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Perry Anderson

Lineages of the Absolutist State Hardcover – January 1, 1974

by Perry Anderson (Author)

4.6 30 ratings

Part of: Verso World History (6 books)

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Part of series

Verso World History
Print length

573 pages
Language

English
Publisher

NLB
Publication date

January 1, 1974
ISBN-10

0902308165
ISBN-13

978-0902308169
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Perry Anderson
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4.6 out of 5

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Kitchen Trout

Had to read this book for my seminar in college ...

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2017

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Had to read this book for my seminar in college. It is one of the most detailed books I have ever read and you will feel smarter and sound smarter after reading it. For example, did you know that eastern European absolutism was largely a device for the consolidation of serfdom? Faced with the threat of western imperialism, the ruling classes of eastern Europe were obliged to form a ruthless, centralized state that binded the lower classes to the land and prevented the upward mobility of the peasantry all while levying taxes to raise a more permanent military apparatus. It's up in the air as to if someone will actually ask me this kind of stuff in a job interview but no one can say i didn't learn something.

9 people found this helpful

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Yuchen Liu

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2015

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Great book

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Malleus Maleficarum

A brilliant mess, messily brilliant - either way, this is a book everyone should read

Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2018

It is difficult to understand where and how to start a review of a book so majestic in its sweep. Perry Anderson's Lineages of the Absolutist State, is a 600 page tour de force, marked by deep and penetrating insight, an all encompassing sweep over time and terrain, sorely lacking structure and leaving the reader gasping for breath. I have read this book once from end to end and gone back multiple times to read specific chapters again and again just to try and get a coherent understanding of the author's main thesis. With some trepidation, I write this review, hoping that I understood most of what the author wanted to convey.

First some background - Lineages of the Absolutist State (LAS) was published in the 1970s, as the second part of an intended trilogy to explain the emergence of capitalism from the 'natural economy' of agrarianism which was well established across large parts of the globe. This book and its predecessor, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (PAF), attempt to explain why Capitalism arose in Europe alone and if I was to summarize the author's arguments, it is a halfway blend between the extreme-Marxist view of economic determinism, wherein all nations and societies pass through the same path of development on account of technological changes, and a purely contingent view of history, wherein events are purely determined by exogenous factors that are independent of the state of any given society.

This book picks up where PAF left off, hypothesizing that the emergence of the Absolutist state from the feudal societies that emerged after the collapse of the Roman Empire, were critical intermediaries in the development of capitalism. In particular, the rise of Absolutism brought with it imperfect prototypes of many of the institutions associated with modernity - taxation, standing armies, bureaucracy and diplomacy. Perry Anderson's contention is that it was a combination of two exogenous shocks - the Black Death in Western Europe and the massive influx of silver from the New World, that combined with the singular political, economic and legal institutions of Western Europe, viz. the existence of private, heritable property in land that led to the rise of Absolutism - and he also briefly makes a link between the singularity of Western feudalism on account of the synthesis of two collapsing modes of production, the Roman slave economy and the Germanic free peasant holding system, to reinforce the idea that without this foundation, the two exogenous shocks in themselves would not have led to the rise of the Absolutist State and later on of capitalism.

Unfortunately, there is no clear exposition of the above argument anywhere in the book itself, so I can't even be sure if that is what the author intended to convey - but I do believe I am close. From a structure perspective, no overarching argument is stated clearly upfront so unfortunately, the reader will need to read the whole book, including the two Annexed notes at the end to arrive at an appreciation of the book's overall argument. This is where the book is at its strongest, when highlighting the differences between Eastern Europe, Japan, the Ottoman Empire and the Mughal Empire to highlight the emergence of a deviant form of feudalism (Eastern Europe and Japan) or of no feudalism (Ottoman Empire and the Mughals) neither of which led to the development of capitalism (until imposed later by Western European societies through coercive imperialism).

The heart of the book consists of detailed individual essays exploring the rise and fall of Absolutism in each major country of the West and the East and the author begins with Spain, which can legitimately be highlighted as the original prototype of Absolutism in Western Europe with the influx of American silver and the strengthening of its military, especially the Tercio which was the anvil on which copy-cat Absolutism in other geographies in the West was forged. A similar role was played in Eastern Europe by Sweden, where the Swedish Empire, enriched by its silver mines and iron cannons, was a geopolitical hammer that shaped the Absolutist state in Austria, Bohemia, Russia, Poland and Prussia. It is well nigh impossible to provide a pithy yet comprehensive summary of the author's excursus into the trajectory of Absolutism in each country but any reader who goes through his country-wise essays will arguably emerge with an insight into 3 centuries of political, military and economic developments for the entire continent of Europe that would otherwise require possibly years of study across multiple books.

With that being said, there are some shortcomings of the book, that 40 years later, perhaps Perry Anderson himself would concede. Firstly, the language itself is clearly haughty, with an intent to use bon-mots and words that will have even the most fluent reader reaching for the dictionary (Rod Ayala, in his review, characterized the author as a show-off) - more importantly, in 40 years, we have not seen the 3rd part of this trilogy and with the author having turned 80, we might legitimately assume that it is not imminent - which is a shame because Perry Anderson leaves the origin of the bourgeoisie and capitalist economy unexplained - there is nothing in this book that shows a straight line from the decline of the Absolutist state to the rise of the capitalist state (Richard Lachmann, in his review, says it's because the author boxed himself in and I agree - while we do see the rise of a bourgeoisie in this book, they were nothing more than town dwellers who were fighting against aristocratic privilege and there is no reason why they could not have attained this goal within an Absolutist state). The final criticism of this book is its lack of organization, while the country by country assessment is valuable, the lack of an adequate synthesis either at the end or upfront does no service to the reader

However, the criticisms highlighted above are minor and this book justly deserves its position as one of the great books of Marxist historiography - and it is hard to imagine how anyone who invests time to read and reflect upon it would come away disappointed. My only disappointment is the lack of the 3rd book of the trilogy

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Pietro Krepompkin

Exquisite tome

Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2016

Oh yeah this bad boy is just dripping with beef sauce, definitely, if you're a bespectacled or would-be bespectacled intellectual who loves a nice deep bite into European History and its many, chunky layers, and you don't mind getting your spectacles all bespectacled, this is your book. This man must really have spent years in a library because this book is so in-depth I don't even know what to think. It's a really crazy book.

6 people found this helpful

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Jim Blake, Jr.

Foundational

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2017

I walked into Keplers Books in Menlo Park California set on buying the most boring book I laid eyes on in the hope I might learn something unusual. i do this from time to time. Professor Anderson's book was the one ! I read it daily for two months on the train to work - never an easy read. It is a fascinating book and 20 years later, I use ideas from it in my writing on postmodernism. It is a powerful book, a foundational book for understanding how and why large nations form.

3 people found this helpful

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nyc_economist

A masterpiece

Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2004

This is comparative history writing at its best. I am in awe.

I picked up this thick book thinking I'd just poke around at a few of the chapters but I found myself so drawn by it that I had to go back and read it from start to end (all 550+ pages). Anderson isn't just interested in historical detail, he's interested in trying to shed understanding on big fundamental questions such as why was serfdom re-imposed in the East at the same time that it was collapsing in the West, why absolutism arose at the time it did and took different shapes in different regions. Solidly argued and authoritative, I can say without exageration that this is one of the most important history books I have ever read (scratch that, this is simply one of the most important BOOKS I've ever read). It changed the way I think about economic development, absolutism and nation states.

It is also well written. I found myself reading the book almost like a novel. No sooner had I finished a chapter on say Prussia that I found myself unable to put the book down because I wanted to find out what was similar but different in Poland, or Russia. Anderson has framed the questions so nicely that you just keep begging for more.

32 people found this helpful

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Lineages of the Absolutist State Hardcover – January 1, 1974

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