Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/47

 GOLDENWEISER] A NEW APPROACH TO HISTORY 35

other traits, and functions inherent in their character of kin (or blood) groups.

If, then, it is accepted that political organization is inherent in society, migration evidently has nothing to do with it. In fairness to the author, however, let us glance for a moment at forms of political organization coming nearer to those with which he would specifically deal. The reference is to political systems of a higher degree of integration and centralization than is common in most primitive society. Such political systems occur in three wide geographical areas: parts of North America, a large part of Bantu and Sudanese Africa, and Polynesia. The political form which is indigenous in North America (although it occurs in a limited number of instances only) is the Confederacy, that of the Iroquois being best known. It involves, of course, a considerable degree of in- tegration of the functions of the constituent tribes, but lacks the feature of supreme authority being lodged in one ruling head, the administrative authority and functions of the body of semi- elected, semi-hereditary chiefs also being distinctly limited. The African state approaches the Eurasian form much more closely, in so far as the territory occupied is often considerable, the individuals- comprised in the state number hundreds of thousands or even millions, the centralization of administrative functions is marked r and the state is headed by a king, hereditary, of sacred person,, owner of the state land, absolute master over the life and death of his subjects, and legislator. In Polynesia, the territorial and popu- lation proportions are again reduced to the more primitive level, but there is a king, whose person is sacred, whose prestige is tre- mendous, who, without being a legislator, wields the almost equiva- lent power of the imposition of tabu. Should one look about for

that adhered to by the author. It is true that Professor Teggart is at liberty to use terms with whatever meaning may to him seem appropriate, provided the use is- consistent; but the issue here is not terminological, for when it is possible to show, as? in the above excursion, that certain features of political organization in its modern sense (meaning the "State" of history) are shared by human aggregates down to re- motest antiquity, the "emergence of political organization" (in the modern sense> does no longer appear as so much of an epochal event in world history, and the "pro- cesses" that would account for its emergence must share with it this change of perspec- tive.

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