Arms, Violence, and the State
A Historical Perspective
by Jeremy Black
Copyright, Chronicles, January 1998, pp.19-21.

pull quote: 
"Crime and insecurity are both aspects of the crisis of Western society at the
close of the millennium. This sense of helplessness, itself fueled by the
government's monopolization of the means of force, is then used by the central
state to justify suppressing still more personal liberties and the right to
self-defense."

Jeremy Black is a professor of history at the University of Durham, England.

Governments today seek to monopolize violence and to control the ability of
people to defend themselves, their families, and their communities. In doing
so, governments present themselves not only as representatives and protectors
of their people, but also as the necessary end of the historical process.
These views can be contested, not only by appealing to empirical and
philosophical aspects of the modem situation but also by looking at the march
of time. Both involve challenging the arrogant claims of the state to power
and legitimacy.

	History reveals the degree to which states increasingly became the expression
of organized violence. This owed much to the ambition of governments to
monopolize the use of such violence, at the expense of a range of groups, from
private individuals to stateless pirates and mercenaries. Indeed, the
monopolization of violence became a definition of statehood, as a functional
understanding of rulership replaced the traditional legitimist understanding
in the 19th and 20th centuries. Governments today prefer to rely on other
definitions, especially those summed up in the term "democracy," but part of
the brutal truth is that states and governments are defined by power, the
quest for power, and the denial of power to others.

	Yet this monopolization of violence is relatively recent, and in no way an
inevitable aspect of state organization. In the 19th century, military
entrepreneurship--mercenary activity-- became less frequent in Europe, and this
influenced relations between states, and between states and nonstate bodies.

Recruiting via intermediaries was replaced by direct recruiting, especially
systems of conscription. The Crimean War (1853-56) was the last war in which
the British government recruited units of European foreign mercenaries for war
service.

	Authorized nonstate violence was also eliminated in a piecemeal fashion,
mostly in the 19th century. This hit privateers, such as the government-
supported and supporting Barbary corsairs of North Africa, and mercantile
companies with territorial power and their own armed forces, such as the
British East India Company. The elimination of such practices owed something
to their ability to provoke interstate conflicts by being outside full state
control. Their elimination also reflected a sense that such practices were
anachronistic as well as antagonistic to governments that sought power,
emphasized reform, and placed a premium on rationality, conceived of in terms
of a clearly defined organization with explicit rules of conduct and state-
directed systems. The territorial and military roles of the companies came to
an end, that of the British East India Company after the Indian Mutiny. At a
more mundane level, in 1882 the Italian government took over the coaling base
established by the Rubattino Steamship Company at Assab near the mouth of the
Red Sea. It seemed inappropriate for private companies to control territory,
although there was scant sign that entities such as the Hudson Bay Company
were abusive.

	There were exceptions, but they became more uncommon. One latter-day
adventurer, James Brooke (1803-68), helped suppress a rebellion in Sarawak; in
northern Borneo, and was rewarded by the Prince of Brunei with its
governorship (1841). That became the basis of a territorial position that led
to him, and to the nephew and grandnephew who succeeded him, being termed the
"white rajahs" of Sarawak. Under the nephew, Sir Charles
Anthony Johnson, the territory expanded, and in 1888 Sarawak was converted
into a British protectorate. The last rajah did not cede Sarawak to the
British crown until 1946--his position had been destabilized by the effects of
Japanese occupation during World War II.

	Despite the success of the Brookes, opportunities for such activity became
less common. They had flourished beyond the frontiers of empire, a world
brilliantly captured in George MacDonald Fraser's recent Flashman novels.
Thus, in India, the willingness of the locals to turn to European weaponry and
military methods had provided careers for a number of European soldiers. The
most spectacular was George Thomas, an Irishman who deserted the British new
in 1781 and rose, through military command in Indian armies, to independent
control of a substantial region between Delhi and the Punjab by 1799.

	Such opportunities disappeared as the regularity of 19th-century government
swept across much of the world. In addition to authorized nonstate violence,
unauthorized nonstate violence, particularly piracy and privately organized
expeditions designed to seize territory, was also in large part stamped out in
the 19th century. This both demonstrated and enhanced the ability of states to
monopolize power, and the European powers, especially Britain, devoted much
effort to suppressing piracy, especially off China, in the East Indies, off
British Columbia, in the Pacific, and in the Persian Gulf.

	The banning of the slave trade and the subsequent measures taken to extend
and enforce the bans were also important examples of moves designed to end
authorized, and then unauthorized, nonstate violence. The British navy was
especially active in employing violence against the slave trade, particularly
from Africa to the Middle East. The European powers sought to monopolize
military force, both within their European territories and in their colonies,
on land and at sea. An important example of a state establishing a monopoly of
violence was the effort to bring the Cossacks of both Ukraine and South and
Southeast European Russia under state control, which ultimately left them
vulnerable to the Stalinist tyranny. The redshirted volunteer force with which
Giuseppi Garibaldi conquered Sicily and Naples in 1860 was absorbed into the
Italian army, and in 1862, when he subsequently formed a private army to
capture Rome, then an independent papal state, it was defeated by the Italian
army.

Monopolization of violence was linked to state control of societies, which was
a gradual but insistent process. European states first sought to prevent the
use by partisan groups of organized violence for the pursuit of domestic
political objectives. They also took steps against feuds. At the personal
level, the activity of the state was initially less insistent, but measures
were nevertheless taken to abolish--or at least to limit--dueling, and to
restrict the ownership of firearms.

	Moves to restrict the ownership of arms were pursued in the 19th century, at
the very time when there was an increasing emphasis on conscription and the
availability of military reserves. Governments were determined to control both
the practice of mass recruitment and its consequences. Force was used as never
before, but it was force by and for governments.

	governments were particularly determined to monopolize arms that had a
battlefield capability. This was true both of artillery, from its initial
development, and of flintlock musket in the 18th century. Furthermore, by the
16th century, most sophisticated fortifications were under central government
control, and, by the 18th, they all were. Even though personal weapons were of
scant value against the increasingly powerful armies of the state, European
states sought to control their ownership.

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