Before the state: systemic political change in the West from the Greeks to the French Revolution

Charting structural political change from the origins of western civilisation in the pre-Christian Greek world to c1800, this ambitious reassessment of world political development draws on a wealth of historical material and seeks to change the way we think about the nature of the state.

The idea that society, or civilisation, is predicated on the "state" is a projection of present-day political ideology into the past. Nothing akin to what we call the "state" existed before the 19th century: it is a recent invention and the assumption that it is timeless, necessary for society, is simply part of its legitimating myth. The development, over the past three millennia, of the political structures of western civilisation is shown here to have been a succession ofindividual, unrepeatable stages: what links them is not that every period re-enacts the "state&q

Charting structural political change from the origins of western civilisation in the pre-Christian Greek world to c1800, this ambitious reassessment of world political development draws on a wealth of historical material and seeks to change the way we think about the nature of the state.