continuing activism, such bodies claimed that direct action by the people had
greater authority than anything done by elected officials who, without constant
monitoring by the watchful citizenry, could easily turn into a new form of aristocracy
(Sutherland 2009). Local and central authorities had complex relationships oscillating
between intense militancy and authoritarian suppression, resigned acceptance and
active facilitation, depending on the crisis of the moment (Soboul 1958; Tønnesson
1959; Woloch 1970).

Tensions in French Revolutionary Democracy

French revolutionary democracy justified actions by appeals to conflicting concepts
and resorted to institutions justified by those concepts that were inherently in conflict
as well. Sovereignty was lodged not in kings, gods or past practice, but exclusively in
human beings who were identical in rights. In abolishing ‘privilege’, etymologically
‘private law’, in favour of the universal law for all, no one was to differ in rights due to
noble status, occupation, region or locality. The detailed legislation actually accom-
plishing this was often a source of fierce debate. There was enormous resentment on
the part of ex-nobles, for example, over the abolition of their rights to family coats-of-
arms (Doyle 2009). But having justified such annihilation of differences on universal
grounds, they could hardly deny voting rights to Protestants or Jews, or those in
stigmatised occupations such as executioners or actors, or twenty-one year olds, free
men of colour or women. The pull and tug of social movements went on, abolishing,
maintaining or renewing one or another form of exclusion from full rights. But with
equality among abstractly conceived individual citizens given such weight, exclusions
would now need some justification too. For a while some would claim, for example,
that Jews were not really citizens at all since their ancestors came from afar, the debate
itself was a sign that exclusions could not just be taken for granted any more. Not that
there was anything automatic about the results of any of these conflicts. Women
formed political clubs and appropriated revolutionary rhetoric, but only achieved
voting rights in a democratic France in 1944 (Hunt 2007: 171). But exclusions could
now be challenged. Some challenges met strong resistance, some less and some
democratising movements were stronger than others. The night of 4/5 August 1789
became the occasion for the National Assembly to decree the abolition of feudalism in
France and to extend that abolition not just to the seigneurial rights but to a multitude
of privileges of various kinds. This was not simply the working out of the logical
consequences of notions of equality and liberty, but also a practical political response to
the enormous explosion of rural insurrection that had peaked in late July (Markoff
1996).
Conspicuously absent from the vast collection of inequalities and deprivations of
liberty now slated for history’s dustbin was colonial slavery, despite the compelling
arguments of the Society of the Friends of Blacks that slavery was obviously
incompatible with equality and freedom. However, there was not yet a slave rebellion
as there was a peasant rebellion, and the planters, slavers and port-city merchants had
their own powerful arguments, especially the threat to shift the fabulously wealthy
216 early modern democracy

sugar production of St Domingue to the British Empire. But the boundaries of rights
were no easier to fix in the Caribbean than in metropolitan France. First, the white
plantocracy demanded its inclusion in the rights-bearing French nation. Then, two
challenges arose as less wealthy island whites demanded their own inclusion, as did the
very significant group of ‘free coloureds’ who owned an important portion of St
Domingue’s land and slaves. Initially, the white planters sought alliance with the free
coloureds to resist the demands of less prosperous whites. When the slaves revolted,
the National Convention declared the end of colonial slavery, as much in deference to
the slaves’ movement as to keep consistent in the application of the abstract principles
of liberty and equality. Napoleon was to rescind the abolition of slavery, but was unable
to restore it everywhere, since the Haitians had defeated the French forces, as well
as the British and Spanish who attempted to take advantage of the violent chaos
(Drescher 2009: 146–80; Dubois 2004).
Embodying the sovereignty of the people in a unicameral elected legislature was
inherently problematic as well. As we have seen, all sorts of locally rooted groups
claimed that democracy inhered in their own direct action, rather than in locally or
nationally elected bodies; local officials and national legislators denounced direct action
for defying the legitimate authority of the people’s representatives. The relationship of
elected legislature and hereditary monarch was also extremely troubled. The Con-
vention’s solution was to kill the king, but this did not settle the question of the
organisation of the state for long because it soon installed a new monarch in Napoleon
Bonaparte who strongly curtailed legislative power. The fundamental notions that
there was some meaningful sense in which ‘the people’ could be said to be a singular
actor or that parties and electoral campaigns were illegitimate were challenged by the
way actual people organised to defend and advance their particular interests and
conceptions of right action. ‘Parties’ were incessantly condemned, yet the national
legislatures and local councils were continually getting petitions and demands from
people organised for that purpose and covert support for favoured candidates existed
as well. In the period of the Terror in 1793–4, the Committee of Public Safety
abolished previously cherished individual rights and carried out incarcerations,
property confiscations and executions (but not torture) on a vast scale. Yet even then
the government could be said to exemplify the notion of the supremacy of elected
legislative authority: when the Convention revoked the Committee’s mandate, its rule
was over.
After the fall of the Committee of Public Safety, what was left of the Convention
treated elections as instruments to acquire rulership, even as they did not rule out
other means. Regulations were crafted to keep themselves in place, most dramatically
by requiring that two-thirds of newly elected legislators were to be chosen from among
those already sitting in the Convention. Over the next few years, if the electorate
veered too far left or right, political clubs could be closed, activists imprisoned,
schisms in electoral assemblies encouraged and then the favoured fragment of the
schism recognised as the rightful assembly. Rather than the citizens choosing their
sovereign representatives, the legislators organised the elections to bring themselves
back into power: voting results were ignored and the military invited to prevent
unwanted outcomes. In 1799, General Bonaparte went beyond the governing estab-
 the french revolution 217

lishment’s bidding in suppressing threats to its rule, installed himself in power and
closed down what was left of the revolution’s democracy.
But this does not mean that elections were an insignificant element in political
contestation. For a decade, elections were the key element in claiming legitimate
authority. At the local level, there is much work for historians still to do, but it appears
that beginning with those very first local elections, the local structure of authority
changed radically (Jessenne 1987). The conception of the people as a singular
collective actor hung over efforts to create such a people where it did not yet exist
and was in tension with stirring commitments to the rights of individual persons. The
penchant for national standardisation in law, administration, weights and measures,
and taxation extended to considerable disdain for the rich fabric of local custom and
culture. The relevant committee’s report to the Convention on language policy was
titled: ‘Report on the Necessity and Means to Annihilate Patois and Universalise the
Use of the French Language’ (Certeau et al. 1975: 302). The disdain for parties and
the valorisation of the unity of the sovereign people made it difficult to organise
disagreement, let alone establish dissent as legitimate. The notion a ‘loyal opposition’
was anathema to the French Revolution.

Extending Revolution in the World

The impact of the revolution beyond France was immediate and enormous (Godechot
1956; Palmer 1959–64). It committed an enormously powerful country to one side of
an ongoing struggle in many places between what had been described shortly before
as ‘aristocrats’ versus ‘democrats’. It provided powerful evidence that the hope of a
democratic political order might be viable, not simply along the American coastline far
from the aristocratic-monarchical states of the Old World, but in Europe as well. The
old claim that democracy was not only extremely undesirable, but impossible on a scale
larger than an ancient city-state evaporated when the aristocratic armies of Europe
failed to crush the democratic rabble of France. Democracy might still be highly
undesirable, but conservatives could no longer take comfort in its impossibility. When
the mutable fortunes of battle proved favourable, the French exported their new
political models by force, annexing adjoining territory and supporting satellite
republics in alliance with local democratic movements. The scale of the extensive
French mobilisations of military forces, essential for a country whose armies even-
tually, if briefly, dominated Europe from Madrid to Moscow, provoked defensive
imitation of some French practices even on the part of regimes determined to set the
clock back. The writing of constitutions took hold even among some of France’s foes,
not to mention its satellites, thereby diffusing the foundational democratic notion that
human beings can set down the fundamental rules for shaping or reshaping their own
states and societies. Those constitutions had other important democratic features. The
constitution adopted in Cádiz in 1812, for example, provided for a broad suffrage in the
Spanish empire and was an important framework for subsequent democratic devel-
opments in Latin America.
At the start of the twenty years of warfare that began in 1792, French legislators
proclaimed their intention to democratise the places they occupied, to extend to
218 early modern democracy

Europe their own social and political virtues. As one famous formulation had it, they
would go to war against the palaces but make peace with the cottages. A few doubters
suggested that they would merely arouse resistance, since ‘no one loves armed
missionaries’ (Robespierre [1791] 1950–67: 8:81). As the long war unfolded, the
extraction of resources from occupied places and the consequent multiple forms of
resistance against French armies meant the French were more likely to be seen as
oppressors than as liberators, as new tyrants rather than as champions of freedom.
Wartime exigencies fuelled the closure of France’s own sites of democracy, particularly
in the brief murderous rule of the Committee of Public Safety and the more durable
new monarchy of Bonaparte.

Conclusion
Three days after its establishment by the National Assembly, the Committee on the
Constitution announced that it would prepare a ‘declaration of the rights of man’. It
issued a statement of the seventeen articles on which it could agree in August. These
rights were taken to be prior to any particular form of government since ‘the purpose
of all political association is to preserve the natural and irrevocable rights of man’
(Déclaration 1789). Although sociologists have generally been of the view that rights
are meaningful only to the extent that there is an enforcement mechanism, the
Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen had it the other way around. There is
almost no specific mention of France, its institutions and mode of government at all.
Rather, all governments must take measures to ensure the rights people have simply
because they are human beings. It is because ‘Men are born free and equal in rights’
that the law must see to it that there is equality among citizens (Déclaration 1789).
According to Article 11: ‘The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the
most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may therefore speak, write and print
freely’ (Déclaration 1789). Perhaps no word is more important in this Article than
‘therefore’. Citizens must have certain rights as citizens because all human beings have
them.
Ferociously denounced as a threat to established authority everywhere and equally
passionately defended for the same reason, the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du
citoyen was at the same time a challenge to democracy as it was a powerful defence of it.
The defence is in the claim that democracy is a better protector of human rights than
imaginable alternatives. The challenge is that actual realisations of democracy are
deficient in the achievement of human rights and therefore always a source of social
movements for their extension. For twenty-first-century critics of democracy in the
era of globalisation, it would no longer be as clear as it seemed in 1789 that the
achievement of citizens’ rights in the separate nation-states was an adequate vehicle for
securing the fundamental rights of humanity.
In the decade that followed the elections to the Estates-General, the drama,
complexity and multiplicity of France’s revolutionary experience made that upheaval
an endless source of models of democracy and of anti-democracy. It developed the
practice of democracy through representative institutions and the often contrary
practice of democracy through intensive personal participation. At different points it
 the french revolution 219

provided deeply eloquent formulations of freedom and equality, eliminated long-

standing forms of inequality and many abusive practices, filled enormous numbers of
public positions by popular election, inspired large numbers of people in villages and
urban neighbourhoods to participate in making their own history, deeply involved its
army in political life, crushed political dissent and excoriated cultural difference. It
demonstrated that a modern nation-state could be organised without monarchs and
aristocrats, and it also demonstrated how deeply contentious the future of democracy
would be.

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