The Modern Invention of ‘Dynasty’: An Introduction

Abstract

Historians tend to take 'dynasty' for granted. It is assumed that 'we' know what 'dynasty' is; and that the concept unproblematically corresponds to the empirical reality of a historical institution present in all rulerships across time and place. Taking as its point of departure the peculiar and little-researched history of the word itself, which acquired its current meaning only as recently as the second half of the eighteenth century, this article sets out a research agenda for historicising 'dynasty'. Introducing the special issue on the global intellectual history of the modern invention of 'dynasty', it argues that 'dynasty' is not simply a neutral historical term, but a political concept that became globally hegemonic in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the expansion of European colonialism. The article maps out three main trajectories for rethinking both past and present beyond the totalizing and falsely transparent concept of 'dynasty'. First, it points toward a more complex and less hierarchical vision of precapitalist, including and especially extra-European, societies. Second, it considers how exactly capitalism produced new modes and ideologies of hereditary transmission of sovereignty and property and theorises a link between 'primitive accumulation' and the political form of the royal/princely 'House'. Third, it centres the role of colonialism -European imperial expansion as well as anti-colonial non-European nationalisms -in globalizing 'dynasty' as a category of power. The article concludes on a political and ethical note: a global intellectual history of the invention of 'dynasty' ultimately has the polemical aim of denaturalizing, demystifying, and provincializing hierarchy and inequality.

Framing Emptiness: Response to a Grandiloquent Discussion of Dynasty

“…I (or the hazy group of authors I seem to represent) paint an ' … excessively conservative picture'. 4 The outspoken position of the editors is underpinned by references to four pages taken from the introduction and the conclusion of Dynasties, cited wholly out of context. Let me give you a specimen of their citation technique:…”

“…5 After eviscerating my statement, the editors do little to investigate its empirical basis. They move forward to underline that a view such as this ' … naturalizes "premodern", precolonial, or non-European politics as primordially hierarchical', 6 ignoring an explicit remark on the page they cited, where I stress that hierarchy and dynasty have frequently been used as a convenient rhetorical counterpoint to modern 'egalitarian' society. Another long quote, now from the conclusion, gets similar treatment, not by cutting key sentences, but by wilfully disregarding long qualifications on the same pagesas well as the empirical detail provided on every page of the book.…”

“…11 As a comparative social historian of European courts with a background in anthropology, I have felt compelled to accept the challenge to 'go global': am I culpable for not choosing to focus on ' … peasants, pastoralists, and other labouring actors'? 12 In a recent Past & Present article condescendingly alluded to in the introduction's footnotes, I explicitly list 'cities, villages, armies, religious communities, hospitals' as alternative foci for detailed global comparative research. 13 Clearly, these themes will need other researchers.…”