Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of Hawai'i Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of
World History.
http://www.jstor.org
Democracy;s Place inWorld History
STEVEN MUHLBERGER
Nipissing University
PHIL PAINE
Toronto, Ontario
the recent past, demands for democracy have come from all
In over the world. Almost no one expected this. It is an interesting
and important reflection on those events that historical scholar
ship has little to say about democracy that contributes, intellectu
ally or practically, to an understanding of them.
Democracy once had a prominent place in historical thought.
Dramatic changes in nineteenth-century European and North
American society produced a liberal historiography to put those
changes into context by identifying the history of Europe with
that of personal liberty.1 It held that Europe had evolved a unique
notion of liberty out of a combination of classical and Christian
ideas. This ideal had driven the political development of Europe
and its more advanced colonies and set them apart from the rest
of the world. It was taken for granted that the history of govern
ment (once any society had emerged from the historyless "state of
nature") began with monarchy, and that non-European peoples,
1 see William
For a summary, H. McNeill, Structure of European History (New
York, 1974), pp. 3-17. Two exemplary products of nineteenth-century liberal history
are Lord Acton, History of Freedom and Other Essays (London, 1909); and Sir Henry
Sumner Maine, Popular Government: Four Essays, 5th ed. (London, 1909). Many
other historians (especially, as McNeill points out, continental scholars) took a
more nationalist view of the progress of liberty, but all liberals
narrowly thought
of this progress as basic to human history.
Journal of World History, Vol. 4, No. 1
? 1993 by University of Hawaii Press
23
24 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1993
5
Indeed, Donald W. Treadgold's Freedom: A History (New York, 1990) shows
that this interpretation is still alive and influential today. Treadgold, like the nine
teenth-century liberals, attributes an overwhelming importance to European ide
als of freedom and political institutions. His reaffirmation of the uniqueness of
the European tradition is based not on a thorough acquaintance with the political
and ideological characteristics of other cultures, but on an a priori acceptance of
stereotypes that go back to Hegel, if not earlier.
Muhlberger and Paine: Democracy's Place inWorld History 27
6
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George
Lawrence (New York, 1969), pp. 287-94, 5I3~24- One could cite a vast modern litera
ture on the political of voluntary such as the quite rele
significance organizations,
vant work of Jane J. Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy (New York, 1980),
but the point is made briefly and well by Aristotle, who cites an aphorism well
known to tyrants (Politics 5.11.; trans. T. A. Sinclair [Harmondsworth, 1962], p. 225):
"Don't allow getting together in clubs for social and cultural activities or anything
of that kind; these are the breeding grounds of independence and self-confidence,
two things which a tyrant must guard against."
7
There is no better illustration of the complexities of this problem than the
tortuous arguments that Aristotle uses in his Politics to distinguish between aris
tocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and polity, the last his ideal and balanced form of
government. All involved both some attempt at inclusivity and a degree of exclusiv
28 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1993
ity; thus the definition of the key term citizen could not be taken for granted. The
same difficulties exist today. Modern states restrict citizenship and the franchise
in a variety of ways (e.g., in the cases of resident aliens, prisoners, or convicted
felons; in the recent past many states denied the vote to those receiving public
assistance). Such restrictions may or may not be justifiable, but are usually taken
entirely for granted.
8
Again the case of Aristotle is relevant. Aristotle knew that all nonmonarchical
constitutions existing in his own day mixed oligarchical and democratic features,
but he had no difficulty in distinguishing which elements in them were demo
cratic, that is, promoted inclusivity. See especially Politics 4.14.
9
The first date marks the nationwide enfranchisement of women on the same
basis as men; the second is significant because before 1965, large numbers of black
citizens of the United States were prevented from voting by a variety of state laws.
Adult suffrage of a sort we now expect from any country claiming to be a democ
racy is rare and a nineteenth- or twentieth-century phenomenon. The country with
the longest continuous history of adult suffrage is Finland (since 1919). A franchise
made up of all or most male householders is, however, not rare in the further past.
10
To use such awkward phrases as "quasi-democracy," "quasi-democratic
practices," or "quasi-democratic institutions" throughout this discussion would
lend only a specious precision, while obscuring an important element to our argu
ment. Such terminology has been rightly rejected by students of classical Greek
and Roman politics. We make no claim that we have discovered a multitude of true
or perfect democracies in the non-European past. If the reader can agree that
some or all of our examples are roughly as democratic as those cities considered
democratic by Aristotle, we are satisfied. See note 7 above.
Muhlberger and Paine: Democracy's Place inWorld History 29
11Y. K. L. K. Tao,
Liang and Village and Town Life in China (London, 1915),
PP- 3-6
12
Ibid., p. 28. Liang and Tao generalize very broadly, taking little note of
regional variation. A more detailed account of the clan or zu can be found in Hsien
Chin-Hu, The Common Descent Group in China and Its Functions (New York, 1948),
which unfortunately does not discuss the decision-making process at any length.
This is a common problem in finding information about grass-roots organizations.
But Hu does give (app. 53, pp. 169-80) a riveting account of one intraclan contro
versy.
3? JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING I993
13 in China,
Liang and Tao, Village and Town Life pp. 32-41, especially 22-31.
Compare Gary Seaman, Temple Organization in a Chinese Village (Taipei, 1978), pp.
63-70, 146, a case where the elections are rigged, but the informal log-rolling
behind all practical projects is real and effective.
14
Arthur H. Smith, Village Life in China (1899; rpt. Boston, 1970); Martin C.
Yang, A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province (New York, 1945). Yang provides
an example of a voluntary organization in the main school of his home village. It
had been founded by the Pan clan but was attended by children of all clans and run
was a village-wide
by a school council of all parents. "The council organization"
(P-144)
15
Ibid., pp. 173-81.
16
Ibid., pp. 181-86; compare Smith, Village Life in China, pp. 170-76.
17
For a similar pattern in a Muslim community in southeast Asia, see Thomas
M. Fraser, Jr., Fishermen of South Thailand: The Malay Villagers (New York, 1966),
pp. 40-52.
Muhlberger and Paine: Democracy's Place inWorld History 31
18
Smith, Village Life in China, pp. 98-124; C. K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Soci
ety: A Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their His
torical Factors (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961), pp. 60-61,98-99.
19
Yang, A Chinese Village, pp. 240-41. Staving off disaster in a peasant commu
nity is no small thing, but Yang was a rural reconstruction officer and had greater
ambitions. Compare Yang's criticism of peasant conservatism to Sir Henry
Maine's criticism of democracy (1884). It was undesirable because in such places as
Switzerland, it had proved itself unprogressive: "The progress of mankind has
hitherto been effected by the rise and fall of aristocracies" (Popular Government,
p. 42). Kung-Chuan Hsiao, in Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Cen
tury (Seattle, i960), pp. 261-63, sums up the arguments of scholars who have consid
ered democratic elements in village life as insignificant in comparison to the
power of various elites. Compare position, note 53 below.
Wittfogel's
20
Smith, Village Life in China, p. 102. Smith's testimony is the more interesting
in light of the fact that, from a missionary he was inclined to
coming background,
view the Chinese way of life as corrupt. Martin himself admitted
deeply Yang (A
Chinese Village, p. 241) that by denying the democracy of Chinese local government,
he was disagreeing with many other observers.
21
Nor was democratic practice restricted to villages. John H. Fincher's Chi
nese Democracy: The Self-Government Movement in Local, Provincial and National
Politics, 1?05-1?14 (London, 1981) documents the role of big-city democratic reform
movements in influencing the large-scale but largely with
forgotten experiments
parliamentary democracy in the late Qing period. Chinese democratic reformers
appealed not just to foreign ideals but to Chinese theoreticians who had argued
that administrators should be responsible to deliberative councils (p. 68). See also
32 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1993
who have ever lived have been citizens of small agricultural vil
lages. They have focused their loyalties on those villages and have
experienced government in that context. Most of these millions of
agricultural communities, past and present, have employed some
democratic techniques of government: decisions made and lead
ers chosen by unanimous consent or majority vote, after extensive
discussions in a public assembly. Almost all villages, everywhere,
have had a village council. These have many names: the ancient
tings of Scandinavia, the kampong assemblies of Malaysia, the
famous council fires of the Amerindian confederacies, the com
munes of the vill of medieval the gumlao of the Kachin
England,
in Burma, the Landesgemeinde of central Europe, the Maori
hapus, the kokwet of the east African Sebei, the panchayats of
India, and countless others. Voluntary self-help groups have also
been commonplace, and decision making within them has neces
sarily been by discussion and general agreement.
Africa is often portrayed as a continent dominated by kingship
and authoritarian rule. Although specialists know better, the
presence of kings in precolonial times is often cited as an explana
tion of the postcolonial plague of dictatorships. Nobody applies
the same reasoning to Europe, although it has had no shortage of
kings and emperors. The existence of kings in the past does not
make for a destiny of kings.
Africa, in fact, has not been particularly fertile ground for
kingship in past ages. Its monarchies and empires have been
ephemeral by European standards. At least half of the "tradi
tional" monarchies of the present were installed by the colonial
a hundred
powers years ago. Other precolonial kings were no
more than oligarchs and war chiefs of limited power. Precolonial
Africa was a latticework of decentralized and
farming villages
autonomous towns only occasionally subjected to genuine monar
chical states. The chiefs that existed varied greatly in power, but
most would fit Albert Doutreloux's description of Yombe chief
dom, as summarized by Wayne MacGaffrey: "Whatever the extent
of a chief's power, chief ship is inevitably associated with a collec
tion of people who surround the chief at least as much to control
him as to assist him."22
Quite often, the village councils were left to run things without
an overlord to help or hinder them. Among the Sebei of Uganda,
all villagers could attend the governing kokwet, and all circum
cised males could speak there. Opinion was most easily swayed by
kirwokik (judges), men with a reputation for eloquence, irrespec
tive of wealth or station. "Judgeship," says a Sebei proverb, "is
bought by the ear, not with cattle."23 Similar assemblies have been
described for dozens of other peoples. Commonly village polities
have combined in alliances?alliances organized through a series
of nesting councils and assemblies. For instance, the Aguinyi
"clan" among the Ibo of Nigeria is an acephalous confederation of
seven autonomous towns. Although the confederation has no
institutional expression, each of the towns is run by a council of
delegates elected from the villages that make up the towns. Each
village has an assembly in which everyone may speak, and which
is responsible for roads, scholarship schemes, revolving loan
funds, and (even in modern conditions) basic law and order. Below
the village level, both wards and extended families deal with com
mon business on much the same basis as the villages themselves.
Life among the Aguinyi thus embraces a variety of democratic
experience.24
The Aguinyi and other
Ibo peoples also provide an example of
an individualist democratic ethic that appears to have grown
entirely from indigenous roots. The Aguinyi often speak of the vir
tues of common effort and unanimity, but they also acknowledge
the power of chi. Chi originally meant a pagan deity or personal
god and now stands for an individual's fate or destiny, as well as
the combination of characteristics that makes someone "person
ally responsible and calculative in his life and actions." Chi is the
strength that enables individuals to stand up for their own views
when they disagree with the rest of the community. Obstruc
tionism is not popular among the Aguinyi, yet the concept of chi,
which makes the "individual. . . the last irreducible unit of re
sponsibility who must [guard] against all undue imitation and
23
Walter Goldschmidt, Sebei Law (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), pp. 163-67;
Goldschmidt, Culture and Behavior of the Sebei: A Study in Continuity and Adapta
tion (Berkeley, 1976), pp. 55-85. The phrase "bought by the ear" meant that a judge
had learned the traditional law by diligent listening to the rulings of elder states
men. In Sebei Law, p. 164 and n. 2, Goldschmidt points out that women were
involved in council discussions what were regarded as "women's mat
involving
ters"; when Goldschmidt consulted male experts in Sebei law, they suggested to
him that women should participate in the discussions.
24
Lambert U. Ejiofor, Dynamics of Igbo Democracy: A Behavioural Analysis of
Igbo Politics in Aguinyi Clan (Ibadan, 1981), especially pp. 34-85.
34 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING I993
25
Ibid., pp. 106-107.
26 shows how colonial and
MacGaffrey, Custom and Government, brilliantly
postcolonial rule has repressed popular quasi-democratic self-government in
favor of hierarchical structures, while denying the very existence and possibility
of "native" self-government.
27 of governments have been in unlikely
Quasi-democratic methods important
places, such as the hyper-competitive trading cities of the Niger Delta in the nine
teenth century, a culture in which slave trading and cannibalism were customary.
European observers characterized the culture as one in which monarchs
Early
and nobles held absolute power over a suppressed population. Detailed study has
shown that the key institutions, the canoe houses (extended households whose
power was based on trade and fighting strength), used quasi-democratic methods
to choose their leaders (often ex-slaves) simply because they could not afford the
inefficiency of hereditary leadership. See G. I. Jones, The Trading State of the Oil
Rivers: A Study of Political Development in Eastern Nigeria (London, 1963), espe
cially pp. 170-72. For an account of a recent election in a similar, "monarchical"
city in the same area, see Egiegberi Joe Alagoa, The Small Brave City State: A His
tory of Nembe-Brass in the Niger Delta (Madison, 1964), p. 21.
28 was of this view, but how
Marx, of course, the most influential proponent
commonplace it was in the mid-nineteenth century can be seen by reference to
Eliot, History of Liberty, Part I, 1:8-21. Although scholarship has long ago moved
past this point, the basic attitude toward India still survives in many contexts.
Muhlberger and Paine: Democracy's Place inWorld History 35
29 treatment
The most thorough of the subject is J. P. Sharma, Republics in
Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.-500 B.C. (Leiden, 1968). See also A. S. Altekar, State and
Government in Ancient India, 3d ed. (Delhi, 1958). Steven Muhlberger, "Demo
cracy's Past: The Case of Ancient India" (forthcoming), is a historiographical
reconsideration of the significance of the Indian republics.
30
Sharma, Republics in Ancient India, pp. 15-80, 237.
31 at
Narendra Wagle, Society the Time of the Buddha (Bombay, 1966), pp.
156-58.
32
Ibid.
33 State as Known to
Altekar, and Government, p. 115; V. S. Agrawala, India
Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashatadhyayi, 2d ed. (Varanasi, 1963),
PP- 436-39, interpreting Kautilya, Arthasastra 11.1. (trans. R. Shamasastry, 8th ed.
[Mysore, 1967], p. 407).
JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING
36 1993
38
Mahavagga 1.28, in Vinaya Texts, pt. 1, trans. T. W. Rhys Davids, vol. 13 of SBE
(Oxford, 1881), pp. 169-70; and Kullavagga 4.9-14, in Vinaya Texts, pt. 3, trans. T. W.
Rhys Davids and Hermann Oldenburg, vol. 20 of SBE (Oxford, 1885), pp. 24-65. The
latter section deals with the most contentious issues possible within the sangha,
those which concerned of the monastic rule itself. Such a dispute
interpretation
could be referred to a jury or committee elected by the sangha, or settled
specially
by majority vote. The Kullavagga shows a recognition that a democratic vote was
seen as the legitimate way to settle such disputes as well as a desire to "direct"
votes when threaten the unity of the sangha. The vote taker (himself an
they might
elected official) could disallow votes if the winners' opinions went against his
of the law (4.10; pp. 26-27). The provision makes no sense unless the
interpretation
belief in majority rule was strong in the order.
39
Altekar, State and Government, p. 136; compare Benoychandra Sen, Studies
in the Buddhist Jatakas: Tradition and Polity (Calcutta, 1974), pp. 60-64.
40 is the Santi Parva section of the Mahabharata, which
Among these treatises
justifies absolute monarchy as a guarantee of order and caste distinctions; inter
38 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1993
estingly, chapter 107 provides advice to a raja who is not yet an absolute monarch,
who is told how to manipulate his gana by setting the "leaders" against the igno
rant membership. The treatise attributed to Manu (Manu-Smrti, The Laws of
Manu) is the earliest of a series of Dharmasastras, or systematic treatments of
divine law in which caste is a key concept.
41
Kautilya, Arthasastra 11.1, p. 416.
42A can be seen
similar situation in the Greek polis communities in the Hel
lenistic and Roman periods and in the Italian city-states of the high Middle Ages
and Renaissance. See Simon Price, "The History of the Hellenistic Period," in John
Boardman, Jaspar Griffin, and Oswyn Murray, eds., The Oxford History of the
Classical World (Oxford, 1986), pp. 330-36; Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination:
City-States in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore, 1988), especially pp. 130-61,191-217; and
Giovanni Tabacco, The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy (Cambridge, 1989). The
dynamics of such periods are among the most interesting problems facing histo
rians of democracy.
43
The classic study is R. C. Majumdar, Corporate Life in Ancient India, 3d. ed.
(Calcutta, 1969); another treatment is A. S. Altekar, A History of Village Communi
ties in Western India, University of Bombay Economic Series 5 (Bombay, 1927), who
was skeptical of claims that all Indian villages were alike, or could be treated as
small republics. His work documents how, in the Bombay area, a long series of
imperial governments slowly eroded village self-government, until British policies
almost destroyed it entirely.
Muhlberger and Paine: Democracy's Place inWorld History 39
44
Sir Henry Maine, Village-Communities in the East and the West (1889; rpt.
New York, 1974), especially pp. 122-24; Carl C. Taylor et al., India's Roots of Democ
racy: A Sociological Analysis of Rural India's Experience in Planned Development
since Independence (New Delhi, 1965), pp. 29-43.
45
Henry Maddick, Panchayati Raj: A Study of Rural Local Government (Lon
don, 1970), a report from one reformer actively involved in the imposition of the
new (post-1958) panchayat system, depicts it as inspired by the old village com
munities but as having no direct historic link. Compare N. R. Inamdar, Function
ing of Village Panchayats (Bombay, 1970), who looked at four village panchayats in
the period 1960-62; the two more successful ones were precisely those where local
initiative predated government decree.
46
Frederica M. Bunge, ed., Thailand: A Country Study, 5th ed. (Washington,
1981), pp. 81-84; Charles F. Keyes, Thailand: Buddhist Kingdom as Modern Nation
State (Boulder and London, 1987), pp. 36,137-38,140; Manning Nash et al., Anthropo
logical Studies in Theravada Buddhism, Cultural Report Series 13, Yale University
Southeast Asia Studies (New Haven, 1966).
4o JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1993
47
This is well described by Grenville Goodwin, The Social Organization of the
Western Apache (Tucson, 1969).
48 The Chickasaw The Children
Arrel M. Gibson, (Norman, 1971); Bruce Trigger,
of Aataensic: A History of the Huron People to 1660, 2 vols. (Montreal and London,
1976).
49
[James Adair], Adair's History of the American Indians, ed. Samuel Cole Wil
liams (New York, 1930), pp. 406-407, 459-60: "They are all equal?the only prece
dence any gain is by superior virtue, oratory, or prowess.... Governed by the
plain and honest law of nature, their whole constitution breathes nothing but lib
... no words to express
erty. [They] have despotic power, arbitrary kings, op
or obedient subjects.... When any national affair is in debate, you may
pressed,
have every father of the family in his house on the subject with rapid,
speaking
bold language, and the utmost freedom that a people can use."
50 The Lost Universe: Pawnee
Gene Weltfish, Life and Culture (Lincoln, 1965), p.
6: "Gradually I began to realize that democracy is a very personal thing, which like
at home. it means not being coerced and having no need
charity, begins Basically
to coerce anyone else.... In the detailed events of everyday living as a child, [the
Pawnee] began his development as a disciplined and free man or as a woman who
felt her dignity and her independence to be inviolate."
Muhlberger and Paine: Democracy's Place inWorld History 41
57
For an eloquent presentation of this point of view by an anthropologist, see
Marshall D. Sahlins, Tribesmen (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968), pp. 4-13.
58 case of the Roman
The paradigmatic empire has recently been the object of
convincing debunking: Peter Garnsey and Richard Sailer, The Roman Empire:
Economy, Society and Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987), and Benjamin
Isaac, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East (Oxford, 1990), show that
the imperial government, even at the empire's was hardly at all concerned
height,
with the well-being of the general population and devoted its energies almost
entirely to creating and maintaining a power structure that benefited a very small
minority. As Isaac puts it (p. 160): "The army's role was to protect the rulers rather
than the ruled." It is becoming more difficult to decide whether the Roman state
represented a case of Hobbesian war or civilized peace.
59
Aristotle, Politics 5.1, discusses the pursuit of fairness (or equality) as the
basis for any constitution, and the lack of it as the reason for internal conflict. The
same passage refers to some of the difficulties involved in interpreting the concept
of equality.
44 JOURNAL OF WORLD HISTORY, SPRING 1993
60 An Evolutionary Per
See Elman R. Service, Primitive Social Organization:
spective (New York, 1962), especially his summary of band and tribal society (pp.
140-41).
61 are not perfect in this regard, but a fair com
Of course, democratic regimes
parison between western and eastern Germany, or Latvia and Sweden will make
the point.
Muhlberger and Paine: Democracy's Place inWorld History 45
62
In the second century, the emperor Trajan his prohibition of a col
justified
lege or guild of firefighters in Nicomedia in these terms: "It is to be remembered
that this sort of societies have greatly disturbed the peace of your province.. ..
Whatever title we give them, and whatever our in it, men who are
object giving
bonded together for a common end will all the same become a political organiza
tion before long." Pliny, Letters 10.34, trans. William Melmoth (Cambridge, Mass.,
1963), 2:319-21.