states also had armies, law courts, secret fraternities, councils of nobles, and the institutions of servility and clientage. The armies were not regularized, but functioned as a “home guard,” with all the adult males of a certain age group liable to be called into service. In the Kuba state, unlike the other two, “a number of war leaders […] conserved their posts in peacetime.” In all three cases, however, the armies were at the service of the government, being “used for territorial usurpation, war robbery expeditions, suppressions of revolted vassals, and so on.”51
The law courts were most extensive in the Kuba state, with a multi-stepped structure spanning village, province, and capital. The highest judges were the paramount ruler and the head of the council. There were also “different judges for making decisions on definite crimes and cases: on sorcery, on killings, on fights and mutilations, on stealing, on heritage, on trade and so on.”52 The secret fraternities, for their part, executed the sentences. In early states on multiple continents, such fraternities played an important role in backing up what was otherwise a weak state power, both symbolically and physically. A famous example is the cult of Ares in the Athenian city-state, which carried out executions on the hill of Areopagus.
Sometimes the secret fraternities comprised young men recruited to support the old men who occupied the positions of judges and rulers. Recruits were given the privilege of being sanctioned to commit what would otherwise be blood crimes, a great power both symbolically and psychologically (and also quite revealing in terms of the psychology of state supporters: the “anti-social elements” that apologists for the State always warn us against have from the very beginning been the agents of the State itself). Other times they were power-holders in their own right. Their anonymity played multiple functions: ritualizing the mystical execution of justice and encouraging the view that justice was the dispensation of a divine principle and not the politically motivated action of specific people with names and faces; excusing the families of the executed from the obligation for vengeance, in cases where they supported the justice process; and protecting the executioners from vengeance, in cases where the families of the executed were defiant. This last element is perhaps the only one that has remained unchanged today, when state executioners are still faceless, and police in anti-terrorism or other high-profile operations of a political nature cover their faces and badge numbers.
In all three Congo basin states, the authority of the paramount ruler was complemented by that of a council of nobles. In the Kuba state, this council had a leader.
The relations between the council and the [paramount ruler] were ambiguous. Members of the council outwardly showed obedience but they were very powerful in reality […]. Having meetings not less than once a week the council decided practically all the important questions. The nyimi [paramount ruler in the Kuba state] was allowed only to submit proposals for consideration. He was not allowed even to be present at the sittings of the council. A kikaam [head of the council in the Kuba state] could make a decision opposed to the will of a nyimi.53
The paramount rulers were also surrounded by a large number of noble courtiers, some of whom played a “crucial part in the state apparatus” while others were only the bearers of honorary titles. It is important to note that while the paramount rulers may seem like figureheads from a modern standpoint, they played a vital role as “priest-king,” which will be discussed in Chapter XI. The ascendance of the council and other institutional forms of leadership in the Kuba state reflect a push by the elite to extend their power beyond what is attainable through the symbolic and religious forms of domination that are prevalent in early states.
The three Congo basin states practiced servitude, whereby war captives, condemned criminals, or their relatives had to toil in fields, act as domestic workers, porters, personal servants, or bodyguards. The labor they provided was minor, far from constituting the primary form of economic exploitation, and the conditions and labor demands they faced were significantly lighter than those of the slaves under the Roman Empire or the later European nation-states. Clients (most typical in the Baluba state) enjoyed a much higher status than servants. Attaching themselves to a noble family, they played the role of bodyguards or assistants. Over time, the mutual obligations of clients and patrons took on a hereditary form. The societies that preceded these states were all non-patriarchal or only lightly patriarchal, whereas all three states pushed to institute more patriarchal relations.
These internal processes, perhaps more important in the formation of the Congo basin states than their practices of warfare and conquest, correspond to patterns that will be discussed in a subsequent chapter.
28 I don’t know of any geographical society or academic institution that advocates the redesignation of Europe as a subcontinent; nonetheless only the obstinate self-importance of the white supremacists who founded such institutions can explain the continental classification. Not tectonically, not geographically, not historically, not even culturally can Europe qualify as a continent. On all grounds India has a far better claim to continent-hood.
29 Inventing new terms can be an obnoxious habit; nonetheless in the literature on state formation I found no term for a body that acts intentionally and aggressively as a vessel and vector for state-making technologies and as a direct agent for state formation, but does not in itself constitute a state, lacking the requisite host population.
30 Boehm (“Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy”) details the frequency with which leaders of stateless societies were deposed or even killed by others with less status. Among the two most frequent motives for such topplings are the perceived greediness and the authoritarianism of the leader.
31 Tacitus singles out the Goths as the most “autocratic” of the Germanic tribes, “but not to such a degree that freedom is destroyed.” Tacitus, in The Agricola and the Germania, translated by H. Mattingly (98; repr., Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1948), 138.
32 Arthur, though he is presented to us as a king, is a good example of a non-state leader: it is not institutional legitimation but charisma and magic attaining specifically to his person that he needs in order to rally his warriors, who sit together in a circle.
33 Michal Tymowski, “State and Tribe in the History of Medieval Europe and Black Africa—A Comparative Approach,” in Social Evolution and History, 177.
34 Ibid., 174.
35 Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, xi.
36 Cited in ibid., 259, 264–65.
37 Tacitus, The Agricola and the Germania, 98.
38 Ibid., 108.
39 Ibid., 118.
40 Ibid., 122–23.
41 Ibid., 114.
