¹ Modernization is conceptually distinct from but a central aspect of both ‘social development’ and ‘nation-state formation.’ By the former is meant a tendency towards an increase in structural complexity within social configurations. Two aspects of this tendency are increasing specialization in roles, institutions, and social groups and the institutionalization of cooperation and conflict at increasingly high structural levels. By ‘nation-state formation’ is meant those processes from which there emerges a social configuration characterized by a state apparatus with a relatively high degree of dominance within it and of autonomy with respect to agencies located outside it; the salient structural characteristics of the configuration being a complex articulation between a state bureaucracy and social classes within a framework of legitimacy, emphasizing the mutual rights and obligations of the state and the citizen. When different societies are compared it is clear that the processes tending towards the emergence of nation-states generate a variety of structural forms and have no ‘end point.’

² The contribution of puritanism to modernization is a powerful one, not least in its substitution of self-repressive behaviour for the enormous costs of‘external’ political controls.

³ Modernization thrives on inequalities of power which ease the process of extracting energy and resources from the many so that they may be coordinated and applied by strategic minorities. In the short and medium term, modernization tends to increase inequalities of power and rewards within and between societies. However, as a complex division of labour develops, power becomes more widely distributed among a number of specialized ‘parts’ within increasingly interdependent structures.

⁴ The author is currently investigating the containment and incorporation of the manufacturing bourgeoisie within English society during industrialization, with particular reference to formal education. Attention is paid to relationships among competing elites in Birmingham and Sheffield and to the articulation of municipal social structures with county and metropolitan hierarchies between 1850 and 1914. For some initial findings and a brief comparison with Boston, Mass., see Smith, D., ‘The Urban Genesis of School Bureaucracy: a transatlantic comparison,’ in Dale, R., Esland, G. and MacDonald, M., eds., Schooling and Capitalism (Routledge, 1976), pp. 66–77.Google Scholar

⁵ Such a process is analogous to commercial competition among business enterprises that stimulates the adoption of rational capitalist techniques: ‘those who would not follow suit had to go out of business’, Weber, M., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Allen & Unwin, 2nd ed., 1976), p. 68.Google Scholar

⁶ Generally, networks of conflictual interdependence achieve a substantial complexity within and among the elites of different societies before they acquire a comparable complexity within the general population.

⁷ A discussion of some political manifestations of these processes may be found in Binder, L., ed., Crises and Sequences of Political Development (Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar. An incisive critique of existing approaches to modernization (with particular reference to political development) may be found in C. Tilly, ‘Western State-making and Theories of Political Transformation,’ in Tilly, C., ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 601–38.Google Scholar

⁸ The phrase ‘probes the ground’ is used advisedly for the substance of the model is a series of systematically related insights and empirical generalizations discussed in terms of'domination’ and ‘containment.’ At a number of points conceptual and theoretical issues have been left unexplored deliberately, to avoid forcing premature ‘closure’ on an approach still in the early stages of development.

⁹ Penguin, , 1969.Google Scholar

¹⁰ ‘The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16:4 (09 1974), 387–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ See also Wallerstein, I., The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (Academic Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and ‘From Feudalism to Capitalism: Transition or Transitions,’ Social Forces, 55 (12 1976), 273–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a valuable discussion of Wallerstein's work, see Skocpol, T., ‘Wallerstein's World Capitalist System: A Theoretical and Historical Critique’, American Journal of Sociology, 82:5 (03 1977), 1075–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² Wallerstein traces the emergence and persistence of the capitalist world-economy over five centuries. It is interesting that he does not identify any pattern in the successive conflicts among societies in the course of his four stages of evolution but discusses particular historical sequences as illustrations of a general tendency of a ‘core-periphery’ system to persist and consolidate itself even though different ‘pieces’ change their structural locations. No analysis is undertaken of the dynamics of intersocietal struggle and their relationship to shifts from one stage to another.

¹³ Another major social interest, the peasantry, is distinguished from the three indicated in two respects: first, it was eradicated or absent in two of Moore's cases—England and the United States. Second, as Moore recognizes, ‘the peasants have to have leaders from other classes’ (p. 479). They constitute in certain circumstances a ‘massive form of discontent’ (p. 480). The peasantry were a gigantic reservoir of energy whose political capacity was largely determined by the structure of rural society and its articulation with the commercial and bureaucratic structures of urban society, centres of the state apparatus and the market. For an analysis of social revolutions, sensitive not only to structural variations but also to intersocietal relations, see Skocpol, T., ‘France, Russia, China: A Structural Analysis of Social Revolutions,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, 18:2 (04 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In many respects the analysis marries the sensitivity to power, exploitation and social control exemplified in Moore with the concern shown by Reinhard Bendix for the emergence of new structures of ‘incorpo- ration’ both intrasocietally and intersocietally. Bendix, R., Nation Building and Citizenship (Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1969)Google Scholar; and ‘Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered,’ in Embattled Reason (Oxford University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

¹⁴ This formulation is adapted from Theda Skocpol, op. cit., pp. 178–79.Google Scholar

¹⁵ The central institutions of the state apparatus are those devoted to appropriating some of the material surplus produced within a society, sustaining a specific pattern of distributing rewards and penalties, creating and managing the skills, resources, communications and orientations appropriate for maintaining (directly or indirectly) the modes of production, and discouraging or resisting attempts to displace the state apparatus from its structural position within the polity. All these institutions seek to extend the scope of state power both within and beyond the polity. Each activity indicated above (taxation, policing, welfare administration, education, research, defence) is carried out through bureaucratic means, to differing degrees complemented by, subverted by, and in competition with routines, practices, and institutions regulated through the market rather than bureaucracy. The managers of the state apparatus include leading civil servants, military commanders, ministers and ruling dynasties. They are always ‘shadowed’ by rivals, would-be managers of the state apparatus, potential beneficiaries of elections, coups d'état and revolutions.

¹⁶ The genesis of these relationships may be understood partly in terms of the location of the society in a developmental sequence of three phases, originating with the hunting and gathering band and arriving at the urban industrial nation-state. In the first phase, transition from band to tribal society, the central problem was to adapt the institutional expressions of a persisting dominant mode of integration (kinship) to the new horticultural technology of the ‘neolithic revolution.’ In the second phase, the appearance of chiefdoms and states, a persisting horticultural technology of domesticated livestock and primitive cultivation was more effectively exploited. This occurred initially through an increase in specialization and centralization, subsequently through the supersession of kinship as the major mode of integration by bureaucracy and the market. During the third phase, as in the first, the institutional expressions of persisting dominant modes of integration—market and bureaucracy—were adopted to the constraints and opportunities afforded by new forces of production, i.e., agrarian and industrial. The above scheme has been greatly influenced by Lenski, G. E., Power and Privilege (McGraw-Hill, 1966)Google Scholar and Service, E. R, Primitive Social Organization: an Evolutionary Perspective (Random House, 1962).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Bureaucracy and the market constitute alternative and potentially contradictory modes of coordinating relations among providers and consumers of specialized goods, resources, skills and services. Bureaucratic regulations specifying a pattern of resource distribution among defined social categories may contradict market criteria which allow individual possessors of cash and commodities to enter into transactions whose terms are specified by effective levels of supply and demand. The ‘black market,’ ‘corruption’ of officials, and complaints of ‘red tape’ are manifestations of these contradictions. However, on the one hand market networks depend upon a general social stability which they cannot themselves provide; on the other hand, they create relationships of interdependence which may subsequently be managed bureaucratically, circumstances that suggest that the state apparatus may both precede and survive a relatively autonomous mercantile sector. For an illustration of the ambiguity of the merchant's situation in a complex horticultural society, see Soustelle's discussion of the pochteca within the Aztec Empire. Soustelle, J., The Daily Life of the Aztecs (Penguin, 1964), pp. 77–83.Google Scholar

¹⁸ For a relevant discussion, see Goody, J., ‘Feudalism in Africa?’ Journal of African History, 4:1 (1963), 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁹ A distinction exists between structural conflicts inseparable from the relationships just described and the flow of persons among the social positions embedded in these relationships. The fact that many aristocrats became state officials did not diminish the structural conflict and differences of orientation between the state apparatus and the great landowners, although it helped in working out medium-term compromises in many cases. Similarly, the fact that many successful businessmen sought the prestige of land and noble title did not diminish the structural conflict between capitalist entrepreneurs and aristocratic landowners although it may have weakened the political challenge from bourgeois gentilhommes. Also, in so far as the structurally conditioned vested interests of the state, the bourgeoisie or the aristocracy were embodied in normative codes effectively transmitted to potential aggressors, they were to that extent protected. Two major theoretical issues raised here are the distinction between system integration and social integration, and the significance of patterns of group perception grounded in socializing experiences in part deliberately ‘managed’ within institutions of cultural transmission and in part shaped by participation in both routine and non-routine social encounters. On the first, see Lockwood, D., ‘Social Integration and System Integration,’ in Zollschan, G. and Hirsch, W., eds., Explorations in Social Change (London, 1964), pp. 244–57Google Scholar; Mouzelis, N., ‘Social and System Integration,’ British Journal of Sociology, 25:4 (12 1974), 395–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the second, explored with respect to educational changes in English society in the course of industrialization and imperialism, see Smith, D., ‘Codes, Paradigms and Folk Norms: An Approach to Educational Change with particular reference to the work of Basil Bernstein,’ Sociology, 10:1 (01 1976), 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ Cf. Moore, , op. cit.Google Scholar Another medium-term source of economic (and in varying degrees political) sustenance to the great aristocratic magnates in some cases was their ownership of land subject to urban development. In England the Norfolks were major landlords in Sheffield, while Calthorpe real estate intruded into the centre of Birmingham. Some aspects of this question have been investigated by Cannadine, David, ‘The Calthorpe Family and Birmingham 1810–1910: a “conservative interest” examined,’ Historical Journal, 18:4 (12 1975), 725–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Victorian Cities: how Different?,’ Social History, 4:1 (01 1977), 457–82.Google Scholar

²¹ Serfdom and slavery maximize the control of the landowner over his labour force, thereby reducing the rights not only of the labourers but also of the state apparatus which seeks a direct and unmediated relationship with all subjects (or potential citizens). Labour-repressive forms of agriculture thrived where urban society and state administration were relatively weak; their very weakness increased the vulnerability to external attack from modernized states. Such was the case in Prussia confronted with French aggression during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Russia in the decades between Napoleon's campaigns and the Crimean War, and the Confederate South during the American Civil War. In each case the sequel was the abolition of labour-repressive forms by the managers of the state apparatus and an associated reduction in the power and autonomy of the great landowners. There is more than chronological coincidence in the fact that both Czarist Russia and the southern states of the U.S.A. saw an end to long-standing forms of legal bondage in the 1860s, a response in each case to the gathering power of an urban industrial growth with dynamic centres on both sides of the North Atlantic.

²² A crude distinction may be made between a mercantile bourgeoisie whose wealth derives primarily from trade and a manufacturing bourgeoisie which owns factories and manages the urban labour force. The first typically emerges before the second. Although variations exist in the forms and degree of solidarity between mercantile and manufacturing bourgeoisie the distinction between them is not consistently made in this paper. When the term ‘bourgeoisie’ is used it means merchants, bankers, manufacturers and other groups whose power derives primarily from wealth acquired through capitalist enterprise in production and distribution. More generally, it is recognized that transformations in the structure of relationships among the three major social interests within and amongst societies are conditioned by (and in turn condition) variations in the ‘internal’ structure of the bourgeoisie, landed aristocracy, and state. Such ‘internal’ variations must take a second place in this analysis which is primarily concerned with variation in relationship among the social interests comparatively and over time.

²³ The decentralized structure of political control in English society did much to fragment the process whereby the peasantry was eradicated so that it was experienced as innumerable acts of ‘manageable’ violence. This same structure may further have permitted multitudinous variations in local social organization and work practices whose fertile interaction helped to generate a powerful new mode of production that bestowed global power upon its beneficiaries. The world wars which effectively broke up the British Empire also witnessed a great extension of the state apparatus. Subsequently there has occurred a slow and partial emancipation of the state from its previous subordination to a ‘gentlemanly’ mercantile interest. Containment muted by coalescence is the overriding characteristic of relationships among the distinct interests now dominating English society: the mercantile bourgeoisie, the manufacturing bourgeoisie, the state, and more recently, organized labour. Each may powerfully inhibit modernizing strategies undertaken by others. The research described in note 4 is intended to contribute to the investigation of these processes.

²⁴ The Soviet government, in contrast, has approached global parity with the United States government by extracting a higher proportion of a smaller surplus.

²⁵ The modernization programmes of Peter the Great (1689–1725) were not seriously sustained during the following century.

²⁶ The Chinese case differs from the others discussed in that the Confucian examination system and the extensive kinship networks of the clan and the lineage bound the state apparatus and the provincial landowners closely together from an early stage in the Empire, before the impact of European expansion.

²⁷ These cases and that of France will be discussed in more detail in the next section.

²⁸ Postwar reconstruction of the Japanese and German polities permitted the bourgeoisie to achieve greater power in these societies after 1945.

²⁹ These processes were discussed in the previous section with reference to their tendency to lead to structures of state domination.

³⁰ Lateral containment as a set of processes is conceptually distinct from the ‘balance of power’ whose locus classicus was eighteenth-century Europe, and is related at every phase to the ‘internal’ development of participant societies in the course of modernization. The major intersocietal conflicts to be discussed—in Britain, France, and the nascent American Republic 1775–1815, and the First and Second World Wars—each engaged the energies and consciousness of a vast proportion of the citizenry of the societies involved. The ‘cold war’ and Sino-Soviet hostility, though unconsummated in nuclear conflict, have both continued this long tradition. The common man saw George III and Napoleon as wicked bogeymen, an image later bestowed on Hitler and Stalin. British xenophobia, Germanic fear of the ‘Slavs,’ American (and Russian) paranoia in the face of the ‘yellow peril’ all helped to make these intersocietal antagonisms a matter not just of states but of peoples. See Buchan, A., Power and Equilibrium in the 70s (Chatto and Windus, 1973).Google Scholar

³¹ The overall effect of postwar reconstruction in West Germany and Japan has been to reverse the prewar balance of power in the relationship between state and bourgeoisie. Postwar reconstruction in East Germany has pushed existing state domination towards more complete supremacy by the eradication of the bourgeoisie as a distinct social class.

³² Both Britain and France furnish relevant examples, particularly after the First World War. The dismantling of war controls in Britain and French ‘triumphalism’ each was evidence of a confidence that drastic structural reforms could be avoided by the ‘victorious’ allies. Apparently a victory for the British Empire and a confirmation of its strength, the war in fact gave new impetus to tendencies which were to lead eventually to its dissolution. See Howard, M., The Continental Commitment (Temple Smith, 1972), pp. 74–95.Google Scholar

³³ At the same time, however, many of the judicial and administrative rights attached to landownership were removed. ‘En règie générate, on pent affirmer que l'Etat classique s'est constitué partout contre le sommet d'une aristocratic foncière qui possédait plus que la terre, mais un ensemble de pouvoirs sur les hommes, pouvoir de jurisdiction, de commandement, que résume assez bien le “ban” de nos anciens légistes. L'Etat administratif centralisateur s'affirme done contre un Etat diffus: barons, lords, grands feudataires, boïards, qui tiennent lien de l'Etat en l'absence de l'Etat … l'Etat preclassique est toujours, au départ, révolutionnaire. …’ Chaunu, P., La Civilisation de I'Enrope classique (Arthaud, 1966), p. 57Google Scholar. See also, Anderson, P., Lineages of the Absolutist State (New Left Books, 1974), pp. 85–112.Google Scholar

³⁴ Stoye, J., Europe Unfolding, 1648–88 (Collins, 1969), p. 77.Google Scholar

³⁵ These reforms belong to the first and second phases of the state domination sequences.

³⁶ Ibid., pp. 191–225.

³⁷ In the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–97) France confronted England, Spain, and Holland. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) France faced (primarily) England, Holland, and the Empire. The Emperor continued at war with France for a year after the Treaty of Utrecht.

³⁸ Ogg, D., ‘The Emergence of Great Britain as a World Power,’ in Bromley, J. S., ed., The Rise of Great Britain and Russia 1688–1713 (New Cambridge Modern History), vol. XI, 254–83 (Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 260.Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ Court, W. H. B., The Rise of the Midland Industries, 1600–1838 (Oxford University Press, 1938).Google Scholar

⁴¹ See, for example, Sutherland, L. S., ‘The East India Company in Eighteenth-Century Politics,’ Economic History Review, first series, XVII: 1 (1947)Google Scholar; ‘The City of London in Eighteenth-Century Politics,’ in Pares, R. and Taylor, A. J. P., eds., Essays Presented to Sir Lewis Namier (Macmillan, 1956).Google Scholar

⁴² Higgonet argues that the Seven Years War occurred largely because the participants found it difficult to manage ‘a novel diplomatic situation which had brought into being a state of insecurity for which there are few parallels in modern European history.’ Higonnet, P. L-R., ‘The Origins of the Seven Years War,’ Journal of Modern History, 40:1 (03 1968), 57–90, 90. Cf. note 95 below.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴³ Following colonization North, Central and South America had been transformed from a continent of predominantly hunting and gathering or horticultural economies to one of highly commercialized agrarian societies.

⁴⁴ Parry, J. H., Trade and Dominion (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), pp. 133–36.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Gipson, L. H., The Coming of the Revolution 1763–1775 (Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 181–95.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Ibid., pp. 13–18.

⁴⁷ The French and Americans made separate peaces with the British. Harlow, V. T., The Founding of the Second British Empire (Longmans, 1952), vol. I, 287 ff.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ For a discussion of the ‘Western’ or ‘Atlantic’ context of the French Revolution and American independence see Godechot, J., Les Révolutions (1770–1799) (Presses Universitaires de France, 1963)Google Scholar; L'Europe et L'Amérique à L'Epoque Napoléonienne (1800–1815), Presses Universitaires de France, 1967Google Scholar; Palmer, R. R., The Age of the Democratic Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1959, 1964).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ 1775–83 American War of Independence with French military participation from 1778 to 1783; 1793–1815 hostilities between Britain and France; 1812–14 war between Britain and the American Republic. It is notable that in each case successful warlords found themselves in central positions in internal politics during or shortly after these years: George Washington, President (1789–97); Bonaparte, Napoleon, First Consul (1799–1804)Google Scholar, Emperor (1804–14); Wellington, Lord, Prime Minister (1828–1830).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Bosher, J. F., ‘French Administration and Public Finance in their European Setting,’ in Goodwin, A., ed., The American and French Revolutions 1763–93 (New Cambridge Modern History), Vol. VIII (Cambridge University Press, 1965), 565–91.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Phase three of the state domination sequence.

⁵² Gibbs, N. H., ‘Armed Forces and the Art of War,’ in Crawley, C. W., ed., War and Peace in an Age of Upheaval 1793–1830 (New Cambridge Modern History), Vol. IX (Cambridge University Press, 1965), 60–76, especially 60–65.Google Scholar

⁵³ von Clausewitz, C., On War, Rapaport, A., ed. (Penguin, 1971), pp. 384–85.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Dupeux, G., French Society 1789–1970 (Methuen, 1976), pp. 105–29Google Scholar. But compare Cobban, A., The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 1964).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ See, for example, Thistlethwaite, F., ‘The United States and the Old World, 1794–1828,’ in Crawley, C. W., ed., op. cit., pp. 591–611.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ See note 23.

⁵⁷ Unlike France and the United States, Britain did not encounter a powerful secondary modernizer in the principal sphere of her territorial expansion after 1815.

⁵⁸ Memorandum on Reform, quoted by Markham, F. in ‘The Napoleonic Adventure,’ in Crawley, C. W., ed., op. cit., pp. 307–36, 333. These reforms belonged to the first and second phases of the state domination sequence.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ See Hamerow, T. S., Restoration, Revolution, Reaction (Princeton University Press, 1966).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Clapham, J. H., The Economic Development of France and Germany, 1815–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1936).Google Scholar

⁶¹ See, for example, Taylor, A. J. P., Bismarck. The Man and the Statesman (Hamish Hamilton, 1955)Google Scholar; Palmer, A., Bismarck (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976).Google Scholar

⁶² See Mosse, W. E., European Powers and the German Question 1848–71 (Cambridge University Press, 1958).Google Scholar

⁶³ von Laue, T. H., Sergei Witte and the Industrialization of Russia (Columbia University Press, 1963), pp. 2–3. Witte's reforms belong to the second phase of the state domination sequence.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 25.

⁶⁵ Ibid., pp. 3, 26.

⁶⁶ Grossman, G., ‘Russia and the Soviet Union,’ in Cipolla, C. M., ed., The Emergence of Industrial Societies, Part Two (The Fontana Economic History of Europe, Collins, 1973), pp. 486–531; 492.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Laue, Von, op. cit., pp. 181–2.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ On French society between the First and Second World Wars, see Dupeux, G., op. cit., pp. 201–18Google Scholar; Cobban, A., A History of Modern France, Vol. 2, 1799–1945 (Penguin, 1968), pp. 283–97.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Thirteen years previously, the Russian state had experienced similar pressure from the leading secondary modemizer in the Pacific, being comprehensively defeated in the Russo Japanese War of 1904–05. Widespread insurrection followed although the troops remained loyal to the regime. The revolution in 1917 marked the third phase of the state domination sequence in Russia.

⁷⁰ Lewin, M., Russian Peasants and Soviet Power (Allen & Unwin, 1968)Google Scholar; Nove, A., An Economic History of the USSR (Allen Lane, 1969). The post-revolutionary reconstruction belongs to the fourth phase of the state domination sequence.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Defeat in 1918 marked passage into the third phase of the state domination sequence in German society.

⁷² Bracher, K. D., The German Dictatorship (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971). The consolidation of the Nazi regime belongs to the fourth phase of the state domination sequence.Google Scholar

⁷³ See, for example, Robertson, R. M., History of the American Economy (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), pp. 105–263.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See, for example, Katz, M. B., The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Harvard University Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Moore, B., op. cit., pp. 111–61Google Scholar; Van Alstyne, R. W., The Rising American Empire (Basil Blackwell, 1960)Google Scholar. The work of Katz is discussed in D. Smith, ‘The Urban Genesis of School Bureaucracy: a transatlantic comparison,’ in Dale, R., Esland, G. and MacDonald, M., eds., Schooling and Capitalism, Routledge, 1976, pp. 66–77.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Van Alstyne, , op. cit., pp. 173–74.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Beasley, W. G., The Meiji Restoration (Stanford University Press, 1972), p. 43.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Ibid., p. 123.

⁷⁸ An important difference is that whereas in Prussia the commercialization of agriculture had been controlled by junkers, in Japan it was managed outside the ranks of daimyō and samurai by merchants and peasants. As a consequence, the economic and cultural superiority of the aristocracy was in danger of being eroded. The Restoration oligarchy took control over processes of commercialization and capitalist development that were occurring in any case; their Prussian counterparts deliberately sought to set these processes in motion, or at least to stimulate the rather weak impulses that existed. To exaggerate the difference, the Meiji oligarchy was on a runaway horse, trying to gather the reins, whereas the Prussian elite was firmly in the saddle, vigorously applying the spurs.

⁷⁹ French experts helped to direct the reorganization of the army, national banking regulations were based on American experience, the Criminal Codes of 1880 were of French inspiration, the constitution of 1889 was heavily influenced by the German model, and so on. See Beasley, , op. cit.Google Scholar, Kamatsu, P. A., Meiji 1868. Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Japan (Allen & Unwin, 1972), and references therein. The Meiji Restoration and subsequent reforms marked a swift passage from the first to the fourth phase of the state domination sequence.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ By the Lansing-lshii Agreement of November 1917, the United States recognized the ‘special interests’ of Japan in China.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Hsu, I. C. Y., The Rise of Modern China (Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 317–500. The failure of ‘reform from above’ and the subsequent demise of the Empire marked the passage through the second and third phases of the state domination sequence.Google Scholar

⁸² The domestic context of Japanese aggression in 1941 might usefully be compared with that of German aggression in 1914. In both cases, informal agencies of political coordination (the Meiji oligarchy in the former case, Bismarck in the latter) had ceased to operate some years before, bestowing a legacy of bitter conflict among competing elites in which the military (closely allied to the emperor) progressively became dominant. In both cases, martial elites committed their societies to wars in which success could not confidently be predicted.

⁸³ On modernization under the Nationalist government, see Hsu, , op. cit., pp. 664–73Google Scholar. On the diplomatic background see, for example, Feis, H., The Road to Pearl Harbor (Princeton University Press, 1950)Google Scholar; Toland, J., The Rising Sun, The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire (Cassell, 1971), esp. pp. 121–48.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Hsu, , op. cit., pp. 697–98.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Feis, , op. cit., pp. 110–21.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Hsu, , op. cit., pp. 581–602.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 in Shanghai. Ibid., p. 607.

⁸⁸ Ibid., pp. 656–58.

⁸⁹ For a useful discussion, see Dunn, J., Modern Revolutions. An Introduction to the Analysis of a Political Phenomenon (Cambridge University Press, 1972), esp. pp. 90–95.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ In France, Russia and China, intense pressures during sequences of lateral containment displaced ‘old regimes’ which had offered state protection to aristocratic interests. Subsequently, each revolutionary regime confronted intersocietal conjunctions (1789–1815, 1917–45,1949-?) which embodied progressively higher levels of resource mobilization against them. Whereas French society had been dominant in Europe, the gap between the level of development of Russian society and its principal opponents was a large one and that between China in 1949 and its potential aggressors larger still. The tapping of the energies of the population by the threatened revolutionary regime was in the second case more thorough- going than the first and in the third more thoroughgoing than the second. The possibility of applying more intense strategies was increased by technological advances stimulated and disseminated in the course of successive sequences of lateral containment. If railways and electricity helped force through Russian collectivization, new technologies of mass communi- cation must have contributed powerfully to the development of the People's Republic of China.

⁹¹ On techniques of mutual regulation in Imperial China, see Hsaio, K-C., Rural China. Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (University of Washington, 1960)Google Scholar. For strategies of control during and since the revolution, see Schurmann, F., Ideology and Organization in Communist China (University of California, 1968)Google Scholar; Hinton, W., Fanshen. A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (Monthly Review Press, 1966)Google Scholar. A valuable recent discussion of the ways in which development within the pre-revolutionary social structure powerfully conditioned subsequent transformations in both Russia and China may be found in Skocpol, T., ‘Old Regime Legacies and Communist Revolutions in Russia and China,’ Social Forces, 55:2 (12 1976), 284–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹² In each case a forced march into the future had produced a cataclysmic economic failure and a bureaucratic revolt against the leadership. In Russia, the response was Stalin's purges, accompanied by a reform of higher education that produced careful organization men and apolitical technicians. In China, the response was the Cultural Revolution which—unlike the ‘cooling out’ effect of purges—generated a combustible idealism among the young intelligentsia. Short-term production costs may be outweighed by medium-term returns flowing from popular commitment to an accepted strategy, particularly if the massive expense of a professional secret police is kept to a minimum. It remains to be seen whether reliance upon controls ‘among’ rather than ‘over’ the people may eventually elicit more material productivity and a more secure lien by the state upon these resources than has so far been achieved in either the Soviet Union with its relatively apolitical and apathetic populace or the United States with its relatively weak state apparatus.

⁹³ Howard, M., op. cit., pp. 51–52.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Ibid., p. 134.

⁹⁵ An important American assessment of the ‘revolution’ stimulated by the new weapons appeared in the late 1950s: ‘The dilemma of the nuclear period can … be defined as follows: the enormity of modern weapons makes the thought of war repugnant, but the refusal to run any risks would amount to giving the Soviet rulers a blank check. At a time when we have never been stronger, we have had to learn that power which is not clearly related to objectives may merely serve to paralyze the will. No more urgent task confronts American policy than to bring our power into balance with the issues for which we are most likely to have to contend.’ Kissinger, H., Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (Harper, 1957).Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Buchan, A., The End of the Postwar Era. A New Balance of World Power (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974), p. 79.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Ibid., p. 81.

⁹⁸ Resistance against subordination to the United States in Japan and Europe is apparently closely related to the increasing disjunction of strategic, political and economic planes as indicated by Buchan. For countries in the third tier, increasing autonomy may be related to a withdrawal in the extent of its global commitment by the United States over the past few years.

⁹⁹ 'There has emerged, then, a trilateral relationship between the Soviet Union, China, and the United States. It can hardly be called a balance of power since China possesses so little strategic or economic power by comparison with the other two. It is probably better described as a balance of influence. … It does have an effect on the policies of all three powers outside Asia even though its focus may be there.’ Buchan, , op. cit., p. 80.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ It will be interesting to discover to what extent and with what success the Chinese regime encourages or permits the disestablishment of the bureaucratic modes of control which have served modernizing states so well in the past. The Cultural Revolution, which carried such tendencies to an extreme, overlapped with both the Sino-Soviet split and American rappro- chement. However, the mode and degree of its articulation with the constraints of lateral containment remain unclear.

¹⁰¹ A process of democratization tends to occur both within and among societies. Important considerations affecting this process are the distribution of the means of coercion relevant to successively appearing conflict situations and the form and degree of solidarity among occupants of interdependent positions within structures.

¹⁰² Major partial exceptions to this statement are those Latin American societies where labour-repressive agriculture persists and strong landed interests dominate weak state bureaucracies. The Cuban Revolution presented a challenge to such societies in some ways similar to that of the French Revolution in Europe. However, tendencies towards the stimulation of state domination sequences and lateral containment processes equivalent to those discussed in this paper are strongly conditioned by the overriding presence of North American capital and, on occasion, arms.

¹⁰³ Such neglect is less pronounced in studies of ‘contemporary’ cases. The important work of A. G. Frank has revitalized a debate in which Lenin was an early participant. See Lenin, V. I., ‘Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism,’ in Collected Works, Vol. 22 (Lawrence A. Wishart: London, 1964), pp. 185–304Google Scholar; Frank, A. G., Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (Penguin, 1972)Google Scholar; Oxaal, I. et al. , Beyond the Sociology of Development (Routledge, 1975)Google Scholar. On the serious neglect of intersocietal relationships in ‘historical’ analyses see Tilly, C., ‘Reflections on the History of European State-Making’ and ‘Western State-Making and Theories of Political Transformation,’ in Tilly, ed., op cit., pp. 3–83, 601–38. The analysis in this present paper makes no fundamental or rigid distinction between ‘historical’ and ‘contemporary’ modernization; both are conceptualized as manifestations of continuing processes which establish an intimate relationship between them.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ The general debt owed to Moore's work in this respect is clear although the present analysis differs in a number of important ways, not least in radically distinguishing from each other England, France and the United States, three societies which Moore locates in the same ‘bourgeois democratic’ category.