Family Power
Kinship, War and Political Orders in Eurasia, 500–2018

Explains why successful states and empires have developed by fostering collaboration between families and dynasties, and the state.

Peter Haldén (Author)

9781108495929, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 March 2020

386 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.6 cm, 0.68 kg

In a pathbreaking study of extraordinary historical and comparative scope, Halden brings the family back into politics from the shadow world to which it has been relegated by modern social science. He shows just how central kinship groups are to the creation and success of political orders and develops a richer understanding of the state that decenter's Weber's emphasis on violence and bureaucracy. Richard Ned Lebow, King's College London

Since the seventeenth century, scholars have argued that kinship as an organizing principle and political order are antithetical. This book shows that this was simply not the case. Kinship, as a principle of legitimacy and in the shape of dynasties, was fundamental to political order. Throughout the last one and a half millennia of European and Middle Eastern history, elite families and polities evolved in symbiosis. By demonstrating this symbiosis as a basis for successful polities, Peter Haldén unravels long-standing theories of the state and of modernity. Most social scientists focus on coercion as a central facet of the state and indeed of power. Instead, Halden argues that much more attention must be given to collaboration, consent and common identity and institutions as elements of political order. He also demonstrates that democracy and individualism are not necessary features of modernity.

1.Introduction
2.How Social Science Separated Families from Political Order
3.Formless Kinship in Formless Kingdoms. Europe c.500-c.1000
4.Consolidating Dynasties and Realms. Europe c.1000-c.1500
5.Strong Aristocracies in Strong States. Europe c.1500-c.1800
6.The Revival and Sudden Death of Political Kinship. Europe c.1800-1918
7.The Arab Empires 632-c.900
8.Sacred Yet Supple. Kinship and Politics in Turkic-Mongol Empires c.900-c.1300
9.The Ubiquitous and Opaque Elites of the Ottoman Empire c.1300-c.1830
10.Clans and Dynasties in the Modern Middle East: Somalia and Saudi Arabia
11.Conclusions: Implications For State Theory, Power and Modernity
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB], Sociology [JHB], Military history [HBW]