People - States - Territories: The Political Geographies of British State Transformation

People/States/Territories

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People/States/Territories The Political Geographies of British State Transformation Rhys Jones

© 2007 by Rhys Jones BLACKWELL PUBLISHING

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Rhys Jones to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1 2007 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jones, Rhys, 1971– People/states/territories : the political geographies of British state transformation / Rhys Jones. p. cm. — (RGS-IBG book series) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-4033-1 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4051-4033-X (alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-4034-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4051-4034-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Great Britain–Politics and government. 2. Professional employees in government—Great Britain. 3. Local government—Great Britain. 4. State, The. I. Title. II. Title: People, states, territories. JN309.J66 2007 320.941—dc22 2006025007 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 10 on 12 pt Plantin by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd, Hong Kong Printed and bound in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com

I Alun ac Olwen Jones

Contents

List of Figures

ix

List of Tables

x

Series Editors’ Preface

xi

Acknowledgements

xii

1 Introduction: State Personnel and the Reproduction of State Forms

1

2 Analysing an Emergent State: State Actors and a Territorial State Apparatus

13

Thinking about the State . . . Medieval and Early Modern Political Theory: Conceptualizing Political Authority Weber and the Bureaucratic Machine of the Modern State The Human Geographies of Strategic-Relational State Theory The Anthropologies of the Networked State Bringing It All Together: Analysing an Emergent State

13

3 Peopling the Medieval State A Case of Stating the Obvious? People and the Feudal State State Leaders and the Emergence of Medieval State Forms in the British Isles Local Government and the Validation and Contestation of State Forms The Medieval State: Different not Worse?

15 21 28 36 44

49 49 52 56 66 77

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CONTENTS

4 Embodying Early Modern State Consolidation Peopling the Central State Apparatus The Body Politic: JPs and the Political Constitution of England and Wales Shaping and Steering the Local State State Personnel and the Embodiment of Early Modern State Consolidation

5 The State of High Modernity: the Age of the Inspector The Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government The Age of the Inspector Leonard Horner and the Regulation of Factory Production Embodying a Tentative State Consolidation

6 Breaking up: People and the Late Modern UK State The Challenges of Executive Devolution in the UK New Devolved Organizations, New Organizational Cultures State Personnel and the ‘Joining up’ of Regional Governance Territorial Identities and the Reproduction of Devolution Devolution in Prospect

80 86 93 101 109

111 111 119 123 140

143 150 155 159 167 172

7 Conclusions: Peopling the State

175

Notes

189

References

191

Index

208

Figures

3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

Alfredian Wessex MacSorley lands on Scotland’s western seaboard The development of the segmentary gafael in north Wales The systematization of local government in sixteenth-century England and Wales: the Acts of Union William Lambarde, author of the Eirenarcha The Wynn family’s administrative stamping grounds Sir John Wynn Leonard Horner, Inspector of Factories The territorial reconfiguration of inspection districts during the 1830s The political geographies of the UK post 1997 The East Midlands’ Integrated Regional Strategy (from EMRA 2000) The four governmental and administrative regions in Wales The national and local framework for economic governance in Scotland

60 72 76 84 97 103 104 126 130 144 162 165 169

Tables

5.1

The growth of the culture of inspection in nineteenth-century Britain 5.2 The number of mills and factories within the region controlled by Leonard Horner, factory inspector, in 1840 7.1 The variants of state power

122 132 179

Series Editors’ Preface

Like its fellow RGS-IBG publications, Area, the Geographical Journal and Transactions, the Series only publishes work of the highest quality from across the broad disciplinary spectrum of geography. It publishes distinctive new developments in human and physical geography, with a strong emphasis on theoretically-informed and empirically-strong texts. Reflecting the vibrant and diverse theoretical and empirical agendas that characterize the contemporary discipline, contributions inform, challenge and stimulate the reader. Overall, the Book Series seeks to promote scholarly publications that leave an intellectual mark and that change the way readers think about particular issues, methods or theories. Kevin Ward (University of Manchester, UK) and Joanna Bullard (Loughborough University, UK) RGS-IBG Book Series Editors

Acknowledgements

Many debts of gratitude have been incurred in the completion of this book. I break with academic tradition somewhat by thanking first of all my friends and family who have supported me, either directly or indirectly, throughout this project. My parents, to whom this book is dedicated, have been a constant source of support throughout my academic career and have also provided strong educational, cultural and moral foundations upon which to build it. My wife, Jenny, along with my daughter and son, Glesni and Ynyr, have provided a welcome antidote to the trials and tribulations associated with producing a book such as this. Thanks very much for reminding me on numerous occasions – usually in good nature, too – that there is more to life than trying to disentangle the practices of a sixteenth-century JP in north-west Wales or of a government inspector of factories in the north of England during the nineteenth century. Diolch o galon a llawer o gariad i chi i gyd. Thanks also to my colleagues and mentors within the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences (IGES) and further afield. The high levels of collegiality and academic endeavour within IGES – and I believe that the connections between these two attributes are significant and distinctive – have provided me with an unparalleled working environment over the past ten or so years. Bob Dodgshon inspired me what seems like a long time ago now to indulge in ‘big picture history’ and for this I am, at least most of the time, extremely grateful! Other current or erstwhile colleagues also ‘appear’ in subtle ways in various chapters of this book. They have shown incredible forbearance in entertaining me all too often within their offices and in responding in positive and enlightened ways to my many queries. Thanks in particular to Tim Cresswell, Deborah Dixon, Bill Edwards, Kate Edwards, Mark Goodwin, Gareth Hoskins, Martin Jones, Gordon

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

xiii

MacLeod, Robert Mayhew, Pete Merriman, Richard Phillips, Heidi Scott, Mark Whitehead and Mike Woods. Thanks also to Anthony Smith and Ian Gulley for producing the illustrations to a very high quality and to postgraduate and undergraduate students within IGES, who have provided inspiration and distraction in equal measure. In addition, other friends and colleagues from outside IGES have provided much support for this project. I think specifically of James Anderson, Helene Bradley, Robin Butlin, Patrick Duffy, Nick Gallent, Pyrs Gruffudd, David Harvey, Mike Heffernan, Charlie Jeffery, Keith Lilley, Miles Ogborn, Anssi Paasi, Chris Philo and Colin Williams. Thanks to you all for your patience and guidance. Many of the ideas discussed in the book have already seen the light of day in some form or other. I have presented conference papers and seminars in Aberystwyth, Auckland, Coleraine, Belfast, Bergen, Brighton, Exeter, Guildford, Leicester, London, New York, Quebec City and Strathclyde, which have discussed, inter alia, the relationship between state personnel, state organizations and state territories. Thanks very much for the questions and comments that various audiences have made in response to these papers. Delegates, who have been present in one, some or all of these conferences, will be glad to hear that I will be giving this topic a bit of a rest for the foreseeable future. By the same token, referees for a variety of different periodicals have helped me to hone my ideas concerning the geographies of the state over a number of years.Thanks to you for seeing something that was worth publishing in the majority of these papers. More formally, I would also like to thank the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, for its assistance, over a number of years, in providing financial support for my postgraduate and subsequent research. It has also provided regular periods of study leave, which enabled me to conduct much of the research and some of the writing contained within the pages of this book. Thanks also to the ESRC for funding a two-year research project, entitled ‘Constitutional Change and Economic Governance: Territories and Institutions’, as part of the Devolution and Constitutional Change Research Programme (Grant number: L219252013). The material from this project has fed into some of the arguments made in this book, as well as providing the bulk of the empirical material discussed in Chapter 6. Thanks again in this context to my co-researchers on this project, Mark Goodwin and Martin Jones, for providing much conceptual and empirical insight into the contemporary restructuring of the UK state. Thanks also to the two researchers on the project, Kevin Pett and Glenn Simpson, who managed to collect a lot of very useful empirical material over two years. I would like to thank Nick Henry and Kevin Ward as the editors of the book series, the two anonymous referees for the original proposal for supporting publication, and the two anonymous readers for providing valuable

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

suggestions concerning improvements to the final script. Thanks also to Jacqueline Scott and Angela Cohen at Blackwell Publishing for making the publishing process as painless as possible. It goes without saying that the mistakes, misrepresentations and omissions are mine. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders. However, it may have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

Chapter One

Introduction: State Personnel and the Reproduction of State Forms

Ellis Wynn was murdered in north Wales at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The murderers, William ap [son of] Thomas ap Humphry and Anne verch [daughter of] Jhon, a married couple, remained at large for a number of months afterwards, even though their identities and crimes were well known within the local community and, indeed, further afield. The lack of progress in resolving the crime generated much consternation within the emerging state apparatus. For instance, Lord President Zouche of the Council in the Marches – the ‘devolved’ branch of the English state responsible for law and order in Wales – berated the local sheriff, John Wynn of Gwydir, in a letter, complaining that ‘the murderers, in respect of their friends and kindred, are not apprehended; so that they are harboured by the Sheriff’s tenants and friends, and are seen openly in market towns in the day time’. He continued, arguing that ‘if such be the case, begs him to consider how much it concerns the breach of the peace of the land and what a plague it threatens to the country where such vipers are harboured, and what dishonour it will bring on him [the Sheriff], besides discredit and the plague of God both on him and his posterity.Will be glad if this remembrance quickens him, but more glad if zeal does the same’. Not surprisingly after such a tongue-lashing, John Wynn was quick to respond. He defended himself vigorously, contending that the fact that ‘the murderers were harboured amongst Wynn’s tenants and friends is more than he knows or is persuaded will prove true. Cannot deny that the offender is his kinsman, but he that is dead was as near in blood (by the mother), and no kinsman is more sorry than the writer. Protests that he never favoured the murderer or any other notorious malefactor. If the murderer walk within Wynn’s office he shall find neither favour nor support; but the country is wide, and he that standeth in danger of law may long escape the officers’ hands’. Evidently, in this case, John Wynn was keen to defend his honour

2

INTRODUCTION

as a key administrator of the English state in north Wales. The vigour of Wynn’s protestations, however, may lead us to suspect that there was no little truth in Lord Zouche’s accusations regarding the ignoble nature of his involvement in the case. We do not know whether William and Anne were ever caught by John Wynn nor whether they were prosecuted for the murder (quotes from Ballinger 1926: 41–2). This footnote of history begins to illustrate the main concerns of this book. First, and most crucially, this brief example clearly demonstrates the fact that the state, at least in its English manifestation during the early modern period, should be viewed as a peopled organization. Certain individuals played a critical role in facilitating the process of state consolidation that was taking place in England and Wales during the early modern period. The English state’s reliance on particular individuals to instigate state policies meant that it was dependent – perhaps more than most states (e.g. France, see Poggi 1978) – on the goodwill, conscientiousness and commitment of its key personnel living and working in various localities. Lord Zouche acted as the exasperated figurehead of Welsh ‘regional’ government within the English state at this time. Similarly, Sir John Wynn’s lack of enthusiasm for his role as sheriff of Caernarfonshire can be used to explain, at least in part, the lack of penetration of an efficient legal system into the county during this period. State initiatives and forms during the early modern period, therefore, came about as a result of a complex interplay between various kinds of state personnel: key figures of state and more lowly officials. A key aim of People/States/Territories is to examine systematically – in conceptual and empirical contexts – the active contribution of various state personnel to the emergence of a state apparatus within Britain. In doing so, I seek to counter structural, sterile and static accounts of the state by showing that the state is both a ‘political process in motion’ and a ‘peopled organization’ (Peck 2001: 451). Second, and perhaps a little more prosaically, the vignette illustrates the importance of various organizations within the English state apparatus during this period and their role in enabling the English state to govern its population and territory. The state apparatus refers to the ‘set of institutions and organizations through which state power is exercised’ (Clark and Dear 1984: 45).Two of the main characters in the above tale – Lord Zouche as Lord President of the Council in the Marches, and John Wynn as the sheriff of the county of Caernarfonshire – were appointed representatives of particular branches of the state apparatus. This much is clear. What is less recognized is the role of state personnel in shaping the various organizations that constitute the state apparatus and their associated state projects and strategies. I want to argue that state personnel are key contributors to state projects – or, in other words, those ‘initiatives to endow state institutions with organizational coherence, functional coordination and

INTRODUCTION

3

operational unity’ (Brenner 2004: 88) – and state strategies, namely the ‘initiatives to mobilize state institutions in order to promote particular forms of socioeconomic[, political, cultural or ecological] intervention’ (ibid.). My goal in this book, therefore, is to illustrate the role played by people in reproducing, transforming and contesting state organizations, projects and strategies within particular historical and geographical settings. The iterative practices of state actors give meaning and permanence to the various organizations of the state apparatus. But this does not mean that state organizations are wholly static and unchanging. State organizations also evolve as a result of the intended and unintended practices of various actors who ‘see the state’ in different ways (Corbridge et al. 2005). The tale concerning the ineffective character of law and order in early modern Caernarfonshire illustrates, at an empirical level, how state organizations could be transformed through the enthusiasm or lack thereof of state functionaries. Building on this, a focus on the peopled character of the state apparatus shows how the latter can be contested by a variety of actors. It is possible to view the inactivity of Sir John Wynn, for instance, as an example of his contestation of the growing interference of the state in the lifeworlds of the inhabitants of north Wales. State organizations, being peopled, are never static and are continuously shaped by those individuals who person them. And, of course, it is likely that this relationship between state personnel and state organizations is recursive in character. The identities of state personnel are influenced by the state projects, strategies and organizations that structure their working practices. Third, the account of the murder in seventeenth-century Wales demonstrates the importance of territorial considerations for all states (Gottmann 1973). Lord President Zouche and Sir John Wynn alike possessed responsibilities within territorially delimited areas of state jurisdiction, the former acting as the English state’s representative throughout the whole of Wales and the latter as the sheriff of the county of Caernarfonshire. This specific instance also reflects broader conceptual concerns regarding the territoriality of the state. Mann (1984), for instance, has famously asserted that the main attribute of a state’s power is its territorial form. Sahlins (1968: 5), too, has argued that pre-state societies were organized socially, through reference to ideas of kinship, and that part of the significance of the statemaking process was the way it transformed this socially defined territory into a territorially defined society of the state. While there is some conceptual value in adopting such a viewpoint, it can be criticized for portraying state territories as physical entities that are devoid of social meaning and practice. I want to argue in this book that state territoriality, conceived of as an ongoing process or state project, is something that is inherently produced, transformed and contested by a variety of state personnel. People within the state apparatus shape the territorial extent of policies,

4

INTRODUCTION

organizations and areas of jurisdiction and, in doing so, illustrate the social production of state territories. The practices and identities of state personnel are, equally, influenced by the territorial fabric of the state, which conditions their work. The above discussion begins to highlight how I conceive of the state in People/States/Territories. In this book I am concerned with examining the organizational fabric of the state apparatus and the way in which this is underpinned by the state’s control of a designated territory. I am less concerned with the functions of the state for their own sake, although such a theme is of importance when it impacts on the state’s organizational and territorial make-up. Such a focus echoes the institutional aspects of Weber’s classical definition of a state, in which the state is viewed as an organization that seeks to control a defined territory from a central node (see also Mann 1984). I want, however, to ‘stretch’ this definition of the state somewhat. The type of political control exercised by the state, as described by Weber and others, I would argue, lies as much in the realm of political aspiration as it does in political practice. Many states, in different places and different time periods, have asserted a degree of organizational control over a defined territory but have struggled to impose this ideology of rule on the state’s people and territory. This is especially the case with medieval and early modern states, which are discussed at length in Chapters 3 and 4 of this book. For the purposes of this book, therefore, I conceive of the state as an ensemble of peopled institutions, which seeks to exercise power over a defined territory. The above definition also highlights the fact that the state apparatus should not be viewed merely as an organizational and/or territorial entity. It is also a highly peopled organization. People/States/ Territories seeks to portray a state apparatus and territory that is continuously negotiated and translated by those individuals working within its organizations and boundaries. The distinctiveness of such an approach is apparent when one contrasts it with previous research conducted on the state. In the social sciences, there has been a tendency to underplay the significance of agents in reproducing state organizations and territories. Conventional Marxist state theory, for instance, has tended to promote abstract and structural accounts of the nature of the capitalist state. As an example, Offe’s concept of ‘structural selectivity’ refers to the tendency for the capitalist state to favour certain interest groups (usually capital and the dominant class). Offe’s ideas illustrate an essentialist logic, whereby the state functions as if it were an ‘instrument of the interest of capital’ (Offe 1984: 51; see also Driver 1991). Whether the state is viewed as something that works on behalf of ‘capital’ or certain ‘classes’, it becomes clear that much of conventional Marxist state theory has done little to highlight the active contribution that state agents may make to the reproduction of the state apparatus and territory (though see Miliband 1983: 60; Jessop 1990). The

INTRODUCTION

5

value of the approach propounded within People/States/Territories when compared with Weberian state theory is less obvious yet, I would argue, it is just as distinctive. States within Weberian state theory are generally accepted to consist of a set of organizations and their related personnel, possessing a degree of centrality, a defined boundary that demarcates the territorial limits of the state and a monopoly of coercive power and lawmaking ability (see, for instance, Gerth and Mills 1991: 78; Mann 1984; 1986). But while there has been a certain awareness of the peopled character of state organizations within Weberian state theory, I would maintain that studies within this tradition do not tend to take seriously the purposive and active qualities of state personnel (though see Tilly 1984). Weber, for instance, referred to the bureaucratic qualities of functionaries within the modern state but did so solely in generic terms (Weber 1991: 208). Almost echoing conventional Marxist state theory, it is a class of bureaucrats or alternatively a state elite (Mills 1956; Mosca 1939) that is said to reproduce the modern state rather than particular state personnel, working either individually or in concert with one another. In general terms, therefore, social scientists have not explicated the contribution of state personnel to the reproduction of state organizations and territories. In charting the large-scale changes that have affected the state over time, social scientists have been less sensitive to the particular contributions of state personnel to this process.1 Various classes of historians – diplomatic, constitutional and bureaucratic inter alia – have examined in depth the contribution of various classes of state personnel to the reproduction of political forms. Work on the state of the early modern period – the time period with which I began this chapter – has, for instance, examined the peopling of the state. Corrigan and Sayer (1985) have maintained that we need to view the formation of the English state during the early modern period as a process of large-scale cultural, as well as bureaucratic and organizational, change, which was dependent upon the support of the ‘political nation’ (Underdown 1996). Braddick (1991: 2), too, has argued that ‘the state is not a purely institutional phenomenon . . . [it] creates and is created by a degree of normative consensus and organizational co-ordination’. His ideas draw our attention to the importance of the agency of state personnel – people like Sir John Wynn – to the whole process of state consolidation that took place in England and Wales during the early modern period. But while historians have shown a remarkable sensitivity to the peopled character of state forms, I would argue that their close focus on the particularities of the state within defined time periods has militated against them making broader statements concerning the significance of people for the reproduction of all states, in both organizational and territorial terms. My aim in People/States/Territories, therefore, is to tread a difficult historiographical and methodological route

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INTRODUCTION

by using detailed case studies of the peopling of different state forms within Britain as a way of addressing a more conceptual set of questions concerning the relationship between state personnel, state organizations and state territories. Focusing on the conceptual and empirical relationships between these three variables will enable us, I argue, to chart – in both analytical and methodological contexts – the continuously emerging political geographies of the state. But the themes discussed in this book should not be viewed as another account of the ‘great men of history’ and their impact on political forms. Admittedly, the availability of empirical evidence tends to draw one’s attention to the practices and ideologies of individuals in the higher reaches of the political and bureaucratic hierarchies of the state. It can be difficult to excavate the more mundane aspects of the peopling of state forms, especially during earlier time periods. My aim, nonetheless, is to provide an account, where possible, of the association between a range of different types of state personnel and the state forms that they inhabit. The empirical vignette discussed at the beginning of this book drew attention to the peopling of the state of the early modern period. Some might argue that the states of high and late modernity, based as they are on more sophisticated and bureaucratic means of social and spatial control, are likely to be less dependent on the contributions of individual state personnel. To what extent, for instance, do individuals in the apparatus of the contemporary state possess the agency to alter the trajectories of the organizations that they either work in or control? Poggi, for example, has argued that a key feature of the modern state is its ‘depersonalization of political power . . . to the point of rendering relatively insignificant the . . . individual identities’ of state personnel (Poggi 1990: 33). Rather than being a feature merely of socalled ‘immature’ states, I want to contend that state personnel have been key producers of the state apparatus during all time periods. Jump forward nearly four centuries from the Sir John Wynn farrago to the year 1999 and focus on the furore concerning the nomination of the Labour candidate for the role of First Minister of the National Assembly for Wales. Alun Michael, the Labour Member of Parliament elected by the Labour Party as their candidate for the role, is experiencing a sustained grilling in the Welsh press. Described at various times as Tony Blair’s ‘placeman’ and ‘poodle’ (Speed 2000a: 12), Michael’s image is that of a tame politician, ‘parachuted’ in late in the campaign for the Labour nomination for the role of First Minister (Betts 2000a: 1).Though he ultimately wins the nomination, Michael is tainted, at least within Wales, by his strong association with the central Labour administration, and with Tony Blair in particular. Despite being described as one who ‘ha[s] the Prime Minister’s ear’ (Speed 2000b: 1) – or in other words, one who can influence the decisions made by the Labour Party at the scale of the UK state – the popularly held conception is the opposite – that decisions being made, and

INTRODUCTION

7

policies being implemented, by the Labour administration in Wales are being manipulated by the representatives of the central Labour body in London. Eventually, Alun Michael wins grudging support for his candidacy for the role of First Minister but is soon forced to resign for his failure to secure match funding for European monies destined for the most deprived areas of Wales. It is significant, in this respect, that Rhodri Morgan, Michael’s successor to the post of First Secretary in February 2000, feels it necessary publicly to declare ‘I won’t be Blair’s puppet’ (Betts 2000b: 1). Morgan clearly illustrates his perceived need both to distance himself from Michael and to demonstrate his full commitment to the Assembly and all that it represents. This second vignette, I argue, illustrates the continuing role played by state personnel in shaping, and being shaped by, state organizations and territories. Despite their pretensions to bureaucratic impersonality, the state apparatus during both the modern and late modern periods has been inherently peopled in character. As a way of elaborating on the peopling of the state apparatus, the empirical chapters in the book focus on state forms as they have existed in Britain from the Middle Ages to the contemporary period. The empirical focus of the book requires some contextualization at this stage. The main reason for adopting an historical framework is to enable a comparative study of state forms as they have existed in different time periods. The book, in this regard, owes a debt to Dodgshon’s (1987; see also 1998; J. Anderson 1996) exemplary work on the historical geography of political, social and economic forms over the long term. But while Dodgshon’s work has provided a wide-ranging and structural account of the major social and spatial changes to have affected humanity, People/States/Territories offers a far more focused account of how state personnel have transformed, and been affected by, state forms. Concentrating on the peopling of different types of state within Britain enables me to chart how different state forms may be characterized by diverse sets of relationships between state personnel and the organizational and territorial aspects of the state apparatus. The issue of unity of, and difference between, various state forms needs to be handled with care (in a related context, see Ashcroft et al. 1998). At one level, I want to contend that all states, in whichever time periods, have shaped, and been shaped by, the practices of state personnel. People have been at the heart of the reproduction and transformation of state forms throughout human history. But at the same time, it is likely that the relative contribution of state personnel to the reproduction of state forms has also been highly contingent. In one respect, we can hypothesize that the relative emphasis placed on the different elements within the triple dialectic of state personnel, state organizations and state territories has varied from one time period to the next. State personnel would have played more of a role in shaping state organizations during the medieval and early

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INTRODUCTION

modern periods, for instance, than they would have in the state of high modernity. And yet it may be misleading to generalize even at this level. The empirical stories recounted in this book portray state personnel as individuals who have contributed in crucial but haphazard ways to the reproduction of all state forms.While there may be some limited use in ascribing a particular configuration of relationships between state personnel, state organizations and state territories to different time periods a priori, I argue that it is more instructive to examine the connections between these different elements as they unfold in particular empirical contexts. The relative importance of each of these three factors will be dependent, in the last instance, on the particular set of circumstances that are present within specific state organizations, projects and strategies (in a related context, see Corbridge et al. 2005: 7). The extended time frame with which I approach this project also has a bearing on how the people of the state are conceived. The vignette with which I began the introduction was significant, for it spoke of a cadre of state personnel whose work for the state was carried out on a part-time basis. Sir John Wynn, as well as being a sheriff of Caernarfonshire, was also a local landowner and, as I show in Chapter 4, was berated by individuals in the higher echelons of the English state for spending too much of his time and energy on his own personal interests.The situation was even more complex during the Middle Ages, where the practice of government was dependent in large measure on the cooperation of the heads and members of kin-groups, which lay largely outside the direct control of the inchoate states of the period. Efforts to distinguish between state officials and civil society during this period, therefore, are fraught with difficulties. Even during the modern and late modern periods, when an increasing bureaucratization of the state might have been expected to have delineated the boundaries between the state and civil society in more detail, confusion reigns.The continuing close links between an emerging class of professional bureaucrats and patrons in civil society in the British state during the nineteenth century and the proliferation of quangos that exist in the British state of today testify to a blurring of boundaries between the state and civil society. In more conceptual contexts, too, many writers have sought to extend our meaning of the state – and its people – into civil spheres. Medieval political theorists, for instance, conceived of the state as something that was governed in an extensive and corporate manner. In this way, the Roman notion of quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur or ‘what touches all is to be approved by all’ became the watchword of many Dominican and Franciscan political theorists (Coleman 2000: 45–6). More recently, Gramsci has argued that the state apparatus is broad in scope, drawing in important aspects of civil society. If ‘State = political society + civil society’, then we need to think of the state apparatus and its people

INTRODUCTION

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as something that is inclusive and broad-ranging in character (Gramsci 1971: 263). While there is much conceptual worth to these ideas, I treat state personnel in this book to be those individuals that staff the various organizations of the state apparatus and who are involved in developing and implementing its projects and strategies (Clark and Dear 1984). I recognize, nonetheless, that the demarcation of the line of separation between the people of the state and the broader civil society may well be problematic in certain instances. As I have mentioned already, the geographic focus of the book is on Britain. But, of course, for much of the period in question, a reference to Britain, let alone a British state, would be a highly dubious one to make. It is evident that the political forms that have existed within the geographic space of Britain have been variegated in character throughout history. During much of the medieval period, for instance, it would be anachronistic even to refer to English, Scottish or Welsh states since each of these territories would have contained a variety of different, sometimes competing, political forms (Davies 1993; Frame 1990). The development of state organizations and territories, as well as the contribution of people to these emerging state forms, would have happened in a very piecemeal manner for much of the Middle Ages. Later periods only partly simplified this complex political geography. The process of consolidating an English and Welsh state form, which occurred during the sixteenth century, was followed by a Union of the English and Scottish crowns at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Morrill 1995). A subsequent Union of the Irish and British Parliaments took place at the turn of the nineteenth century but this unity was disrupted once again during the twentieth century: firstly, through the partition of Ireland and the creation of an independent Irish state and, secondly, through the recent process of devolution. These complex political geographies are, on the one hand, problematic since they demand both an in-depth knowledge of many political traditions and trajectories and a sensitivity to appropriate forms of political nomenclature. And yet, at the same time, these ever-mutating political organizations, territories and identities create an ideal test site for examining the continually emerging connections between state personnel and state forms. Britain, in this respect, offers a highly apposite, though by no means unique, case study for examining people/states/territories over the long term. Its political fluidity provides an excellent exemplar of the key methodological and conceptual claims that I seek to make in this book. I want to stress, too, that I do not seek to show in People/State/Territories how a British state came into being. Such an approach would be dangerously teleological by portraying a process of British state formation that was somehow predestined to happen. In any case, my emphasis on the peopled character of the process of state transformation that occurred within the geographic area of

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INTRODUCTION

Britain, I would argue, highlights its contingent character. In deciding how to shape, and accommodate themselves to, state organizations and territories, state personnel helped to ensure that the process of state consolidation that took place within Britain could have proceeded along a number of different trajectories. The book begins by discussing previous contributions that have sought to show how people shape, and are shaped by, the state apparatus (Chapter 2). I stress in this chapter the constitutive role played by state personnel in actively reproducing, transforming and contesting the state apparatus, as well as the latter’s impact on the former’s identities and practices. The chapter discusses the tentative efforts made to people the state apparatus by medieval and early modern political theorists, as well as from Weberian, Marxist and post-Marxist perspectives. While these various epistemological frameworks can shed some light on the recursive relationships between state personnel, state organizations and state territories, they fail to take seriously the role of actors in producing state forms.The conceptual framework that informs this book is based on an understanding of: state personnel as active agents who possess a variety of different identities, subjectivities and prejudices; state organizations as the bureaucratic and programmed institutionalization of state power and which are, at least in part, the product of decisions and priorities of state personnel; state territories as the space over which states claim political power and which are the product of both the activities and proclamations of state personnel, as well as the projects and strategies of state organizations. The key, in this respect, is to examine the reciprocal and iterative relationship that exists between state personnel, state organizations and state territories, one in which each constituent element of the triple dialectic is continuously reproduced. The empirical chapters that follow hone in on critical periods in the evolution of state agents, organizations and territories in Britain. Chapter 3 discusses the initial emergence of state organizations in Britain that took place during the Middle Ages. Efforts were made to shape a new organizational and territorial framework of government during this period, which illustrates the beginnings of a process whereby people, land and resources within Britain were being controlled through the systematic appropriation of space by state organizations under the control of certain key individuals. Chapter 3 begins by examining the feudal character of the medieval state before proceeding to discuss the role of the sovereign in embodying the inchoate organizational and territorial framework of the state. It then addresses a more widespread peopling of the state during the Middle Ages that took place in the context of ‘local’ forms of government, ones which were dependent upon kin-groups for their institutional sustenance. Throughout, I emphasize that the highly peopled character of the state during this period should not be used as testimony of its perceived

INTRODUCTION

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‘immaturity’. Rather, I stress how the explicitly peopled nature of the medieval state actually contributed to its permanence and infrastructural power. Chapter 4 deals with another key period in the transformation of the state within Britain. During the early modern period (between approximately 1500 and 1750), attempts were made to rid Britain of its numerous organizational and territorial anomalies as it came more firmly within the grasp of the English crown. Key transformations took place during the sixteenth century that enabled more systematic forms of state government to develop and I focus in this chapter on their contours within England and Wales. Elton’s (1953) so-called ‘Tudor revolution in government’ led to a transformation of state bureaucracy in the English state’s centre. Equally fundamental changes took place in the various localities of the state. One of the key developments was the instigation of a more systematic Commission of the Peace throughout the lands of England and Wales. Local landowners such as Sir John Wynn, acting as part-time officers of state, enabled the rulers of the English state to reach out in more effective ways to the various localities. The considerable latitude afforded to these officers of state, however, especially in the more remote regions, posed difficult questions regarding their perceived commitment to, or contestation of, emerging state forms. Focusing on the agency of state personnel during the early modern period, however, enables us to emphasize two important aspects of the process of state consolidation that took place during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The continuing embeddedness of state personnel in age-old patterns of patronage and kinship speak of a divide between medieval and early modern state forms that exists more in contemporary imagination than it did in early modern practice. Similarly, the active contribution of state personnel to the reproduction of state forms – whether in the centre or the localities – alludes to an early modern process of state transformation whose contours were highly contingent, variegated and plural in character, a point that has been made forcefully in more general contexts by Spruyt (1994). The final two empirical chapters deal with a more contemporary reciprocal relationship between people, organizations and territories. Chapter 5 examines the peopling of the British state during the so-called ‘Age of the Inspector’. The nineteenth century witnessed a second ‘revolution in government’ (MacDonagh 1958), characterized by an increased – albeit tentative and unwilling – intervention by the state in the social and economic fabric of Britain, through a bureaucratic and increasingly professional group of civil servants. My empirical focus on industrial regulation shows the qualitative shift in the number and extent of state organizations, their use of spatial and territorial order, and the key role played by state agents in facilitating and contesting these developments. Factory Inspectors’ efforts to

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INTRODUCTION

grapple with the implementation of the 1833 Factories Act, in particular, show how state personnel were, once again, involved in shaping emerging state forms, often in difficult circumstances. In discussing these issues, I seek to show how the British state’s ambivalent attitude towards state intervention of all kinds during this period was a producer – and, to some extent, a product of – Inspectors’ attitudes towards industrial regulation. Chapter 6 deals with the transformation of state forms that has taken place in Britain during the period of late modernity and, in so doing, acts as a counterpoint to Chapter 5. As a result of the creation of a Scottish Parliament, a Welsh and Northern Irish Assembly, and the devolution of power to various regional bodies in England, there has been a substantial territorial and functional recalibration of governance within the UK. Much has been written in the social and political sciences concerning this change, especially with regard to the formation of new state organizations and their related territorial remits. Less is known concerning the connections between state personnel and this organizational and territorial transformation and it is this lacuna that Chapter 6 seeks to fill. The significance of this process of devolution is that it has created new scenarios for the unfolding of the dynamic relationship between state personnel, organizations and territories. Rather like a mixture of fluids in a test-tube, devolution has agitated these three elements into new forms and combinations. In this changing political landscape, agents have had to make sense of their role within new organizations, their relationship with new territories of governance, along with their new responsibilities and working practices. Furthermore, it is these self-same individuals who have also been the agents of change, helping to create, through their actions, new organizations, the territorial remit of the new organizations and their associated strategies. Ron Davies’ oft-quoted aphorism that devolution should be viewed as a ‘process rather than an event’ is appropriate as a way of conveying the continual emergence of the state in a post-devolution UK. Emerging, disappearing and re-emerging state organizations and territories have been driven forward by state personnel and have, at the same time, questioned the practices and ideologies of those self-same people. State personnel have been both producers and products of this state ‘in motion’ (Peck 2001). Taken together, therefore, the various chapters in the book contribute to our conceptual and empirical understanding of the role of people in reproducing and transforming the state. In focusing on characters such as Sir John Wynn and Alun Michael, we begin to see how state personnel, in various guises, have shaped, and have been shaped by, state organizations and territories in Britain. It is in this context that we need to take seriously the role of people in shaping state forms if we are to fully appreciate the dynamic organizational and territorial transformation of the state over time.

Chapter Two

Analysing an Emergent State: State Actors and a Territorial State Apparatus

Thinking about the State . . . It seems to me that two separate trends characterize much of contemporary human geography in relation to its study of political structures in general and states in particular. At one extreme lies a relational turn within human geography, which seeks to advocate, especially in its more normative manifestations, an a-territorial understanding of politics, identities and spaces. Amin et al. (2003: 6), for instance, argue that ‘an era of increasingly geographically extended spatial flows’ and an ‘an intellectual context where space is frequently being imagined as a product of networks and relations’ is challenging ‘an older topography in which territoriality was dominant’. Territories and spaces – be they cities, regions or national territories – are presented as a static and relatively old-fashioned backdrop to the more fluid, relational and topological realities that characterize the contemporary world (see Allen 2003; Geografiska Annaler 2004). This new reality is one that is characterized by numerous connections between various local, national and global actors. I see a dominant neo-Marxist state theory at the other extreme, which largely espouses a conception of politics and of the state in which people do not figure. Brenner (2004), for instance, provides an excellent account of the functional and territorial reworking of the state under contemporary capitalism but fails to elaborate in a meaningful way on any human actors that have been involved in its transformation. Despite working within a theoretical framework that promotes a relational understanding of the state, Brenner’s work is disappointingly silent on those concrete social relations that have led to its fundamental restructuring in recent years. The focus within this otherwise impressive volume lies on a meso scale (Brenner 2004: 22) – and related abstract language – of state organizational form, of state projects and strategies.The goal of this chapter is to steer a conceptual

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path between these two extremes by showing how the state apparatus – conceived of as an organizational and territorial entity – is continually reproduced through the practices of state actors. I want to show how the territorial organization of the state apparatus, far from being a relic against which to position new relational and topological politics, is actively and continually reconstituted through the practices and actions of a variety of actors. I do not strike out alone in considering these issues. Many theorists writing from the medieval through to the modern and contemporary periods – and from a variety of perspectives – have, either explicitly or implicitly, considered the role of people in shaping, and being shaped by, state forms. Of course, one could not examine issues to do with the organizational and bureaucratic form of the state without considering the momentous contributions made by Weber and Marx, along with their respective disciples. Full attention will be directed to these two bodies of work in subsequent sections of this chapter. But I also want to discuss the work of other, perhaps less familiar, political theorists in order to supplement our understanding of the peopling of the state. One important way in which we can expand our range of conceptual knowledges concerning the state is through focusing on medieval and early modern writings. Since the empirical chapters of the book examine the empirical interrelationship between state personnel and the organizational and territorial aspects of the state apparatus in a number of different temporal contexts, it is important to acknowledge the various contributions to political and state theory made by commentators writing across the same range of time periods. There is a danger, otherwise, of prioritizing the ‘value’ and ‘insight’ ascribed to modern commentators on the structure and function of the state: Marx and Weber in particular. Such an agenda fits in with broader concerns regarding the need to destabilize and undermine the boundary that has been traditionally constructed between the medieval and modern periods, and to delineate the continuities and differences between pre-modernity and modernity (see especially Latour 1993; in geography, see Jones 2004a; Jones and Phillips 2005). But there is another way in which we can expand our set of conceptual knowledges concerning the state and that is to take heed of more recent post-Marxist work that has elaborated on the significance of the state as a means of governing society. I think here, in particular, of the work of Foucault, Latour, and Deleuze and Guattari, whose emphasis on such themes as biopower and networks can do much to highlight the peopled character of the state. In charting these various conceptual understandings of the state, I will focus in the main on those contributions that either emanate from, or relate to, Europe. While this Eurocentric conceptual focus may be criticized by some, I believe it is justified given the empirical examination of state forms within Britain that is contained in subsequent chapters of this book.

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The key task that I set myself in this chapter is to forge some common conceptual ground between these seemingly disparate bodies of theories. My objective, in this respect, is not so much to develop an alternative theory of the state as to illustrate an analytical framework that can enable researchers to illuminate the peopled character of the state apparatus. I want to emphasize three key themes that are of significance to a peopled understanding of the state: the importance of the identities of state personnel; the relationship between state personnel and organizational aspects of the state apparatus; and the link between the state as a peopled organization and its territorial form. Taken together, the mutual imbrication of state actors, organizations and territories, in which each element is in a continuous and productive relationship with the other, provides an analytical framework for examining an emerging state.

Medieval and Early Modern Political Theory: Conceptualizing Political Authority Medieval writers were concerned with producing normative accounts of the character of state power. They wrote within a broader constitutional and political context that was framed by the conflict between church and state: for authors such as Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham, the main area of concern was the need to determine the limits to state and church power. Indeed, it was the challenge posed to secular government by the papacy that instigated a sustained interrogation of the character of state power. This conflict between state and church was most clearly debated in the context of the ‘two swords’ theory, in which efforts were made to reconcile the coercive and jurisdictional powers of both state and church (D’Entrèves 1959). This was not just an abstract argument carried out between state and church advocates but was also played out in many specific and concrete conflicts of interest between the two parties (e.g. Leyser 1965; Tierney 1964). It is clear that issues to do with the peopling of the state were prevalent in the political theory that was being written during this period. This is not surprising given the fact that numerous commentators have maintained that the state of the medieval period was one that was highly dependent upon personal relationships between different political actors, especially in the context of feudalism, where connections between lord and vassal underpinned political rule (see Chapter 3). Nowhere are medieval discourses on the peopling of politics more evident than in considerations of the identities of highly placed state personnel, especially kings. The idea of tyranny helped to structure these medieval accounts of the peopling of medieval politics. A number of authors were keen to illustrate the dangers

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that tyrannical behaviour and qualities would bring to a political community. But, of course, by describing the failings of tyrants as political leaders, various political theorists also implicitly outlined the more positive qualities that should be apparent in good political leaders. An early example of this theorizing can be found in Aquinas’ description of the failings of tyrants. According to Aquinas in his De Regno, tyrants represented the opposite of good government in that they were concerned with the ‘particular interest of the ruler and not for the common good’ (in D’Entrèves 1959: 5). Tyranny could take on a number of different forms: if a tyrant was ‘a slave to avarice, he [stole] from his subjects’; if ‘prone to anger, he . . . shed blood heedlessly’ (ibid.: 9). Tyranny led, therefore, to the multiplication of misery for the community of the state (ibid.): Under such a government death comes, not in satisfaction of justice, but violently and because of unbridled passion. In such circumstances there is no security, and all is uncertain: for there is no law; and no reliance can be placed upon that which depends upon the will, or rather the caprice, of another. Such oppression does not near only upon the material welfare of the subjects; their spiritual welfare also is threatened.

A good king, therefore, was magnanimous, generous, slow to anger and compassionate. Above all, he governed according to a rationality that was based on achieving the common good for the community of the state (see below). Importantly, the king used his rationality as a way, not of ensuring his own personal preferment, but in order to increase the common good of the whole community (see also Offler 1940, vol. 1: 180; Monahan 1974). The exemplar of virtuous kingship – or the king who most characterized the opposite of tyranny – was always considered to be Charlemagne, who was crowned as the heir to the Roman Emperor in 800. As Coleman has argued (2000: 12), Charlemagne’s was a ‘theoretical ideal which would be invoked in centuries afterwards as the model for organized government’. But as the above comments begin to demonstrate, these medieval discussions were not concerned with examining the personal qualities of political rulers for their own sake.The qualities displayed by political rulers were important because of the impact that they had on the character of government within the kingdom. Political theorists throughout the Middle Ages sought to examine the interface between state leaders and state forms, and the critical means of articulating this link was the notion of the common good. This concept referred to a rational interpretation of the most appropriate way of meeting the needs of the whole of the political community. Aquinas, in his De Regno (D’Entrèves 1959), illustrated the strong connections between the state leader and the state that he governed or, in other words, between the king and his kingdom.The notion of the common good

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acted as the bedrock for this relationship. States were organized for the benefit of king and citizen alike through reference to the common good. This is seen most clearly in the context of the laws of the state. Aquinas maintained that the key way in which a state achieved the common good was through the rational laws that it adopted within its territory (D’Entrèves 1959). Furthermore, the common good within all the medieval kingdoms of Christendom was related to the promotion of a virtuous way of living that led to spiritual salvation. For Aquinas, along with many other medieval political theorists, therefore, the common good, leading to eternal life, forged a strong and close connection between the state’s form and function, its political leaders and its ordinary citizens. All were bound to a common political framework that was based on a spiritual telos. While medieval political theorists discussed at length the peopling of politics during the Middle Ages, they focused less on the spatial configurations of state power. The territory of the state was of secondary importance. For the majority of these writers, it was the political community that assumed the greatest significance. Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, John of Paris and William of Ockham’s conception of the state, for instance, is grounded in corporation theory in which the state is viewed as the organizational manifestation of a collection of rational individuals who concede to the formation of coercive laws within the boundaries of the state (see, for instance, McGrade and Kilcullen 1992: passim). The political territory was formed in lieu of the existence of a unified political community, governed by a single individual. There are, admittedly, some exceptions to this tendency. At a general level, it can be argued that the Barbarian territorial kingdoms that were formed at the end of the Roman Empire acted as the ideal of medieval kingly government. Giles of Rome, too, who wrote his De Regimine Principum for Philip the Fair, future King of France, during the late thirteenth century, saw the political entity of the kingdom as a ‘concrete, territorial state, rather than as an abstraction’ (Coleman 2000: 69). But, on the whole, medieval political theorists tended to focus their attention on bettering the means of governing a kingdom as a social entity. That this social entity also existed as a territorial kingdom was either merely implied or assumed. The constitutional changes of the modern period, encapsulated by Tilly (1990; see also 1975) through his reference to the ‘consolidation’ of the state – or, in other words, its increasing power to influence the lives of its citizens in a routine manner (see also Mann 1984) – effected far-reaching changes to the practice and ideology of state government. The process of consolidation was driven by a combination of factors: the need to regulate conflict between different social groups and classes; and the requirement to pursue and withstand military conflict (Skocpol 1979: 32). Not surprisingly, the escalation of state power during this modern period led to

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considerable normative concerns regarding, inter alia, the extent to which the state should penetrate civil society, the relationship between the state and private property and, in a related context, the degree to which citizens could resist and accommodate the state’s intrusions into their lives. Foucault (1991a: 87), for instance, has demonstrated the growing importance of new ideas of government during the period to the extent that ‘government as a general problem seems to me to explode in the sixteenth century’. Key concerns within this general area were those relating to the reason of state, that of the police (also cameralism) and national mercantilism. Ideas of reason of state refer to the political ideologies that appeared during the early modern period, for instance La Perrière’s Miroir Politique of 1567 and Machiavelli’s The Prince, that espoused a vision of the state that was not wholly focused on the relation between the prince/king and his sovereignty, but one that was rather more open to the complex and complimentary forms of government that existed within the boundaries of the state (see Skinner 1978, vol. 1: 248–54). The idea of police was closely related to reason of state in that it represented an attempt to understand the sense of order that existed within a community, and related efforts to preserve that sense of order (Dean 1999: 90; Gallet 1944; Knemeyer 1980; Oestreich 1982). The third element, national mercantilism, was concerned with two aspects of government, ones that were thought at the time to be interrelated: the finance of the state’s treasury and the size of the state’s population. The population of the state was to be closely governed as part of national mercantilism. It is in this context that the state was to ensure that the members of the population ‘were to be made industrious’, either by being in gainful employment or as part of make-work schemes (Dean 1999: 95). But despite the development of these new ideas, it is equally true to say that the political theories of the early modern period sought to rework rather than jettison the contributions made by medieval theorists. We witness some continuity of ideas, therefore, between the political theory of the medieval and early modern periods. Notions of tyranny, discussed above for instance, were reworked in the late medieval and early modern period. A well-known take on the ideal qualities of political leaders – and a refreshingly cynical discourse on the notion of tyranny – was provided by Machiavelli (Machiavelli 1999 [1516]). Writing at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Machiavelli sought to create a manual of the most effective means of government for a political leader and, in so doing, subverted medieval understandings of government for the common good. Grafton (1999: xxiii), for instance, has noted that Machiavelli in his Prince constantly referred to notions of virtue but clearly did so in an instrumental context. As such, the ‘qualities traditionally considered as “virtuous”, in the Christian or feudal sense, were not virtuous at all in a prince’. A judicious

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and flexible use of tyranny was required in order to ensure that the prince could acquire and maintain control of the state (Machiavelli 1999 [1516]: 50–1): Whenever men are discussed and especially princes . . . they are judged for various qualities which earn them either praise or condemnation. . . . So a prince has of necessity to be so prudent that he knows how to escape the evil reputation attached to those vices which could lose him his state . . . taking everything into account, he will find that some things that appear to be virtues will, if he practises them, ruin him, and some of the things that appear to be vices will bring him security and prosperity.

Although Machiavelli’s work sought to challenge the dominant medieval understandings of the qualities that should be evident in state leaders, it still emphasized – similar to medieval political theorists – that the personal qualities of political leaders were key to the successful reproduction of the state. While the common good may have structured medieval understandings of the relationship between state leaders and the organizational aspects of the state apparatus, debates concerning the notion and location of sovereignty act as a proxy measure of this link during the early modern period. The early modern debate surrounding the appropriate location of sovereignty, familiar to readers, can also be construed as a dispute concerning the character of the relationship between state leaders, state organizations and the broader political communities that they sought to govern.The more straightforward exposition of this link between state leaders and the state apparatus appears in Hobbes’ (1968 [1670]) account of the Leviathan. Hobbes wrote his Leviathan in a seventeenth-century England which had been characterized by considerable social and political upheaval. A strong state or civil government was needed, according to Hobbes, in order to combat such anarchy. As such, he advocated that the body politic should cede its rights to a sovereign power, which could govern for the benefit of all. Hobbes, therefore, conceived of the state as an organization that embodied, and was embodied in, a sovereign. S/he was viewed as a ‘Mortall God, to which we owe under the Immortall God, our peace and defence’ (1968 [1670]: 227, original emphases). Such ideas had been reflected in political practice over a century earlier, as evidenced in Henry VIII’s exclusive claims to sovereignty, expressed in the Act of Supremacy of 1535 (Skinner 1978, vol. 2: 87). Rousseau (1998 [1762]), writing in Paris much later than Hobbes, posited a counterclaim in which the sovereignty of the state was seen to be directly constituted on the basis of the broader body politic (see also Machiavelli’s Discourses, quoted in Skinner 1978 vol. 1: 159; see also Locke 1690 [1980]). He maintained, for instance, that sovereignty was constituted ‘of the body of the people’ (Rousseau 1998 [1762]: 27; Held

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1992: 108) and, as such, the role of state government was to return to the people their natural rights. While Hobbes’ ideas helped to maintain a medieval and relatively straightforward understanding of the synonymity of the sovereign with the state that she or he ruled, Rousseau’s work on sovereignty stretched understandings of the state as a peopled organization by positioning it firmly in the broader political nation. Early modern political theorists were relatively coy about their vision of political territoriality. This period, of course, witnessed a key development in the growing territoriality of the state within Europe with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which recognized the existence of a system of territorial sovereign states in Europe for the first time (Murphy 1996; see also Pickles 2004; Harley and Woodward 1987). But this momentous development, along with the longer-term territorial consolidation of the state that was taking place over this period, does not seem to have made too much of an impact on early modern political theory. Skinner (1978) has shown, for instance, how territorial considerations were of secondary consideration to Renaissance and Reformation scholars. The political theorists of the time were far more concerned with the development of appropriate means of government, with the need to delineate the character of sovereignty and with the necessity of ensuring the continuation of political liberty than they were with elaborating on the significance of territory as an expression or facilitator of state power. The great early modern political theorists of the English-speaking world – Hobbes and Locke, for instance – did not expound on the significance of territory within their writings. For Hobbes, the essence of the Commonwealth was the bringing together of the wills of the multitude into the rule and actions of the sovereign (Hobbes 1968 [1670]: 228). Admittedly, he implied in places – for instance, through reference to ideas of conquest and war – that the territorial extent of sovereignty was, of necessity, spatially circumscribed and open to question (ibid.: 225). There is a clear assumption in his work, nonetheless, that the whole basis of the state derives from a social and legal relationship between the sovereign and his subjects. The formation of the kingdom or state as a territorial entity flowed from this social relationship. Similarly, Locke cast his understanding of political power as something that derived from the transference of autonomy from ordinary individuals to a broader society, and thence to a set of specified governors (Locke 1690 [1980]: 89). There is little sense, however, in which Locke conceived of a state as an organization that possessed jurisdiction over a defined territory (ibid.: 91–100). Machiavelli, admittedly, sought to advise political leaders on the most expeditious ways of consolidating their hold on newly acquired territories (ibid.: 18–32). His contribution acceded to the significance of territorial ways of understanding state power – at least in a physical sense – but does so in rather a roundabout way.

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As Elden (2005: 14) has recently noted, the most sustained discussion of state territories and territoriality during the early modern period appears in the work of Liebniz. Charged by the Duke of Hanover to determine the status of rulers within the Holy Roman Empire, Leibniz sought to distinguish between ‘majesty, as the power to demand obedience and loyalty, without being commanded themselves, and sovereignty, which he sees as being stressed in the treaties of Westphalia, as concerned with territory’ (ibid.). The key significance of territory, therefore, during the early modern period was its use as a spatial manifestation of the notion of sovereignty. But in separating out the exercise of some form of social rule from that of sovereignty, Leibniz can be seen to be disassociating – at least to a certain extent – the sovereign’s power to rule from the territorial manifestation of the power to rule. I would contend, however, that the exercise of sovereignty, of necessity, implies the existence of a sovereign or collective of people who are intimately involved in the governing of state territories. Sovereign state territories did not exist, and could not be reproduced, during the early modern period without reference to those individuals whose responsibility it was to govern them. State leaders in some way, therefore, were producers of the state territorialities of the time. This, necessarily, brief and selective outline of the political theory of the medieval and early modern periods gives a sense of overarching concern of a variety of theorists with the social constitution of states within their respective time periods. Writers from these two distinct time periods focused mainly on the role of the monarch within the structures of the state and her or his links to the broader population. Moreover, there is a strong normative flavour to the majority of these contributions. Less attention is directed towards the nature of the connections between state actors and the state apparatus. Indeed, there is a sense in which this relationship is viewed as an unproblematic and unidirectional one. Good, rational and spiritual kings are said to lead automatically to good government. Equally, medieval and early modern political theory paid scant attention to the territorial form of the state, apart from straightforward physical terms. In order to explicate more fully these important facets of the peopled and territorial state, we need to turn to the work of more recent political and social theorists. The first stop on this journey lies with one of the giants of social and political theory, namely Weber.

Weber and the Bureaucratic Machine of the Modern State Much has been made by a variety of state and political theorists concerning the impersonal and bureaucratic aspects of the state apparatus during the modern period. The state during this period was one in which the

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influence or will of a particular individual was minimal, if not irrelevant. According to academic convention, the state bureaucracies of the modern and late modern periods are characterized by functions and the fulfilment of offices rather than the actions of various individuals per se. As Poggi (1990: 20) puts it: Qua organization, on the other hand, the state unifies and makes distinctive the political aspects of social life, sets them apart from other aspects, and entrusts them to a visible, specialized entity. Thus individuals can claim the prerogatives involved in the exercise of rule only on grounds of their position within that entity.

Obviously, I would be unwise to attempt to refute completely such assertions. It is clear that the modern state has been characterized by more impersonal structures of power than those that existed in the medieval and early modern states. And yet a number of political and state theorists have acknowledged the potential for the identities of state personnel still to have a bearing on the workings of the state organizations and territories within which they operate. Such discussions of the peopling of the modern state appear in their most overt form in the work of Weber and his numerous followers. Weber’s definition of the state is important, in this respect, since it highlights the peopled character of the state as a territorial organization. He argues that a political organization is considered a state ‘in so far as its administrative staff successfully upholds a claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order’ (1947: 154, original emphases). But in addition to emphasizing the peopled character of the state, Weber also has much to say concerning the qualities of state personnel. He emphasizes that the character of the state will depend on such factors as the mode of administration, the extent of its jurisdiction, the objects that it controls and the character of state personnel (1947: 153–4; Weber 1991: 78; see also Giddens 1985: 8). The state as a rational bureaucracy is peopled by a certain type of functionary, referred to as an ‘administrative’ or ‘genuine’ official (Weber 1991: 95): ‘the narrowed professional, publicly certified and examined, and ready for tenure and career. His (sic) craving for security is balanced by his moderate ambitions and he is rewarded by the honor of official status’ (Gerth and Mills 1991: 50).

For Weber, therefore, modern state functionaries demonstrate certain qualities and identities as a group. The one hallmark of administrative bureaucrats, according to Weber – and this is a theme that echoes the

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contributions made by medieval political theorists – is their use of rational knowledge as a means of discharging their duties. As well as being rational, these individuals are also educated and trained to a certain level in order to deal with the technical rules and norms that undergird the state bureaucracy (Weber 1947: 331). Such themes help to illustrate the uniformity and interchangeability of modern state personnel. Although they possess a set of identities that mark them out as an efficient cadre of administrative bureaucrats within the state apparatus, they also lack any real sense of distinctiveness and identity as individuals (Weber 1991: 208). In certain cases, admittedly, the actions of the professional bureaucrat may be constituted through features of their character: for instance, an enjoyment of the ‘naked possession of power’ or, alternatively, a sense of self-worth deriving from a belief in one’s service for a cause (Weber 1991: 84). But in most cases, Weber conceives of the identity and subjectivity of the state official as something that is subsumed within the professional and technical state bureaucracy. It is the fact that state personnel occupy an impersonal ‘office’ (Weber 1947: 330) that displays, above all, the lack of real agency available for state personnel in Weberian understandings of administrative bureaucracies (though see Giddens 1985: 11–12). The counterpoint for the faceless and uniform character of the modern state bureaucrat lies in Weber’s discussion of the notion of charisma. Charismatic leaders display extraordinary personal qualities and it is these that are used to generate enthusiasm for particular state projects and strategies. Charisma, therefore, as a ‘balancing conception to bureaucracy’ (Gerth and Mills 1991: 52), concerns the personal qualities of select leaders. It is something that is more an attribute of a second type of state functionary, namely that of the ‘political’ official (Weber 1991: 90–95). Charisma, moreover, is cast as a rare occurrence, which highlights the broader significance of the more common rational and bureaucratic state actor (Weber 1991: 79). The identities of these different types of state personnel have a bearing on the reproduction of the state. In terms of the rulers of the state, Weber (1991: 82) maintains that ‘everywhere the development of the modern state is initiated through the action of the prince’. Arguably of more critical and widespread importance, however, is the role played by the impersonal and depersonalized state bureaucrat. A modern state can only be governed effectively if its personnel are able to display certain characteristics. Thus, the existence of a rational and technically oriented state personnel leads to the formation of rational and bureaucratic state organizations. It is in this sense that Weber places such great store on the need for the state to be staffed by a group of individuals who have been exposed to ‘thorough and expert training’ (Weber 1991: 198). Rational state bureaucracies, in this sense, help to ‘educate’ state personnel to adhere to the same standards of

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rationality and professionalism in their day-to-day work. At the same time, this group of state agents’ day-to-day compliance with rules and procedures helps actively to reproduce the state bureaucracy (on a broader note, see Bourdieu 1977; Foucault 1991a). The language of a mutually reinforcing process of reproduction of state structures and state actors draws us nearer to the work of Giddens (1981; 1984; 1985). His structuration theory describes how all social processes and formations are continually reproduced through an interaction between ‘purposeful, knowledgeable agents who have reasons for what [they] do’ and social structures, which affect what they do ‘in ways of which [they] are unaware’ (1981: 16). Put another way (ibid.: 19), the theory of structuration argues that: all social action consists of social practices, situated in time-space, and organized in a skilled and knowledgeable fashion by human agents. But such knowledgeability is always ‘bounded’ by unacknowledged conditions of actions on the one side, and unintended consequences of action on the other.

Two key points arise in Giddens’ formulations. Firstly, that all social action should be viewed through a lens that incorporates notions of ‘timespace’. Social systems stagnate and evolve – or, in other words, are reproduced, over time and space. This can involve: time as understood on a day-to-day basis (known as the ‘durée of activity’); time conceived on the basis of the life cycle of the agent; and the extended time of structures, redolent of Braudel’s long durée (Braudel 1972; Giddens 1981: 19–20). The significance of these different conceptions of time, of course, is that they interpenetrate in important ways so that agents’ day-to-day actions can have, ultimately, important implications for the reproduction of institutions and structures (though see the criticism of structuration theory in Murdoch 1997: 323–5). Similarly, the process of social reproduction is always spatial so that space should be incorporated right at the heart of the duality of structure. Indeed, efforts have been made to elaborate on the spatiality of structuration theory, with regard to the key geographical concepts of place (Pred 1984) and region (Gregory 1982; Paasi 1991; 1996; 2002). The significance of viewing the process of structuration as one that operates through notions of time-space for the present discussion is clear. State agents, working within particular places and on day-to-day timescales, can shape, and be shaped by, the organizations of the state apparatus, which exist over longer time periods and extend over greater geographic scales. The second key point to arise from Giddens’ work on structuration is the need to view agents as individuals that possess attributes of knowledgeability and purposiveness. Contra the more dehumanized agents that populate certain branches of Weberian political theory, especially within

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conceptions of the bureaucratic state, Giddens (1981: 18) argues that actors should not be viewed as ‘cultural dopes’. Rather, actors are ‘highly knowledgeable (discursively and tacitly) about the institutions they produce and reproduce in and through their actions’. State actors are, therefore, knowledgeable and purposive agents that help to reproduce the state apparatus. They are not impersonal automatons that replicate the state apparatus in a purely unthinking fashion. In addition, their own subjectivities may be changed as a result of entering the state apparatus as workers. Or they may choose to react against the imposition of state norms and procedures on their character. It is impossible to prejudge the impact of the state apparatus on state agents and vice versa. The answers to such questions lie in empirical enquiry. As a way of illustrating these claims in a more concrete way, we can briefly allude to work on the growing consolidation of the early modern state, which was predicated on its war-making needs and capabilities (Giddens 1985: 112). What is key in the context of this book is the role of individuals – from various socio-economic classes – in reproducing, and being reproduced by, this state war machine. We can think about the role of people within this process in a number of different contexts. At one level, certain key individuals – Maurice of Nassau in particular – were influential innovators in the whole process of military modernization and, in a related context, state consolidation that characterized the early modern period. Significantly, Maurice of Nassau’s innovations led to the creation of a two-tier military machine that was based on different configurations of military agents and structures. While the upper echelons of the army, populated by members of the gentry, were based on a high level of knowledge of various administrative tasks – ones which were supported through the creation of military academies within the various European states – the lower reaches were characterized by a group of relatively deskilled ordinary soldiers. What is key, in this respect, is the effort made to shape the actions of individuals – whether through attendance at specialist military academies or through a prolonged process of training on the parade ground – and the subsequent impact of these new subjectivities and skills on the conduct of an increasingly ‘modern’ form of warfare. Agents and structure were, thus, tied into closely articulated ties of interdependence and reproduction.The broader significance of this growing coordination of the armed forces within the early modern period, of course, was that it acted as a template for the later consolidation of the state. Notions of hierarchy, orderliness, rules and bureaucracy were easily translated from the battlefield into the inchoate offices of state (Weber 1991: 196–209). Talk of the spatiality of state forms, of course, brings us on to the insights afforded by Weberian state theory into the territoriality of the state. Weber (1991: 78) famously argued that a key feature of the state was its ability to

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assert a monopoly on coercive power within a defined territory (though see Giddens 1985: 18). Sack (1983; 1986: 46), in his wide-ranging account of the significance of territoriality for human history, discusses the significance of territoriality for Weberian understandings of the state. In this regard, he maintains that an emphasis on territorial means of political control can increase the state’s ‘organizational efficiency, centralization, and span of control’. But it is Mann who has provided the most emphatic statement concerning the territoriality of the bureaucratic state machine, when he argues that it is the notion of territory that instils in the state its distinctiveness, its autonomy as an organization and its social power (Mann 1984). It is this dependence on its territory that marks out the state as an organization that is different from political clubs and parties, business companies and religious organizations. While these other organizations may well possess other aspects of social power – ideological, economic, military and political – it is only the state that is dependent on a territory as a way of maintaining its autonomy. Territory, in this way, becomes a ‘space of calculation’ for a variety of state projects and strategies (Elden 2005). Other Weberian writers have built on this foundation by seeking to problematize the importance of territoriality for the state. Poggi (1990: 22, original emphases), for instance, maintains that The state’s relationship to the territory is a complex one. It has its ‘hard’ aspects: in particular, the territory must normally possess geographically distinct, fixed, continuous boundaries, and be militarily defensible. . . . In the course of the development of the modern state, the relationship ceases to be thought of as one of ownership: as an Italian jurist suggests, the state does not have a territory, it is a territory.

The above quote illustrates well two aspects of state territoriality, namely its material and ideological features. States possess a physical territory, which is defined by clear boundaries. This is a notion of territoriality that is redolent of lines drawn on a map, of boundary markers set on a barren moor or of razor wire set between antagonistic neighbours. At the same time, especially during the modern period, states have, to a large extent, become identified and thought of as a territory above all else. In this sense, the importance of territory for the state is also apparent in a discursive or ideological sense. Whereas medieval and early modern political theorists thought of states as mainly social entities that possessed a territorial expression, Poggi maintains that the state of high modernity increasingly became viewed as a territorial entity in and of itself. In another context, it is useful to think about the way in which a state’s territorial form of power is exercised or practised. In this regard, Mann (1984) has drawn attention to the two different ways in which a state’s

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power can be exercised throughout its territory. The first is a despotic form of power and relates to the ability of a state’s leaders to affect civil society in an arbitrary manner. In simple terms, it equates to a state that is organized around the whims of the state elite. Secondly, we need to think about the infrastructural power of the state or, in other words, the ability of the state apparatus to affect the lifeworlds of its citizens in a routine manner. I would argue that it is this second form of state power that draws us closer to territorial understandings of the state during the modern period. As noted above, Sack (1986) has argued that the use of territory is a key means through which the state is able to coordinate and centralize its operations and, thus, rule its population in a more effective manner. For instance, it is territorially organized units of administration that enable the state to monitor most effectively the activities of its population. Although it would be unwise to equate state infrastructural power with state territorial power, it is clear that there is a strong recursive relationship between the two. The contours of the relationship between a state’s territory and its infrastructural power have been discussed at length by Giddens (1985). He maintains that the consolidation of the state as a bureaucratic organization, as it extended its administrative control outwards from a core to defined boundaries, brought about a singular and uniform administrative rationality to all activities, organizations and citizens of the state. The development of a rational and territorial state bureaucracy went hand in hand: state bureaucracies and state territories were two sides of the same coin that signalled the growing infrastructural power of the state. Weberian state theory is highly illuminating as a way of conceiving of the peopling of the state of high modernity and, by implication, of state forms during other time periods. Its emphasis on the peopled character of the state apparatus, its constitution as a bureaucratic entity and its territorial expression tallies well with the aims of this book. In addition, the avowedly historical approach of Weberian state theory helps to demonstrate how the role of state actors, and of the organizational and territorial aspects of the state apparatus, has shifted over time (for the latter, see Murphy 1996). At present, however, the manner in which people are incorporated into Weberian state theory leaves a little to be desired. The individuals that help to reproduce state forms and state territories must fit into one of two different categories: the charismatic and visionary state leader and the faceless and depersonalized state bureaucrat. Furthermore, these individuals are deemed to be immune from any outside interests since it is this professionalism that enables various state actors to sustain the autonomy of the state (for alternative arguments, see Hobson 1998). My contention is that state actors have more political and cultural complexion than is allowed for within Weberian state theory. If this is the case, their role in reproducing state forms must also be more variegated than what is suggested within Weberian state theory.

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One body of work, which emphasizes the socio-economic and political complexion of state action, is Marxist and neo-Marxist state theory and it is to this mode of enquiry that I turn in the next section.

The Human Geographies of Strategic-Relational State Theory Weberian-influenced state theory may well have taken the lead in emphasizing the need to examine the qualities and identities of state personnel but valuable contributions have also been made by Marxist and especially neo-Marxist state theorists. Conventional Marxist state theory has traditionally focused on the state in largely structural or institutional terms. It is the broad, relatively generic, and definitely ‘unpeopled’ language of ‘class’, ‘capital’ and ‘state’ that has been used to examine the manifold connections between state and society (e.g. Offe 1984). Much of traditional Marxist theory gives the impression that class factions, capitalist interests and state forms possess their own agency, one which is constituted with little recourse to the activities of real people within them. In this way, conventional Marxist state theory has been criticized for being overly instrumental, functional and essentialist in character (Driver 1991). Certain voices within conventional Marxist state theory have, nonetheless, sought to present a more nuanced and people-centred account of the state. Marx himself, for instance, in some of his later writings on France, drew attention both to the relative autonomy of the state when compared to issues of class and to the actors involved in shaping state and class politics in France during the period between 1848 and 1851 (Marx 1974). Following in Marx’s wake, Miliband has also been keen to emphasize the role of specific agents in the reproduction of state–society relationships. He has argued cogently that ‘the state does have interests of its own or, to put it more appropriately, that the people who run it believe it has and do themselves have interests of their own’ (Miliband 1983: 60; see also 1968). This, of necessity, alludes to the importance of the agency of state personnel or state managers in promoting – to a certain extent – the interests of the state. In his efforts to examine the ‘dynamics of state action’ (ibid.: 62), Miliband draws our attention to the interests of the state executive. Even though these may be informed by the broader demands of capital, they are not reducible to them. Miliband discusses two main interests that may inform the decisions made by the state executive: self-interest as reflected in issues such as the exercise of power, high salaries, status and privilege; and a ‘national interest’, linked to ideas of nationalism. In the last instance, of course, the relationships between these two sets of interests and the imperatives of capital have ‘on the whole been very good’ (ibid.: 64), especially due to the shared values and social backgrounds of political and capitalist elites (for

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criticisms of Miliband’s ideas, see Poulantzas 1978; Jessop 1990; for a recent review of the contours of Marxist state theory, see Hay 2006). But it is the more recent neo-Marxist research that has done most to stress the role played by the identities and agency of state actors within the whole process of state reproduction and transformation. Jessop, for instance, has broadened his original concern to adopt a conceptual focus, which admits a certain scope for state agents’ identities to influence the unfolding character of state forms (Jessop 2001: 1223). The role of people – as ‘state managers . . . class forces, gender groups as well as regional interests, and so forth’ (Jessop 1990: 270) – is crucial to the unfolding of the state’s strategic selectivity in particular places and at certain times. It is clear that Jessop’s approach necessitates a focus on, inter alia, the identities of state personnel. Jessop (2001; see also Archer 1995) finds fault, in this respect, with the structurationalist approach adopted by Giddens, focusing on his unwarranted separation of structure and agency into discrete entities, which are subsequently brought back together in a productive relationship through the duality of structure. Jessop disapproves of such an approach on epistemological and ontological grounds, stating that structuration theory fails to recognize and explain ‘the differential capacities of actors and their actions to change different structures’ (Jessop 2001: 1223). In other words, structuration theory, according to Jessop, is unable to draw attention to the fact that certain actors possess more licence to shape structures than others. Giddens might well disagree with such an assertion. The latter’s detailed discussion of the role of people in moulding, and being moulded by, standing armies, for instance, illustrates well the potential for different people, from different socio-economic classes, to differentially access, affect, and be affected by, the military machine (Giddens 1985: 112–16). In no way does Giddens portray a process of structuration in which all actors possess the same capability to shape, and be shaped by, the structures or institutions within which they operate. Putting Jessop’s criticisms aside for a moment, I want to focus on the more positive aspects of the alternative approach that he advocates (Jessop 1990; 2001; 2002). At heart, his so-called Strategic Relational Approach (hereafter SRA) maintains that the state should be viewed in relational terms or, in other words, as a product of social relations. In this way, Jessop (1990: 269–70) argues that ‘the power of the state is the power of the forces acting in and through the state’. The state, at an ontological and epistemological level, does not exist as a separate organization. Rather, it reflects the needs, interests, and priorities of the individuals, and groups of individuals, working in and through it. This relational way of thinking about the state explains Jessop’s criticism of the separation of structure and agency with regard to structurationalist studies of the state. For Jessop, the

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state should not be regarded as a separate structure that exists over and above the actions, needs and strategies of those forces working in and through it. Hay (2006: 75) eloquently describes the mutual production of structure and agency within the SRA: Structure and agency logically entail one another, hence there can be no analysis of action which is not itself also an analysis of structure. All social and political change occurs through strategic interaction as strategies collide with and impinge upon the structured terrain of the strategic context within which they are formulated.

Jessop continues with this theme by arguing that the form of the capitalist state should not be ‘read off’ the economic processes that undergird it. Building on the work of Poulantzas (1978), Jessop’s SRA opens up the possibility for viewing the capitalist state as one that admits some strategic selectivity to its operations (Brenner 2004: 87). In other words, the state, and the policies and activities pursued through it, ‘constitutes a terrain upon which different political forces attempt to impart a specific direction to the individual or collective activities of its different branches’ (Jessop 1990: 268). Of course, the state is more permeable and suitable to some types of political agents than to others. The existence of this tendency should not distract us, however, from the contingent character of state projects and strategies. In effect, this means that Particular forms of economic and political system privilege some strategies over others, access by some forces of others, some interests over others, some spatial scales of action over others, some time horizons over others, some coalition possibilities over others. Structural constraints always operate selectively: they are not absolute and unconditional but always temporally, spatially, agency, and strategy specific. (Jessop 1997: 63)

The relational character of strategic selectivity implies that the differential ability of social forces to pursue their interests through different strategies ‘is not inscribed in the state system as such but in the relation between state structures and the strategies which different forces adopt’ (Jessop 1990: 260; 2002: 34–36). The admission that interest groups other than capital – based on issues of gender and territorial identity, for instance – may gain access to the state apparatus is especially pertinent, since it opens up the possibility of examining the relative contribution of a variety of groups to a state’s emerging projects and strategies (Jessop 2001: 1223). As noted above, this approach rejects the separation of structure and agency, choosing instead to collapse one into the other. Of course, this poses considerable methodological difficulties in empirical research. For analytical purposes, therefore, Jessop agrees with Archer’s (1995)

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contention that structure and agency must be separated in order to examine their changing relation. As Jessop (2001: 1226) puts it, ‘only in this way can one pose questions about when actors can change things and when they cannot, about variations in the strength of constraints, or concerning what gives people more or less freedom’ (see also Jessop 2002: 34–36). But despite Jessop’s effort to distinguish between an SRA that is sensitive to the role of agency and Giddens’ structuration theory, considerable common ground exists between them, especially in more methodological contexts. Even in more epistemological contexts, there is some room for dialogue, I would argue. Both approaches, for instance, emphasize the importance of active agents in reproducing the state apparatus within certain limits. Both, also, stress the need to focus on the temporal and spatial dimensions of the reproduction and transformation of states.The point of divergence between both approaches lies in their conceptualization of the relationship between the organization of the state and the broader economy and society. While Giddens views it in largely autonomous terms, Jessop conceives of the state as something that represents the sedimentation of the actions and strategies of societal actors. It is noticeable, too, that neo-Marxist state theory has also sought to address issues of state space or territoriality in recent years. At one level, this project has involved re-evaluating classical Marxist theory through a lens that is informed by a spatial turn in social theory. So, for instance, Sack (1986: 47) has tried to show how notions of territoriality infuse many of Marx’s most famous claims regarding capitalism and class conflict. For example, Sack sees the ‘obfuscatory’ role of territoriality as a key mechanism that enables capitalism, especially through the state, to cloud the true nature of class conflict. In addition, we have already caught glimpses of how work by neo-Marxists has begun to elaborate on the benefits of a spatially and territorially informed Marxist understanding of the state. Jessop’s work on the SRA (1990; 1997; 2001; 2002), for instance, has maintained that we need to examine how territoriality permeates the very fabric of the state – at a material and ideological level. He contends that (2001: 1227) all structures . . . have a definite spatiotemporal extension. They emerge in specific places and at specific times, operate on one or more particular scales and with specific temporal horizons of action, have their own specific ways of articulating and interweaving their various spatial and temporal horizons of action, develop their own specific capacities to stretch social relations and to compress events in space and time, in consequences, they have their own specific spatial and temporal rhythms.

Rather than being secondary issues of concern, Jessop (2001: 1227) suggests that space and time should be viewed as ‘constitutive properties that help to distinguish one organization, institution or institutional order from

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another’. This means that an appreciation of the territorial and scalar dynamics of the state should be central to any serious attempt to understand its evolving nature. Furthermore, a temporally and spatially sensitive reading of the SRA, according to Jessop, provides an insight into the way in which the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of the strategic endeavours of agents is, at least in part, dependent on their access to particular territories and scales of governance. In Jessop’s (2001: 1227) words, ‘all structures privilege the adoption . . . of certain spatial and temporal horizons of action by those seeking to control it, resist it or transform it’. Put simply, the very forces that can legitimately gain access to particular parts and branches of the state are spatially bounded and, to a certain extent, scale dependent. Jessop’s work should be commended for opening up a spatial and temporal neo-Marxist reading of the evolution of state forms. Unfortunately, however, Jessop has shied away from spelling out in more concrete terms the territorial and spatial implications of a geographically sensitive SRA. His main foray into the more concrete territorial reconfigurations of the state lies in his exposition of the process of the hollowing-out of the state, most specifically its denationalization (Jessop 1990). Some of his followers have, however, tried to explicate more fully the geographical implications of the SRA. Brenner (2004; see also Brenner et al. 2003), for example, has maintained, following Jones (M. Jones 1997; 2001), that a process of ‘spatial selectivity results from the relational interplay between the geographies of inherited state structures and emergent strategies to transform and/or instrumentalize the geographies of state power’. In other words, the unfolding patterns of state power are shaped by the interplay between territorial and spatial aspects of pre-existing state organizations and current state strategies. But despite the value of these neo-Marxist insights, I still have a sense in which the spatial constitution of the state, as well as its ongoing transformation, is viewed through relatively abstract lenses. It is state strategies and state projects that transform and reproduce state territorialities but there is little room to examine how various individuals are actively involved in shaping these territorial agenda.This omission is ironic, given that there is ample conceptual room to couple together a relational understanding of the state – where state actors are intimately involved in the strategic reproduction of state forms and functions – with an appreciation of the state as a territorial entity. Unfortunately, Jessop and his followers do not, on the whole, make this important connection. The main relationship between state actors and state territories posited within neoMarxist state theory seems to be unidirectional in nature. Pre-existing state territories influence the opportunities open to a variety of state actors to access the power structures of the state. There is little sense in which state actors, through their actions and discourses, can contribute to the

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production of state territories. Nor is there, alternatively, an appreciation of the mutual co-evolution of state actors and state territories, where one group influences, and is influenced by, the other. In order to begin to approach this process of mutual co-evolution, we need to turn to the work of Lefebvre (2003: 84–5), another doyen of neoMarxist political and social theory. He has sought to tease out the different aspects of state space, including the processes involved in its production, in a systematic manner. As well as promoting a physical or material conception of their own territoriality, states also portray themselves as a homogenous territory over which certain organizations, with their concomitant rules, regulations and norms, apply. The territorial basis of a state’s legal system would be a good example of this way of conceiving of a state’s territory (Blomley 1994; Delaney 1998; 2003). State territoriality, therefore, is something that is also produced in and through the territorial remit of various state organizations within the state apparatus. The third way of thinking about a state’s territory reflects a far more abstract sense of the national space and is based on the state population’s imagination of the geographical contexts within which they are governed. Here, the notion of territory approaches understandings of the civic nation (Breuilly 1993; Brubaker 1992; Gellner 1983). But the most valuable aspect of Lefebvre’s work is his emphasis on the fact that state space, as well as other forms of social space, is produced. Space, within his framework, is not viewed as a static, pre-given or empty area (Lefebvre 1991: 1; see also Soja 1989). Rather, we need to think of space as something that is produced through a combination of different processes that are combined together in a triple dialectic. The three key interrelated processes according to Lefebvre are spatial practices, which relate to the material form of social spatiality; representations of space, reflecting spaces of ideological power, utopias and visions; and spaces of representation, concerning clandestine spaces of resistance or the space of inhabitants and users (Soja 1996). Importantly, it is possible to adapt this conceptualization of the processes inherent in the production of space to reflect the more specific political process whereby states produce territories. We can think of a territorial triple dialectic as follows: • territorial practice, referring to the physical territorialities produced by the state; • representations of territory, signalling the more hegemonic conceptions of territory produced by the state apparatus and its regulations; • representational territories, related to the clandestine and underground conceptions of territory produced in reaction to representations of territory (see Lefebvre 1991: 33).

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The key point to stress, in this regard, is the productive interplay that exists between these three elements. The production of state territoriality varies from place to place, and from time to time, as a result of the exact configurations and balances between territorial practice, representation of territories and territories of representation. The notion of state territoriality is by no means static or pre-given therefore. It is the product of a constant interplay between these different elements (Lefebvre 1991: 23). Crucially, the whole emphasis placed by Lefebvre on the production of state territoriality draws our attention to the role of people within the process. State territories do not just exist: they must be reproduced, transformed and contested through the actions and practices of people, either as individuals or in concert with other people. This point is emphasized in another contribution that focuses explicitly on the relationship between ‘space and the state’. Here, he argues that state space is the product of the actions of state officials (hommes de l’état): The state and territory interact in such a way that they can be said to be mutually constitutive.This explains the deceptive activities and image of state officials (hommes de l’état). They seem to administer, to manage and to organize a natural space. In practice, however, they substitute another space for it, one that is first economic and social, and then political. They believe they are obeying something in their heads – a representation (of the country etc.). In fact, they are establishing an order – their own. (Lefebvre 2003: 87, original emphases)

State territories are, therefore, the product of the ‘narrations’ of state officials or, to put it another way, the production of state territories cannot be seen ‘as external to practice’ (ibid.; see also Newman and Paasi 1998). The continual ‘becoming’ of territories comes about as a result of the practices and ideologies of a variety of state personnel, ranging from those associated with state projects and strategies at the national scale to those linked to more mundane and potentially locally-based projects and strategies (in a related context, see Paasi 1996: 11). Adopting such a viewpoint, I would argue, is one additional way of avoiding what Agnew (1994) has referred to as a ‘territorial trap’, in which the territoriality of the modern state is viewed as an unproblematic, flat and isomorphous space (see also Delaney 2005: 57–8). And yet while Lefebvre’s contribution is to be welcomed, it can be criticized on one important front. Lefebvre (2003: 86) contends that the state, through its officials and apparatus, tends to produce a homogeneous state space, one that is at odds with the ‘chaotic features as the space generated by “private interests” ’. State space is, therefore, at one and the same time homogeneous and broken (ibid.). According to Lefebvre, it is the

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territories of representation that can offer spaces of dystopia, difference and opportunity, while the representation of territory that originates in the state apparatus and its officials is one of blandness and uniformity. The problem with such a viewpoint is that it tends to reify the state apparatus, in terms of its organizational structure and its territorial reach. But if we think of the state in a plural and peopled way, then it is unlikely that all branches of the state, let alone all state officials, will automatically adhere to one unified and homogeneous representation of territory (cf. Jessop 2002). If we admit an active role for state officials in the reproduction of state territoriality, as well as the various organizations that comprise the state apparatus, then the resultant state spaces must exist in the plural, rather than the singular.To put it another way, numerous peopled viewpoints and practices must exist within the state hierarchy so that any representation of territory – in addition to being challenged by ‘outside’ interests – will automatically be fractured and fissured from the inside. Adopting this modified Lefebvrian approach emphasizes a heterogeneous, contested and variegated understanding of state territoriality, one which is at odds with the more static and pre-given conceptualization of territoriality that appears in much of the contemporary geographical literature (e.g. Amin et al. 2003; Amin 2004). State territories, as products of a variety of different interest groups, a variety of state officials and a variety of state organizations, are always multiple in character. While states may seek to advance an illusion of national territorial homogeneity – through the existence of nationally based organizations, or the promotion of national projects and strategies – they are fundamentally plural in nature. Importantly, it is state personnel who play a key role in producing this heterogeneous territoriality of the state. Neo-Marxist state theory provides much insight into the relational form of state organizations, the contested and plural nature of state strategies and the inherent spatiality of state organizations and structures. It can be criticized, nonetheless, for its partial admittance of actors into its conception of state forms. While the SRA, for instance, admits the possibility for a variety of interest groups to shape state forms and strategies, to all intents and purposes it is state actors that reflect the interests of capital and the dominant class that are the main, if not the only, focus of enquiry. Moreover, the social relations that lie at the heart of the SRA are viewed predominantly in abstract terms. In the same way that Weberian state theory can be criticized for thinking of state bureaucrats in general and stylized ways, so can neo-Marxist accounts of the state be taken to task for failing to take seriously the various types of social relation – or, alternatively, the various types of identity, subjectivity and interest – that constitute the state. Similarly, despite recent efforts to take seriously the territorial form of the state, there is still a sense in which neo-Marxists conceive of state spaces

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and their related scales of state activity as being things that are produced solely by state strategies and state projects (Brenner 2004: 89–94).The way in which these strategies and projects, along with the resultant territorial and scalar forms of the state, are produced remains largely unexplored. Lefebvre’s (1991; 2003) work has the potential to remedy this deficiency, as I have demonstrated in this section. The value of his insights for developing a peopled understanding of the reproduction of the organizational and territorial aspects of the state apparatus will be spelt out more fully in the final section of this chapter.

The Anthropologies of the Networked State My emphasis in this book on the worth of examining the role played by state actors of all kinds in shaping, and being shaped by, the organizational and territorial aspects of the state resonates in some measure with the recent post-Marxist work that has been conducted on the networked character of power. The work carried out under this catchall label has, admittedly, been highly varied and, at one level, it would be inappropriate to force an association between numerous contributions that may well possess different ontological, epistemological and methodological outlooks. At the same time, it seems to me that a number of different academics have sought to problematize traditional conceptions of the character of political and state power (for a review, see Allen 2003). Taken together, these various contributions have stressed the need to think of political and state power as something that is: dispersed rather than centralized; networked and topological rather than territorial; immanent rather than being a distinct capacity; based on heterogeneous associations of social, material and natural entities. The inspiration for much of the post-Marxist re-evaluation of political and state power comes from the work of Foucault (1991a; 1991b especially; see also 1977). Foucault has charted the changing character of political power within the state over the long term. He draws attention to three different configurations of state power over time but I want to suggest, in addition, that his work can also be seen as a commentary on the relationship between people – or national populations – and the state. Foucault witnesses a particular form of state power developing during the sixteenth century. As noted above, this period witnessed a proliferation of different political treatises that considered various aspects of the art of government: reason of state; police and cameralism; and national mercantilism. It was this effort to rationalize forms of government during the sixteenth century that led to the beginnings of a so-called administrative state, in which populations were regulated through the new statistical and information

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technologies (Foucault 1991a; see also Giddens 1985). Significantly for Foucault, the process of government during this early period took place at the level of the household, with key concerns revolving around securing the social reproduction and welfare of households. From about the eighteenth century onwards, according to Foucault, this administrative state was replaced by a governmental state, which possessed an expanded political and social vision. This state was concerned with defining and governing whole populations and national resources. While different in many ways, both the administrative and governmental state were characterized by a disciplinary form of political and social power, since households and national populations were monitored and coerced in relatively overt ways. Recent configurations of state power, however, especially during the period of late modernity, have reflected more subtle and internalized forms of social control. The key to this new state order is the notion of biopower, which is predicated on a dispersed self-regulation of social and political activity by a state’s population (Foucault 1991a; see also Hardt and Negri 2000: 23–4; Rose 1989). The significance of Foucault’s arguments lies in his emphasis on the ‘more dispersed technologies of normative constraint and benevolent guidance’ that characterize the notion of self-regulation or self-government, which is critical to the reproduction of social and political power within the state of late modernity (Allen 2003: 79). I want to suggest that we can fruitfully adapt Foucault’s ideas concerning self-government to refer to the peopling of the state. Rather than thinking of the reproduction of the state – as organization but also as territory – as something that proceeds in a centralized and purely hierarchical manner, Foucault’s insights have the potential to draw our attention to the decentred, poly-vocal and peopled character of political power. The power of the state apparatus as a territorial organization, especially in its modern manifestation, does not derive from its formalized mechanisms of control, domination or coercion but is based, rather, on more subtle and invidious self-regulatory techniques of governmental control. Foucault’s work, in this regard, can be related to Bourdieu’s discussion of the concept of habitus (1977), which refers to the structuring of principles, practices and representations without recourse to rules, and which are adapted to goals without being the product of conscious direction. It is possible to adapt the notion of habitus to think about the production of a state habitus within the mentalities and practices of various types of state personnel (see also Weber 1947). State personnel may adapt themselves to the informal rules of self-government proscribed by the state. But in showing us ‘how patterns of social life could be maintained over time without this either being specifically willed by agents or the result of external factors beyond the reach of agents’ will’ (Calhoun 1993: 72), the danger is that the notion of the state habitus can be perceived as

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something that is more concerned with the reproduction of particular state forms, rather than their transformation. And yet there is some room for change within the concept of the habitus. The habitus portrayed by Bourdieu is not one of immutable tradition but is rather one that can react gradually to social, political or institutional changes within a given society. As Calhoun (ibid.: 78) argues: As people succeed or fail, meet with approval or disapproval, in trying to carry out their manifold projects of daily life, they may adjust slightly the traditional information that they have received from various others in the course of previous interactions.

State actors possess some latitude, therefore, in terms of negotiating their role within the structures of the state. Their room for manoeuvre, nonetheless, is compromised. There are two important health warnings that need to be stated with regard to this application of Foucault’s and Bourdieu’s ideas to the peopling of the state. First, it should be borne in mind that Foucault’s work refers to the internalization of the power of the state into the self-government of whole populations. It may be disingenuous, in this regard, to apply his ideas merely to the more circumscribed world of state personnel in particular. Second, when Foucault speaks of a population that is uniformly made subject to the social control of the state, and when Bourdieu’s ideas are extended to refer to the integration of state personnel into a state habitus, their ideas have the potential to underplay any scope for a differential engagement of individuals – whether in the broader population or within the state machinery – with state power. Given my arguments in previous sections, I would want to emphasize the ability of all state actors, in some way or other, to be actively and differentially involved in the reproduction of state forms. It is heartening, in this respect, that some work that has been inspired by Foucault has sought to elaborate on the diverse interactions between various kinds of individuals and groups and the state apparatus. I think here, in particular, about ethnographic or anthropological studies of the state. The emphasis in this body of work has been on examining the people and the day-to-day practices that have furthered or contested the biopolitics associated with the modern state. Rose (1996), for instance, has stressed the need to explore the various classes of state official – bureaucrats, managers and experts for instance – that have been implicated in the development of state governmentality during the modern and late modern periods. ‘The modern effect of the state’ (Mitchell 2006: 181), therefore, is not only predicated on the promulgation of laws or the fighting of wars but is also based upon those more mundane and decentred practices of state officials and ordinary citizens, which help to give meaning to various

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state projects and strategies. To put it another way, the state is ‘seen’ in a variety of different ways by the various actors that inhabit it (Corbridge et al. 2005). As an example of this more anthropological take on the state, we can focus on the notion of the border. The border of the state represents a key facet of its territorial means of exercising power. But as well as thinking about the programmed and formal ways in which state borders are defined, we also need to examine the mundane practices of state officials and ordinary citizens, which help to give meaning to the border and reproduce it over time. As Mitchell (2006: 180) argues: Setting up and policing a frontier involves a variety of fairly modern practices – continuous barbed-wire fencing, passports, immigration laws, inspections, currency control, and so on. These mundane arrangements, most of them unknown two hundred years or even one hundred years ago, help manufacture an almost transcendental entity, the nation-state.

I would stress that the significance of this anthropological understanding of the border, of necessity, entails a focus on the more peopled aspects of the state. In order to be effective, borders have to be personned by a whole range of state officials. Mitchell’s work is significant for another reason for, in examining the practices of government with the modern state, he is also able to demonstrate the blurred relationship between the state and civil society. So, for instance, even though a state’s legal system is conventionally viewed as something that is based on a distinct separation of the state from the society that it seeks to govern, an exploration of the peopled practices of the legal system – including ‘rights, statutes, penalties, enforcement agencies, litigants, legal personnel, prisons, rehabilitation systems, psychiatrists, legal scholars, libraries, and law schools’ (Mitchell 2006: 176) – illustrates the difficulty in delineating this ‘dividing line’ between state and society. In a similar vein, work on the state’s interaction with the rural poor in India has shown how the practices of state rule are conditioned by a range of state and non-state actors, each of which helps to define the mechanisms and objects of government (Corbridge et al. 2005). An anthropological focus on the practices of state officials, therefore, has the potential to emphasize further the fractured and sometimes indistinct character of state organizational and territorial power. Finally, and building on the previous point, anthropological work on the state also illustrates the potential for various actors, either within the state apparatus or in civil society, to intervene in the state’s projects and strategies. A consideration of the state as a highly peopled and decentred organization provides possibilities for various actors to seek to influence the decisions made, and the practices endorsed, by the state. Thinking about the state as a bureaucratic monolith means that there

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are few opportunities available for state personnel, and activists or ordinary citizens within civil society, to alter the state’s prescriptions. But if the state is peopled at all levels, then there are numerous ‘access points’ or locations within which the state can be subverted. Conceiving of the state in such a way, however, brings its own dangers. Allen (2004), in particular, has maintained that considering political formations in such a decentred (and peopled) way can make it difficult for activists, campaigners or disgruntled citizens to determine where best they can intervene in the state’s projects and strategies. We can pursue this decentred understanding of the state further by considering the work of both Deleuze and Guattari, and Latour. Deleuze and Guattari have emphasized the rhizomatic nature of socialization under contemporary capitalism or, in other words, its networked, linear, immanent and unstable form. They maintain that contemporary socialization takes the form of ‘linear multiplicities’ without ‘beginning nor end’, operating ‘by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 21). Contemporary forms of social and political power, according to Deleuze and Guattari, are not sedimented within hierarchical state organizations but reside, rather, within unstable and uncertain networks of association (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 23). Echoing Foucault’s conception of a dispersed form of power within the contemporary period, they also maintain that modern forms of social power are based on ‘processes of normalization, modulation, modelling, and information that bear the language, perception, desire, movement etc. and which proceed by way of microassemblages’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 458). These networked and deterritorialized microassemblages of power have not made redundant the more territorial macroassemblages of power that are associated with the contemporary state. They have, however, forced it to re-evaluate its role: Thus the States in capitalism are not cancelled out but change form and take on a new meaning: models of realization for a worldwide axiomatic that exceeds them. But to exceed them is not at all the same thing as doing without. (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 454)

Deleuze and Guattari, here, present a familiar argument concerning the qualitative reworking of the state under contemporary capitalism (Brenner 2004; Jones and Jones 2004). But while there is much to commend Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of a networked form of socialization and social power within the contemporary world, it can be criticized for adopting a rather static and ‘isomorphic’ – to use their words – interpretation of the state. It is no doubt useful to describe the modern state apparatus as a static and monolithic territorial organization if one wants to highlight the networked and rhizomatic realities of contemporary capitalism. But, surely,

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there is also room to extend the notion of the network or the rhizome into considerations of how states are reproduced by state personnel. States are not the isomorphic organizations that Deleuze and Guattari portray them to be. They are just as fractured, networked and rhizomatic as the capitalist processes that exist in parallel with them. The potential for a rhizomatic understanding of the state becomes all the more pertinent when one considers the immanence that exists within Deleuzian takes on power. In arguing against hierarchical and centred forms of power, Allen (2003: 84), for instance, notes how a Deleuzian understanding of social power forces us to examine how each of us, whether as part of a group or as an individual, is caught up in an array of cross-cutting lines of social activity which effectively weave our lives into some kind of dense fabric. The resulting texture, to continue the metaphor, is both supple and rigid, open to the detours and contingencies which shape our lives, yet locked down and constrained by the exactitudes of family life, work and welfare, for instance.

In this way, we can think of state actors are individuals that are caught within particular networks of power. Some of these networks may derive from the state apparatus within which these state actors work but others may be associated with ties of family, kinship, gender, religion and so forth. But at the same time, these networks are open to negotiation by individuals and groups. A key implication of this constrained openness is that it is never possible to create a closed and wholly rigid network of power. As Deleuze and Parnet (1987: 145–6) put it: The most centralized of states is not at all the master of its plans, it is also an experimenter, it performs injections, it is unable to look into the future. . . . It is along the different lines of complex assemblages that the powers that be carry out their experiments, but along them also arise experimenters of another kind, thwarting predictions, tracing out active lines of flight, looking for the combination of these lines, increasing their speed or slowing it down, creating the place of consistence, fragment by fragment.

Adopting such a viewpoint means that we need to take on board how state projects, strategies, organizations and territories are never complete or fully assured. Despite their pretensions towards homogeneity and ordered, hierarchical and bureaucratic forms of power, states are fractured entities, in both social and territorial terms. The usefulness of the network as a way of studying and understanding modern society (and nature) has also been emphasized within Actor Network Theory (hereafter ANT). The main tenets of ANT as a

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methodological and epistemological framework are now well known. It stresses the need to think through the numerous connections that exist between society and nature. It is the network, in particular, that draws together humans and, importantly, non-humans into heterogeneous associations (see also Castree 2002; Law 1992; Swyngedouw 1999; Whatmore and Thorne 1997). For key proponents of such an approach, such as Latour, it is the incorporation of non-human actants – in the form of material resources – into these networks that enables humans to spatially ‘stretch’ social relations. For Latour (1996), simians, whose use of nonhuman actants is limited, are caged within localized lifeworlds: their interaction, in this sense, is ‘always bounded and circumscribed’ (Murdoch 1997: 327). It is only humans’ use of non-human actants that enables them to ensure that ‘interactions can be stabilized, summarized and extended through space and time’ (ibid.). Statements such as these have an important bearing on how we should understand the state as a network. At one level, it encourages us to focus on how the distanciated social and political power of the state is enabled through the enrolment of non-human actants into various heterogeneous associations. Non-human actants such as law codes, census returns, official reports, remit letters, memos and correspondence, carbines, crossbows and so forth are all key non-human actants within the various networks that facilitate state government at a distance. Indeed, if we follow the tenets of ANT closely, then it is possible to argue that state personnel of different hues are merely bit-part players in a far more important non-human process of spatial distanciation that underpins the organizational and territorial distinctiveness of the modern state. While I welcome the expanded focus on non-human technologies of distanciation afforded by ANT, I would also want to contend that state personnel should be viewed as key facilitators of state reproduction, in organizational and territorial terms. In this context, official memos and policy documents may well act as critical lubricators of the space-time distanciation of the state, but they still need to be written, compiled, read and implemented by state personnel. The second important implication of ANT for the current study lies in its understanding of space and scale. Space and scale, according to ANT theorists, are constituted through networks of heterogeneous associations. As Murdoch puts it (1997: 332): Network analysis is quite simple: it means following networks all the way along their length; there is no need to step outside the networks for all the qualities of spatial construction and configuration of interest will be found therein. . . . Actor-network theorists thus reject the view that social life is arranged into levels or tiers (some of which determine what goes on in the others); everything is kept at ‘ground level’.

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ANT, therefore, seeks to collapse local and global into one networked category. In a similar vein, space does not exist over and above that which is constituted by the network. Such an understanding of space and scale within ANT enables us to consider the multiplicity of territories and scales of state activity. Although states, especially over the modern period, have sought to ensure that all processes – or, alternatively, networks – gravitate towards national boundaries and the national scale, it is clear that different state projects and strategies are constituted on the basis of different networks of human and non-human actants. Of necessity, these networks will possess differing spatial characteristics, leading, in turn, to many takes on the spaces of the state. Key figures within contemporary human geography have sought to develop these ideas by focusing in more explicit terms on the potential spatial insights afforded by them. I think, in particular, of the work carried out on relational understandings of space by authors such as Massey, Amin, Allen and Thrift. Relational and so-called topological accounts of space start from the premise that the world has always been characterized by numerous and intricate connections between people and places, ones that undermine bounded and territorial conceptions of space. Although this global interconnectedness has always existed to some extent, it has experienced a fundamental increase in its significance over recent years. Such a proposition possesses clear implications for the way in which we may begin to conceive differently of the state. Echoing Deleuze and Guattari’s claims, an acceptance of the increasing prevalence of global connections of all kinds in the contemporary world leads us to think through the new and potentially non-territorial forms of politics that now exist. A focus on the way in which global connections help to constitute place, therefore, immediately ‘combat[s] localist or nationalist claims to place based on eternal essentialist, and in consequence exclusive, characteristics of belonging’ (Massey 2004: 6). Although such statements have been made primarily with regard to identity politics in the contemporary world, they also allude to a non-territoriality that is said to characterize political forms in a more general sense. The work of these various geographers, as well as describing the networked spaces that exist in the contemporary world, also begins to draw our attention to how relational accounts of space can be used to advocate normative and liberating spaces of political practice. The development of a relational view of space, according to these authors, possesses implications about how we think about politics at both the local and global scale. In advocating a new local form of politics, Amin (2004: 38–40) states that a revised ‘politics of propinquity’ would involve a focus on how diversity exists within particular places. At the same time, a ‘relational imagination’ would also help to engender new geographies of social and political

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responsibility beyond bounded spaces – a ‘new politics of connectivity’ (Amin 2004: 40). These global connections do not come about in any blanket manner. The exact configuration of the new forms of political practice and citizenship, for these authors, is grounded in contingent and topological connections between a range of different individuals, spaces and times. These descriptive and more normative contributions are to be welcomed for emphasizing how new understandings of space can lead to a revised comprehension of political practice. In addition, they are useful as a way of highlighting the way in which individuals – either within localities or at broader geographical scales – are connected through intricate networks of association. The debt of this approach to Deleuze and Guattari, and less so to Latour, is plain. But similar criticisms can be levelled towards the relational approach as were made with regard to Deleuze and Guattari’s writings, especially with regard to their conception of state territoriality. State territories are viewed as a static and pre-given backdrop to the more fluid, networked and topological political spaces of the contemporary period within much of the writings on relational space. I do not need to reiterate, in this respect, the reasons why I disagree with such sentiments. Suffice to say more positively that it is possible to adapt the writings of these various authors to show how relational and topological understandings of space can actually inform the continual and peopled reproduction of state territoriality, not only during the contemporary period but also throughout the history of the state as an organization.

Bringing It All Together: Analysing an Emergent State In addressing the identities of state personnel, the relationship between state personnel and the organizational and territorial form of the state apparatus, I have begun to delineate a different way of analysing the state. Rather than viewing the state as a product of a mixture of unpeopled organizations, authorless policies and strategies and static, pre-given territories, I have outlined the potential for adopting a different interpretation of the state. The kind of state I will be exploring in the empirical chapters of this book is one in which the identities, subjectivities and prejudices of state personnel play an important role in facilitating its reproduction and transformation as a territorial organization. State organizations and territories, in turn, aid in the production of the identities of the personnel that staff them. All that remains in this final section of the chapter is to outline a way in which we can think about the relationship that exists between these three different elements – in short, to outline how we should analyse an emergent, peopled, state.

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1.

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State personnel are active agents that, despite the assertions of Weberians and Marxists alike, possess a variety of different identities, subjectivities and prejudices. These identities may be based on notions of gender, place or region, class, personal vanity and so forth. State personnel have always played an active role in the continual emergence of the state. Networks of individuals are instrumental in shaping the organizational form of the state apparatus. These individuals draw on numerous technologies and non-human actants in order to help them to achieve this aim. Although all state personnel play a role in shaping the state apparatus, it is clear that different actors possess different capacities to do so. At certain times, the activities of these various types of individual may help to reproduce state organizations so that the latter enjoy a period of stability and growth. State officials may, however, seek to contest the character of state forms and functions, leading to periods of change and instability. More often than not, it is likely that state officials will seek to negotiate a difficult route between total subservience to, and outright contestation of, state organizations. The state, when considered as a peopled organization, therefore, is heterogeneous, fractured and in a continual state of flux and emergence. In addition, state organizations and territories contribute to the negotiation of the identities of state personnel of all kinds. Some individuals will become part of the habitus of state bureaucracies more than others but the identities of all state personnel are shaped to a certain extent by the organizational and territorial context within which they work. In addition, a consideration of the state as a peopled organization means that there are numerous ‘access points’ through which state personnel and individuals or groups in civil society can seek to influence its projects and strategies. 2. The state apparatus, along with its various organizations, represents the bureaucratic and programmed institutionalization of state power. On the basis of both Weberian and neo-Marxist state theory, states should be viewed as entities that are partially autonomous from, at the same time as being partially embedded within, the broader society.While the state apparatus and its specific organizations are useful analytical categories, it should be emphasized that they do not possess desires, priorities or agency in and of themselves. Both are the product of decisions and priorities of state personnel and are formed through a combination of programmed state forms and more informal rules of practice adhered to, or challenged by, state personnel. Following this, it is important to think about the state in the plural rather than the singular. This heterogeneity of the state organizations operates at a number of levels. The state apparatus can be conceived of as a combination of sometimes collaborating, at other times competing, organizations or sub-apparatuses

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(Jessop 1990; Brenner 2004; Clark and Dear 1984). The policies and strategies adopted by the state, therefore, may well be contradictory.The emphasis on the peopled character of the state apparatus opens up further opportunities to consider its fractured and heterogeneous qualities. As Corbridge et al. (2005: 7) maintain, ‘the ways in which technologies of rule are made flesh will depend on the manner in which they are interpreted and put into play by lower-level government workers, elected representatives and others’. If individuals person state organizations, write and implement their policies and strategies – admittedly within certain constraints – then the organizational unity and isomorphism of the state is bound to be, at heart, illusory if not unimportant in character. State organizations, their policies and strategies, have the potential to shape the identities of the people that person them. They also help to produce state territories. 3. State territories represent the space over which states claim political power (Sack 1986).This is a narrower interpretation than that adopted by some commentators and is based on a focus on the territorial as opposed to the merely spatial practices of the state (e.g., Brenner 2004). State territories are the product of both the activities and proclamations of state personnel, as well as the projects and strategies associated with the state apparatus. State personnel, either individually or in concert with one another, emphasize the importance of certain territories at the expense of others through the promotion of certain strategic priorities. In this sense, state territories can be produced partly through the topological relations between networks of human and nonhuman actants. The state apparatus, too, through its organizational make-up and its projects and strategies affects the contours of the territory of the state. Although there has been an effort, over a certain time period at least, to coordinate the territorial imaginings of state personnel and the representation of territory of different state organizations, this process has always been incomplete. As such, state territories have never been entirely homogeneous, even when the ‘chaotic features’ of capitalism and private interests are held constant (Lefebvre 2003: 86). If we take seriously the fact that the state is a peopled organization, being dependent on the activities and practices of state personnel for its existence, then state territories are always fractured and fissured, the state’s claims to territorial homogeneity notwithstanding. State territories, too, play an important role in placing limitations on the opportunities that are available to the peopled state organizations that create them in the first place. 4. Of course, the crux of this new way of understanding the state is how we conceptualize the relationship that exists between these different elements. While there is much to commend an approach that seeks to

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downplay the separatedness of the organizational and territorial aspects of the state apparatus from state personnel, it is impossible, at an analytical level, to study any of the three categories without in some way separating them out from one another. At a methodological level, therefore, I advocate an approach in which each element – state personnel, the state apparatus and state territories – is viewed in relative isolation, one from the other. Each element within this triple dialectic, nonetheless, is in a constant recursive relationship with the other two and the purpose of empirical research should be to highlight the character of these relationships. Even in more epistemological contexts, I maintain that there is considerable value in maintaining the integrity of each of the constituent elements. State organizations within the state apparatus, despite their dependence upon state personnel for their day-to-day running, still possess a tangible and material quality, in the form of buildings, signs, policy documents, strategies and so forth. In a similar vein, although state territories of all kinds are socially produced through the practices and representations of state personnel, they also feature as physical tracts of land and as distinct elements within a state’s socio-spatial imagination. Furthermore, these more tangible aspects of the state apparatus and territory are non-human actants within the networks of the state and, as such, impact on the practices and identities of state personnel. In addition, we need to realize that the relationship between these three elements is not constant but rather changes over time and space. At certain times, social relations between state actors may well have played a dominant role in the reproduction of the state. At others, state organizations and territories may display relatively ‘unpeopled’ characteristics. Discerning the relative importance of state personnel, state organizations and state territories within this triple dialectic is, predominantly, an empirical question. I realize, in this respect, that this conceptualization of a ‘peopled state’ could be criticized for not nailing its colours to an epistemological mast or, in other words, for blurring the boundary between wholly different understandings of the state – a state-centred Weberian approach, a societycentred Marxist approach and a post-Marxist networked approach to social and political power. I would contend, however, that much recent work has begun to illustrate how it may be possible to begin to combine work from different traditions in innovative new ways. Some strides have been made, for instance, to reconcile neo-Weberian and neo-Marxist interpretations of the state. Neo-Marxists now accede to the relative autonomy of the state, specifically in the context of the SRA (e.g., Jessop 2002; Brenner 2004), while neo-Weberians talk of a state that is partially embedded in the broader economy and society (Evans 1995; Hobson 1998). Similarly, some efforts

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have been made to think through the common ground that may exist between Marxist and post-Marxist understandings of socio-economic, political and ecological processes (e.g., Castree 2002; Jessop 1990: 278–306). I see the current study as a way of furthering this effort to develop a more meaningful dialogue between these different epistemological traditions. All three, in this respect, accede to a greater or lesser extent to: the peopling of the state during different time periods; and the impact of people on the development of state organizations and territories, and vice versa. The empirical task of elucidating the character of these relationships, with regard to the historic development of state forms within Britain, forms the substance of the following chapters.

Chapter Three

Peopling the Medieval State

A Case of Stating the Obvious? For many readers, a chapter discussing the peopling of the medieval state would be, at one and the same time, un-noteworthy and/or anachronistic. To start with, many authors have contended that the main significance of the medieval state was its overarching dependence on the role of individuals. The medieval state in Europe represented, after all, a feudal organization.The medieval state’s territorial extent, as well as its influence on social, economic and cultural processes, was dependent on a series of personal bonds between a territorial lord and his vassals. To use Mayer’s phrase, the medieval state could be considered as ‘an association of persons’ (quoted in Poggi 1978: 25). To speak of a peopled medieval state, therefore, is not particularly noteworthy or surprising.The consensus within history and the social sciences is that the medieval state represented a peopled state par excellence (e.g. Bloch 1961; Strayer 1965; though see Reynolds 1994). Some might argue, in this respect, that the role of people in facilitating and, sometimes, undermining the feudal state hardly bears repeating (Elias 1982: 16–17). At the same time, there is a related opinion that queries whether the state – understood as a territorial organization that possesses a monopoly over the means of violence within defined boundaries – was actually a feature of political life during the Middle Ages. The dependence of the medieval state on the actions of groups of individuals would seem to qualify our ability to speak of it as an instance of a state, properly conceived (from a Weberian perspective, see Weber 1991: 78; Giddens 1985; Poggi 1978; 1990; from a Marxist perspective, see Poulantzas 1978; Offe 1974; Jessop 1990). Such a sentiment, for instance, explains why certain authors have resorted to using scare quotes when describing the political formations of the European Middle Ages as states (e.g. Poggi’s 1978: 25–6). A similar

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impression arises in the work of Giddens (1985: 83–4) on the modern state when he argues that the shift from a traditional state to an absolutist state represented a key discontinuity of modernity, thus obviating any need to study the feudal state. Reynolds (1994: 26), similarly, maintains that numerous medieval historians ‘prefer not to call medieval polities states at all’, justifying their choice through reference to the medieval state’s lack of ‘fixed boundaries, effective central authority, sovereignty (however defined), or modern technologies of communication’. The political instability exhibited by such polities, their co-existence with a range of other political and territorial entities (Ruggie 1993: 149–50), along with their unusually high dependence on social relationships, means that they cannot or should not be considered as fully fledged states. Here, a discussion of a medieval state – peopled or otherwise – merely becomes anachronistic. While there were obvious differences between the states of the premodern and modern periods, I believe, nonetheless, that we need to take more seriously the states of the pre-modern period.We need to do so for two reasons. First, I would argue that it is necessary to demonstrate, rather than merely assert, the distinctiveness of the modern state when compared with its pre-modern counterpart and, moreover, to show how relationships between individuals contributed to, or detracted from, its effectiveness. Second, adopting too focused and narrow a definition of the state, and forging too necessary a link between the state and the modern period, has the potential to downplay the range of different forms that states have exhibited over time. Doing so tends to elevate the state during the modern period to the status of an ideal classic type and neglects the fact that the states of the modern period were often fractured in organizational and territorial contexts.To avoid referring to the political formations of the medieval period as states or, alternatively, to conveniently forget about their existence tends to lead to the adoption of a teleological interpretation of the evolution of human history, where allegedly ‘immature’ organizations are portrayed as substandard versions of their more contemporary counterparts. There is a danger that such assertions will downplay the need to study the distinctiveness of the medieval state – including its peopled character – on its own terms, rather than merely using it as a conceptual ‘outlier’ to contrast with the ideal state form.This is the reason why I have used a ‘looser’ definition of the state within this book in which emphasis is placed on the aspirational aspects of state territorial power. My aims in this chapter, therefore, are to illustrate the role of people in reproducing, and being reproduced by, emerging state forms in medieval Britain without recourse to ideas of ideal state forms, of a mythologized impersonal state, or of a teleological take on the ‘failure’ of a medieval state to live up to the standards set by its modern counterpart. People during the medieval period, at one and the same time, constituted and problematized state forms.

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A chapter that deals with political formations throughout the medieval period can be criticized, nonetheless, for skating over an extremely long period of history in too few words. Clearly, political formations would have varied considerably between the collapse of the Roman Empire in approximately ad 500 and the beginnings of the modern state in approximately ad 1500. If a week is a long time in politics, then a thousand years is certainly a long time with regard to the development of state forms. It is difficult to chart all of these political developments in the depth that they deserve and to do justice to the variety of experiments with political formations that were carried out during this long period of human history. There is room to argue, nonetheless, that the Middle Ages witnessed a sustained attempt to develop more state-like means of governing society. Whereas the constitution of society during the immediate post-Roman period was characterized by the existence of kin-groups and chiefdoms (Charles-Edwards 1993), sustained efforts were made to develop rudimentary forms of state governance from approximately the eighth or ninth century onwards.This does not mean that the development of more sophisticated state organizations was somehow predestined to happen. Neither is it a case of portraying a gradual and continuous increase in the importance of state organizations. As Tilly (1990: 28) has cogently argued, ‘the history of European state formation runs generally upward toward greater accumulation and concentration, but it runs across jagged peaks and profound valleys’. The tentative forays into state formation, as evidenced in Europe during the Middle Ages, perhaps reflects Gledhill’s (1988: 10) argument that we should view resistance to state formation as being the itinerant human tendency, and a transition beyond the absolute rank chiefdom to ‘the state’ based on ‘permanent coercive power’ as a rare event dependent on unusual tendencies.

It is evident, nevertheless, that a fundamental transformation of political space took place throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. It is useful, in this respect, to follow Dodgshon’s (1998: 69) distinction between two key changes that affected European political space during the medieval period. The first was the re-emergence of larger and relatively more stable political formations, so much so that the European ‘political map was altogether simpler by 1500, with far fewer but larger polities’. Secondly – and perhaps more relevant for the purposes of this chapter – there was a shift in the way in which political space was conceived, becoming ‘structured around the territorialized jurisdictions and administrative routines of states and their rulers’ (ibid.). Both these changes are, of course, interrelated.The development of larger polities throughout the Middle Ages justified the creation of more bureaucratic and territorialized forms of state governance,

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while the development of these new means of governance enabled the existence and survival of larger and more stable polities (Jones 1999a). Herein lies the key importance of the Middle Ages in the development of state forms, in Britain and further afield. The chapter is structured as follows. The first section begins by addressing the most fundamental way in way in which the medieval state was peopled, namely its constitution as a feudal system of governance. The discussion here focuses on the plural character of medieval sovereignty and rule and draws out its conceptual implications for the way in which we can think about state organizations and territories during the medieval period. There then follows a discussion that is purposefully wide-ranging in both spatial and temporal contexts. It examines the beginnings of a state-making process that took place in ninth-century Wessex before moving on to explore the peopling of later forms of local government in north-west Scotland and north-west Wales. My aim, in elaborating on these themes, is to emphasize how various kinds of people were actively involved in the production and contestation of the state organizations and territories of the period. Rather than viewing them as impediments to a gradual and tentative consolidation of state power, or as things that lay beyond the orbit of state control, I seek to show how a focus on the state as a peopled organization enables us to think of such individuals and groups as ones that helped to produce a distinctive state form, in both organizational and territorial contexts.

People and the Feudal State A key aspect of the medieval state, it has been argued, was its dependence on feudal means of societal and spatial organization. Bloch (1961: 146–7, 167), for instance, in elaborating on the importance of feudal mechanisms for ordering medieval society, drew attention to the significance of the social concept of homage, along with its spatial corollary, the fief. Homage referred to the act whereby a subservient individual placed him or herself in a position of obligation towards another, more powerful individual. The act of homage could also be augmented with a second ceremony of fealty, in which the subservient individual swore to be faithful to his or her master. In return, it was expected that the more powerful individual would protect his or her vassal. Taken together, the act of homage and fealty, according to conventional interpretations, created the social relationship that lay at the heart of feudalism, namely that between a lord and his vassal. The concept of vassalage, however, was not one that was played out solely in social terms. It increasingly was reflected in the spatial arrangement of fiefs. Dodgshon (1998: 6) has noted that ‘the challenge facing rulers of extended

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polities like the Carolingian Empire was how to turn their assertion of lordship over all men and all land into a system of government’. The donation of a landed estate from the lord to his vassal in the form of a fief was viewed as a solution to this problem. The unequal social relation of vassalage was, thus, translated into a spatial hierarchy of kingdom and individual fiefs. Indeed, Bloch (1961: 167) argued that the fief also helped to reinforce the ties of social dependence between the vassal and the lord since to accept a gift of land placed the former in the latter’s debt. This was no economic debt but rather an ‘obligation to do something’, namely to aid the lord if and when the time arose. Fiefholding could arise either through a direct donation of a segment of a lord’s land to his vassal or in the form of a socalled fief de reprise (ibid.: 171). These latter fiefs were the vassal’s ancestral or allodial lands, temporarily donated to the lord and subsequently returned to him as part of the newly-formed feudal relationship between the two individuals. Feudalism clearly contributed to the development of greater social hierarchies as certain societal leaders sought to extend their control over more people. In addition, vassalage also had the potential to increase the extent of the spatial control exercised by societal leaders. If the existence of such forms of landholding do not, necessarily, reflect the growing importance of state organizations during this period, it does signal a growing concern by societal leaders in the extension of their sphere of influence, both spatially and socially. Paradoxically, at the same time that kings were trying to claim jurisdiction over more people and more land, a further development within feudal Europe led to the fragmentation of feudal polities. Theoretically, the ceremony of homage and the subsequent granting of a fief were acts that needed to be reaffirmed when a vassal or lord died. This requirement helped to underline the fact that the fief was granted only temporarily to the vassal rather than being viewed as her or his own personal possession (Bloch 1961: 175). This could, and did, mean that lords could dispossess vassals of their lands and/or reallocate them to others. Gradually, however, especially from the tenth century onwards, vassals attempted to assert the right of their issue to inherit what they increasingly considered as their patrimony. This tendency shook the feudal relationship to its foundation. It challenged and undermined social hierarchies and could lead to a situation in which the king was considered merely as a first amongst equals within his kingdom (Ruggie 1993: 149–59; though see Reynolds 1986). In a spatial sense, it could lead to a situation in which a king became a minority landholder within his own kingdom. There is no clearer example of how an increasingly assertive and autonomous group of vassals could challenge the organizational and territorial integrity of medieval polities than the dramatic collapse of the Frankish kingdom in the early Middle Ages, as the extended kingdom of Charlemagne disintegrated into a mosaic of

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near-autonomous counties and territories (Duby 1977: 147; see also Elias 1982: 16–17). Countering this centrifugal tendency was not easy. It was not until the bureaucratic developments of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that kings were able, more systematically, to reassert their jurisdiction over their kingdoms. The feudal character of medieval society continued, however, until the beginnings of the formation of the modern state during approximately the sixteenth century. This later feudal system, nonetheless, was one that was organized far more on the basis of the king’s – and his state’s – needs (for evaluations, see Hilton 1978; 1990; Hindess and Hirst 1975; Reynolds 1994; Saunders 2000). The key consideration, in this regard, is the impact of such social ties of interdependence on the character of medieval state governance. I want to argue that there are two ways of thinking about this relationship, in both conceptual and empirical terms. A consideration of these two ways of thinking about the link between people and the medieval state lies at the crux of how we conceive of the state as a territorial organization. At one level, a purely physical interpretation of the significance of state territoriality would assume that such feudal ties impeded the development of the medieval state.The social ties of feudalism are, thus, cast as either instances of the immaturity of state organizations, as things that are totally anathema to them (e.g. Coleman 2000: 15), or a combination of both of these elements. German medieval historiography presents a good example of this emphasis. German historians have differentiated between early medieval kingdoms, based on interpersonal bonds (referred to as Personenverbandsstaat), and early forms of the territorial state (institutioneller Flächenstaat) (Reynolds 1994: 26). The significance of this, I would argue, is that it tends to present a view of feudalism as something that represents an alternative, almost immature version of a territorial state, classically conceived (Jones 1999a). The social ties of feudalism, therefore, qualify what we understand as the ‘state’. Conventional interpretations of the character of the Carolingian Empire, in addition, have tended to emphasize similar themes, in which the feudal relationship is seen to ‘get in the way’ of the business of efficient state rule (Poggi 1978: 19). More broadly, and as noted in Chapter 1, anthropologists such as Sahlins (1968: 5) have maintained that part of the significance of the state-making process is that it signalled a shift from a political situation in which territory was identified and ordered through society to one in which society was ordered through territory. Clearly, such an understanding of the process of state formation, although useful, posits a conception of an unpeopled state or, at least, a state in which social relationships are relegated to secondary importance. Adopting such a viewpoint would mean thinking of feudal relationships as ones that in some ways pollute an ideal territorial state (see also Dodgshon 1987: 130–65).

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Even those who have argued that feudal relationships offered the only feasible means of governance during the Middle Ages have also indicated the problems associated with it and the challenges that it posed to the development of effective means of state control. Elias (1982: 17; Binchy 1970), for instance, has elaborated on the logic of governance that underpinned the feudal contract as ‘kings, strengthened by conquests, send their trusted friends, relations and servants into the country as their envoys’. A feudal way of organizing society and space was the only option available for medieval rulers, bereft of more bureaucratic and territorial forms of governmental control. And yet, as we have seen, Elias views the feudal relationship as an inherently problematic one, as dependent vassals gradually became independent or semi-independent kings themselves. Dodgshon (1987: 171), too, discusses the ‘paradox’ of feudalism, one which betrays his belief in the inherent instability of the feudal state. I want to argue that such arguments are misguided since they underplay the social production of state territoriality (e.g. Strayer 1970: 34; 1965). If we think from the very outset that the state is peopled and that state territoriality is socially produced, then the existence of feudal ties within medieval society should not be conceived as social elements that undermined the effectiveness of territorial state organizations. In an age of limited forms of administrative bureaucracy, of limited territorial reach of state organizations – to put it simply, in an age of limited state infrastructural power (Mann 1984) – medieval kings were dependent on feudal relationships as a way of securing their control over land and people. These social networks should be viewed as potentially effective and complementary ways through which a king exerted his control over his territory and people. Conventional interpretations of the immaturity of feudal state forms are sustained only if we see medieval public government as something that was distinct from the personal ties that existed between a king and his men. Instead of separating them out and seeing purely personal rule as being distinct from, and somehow inferior to, a purely territorial form of rule, we need to think of the medieval state as a peopled organization that was based on a variety of mechanisms of rule (Reynolds 1994). Some mechanisms for the negotiation of political power may well have been based on what we think of as classic feudal ideals, while others may have incorporated early instances of a clerical bureaucracy. Rather than viewing these two elements as ones that fit into totally different anthropological or sociological categories, however, we should think of them as two complementary ways of exercising power within medieval society. In a related context, the existence of feudal ties within medieval states does not detract from the notions of territoriality promoted within them. I argued in Chapter 2 that we need to think of state territoriality as something that is produced in and through the practices and discourses of various state personnel or, in other words,

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to adopt a relational take on state territoriality. If this is the case, then the multifarious feudal relationships that characterized medieval polities were key attributes of state territorialities during the Middle Ages, and not elements that helped to undermine state efforts to promote territorial forms of rule. Building on this argument, I want to offer an alternative take on the relationship between feudalism and the medieval state. Instead of trying to show how medieval political forms deviated from a classical and, implicitly, modern ideal form of state, we need to examine the medieval state on its own terms. Rather than conceiving of feudal relationships as ones that detract from the efforts of state rulers to promote bureaucratic and territorial forms of rule, thinking of the state as a peopled organization encourages us to examine how feudal relationships helped to constitute a particular form of state during the medieval period. This was a state in which social relationships of subservience and domination helped to structure political forms, in concert with elementary bureaucratic machines. Following this, it was a state in which notions of territoriality were promoted through a combination of what we would consider territorially-organized administrative units and the more explicitly socially-produced territorialities that were the product of feudal relationships. By extension, this necessitates an understanding of the medieval state as something that is plural in organizational and territorial character.

State Leaders and the Emergence of Medieval State Forms in the British Isles In this section, I want to discuss the important role played by the state ruler and his higher echelon of officials in reproducing and transforming the state during this period.1 Apart from the notable exceptions of the Holy Roman Empire and certain communes on the Italian peninsula, kingdoms, governed by monarchs, were the most prevalent form of political organization in medieval Europe. In this respect, political theory and reality mirrored each other to a large extent. Although Aquinas, for instance, was able to countenance polities, where administration was carried out by a large number of the population, or an aristocracy, where a certain privileged group of individuals governed the community of the state, as valid forms of state government, he viewed a kingdom, ruled by a single king, as the most appropriate form of state government (D’Entrèves 1959: 5–7). Indeed, it has been argued that during the medieval period ‘kingdoms were seen as the typical – indeed the highest natural – units of government and every kingdom was seen to need a king’ (Reynolds 1994: 35). In this regard, Coleman (2000: 11) has maintained that the importance of kings and

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kingdoms for medieval notions of societal governance derived from the immediate post-Roman period. It was the Barbarian kingdoms that became ever more prevalent at the end of the Roman period that became the ideal form of governance throughout the whole of the Middle Ages. As argued in Chapter 2, a key consideration for political theorists of the period was the character of the king as the ruler of the kingdom. Tyrants, as the antithesis of good rulers, could corrupt the whole political life of the kingdom whereas good kings, possessing the skills and attributes of a benevolent leadership, could ensure the temporal and spiritual sustenance of the inhabitants of the kingdom. It is in this context, for instance, that Coleman (2000: 38–9) can refer to the perceived need for kings to be conversant with the ‘royal art of governing’. Of course, the qualities needed to become and remain king were not solely those that were based on character and leadership. Of equal if not more importance in the realpolitik of medieval society was a prospective king’s control over time and space. By control over time, I mean the ability of a king to command the respect of his potential subjects through demonstrating the quality of his lineage. The use of history as a way of legitimizing nobility and kingship was clearly important during this period. As Coleman (2000: 17) puts it, ‘what constituted nobility [and kingship] is hotly disputed but it appears to have had something to do with family origins, blood lines, distinguished ancestors going back to eponymous heroes of barbarian legend’. Similarly, versions of history were used to secure a broad ‘cultural’ context for particular organizational and political formations. I have argued elsewhere (e.g. Jones 1999b; 2004a; Harvey and Jones 1999) that versions of history were used to justify the existence of particular political formations and institutional structures during the Middle Ages (see also Chadwick 1958: 29; SimmsWilliams 1985). Significantly in the context of the arguments presented in this book, there is ample evidence that an historical justification of the importance of particular kings, of given kingdoms and of specific institutional formations were often viewed in interchangeable terms. The act of legitimizing the rule of a particular king was equated with his rulership of the kingdom through specific organizational means. King equalled kingdom equalled the organizational infrastructure of the kingdom. Of equal importance in the process of sanctioning a king’s rule over a particular kingdom was his physical control over space. We can think of the significance of this control of space in a number of different contexts. The highest priority was placed on the king’s allodial lands or, in other words, those lands that were part of his patrimony. It was this land that acted as the most dependable source of manpower, money and food for medieval kings. Two other forms of control of space existed for medieval kings and it is in these latter contexts that we witness the spatial resources of the king being equated increasingly with the territory of the medieval state. The

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feudal bonds that were prevalent throughout the Middle Ages represented another mechanism for controlling space as territory but kings also, increasingly, sought to control space through developing new territorial units of administration, which, at face value, were redolent of a more bureaucratic and systematic form of social and political power. I have overstated the differences between these different forms of spatial coordination for the purpose of outlining their significance. In the realpolitik and even the political theory of the Middle Ages, all three forms of spatial control would have existed in a close relationship, one with the other. For instance, a king who possessed a large personal patrimony could also develop effective feudal bonds with his vassals. His large resource base could also have facilitated a sustained experimentation with more territorial and systematic forms of state administration. What is certain is that medieval kings’ control over space could never be taken for granted and had to be reinforced at every possible occasion. Although kings throughout the British Isles during the Middle Ages sought to establish long-lasting claims to extensive territories, for much of the earlier parts of the period these claims were transient and unstable unless they were supported by a dominant physical force (for different examples, see Winterbottom 1978: 32; Higham 1993; Dumville 1979; Ó Corráin 1971–2; Byrne 1971; Binchy 1970). Such territorial ambitions were necessary if medieval kings were to begin the slow and tortuous process towards establishing new forms of state governance within their lands and over their people. Control over time and space, and a related effort to instigate dramatic changes to the way in which society was governed, were closely interrelated political projects for medieval kings. Developing a firm grasp over a kingdom’s physical resources as well as its accounts of its past enabled kings to assume relatively strong control over early means of societal governance, thus enabling kings to experiment with more formal and territorial ways of organizing their people and land. Conversely, more firm, efficient and state-like forms of governance enabled kings to extend and strengthen their control over physical resources, such as land, and the versions of the past disseminated through the social groups under their sway (Jones 1999b). A key instance of the role of kings in shaping understandings of time and space – and at a broader level, of being intimately associated with the development of state organizations and territories – lies in the reign of Alfred the Great as king of Wessex. The appellation of Great is well deserved when considering Alfred’s achievements. As many have noted, Alfred’s main accomplishment lay in his successful leadership of English resistance to the prolonged Danish invasion of the ninth century. Loyn (1984: 63), for instance, maintained that Alfred’s significance lay in the fact that he ‘emerged from the period of Danish invasion as the only representative of an English dynasty still to occupy a throne’. Moreover, he had

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instilled a sense of political hope for the Christian inhabitants of England at a time when a complete and successful invasion by the heathen Danes seemed likely. Although some have sought to qualify the extent of Alfred’s political success (e.g. Smyth 1995; see also Campbell 2003), there can be little doubt that Alfred managed to stem a substantial military threat during the ninth century, thus maintaining a separate Christian kingdom of Wessex that would act as a launch pad for the subsequent creation of a kingdom of England during the tenth and eleventh centuries. There has been much argument concerning the exact contribution of Alfred to the development of more effective and ‘state-like’ organizations of governance. At one end lie the statements of commentators such as Loyn (1984) and Wormald (1999). The former maintains that the period of Alfred’s rule signalled a key turning point in the development of what he terms a ‘territorial state’. Wormald (1999), in the same way, views the reign of Alfred as the beginning of the development of an English law that would underpin the evolution of an English state. For authors such as these, it is clear that Alfred’s reign witnessed numerous far-reaching organizational developments: an increased definition of the role of territorial units of local government, such as the shire; a growing emphasis on the minting of money that would underpin Alfred’s capacity for government; an increased autonomy of the state with regard to the church; the development of writing as a way of recording information within the inchoate state bureaucracy; a more efficient form of ‘military governance’ in order to withstand the Danish threat, specifically through the creation of new garrison towns; and a broader thrust towards a process of urbanization, which would increase the supply of money within the kingdom of Wessex. Taken together – and at face value – such developments are indicative of a revolution, or at least the beginnings of a revolution, in the means of state government. Brooks (2003), on the other hand, has outlined the work of a number of authors, writing from different perspectives, who have advocated a more cautionary line of argument. In its broadest terms, the work of these historians paints a picture in which Alfred, rather than being an instigator of new organizational forms, was a king who made full or better use of organizational mechanisms inherited from the West Saxon past. Using documentary and archaeological evidence, a number of scholars have noted ‘governmental continuities from the “middle Saxon” period and in some respects from a far more distant past, perhaps from the Celtic Iron Age’ (ibid.: 173). Alfred’s main success, according to authors such as these, lay in making more efficient use of his people, territory and inherited institutions (Campbell 2003; Smyth 1995). In this respect, the military pressures that he faced and successfully withstood during his reign may well have necessitated a better use of resources on Alfred’s behalf but they did not provide ‘an appropriate seedbed for fundamental governmental reform’

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Figure 3.1

Alfredian Wessex

(ibid.). Of course, such sentiments do not undermine Alfred’s achievements. They merely signal a need to reassess their extent and to temper academics’ claims concerning the novelty of the governmental practices that he promoted. One aspect of Alfred’s method of government was his emphasis on systematising a framework of shires as territorial units of administration throughout the kingdom of Wessex (see Figure 3.1). The shire system was to have a subsequent large impact on local forms of government within England. It has been asserted, for instance, that the ‘shire was treated as

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the basic unit of administration for many purposes, above all in finance’ throughout much of England by the late eleventh century (Loyn 1984: 137). Another feature of Alfred’s governmental innovations was his advocacy of the use of documents and the written word. Keynes (2003: 175; see also Smyth 1995: 3), for instance, maintains that ‘the variety of written sources for Alfred the Great is at once the product, the expression, and the symbol of what was so distinctive about Alfred’s kingship and royal government’. Indeed, it is the use of written documents as a means of communicating information and governing society that is most significant during Alfred’s reign. Alfred, according to his biographer Asser, worked hard to convince his local officers of state – ealdormen, reeves and thegns – of the need to engage in a new written culture of government (quoted in Keynes 2003: 175). So-called ‘reading aids’ or æstel, as part of a broader ‘learning and literacy campaign’ (Campbell 2003: 13), were developed in order to make it easier for these individuals to benefit from, and contribute to, the flourishing use of written documents within government circles. Alfred, in this sense, promoted a series of state-sanctioned practices and mentalities – an early state habitus – amongst his various officers of state. The growing use of written documents of all kinds by Alfred’s government is also a sure sign of the growing efficiency of his state. Many anthropologists and sociologists have argued about the need to view the development of written records and documents as an indication of a growing sophistication of states. Such statements hold true for the development of state organizations in the earliest civilizations and in the state bureaucracies of the modern period (Giddens 1985; Goody 1986; Larsen 1988). In adopting this governmental technology – or, in other words, by bringing nonhuman actants into a networked territoriality of the state – Alfred sought to gain more effective control over the time and space of the kingdom of Wessex. The use of the written word enabled Alfred to ensure a degree of temporal permanence for his governmental authority, as well as allowing him to extend the scale of his territorial control. More sources of evidence exist for Alfred’s reign than for any other early medieval king within England. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for instance, expounds in detail on the years of Alfred’s reign, drawing attention to the political and military toings and froings of the period, as well as alluding to some of the main organizational developments instigated by the king (Whitelock 1961: 46–58). The most direct – though not unproblematic – source for Alfred’s reign, however, is the biography written by the Welsh monk, Asser, sometime during the late ninth century (though see Galbraith 1964; Smyth 1995). Asser was originally an ordained priest, or even a bishop of St David’s, the see located in the far south-west of Wales. He was summoned from St David’s to meet Alfred at the royal estate at Dean in Sussex, probably in 885 (Keynes and Lapidge 1983: 52). Following this

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first encounter, Asser was given lands and status within Alfred’s West Saxon kingdom, leading him to divide his time equally between the latter and his spiritual duties in St David’s. There are numerous possible reasons why Asser authored the biography: an obvious sense of respect for the qualities evidenced in Alfred’s character; his familiarity with Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne; and according to Keynes and Lapidge (1983: 56), Asser’s belief in the need to convince his proposed Welsh audience of the benefits of submitting to Alfred’s overkingship. The Life of Alfred gives a clear indication of the role of a king as the apex of a peopled medieval state. It focuses on: the contributions made by Alfred the Great to the political survival and development of the kingdom of Wessex during the ninth century; the contribution made by Alfred to the transformation and reproduction of state organizations within the territories that he ruled; and the ideologies that lay behind the political and organizational developments of the period. Keynes and Lapidge (1983) have noted that the Life is structured into distinct sections. The first half provides an account of Alfred’s achievements up until 887. This is followed by a short account of Asser’s contribution to Alfred’s successes. The biography concludes with a sustained discussion of the qualities exhibited by Alfred in his reign, and the way in which these influenced the broader practices of government, which he sanctioned. It is this third section that provides the most telling account of the link between the personality and practices of Alfred and the kingdom that he ruled. It is significant, in this respect, that Asser should have read Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne before compiling the biography. Charlemagne, along with his period of rule in the Frankish kingdom, was held up by medieval political theorists as the apogee of Christian rulership, largely because of his ability to combine temporal and spiritual aspects of government in an effective way. Perhaps because of this, there is a strong portrayal in the Life of Alfred of a king for which secular and spiritual matters – at the scale of the kingdom but also at a personal level – assume equal importance. For Campbell, the biography contains a clear illustration of Alfred’s ‘attempt to discipline a whole society in the paths of righteousness’ (Campbell 2003: 11, 20). As part of this spiritual emphasis, the church was drawn into the day-to-day business of government, with bishops, for instance, acting as ealdormen – or the king’s key administrators – within some shires. In the same vein, the growing influence of Alfred through his various state organizations enabled him to ensure that the church was protected from the worst predations of early medieval society: laws were passed, for instance, that enabled the exaction of fines for the neglect of feast days and for the protection of nuns (Loyn 1984: 72). In addition to emphasizing the spiritual qualities of Alfred’s reign, Asser also drew attention to the king’s sustained efforts to learn and practise the

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royal art of government. Echoing Aquinas’ description of the character of good kingship, discussed in Chapter 2, Asser maintains that Alfred ‘struggled like an excellent pilot to guide his ship . . . even though all his sailors were virtually exhausted’ (Life of Alfred 1983: 101). There are other similarities between Asser’s portrayal of Alfred’s rule and more general political treatises on the art of government. Alfred is portrayed, for instance, as an individual who was well versed in rhetoric and capable of deploying it to good effect in order to secure the support of his officers of state and other inhabitants of his kingdom: For by gently instructing, cajoling, urging, commanding and (in the end, when his patience was exhausted) by sharply chastising those who were disobedient and by despising popular stupidity and stubbornness in every way, he carefully and cleverly exploited and converted his bishops and ealdormen and nobles, and his thegns most dear to him, and reeves as well . . . to his own will and to the general advantage of the whole realm (Life of Alfred 1983: 101–2).

This was a king who was aware of his role as the leader of both a territorially ordered kingdom and a hierarchy of state officials. In effect, Alfred’s period of rule illustrates the compatibility of territorial and more social means of political rule within the early medieval state. Alfred is also, moreover, portrayed as a king who had to use his leadership skills in the face of, at times, the intransigence and ineptitude demonstrated by his state personnel. Asser, too, elaborates on Alfred’s generosity, his active nature despite being afflicted by an unknown disease, and his support of learning, reading and education. He also commissioned the erection of new buildings, lavishly decorated, and the construction of new towns and fortifications, in order to withstand the Danish threat (ibid.). But in addition to the specific leadership skills that one would usually associate with the art of government, Alfred is also noted for his prowess in other, varied activities. The king, for instance, practised every aspect of hunting. Presumably, in demonstrating Alfred’s mastery of nature, Asser also sought to show his dominance and control over the people living within his realm. Alfred’s personality and practices, therefore, informed the general political climate in eighth-century Wessex.We need to consider, however, the way in which Asser tried to demonstrate how Alfred’s prowess as a leader helped shape the geographies of state rule within Wessex (see also Jones 2004a). There can be no doubt, in this regard, that Alfred’s period of reign was characterized by an emphasis on developing more efficient mechanisms of governance, either through creating new mechanisms of rule or through reinvigorating older ones. Campbell (2003: 13), for instance, has argued that ‘ninth-century Wessex, like eighth-century Mercia, had very considerable

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administrative capacity integrated into social organization’ (see Figure 3.1). One way in which we can think about these administrative reforms is in the context of the military developments instigated by Alfred. During Alfred’s reign, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes reference to the armed forces that were sustained by each shire and which were led by their respective ealdormen (e.g. Whitelock 1961: 49; see also Campbell 2003: 14). The references made by Asser to Alfred’s efforts to instigate a construction programme for fortifications also illustrates the king’s concern for ensuring the military security of his kingdom, something that was borne out of his own, almost personal, sense of threat (Life of Alfred 1983: 101). Alfred’s personal influence on the government of his kingdom can be witnessed most clearly, however, in the context of the legal and financial advances that characterized the period. In legal terms, Asser makes much of Alfred’s ability to use his intellectual ability and sense of rationality to alter dubious decisions made by certain judges. Alfred was, therefore, ‘an extremely astute investigator in judicial matters as in everything else’ (ibid.: 109). He sought, furthermore, to ensure that his team of judges were well acquainted with the intricacies of Wessex law, especially those individuals who had been guilty of poor judgement in the past. Alfred’s admonishment of poor judges, quoted by Asser (ibid.: 110), is instructive: I am astonished at this arrogance of yours, since through God’s authority and my own you have enjoyed the office and status of wise men, yet you have neglected the study and application of wisdom. For that reason, I command you either to relinquish immediately the offices of worldly power that you possess, or else to apply yourselves much more attentively to the pursuit of wisdom.

Alfred is portrayed, therefore, as a king who acted as the head of a territorialized legal system that operated within the kingdom of Wessex. He was also the head of a hierarchy of officials and was, seemingly, almost single-handedly responsible for monitoring their activities (though see Brooks 2003). In financial terms, too, Alfred is portrayed by Asser as a great innovator. We can think of this in two main contexts. Firstly, it has been argued that Alfred managed to combine an economic policy with his determined military efforts to withstand the Danish threat. Campbell (2003: 17) maintains, for instance, that the founding of towns – some with mints – is indicative of a king for whom financial matters were of the utmost importance. Indeed, it has been argued recently that Alfred commissioned two recoinages during the first ten years of his reign (Blackburn 2003: 205). In c.875, for instance, the recoinage involved: the recalibration of the weights of coins; the redesign of the motifs that appeared on the coins; and an

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expansion of the mint network in order to cater for the increased demands for the new coins (ibid.: 206). Here, fundamental changes to the financial operation of the kingdom of Wessex are seen to be driven by Alfred as king. But Alfred was also concerned with the supply and distribution of resources – in broader terms – to and from his coffers. In particular, we may focus on Asser’s elaborate account of Alfred’s attempts to regulate the tax revenue collected by his government. His plans included the initial separation of secular and ecclesiastical expenditure. These moieties were then further separated: secular expenditure was divided into three, with thirds being spent on his ‘fighting men’ and ‘noble thegns’ (Life of Alfred 1983: 106), his ‘countless’ craftsmen, and on the ‘foreigners of all races who came to him from places near and far and asked money from him’ (ibid.: 207). Ecclesiastical expenditure was divided into quarters.The poor received one portion while the other three quarters were spent on the two monasteries that Alfred had instituted, the school that he had assembled, and the remaining monasteries dotted around the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and, indeed, further afield (ibid.). Obviously, Asser can be criticized for painting an overly schematized account of the state expenditure coordinated by Alfred but, nonetheless, these attempts to classify different segments of state expenditure are illustrative of a king with an eye for detail and one who was keen on instigating a more systematic form of state financial governance within his territory. The biography of Alfred the Great illustrates the key connections that existed between kings and the emergent territorial states that they governed. Admittedly, we need to be aware of the degree to which the rhetoric of such biographies matched the actual abilities of these kings to govern their people and land (see also Jones 2004a). While kings asserted their control over vast territories and multitudes of people, we should be aware of the logistical difficulties that limited the ability of kings to make good their claims to land. What helped in this respect, of course, was the development of new, more bureaucratic and more territorial means of governance. These administrative units enabled kings’ claims to domination to be translated into relatively effective rule. In all this, we witness the productive confluence of different elements in the political geographies of the Middle Ages as state leaders and emerging organizational and territorial state forms became fused together. Examining the role of state leaders is, of course, one obvious way in which we can people the medieval state but I want to focus in the following section on the activities of more lowly personnel in enabling the development of medieval forms of ‘local government’. As well as showing how a range of people were crucial to the effective extension of state power into the various localities, a focus on this theme clearly illustrates the difficulties in delineating the boundary between the state and civil society. In doing

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so, we are forced to consider the process of medieval state formation as one that is not merely dependent on the practices of state actors, as understood in conventional terms, but also, through kin-groups, on the contribution of the civil society at large.

Local Government and the Validation and Contestation of State Forms Efforts were made during the Middle Ages in all parts of the British Isles to develop more effective and rational means of local government. Local units of governmental administration proliferate throughout the whole of the medieval period. We have already discussed the growing importance of shires as territorial units of administration in the kingdom of Wessex. The hundred was developed as a further subdivision of the state territory in England during the early medieval period, though the exact timing of, and reason behind, this development is obscure (Sawyer 1978: 197–200; Loyn 1984: 141). Similar developments also took place within the other kingdoms of the British Isles. Much of the kingdom of Scotland, for instance, was divided into shires, latterly sheriffdoms, from a relatively early period, though it would be hard to argue with any certainty, as Barrow (2003: 44) has asserted, that the whole of the kingdom was subdivided in such a way, especially before the twelfth century. In the same way, much of Wales was subdivided into royal administrative units of cantrefi and commotes. Although there has been some debate concerning the bases and lineages of these units, it is clear that they formed a crucial part of royal administration at the local level by the twelfth century (see Edwards 1956; Jones 1999c). Clearly, therefore, in all these changes we witness a growing sense of the need to formulate territorial means of state administration at the local level. Indeed, many historians have drawn attention to the common frame of reference that underpinned these administrative developments in the various territories (see Barrow 2003: 8; Jolliffe 1933 [1962]). These local units of administration represented solutions to common problems facing state rulers during the early medieval period, namely the need to: promote a state-sponsored mechanism of preserving law and order in the various localities; ensure that local landholders and freemen were drawn into the state’s fighting force; develop efficient means of exacting tribute and rents from the state’s population and territory (e.g. Loyn 1984: 141). At the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, there is an assumption that the character of medieval society meant these units of administration were only partially successful in achieving their goals. We catch a glimpse of this attitude in Loyn’s (1984: 4) assertion that much of the day-to-day mechanisms of early medieval governance lay beyond the immediate

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control of the state. We perceive the existence of this alternative circuit of governance most clearly in the continuing importance of kin-relations and kin-groups within medieval society. Loyn (1984: 45–52), for instance, alludes to the way in which ties of kinship could cut across the efforts of state rulers to create a more systematic, state-based and territorial form of governance. This is illustrated most clearly with regard to the blood feud. Although the English state machinery sought to create a detailed and differentiated system of compensation payments for homicide – the wergeld – this could always be compromised by the actions of the vengeful kin of the deceased. Charles-Edwards (1993), too, in an exemplary study of early Irish and Welsh society, has illustrated the importance of ties of kinship during much of the medieval period within these two societies. The irony, in this respect, is that the kin-groups that existed in these two countries can be viewed as the antithesis of a state-driven legal system. One way in which we can illustrate this point is through reference to the geography of these kin-groups. Charles-Edwards’ (e.g. 1993: 234) work on the Survey of the Honour of Denbigh of 1334, for instance, shows how the landholdings of certain kin-groups, especially the more prominent ones, could extend into numerous cantrefi and/or commotes. Ties of kinship could, therefore, literally cut across the various forms of territorial administration being put into place by the early state bureaucracies in Wales during this period. But as well as the practical challenges served up by kin-groups to the inchoate state administration, we should consider also the existence of a more fundamental contradiction. Certain authors, as noted above, have emphasized the fact that the state-making process represented a fundamental revolution in the organization of society, as society began to be governed through the use of territory, as opposed to a situation in which territory was governed through social or kin-groups (e.g. Sahlins 1968). The spatial distinctiveness of this shift, not surprisingly, has been stressed by geographers, most notably Dodgshon (1987; 1998; see also Jones 1999a). The continued existence and importance of kin-groups within medieval society has been viewed, therefore, as a sign of the ‘immaturity’ of the medieval state (e.g. Giddens 1985; Poggi 1990; Jones 1999a). Kin-groups are viewed as elements that helped to retard the development of efficient state organizations during the medieval period. I want to argue in this section that we need to revisit our commonly held assumptions regarding the role of kin-groups within the medieval state, especially when considering its local forms of governmental intervention. Rather than viewing kin-groups as a social element that hindered the development of a purely territorial state form, we need to think of them as contributors to a distinctive medieval form of state. Instead of thinking of them as an unwelcome intrusion into an ever-maturing state organization, we should begin to conceive of them as social elements that facilitated the

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development of medieval forms of governance. This section, therefore, seeks to rehabilitate the role of kin-groups within the medieval state. It does so by focusing on local state administration in Scotland and Wales and attempts to show how kin-groups in both locations, as networks of people, were active contributors to a distinctively medieval form of state in both organizational and territorial contexts. Prior to the twelfth century, the geography of state territorial organizations in Scotland was a rather haphazard affair. Scotland was divided into different ‘regions’ – Scotia proper north of the Forth and Lothian, Galloway and Cumbria – and numerous smaller territorial units, such as thanages and shires. These latter units, purportedly of ancient origin (Barrow 2003: 48), were estates, which acted as a source of political, legal and economic control for Scottish kings and lords, and were governed on their behalf by their representatives, the thane. There is, however, a distinct geography to these administrative units (Barrow 1960: 40). In the south and the north-east, there is strong evidence for the existence of shires. Shires were less common in the north-west but this may have been due to the smaller populations living in this region during the period (Barrow 2003: 44; see also Barrow 1960: 48). It is clear that Scotland during the twelfth, thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries underwent a sustained transformation of its mechanisms of state rule at the local level. The development of the new and more systematic state institutions of sheriffdoms and sheriffs within Scotland (Webster 1997: 24) had made it possible for a king of Scotland to govern a large territory for the first time. Such sheriffdoms, and the royal castles that they contained, served as the main bastions of royal power in the regions of Scotland (Barrow 1988: 295). Barrow (1988: 8) has argued that the sheriffdoms and the post of sheriff were English imports, although they had been ‘scotticized north of the border’. By the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, there were some twentysix sheriffdoms throughout the whole of Scotland. The key figure of the sheriff acted as the main royal representative in the localities. His roles were numerous, including ‘presiding over the court most in use by free men, collecting and accounting for royal revenue, and often having responsibility for the chief royal castle (or castles) in his own sheriffdom’ (ibid.). At an etymological level, therefore, the state’s organizational and territorial framework of control and the peopling of local government were equated, one with the other. Sherrifdoms represented a growing systematization and sophistication of the local state machinery from approximately the twelfth century onwards. In many ways, the development of the system of sheriffdoms in medieval Scotland, therefore, can be perceived as an instance of the growing ‘infrastructural coordination’ of the Scottish state during this period (Mann 1984). An important point to note, however, is the strong element of

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continuity that could characterize the shift from a system of shires to that of sheriffdoms. Barrow (2003: 31), for instance, has noted how in many cases – in Berwick and Stirling, for example – pre-existing shires could act as the nucleus for subsequent sheriffdoms. In this sense, although the creation of a system of sheriffdoms in Scotland should be viewed as a key development in the growing systematization of state power, it did not, as with most things, take place on a blank canvas. The legacy of shires played an important role in determining the emerging administrative geographies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Similar changes were afoot in Wales during the same period. Efforts were made throughout the Middle Ages to introduce a more systematic, hierarchical and efficient form of local government. Key developments of the period are illustrated in the legal texts produced in various parts of Wales. These outline an attempt to rationalize forms of local administration. Llyfr Iorwerth (Wiliam 1960: 60), the law text for north Wales, is especially explicit in its description of a systematic subdivision of the kingdom of Gwynedd’s territory: Pedeyr eru o honno em pob tedyn a dele bot; petwar tedyn em pob rantyr; pedeyr rantyr em pob gauael; pedeyr gauael em pon tref; pedeyr tref em pob maenaul; deudec maenaul a due tref en e kymhut. There should be four acres for each household; four households in each rhandir; four rhandirs in each gafael; four gafaels in each township; four townships in each maenol; twelve maenols and two townships in each commote.

There is a clear sense here of the ideal subdivision of the kingdom of Gwynedd into various administrative units, the most significant being the cantref (the Welsh equivalent of the shire, which was formed out of two commotes), the commote and the township. Obviously, it is likely that this administrative structure would have been only an ideal but, nonetheless, it demonstrates the efforts being made during the thirteenth century, especially in Gwynedd, to create a more systematic structure of local state government (see Jones 1999c). Part of the difficulty in Wales, however, is to separate out developments that were being coordinated at a Welsh scale and those that merely took place within the geographical boundaries of Wales. Apart from a few specific instances when certain kings or princes managed to assert a degree of overlordship over the majority of Welsh lands – Hywel ap Cadell (Hywell Dda), Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, Gruffudd ap Cynan, Llywelyn ab Iorwerth and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd spring to mind – it is clear that the political geographies of Wales were based, in the main, on the existence of lordships and/or kingdoms within Wales and not a Welsh kingdom as such (Kirby 1976; see also the maps in Rees 1951). In turn, this meant that any effort

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to rationalize state administration at the local level would have been centred on these ‘regional’ kingdoms: Gwynedd in north-west Wales, Deheubarth in south Wales, and Powys along the English border. In many ways, therefore, the situation in Wales mirrored that in Scotland where there was a distinct geography to the establishment of forms of local government. As a rule, and for reasons that need not detain us now, Gwynedd took the lead in this process of administrative rationalization. There is a strong case to be made, however, that these attempts to develop more systematic forms of local administration would have, in turn, extended outwards into the other Welsh kingdoms, partly as a result of temporary periods of overlordship exercised by the kings and princes of Gwynedd, and partly through a process of institutional ‘mimicry’ (Jones 2000a). What, therefore, of the role of people within this new territorial state structure that was being adopted in Scotland and Wales? At a fundamental level, it is clear that issues of kin and lineage entered into decisions regarding the people that should be considered for the post of sheriff in Scotland. So, for instance, there was a tendency during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for the office of sheriff to be allocated on a hereditary basis (Barrow and Scott 1971: 41; Grant and Stringer 1993: 8). In many ways, such a tendency mirrors that which took place in other states of the period, the classic example being that of medieval France, where royal representatives within the localities assumed a great power base that was reflected in, and facilitated by, their hereditary control of these posts. In one context, one can view such an association as an example of how social links and patronage served to qualify the emergence of an effective machinery of state governance at the local level. This was especially the case where sheriffs were also local landholders who could use their dual positions as a way of bolstering their status and power. This issue vexed those who were involved in coordinating medieval government. Barrow and Scott (1971: 41), for instance, note testimony from Kincardineshire, where a jury during the late twelfth century swore to make a correct perambulation between the lands of two local men, Walter and Humphrey, and not to be swayed by the fact that the latter was the local sheriff. In another context, however, the growing hereditary character of the role of sheriff can be perceived as an example of how local patterns of power helped to oil the process whereby state power and influence were imposed on the various localities. This is a theme that is taken up at greater length in Chapter 4, where I discuss the input of local landholders into the mechanisms of state administration during the early modern period. But are there additional, broader ways in which lineage- and kin-groups helped to constitute local governance? Here we reach the nub of the association between kin-groups and the inchoate organizations of the state. I want to discuss two instances in particular, which show how the existence

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and practices of kin-groups, broadly defined, within medieval Scottish and Welsh society, actually served to facilitate and enhance the development of state power. The Scottish example draws upon the political and organizational changes that affected Scotland’s western seaboard and particularly the Kingdom of the Isles – encompassing the Hebrides, Argyll and the Isle of Man (McDonald 1997: 2) – during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Kingdom of the Isles had always occupied a rather indeterminate position within the kingdom of Scotland (see Figure 3.2). Prior to 1098, it had formed part of the kingdom of Scotland but as a result of the treaty signed during that year between the Scottish crown and Magnus Barelegs of Norway, it was formally ceded to Norway (ibid.: 39). McDonald (ibid.) notes, however, that the Norwegian crown experienced numerous difficulties in maintaining its control of the Kingdom of the Isles over the following century. At the same time, the Kingdom of the Isles drifted from the Scottish crown’s control since the latter was preoccupied with interfering in English affairs. It was into this political vacuum that the mysterious figure of Somerled stepped during the first half of the twelfth century. He assumed a pre-eminent position in the politics of the western seaboard for a short while and came to be viewed as an individual who sought to resist the extension of state rule into the region by the Scottish crown. In addition, ‘he was also the ancestor of a number of kindreds . . . [who dominated] . . . the western seaboard for some three and a half centuries after his death’ (ibid.). His main descendants between 1164 and 1269 were the so-called MacSorleys. Their period of rule was characterized by considerable political independence but also, paradoxically, by a gradually increasing interest shown in the region by both the Scottish and Norwegian crowns. This was, therefore, a time of tension and one which was characterized by an effort on behalf of the MacSorleys to negotiate a difficult, middle route between Norwegian and Scottish demands. To a certain extent Somerled can be conceived as the leader of a kingroup, which sought to resist the transmission of Scottish royal power and administration into the west of Scotland. There were certain signs amongst the MacSorleys during this period, nonetheless, of the beginnings of a more sustained and productive political and cultural relationship with the kingdom of Scotland that would assume increasing significance during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. An important element of the changes that took place during this period was the growing adherence of the MacSorleys to a broadly Scottish or Anglo-Norman political and/or cultural identity. There is circumstantial evidence, for instance, that Dugald, one of Somerled’s sons, accompanied King William of Scotland to York in 1175, where the latter swore fealty to Henry II, king of England (ibid.: 72; Duncan and Brown 1956–7: 198). This has been viewed by McDonald as tentative evidence of the growing Scottish consciousness within certain

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Figure 3.2

MacSorley lands on Scotland’s western seaboard

elements of the MacSorley kindred. Similarly, it has been claimed that Ranald, another of Somerled’s sons, began to show an interest in AngloNorman culture and society, witnessed most clearly in his association with the Anglo-Norman cult of the knight (McDonald 1997: 77). Far more important than these early indications of a growing association with a

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Scottish identity, however, was the role the MacSorleys played in facilitating the extension of Scottish state power into the Kingdom of the Isles. With the signing of the Treaty of Perth in 1266, Norwegian claims to the Kingdom of the Isles had been extinguished, and the west of Scotland was annexed by the Scottish crown. The implications for the MacSorleys were momentous. While they had assumed previously the title of King of the Isles, they now became ‘barons of the realm of Scotland’ (ibid.: 123). It is in this role that they demonstrated most clearly their status as facilitators of the development of a relatively unified and organizationally united Scottish state. As McDonald (ibid.: 131) puts it: The Treaty of Perth, although it had ceded the Western Isles to Scotland, had not made any provision for their integration into the kingdom, and it remained for the Lords of Argyll and the Isles to become part of the community of the Scottish realm. While the process of integration had been ongoing (albeit sporadically), from the 1220s, and while it gained momentum with the cession of the West in 1266, this was certainly not an automatic or instantaneous process. It was the decades between 1266 and 1293 that witnessed the political integration of the western seaboard, as the region was slowly brought under centralized control and royal authority was extended westward.

The clearest indication of this process was the creation, under John Balliol’s direction, of three sheriffdoms within the former Kingdom of the Isles in 1293 (Donaldson 1970: 35). Only one of these new sheriffdoms was placed under the control of the MacSorleys. The northern sheriffdom was bequeathed to William, Earl of Ross, while the southern sheriffdom of Kintyre was administered by James the Steward, head of the Stewart family. It was only the central sheriffdom that came under MacSorley control, being bequeathed to Alexander of Argyll, the head of one branch of the family. At one level, we can see this development as an attempt to reduce the influence of the MacSorley clan within the politics of the western seaboard (see McDonald 2000; Sellar 2000). But it seems clear, at the same time, that governmental preferment was increasingly directed towards one sept of the clan, led by Alexander of Argyll. Documents from the period illustrate the key role played by Alexander of Argyll in enabling the Scottish state to extend its control of the west of Scotland. One document commands the men of Argyll, Kintyre and ‘Laudonia’ (current-day Lewis) to help Alexander of Argyll in his responsibilities, which were, namely, to protect the region and to collect royal debts (Duncan and Brown 1956–7: appendices 5 and 6).The document was produced sometime between 1264 and 1293 and, according to McDonald (1997: 132; 2000), reflects the role that Alexander of Argyll played in facilitating the gradual extension of royal

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power into the west of Scotland. In some ways, it reflects the classic ideals of feudalism, in which a trusted lieutenant is given the responsibility of governing a distant territory on the king’s behalf. The second document dates from a later period, possibly between 1293 and 1296 (see Duncan and Brown 1956–7). It empowers Alexander of Argyll to protect those landholders within his sheriffdom who were willing to take lands farmed out from the king. As McDonald (1997: 132) notes, this has been viewed as a testimony for a programme of forced feudalization, since the royal crown did not possess any lands in Argyll at that time (see also Barrow 1988: 55–6). Alexander, in this second document, is empowered to take oaths of fealty from landowners within his sheriffdom and to confirm their possession of land. As such, it represents a more formal administrative role for Alexander than that which appeared in the first document. Whereas the first document alludes to a generalized position of feudal lordship, the second is more redolent of an individual possessive of strictly defined responsibilities within a newly defined hierarchical administrative structure. The significance of the above discussion is that it illustrates how kingroups could both contest and facilitate the expansion of state power during the medieval period. Whereas the actions of Somerled during the late twelfth century were indicative of a kin-leader who was fearful of the extension of feudal forms of state power into the west of Scotland, some of his descendents – just over a hundred years later – were key state administrators within the region. This did not mean that their ties of kin had disappeared, to be suddenly replaced by a more state-centred form of social attachment and identity. Ties of kin were still important for Alexander of Argyll but other proto-national considerations were growing in significance. Much has been made by Scottish historians of the growing significance of the ‘community of the realm’ of Scotland during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and it is clear that such sentiments had not passed by Alexander and his kin, who became increasingly involved in matters of state. In 1275, for instance, Alexander and a kinsman, Alan fitz Rother, led jointly a fleet of sixty ships in order to quell an uprising on the Isle of Man (Anderson 1908: 382–3). In 1284, too, the three branches of the MacSorley family were present in a meeting of the magnates of Scotland where the inheritance of the kingdom was discussed (Thomson and Innes 1814–1875, vol. 1: 424). In both these instances, we see how a kin-group, formally opposed to a form of state aggrandizement within Scotland, had become fully incorporated into the community and administrative structure of the realm. Here, kin-groups, albeit in a contingent way, contributed to state consolidation, rather than undermined it. In Wales, too, the contribution of kin-groups to the emerging political geographies of the period was more ambiguous than some might expect. Kin-groups actively contested and facilitated the growing interference of

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state organizations in social, economic and political life. We see evidence of this in the intricacies of local governance in north Wales. Charles-Edwards (1993) has discussed at length the continued significance of kin-groups within north Wales well into the fourteenth century, drawing on both legal texts and the surveys and extents conducted by English lords during the period. The upshot of much of his discussion is a need to view kin-groups and territorial administrative units as two, complementary aspects of the process of state formation. We can see this most decisively in the institution of the gafael (holding). Charles-Edwards (ibid.: 248–51) distinguishes between the territorial and segmentary gafael. The territorial gafael played an important role in the administrative hierarchy of north Wales, as evidenced in Llyfr Iorwerth (Wiliam 1960: 60): a township was divided into four gafaelion and each gafael was, in turn, subdivided into four rhandiroedd. The territorial gafael was, therefore, part of the administrative structure of the thirteenth century, the period within which Llyfr Iorwerth was published. It was not associated with kin-groups per se but was rather an administrative unit used to assess the money rent of the twnc pound. By the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, the gafael had taken on a second meaning, one which was much more redolent of the social geography of kin-groups. These so-called segmentary gafaels were also holdings of land but, significantly, were holdings – or subdivisions of holdings – of specific kin-groups. The use of the term gafael as a holding of a kin-group varied geographically and, in Charles-Edwards’ study of the Survey of the Honour of Denbigh (see Vinogradoff and Morgan 1914), conducted by Hugh of Beckley in 1334, was much more prevalent in the eastern parts of north Wales. At the time of this Survey, two distinct meanings of the term gafael existed, therefore; one purely territorial and state-oriented, the other territorial and kin-based. I want to argue that the existence of these two interpretations of gafael is highly significant. The segmentary gafael of the fourteenth century represented a marriage between the state-driven territorial gafael of the early thirteenth century and the gwely (bed), the original name used to describe segments of a lineage group (Charles-Edwards 1993: 249–50). The money rent of the twnc pound was originally calculated on the basis of territorial units of administration, such as the territorial gafael. However, at some stage during the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, it became increasingly associated with the lineage group such as the gwely. As part of this shift in emphasis with regard to determining the basis for money rents, we witness a marriage between a territorial gafael and the lineage group of the gwely, with the product of this seemingly happy union being the segmentary gafael.This latter institution represented, at one and the same time, a territorial basis for determining money rents and a segment of a lineage group (see Figure 3.3). The reasons behind this shift in the meaning of a

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1200

Territorial gafael (Llyfr Iorwerth) of 64 acres

Gwely (a lineage group)

1250

1300

The segmentary gafael: segment of a lineage group and a basis for monetary assessment

1350

Figure 3.3

The development of the segmentary gafael in north Wales

gafael are unclear but, in Owen’s (1972: 125) and Charles-Edwards’ (1993: 250) view, relate to the granting of whole townships (trefi) to lineage groups during the mid- to late-thirteenth century, especially in the lands acquired by the kingdom of Gwynedd in north and north-east Wales. In granting whole townships to segments of lineages, the princes of Gwynedd conflated territorial and social understandings of space. Townships would have been subdivided into territorial gafaelion, as was specified in the legal texts of north Wales, but these would have also been held automatically by segmentary gafaelion, as segments of lineage groups. In the institution of the segmentary gafael, we see the productive ‘dialogue’ that could take place between medieval state forms and kin-groups. The segmentary gafael represents a union of two sets of organizational logics: one state-based and territorial; the other social and kin-based. Rather than retarding the process of state formation – and the related territorialization of power – within the kingdom of Gwynedd and the subsequent Honour of Denbigh, kinship units such as the gwely and the gafael were incorporated into state structures relatively painlessly. Admittedly, the precise character of the relationship between territorial units of administration, such as the commote, and the various progenies that held land in north Wales could be complicated at times (e.g. see the discussion of the convoluted interrelationships in Charles-Edwards 1993: 241). The key point to stress, in this regard, is that they are only complicated to our modern eyes, used to purely territorial and hierarchical mechanisms of state government. It is significant, in this respect, that Hugh of Beckley – the individual commissioned to carry out the Survey of the Honour of Denbigh in 1334 – felt it important to spend so much time understanding the lineages of the various landholding families of north Wales. As CharlesEdwards (1993: 248) puts it, the ‘extent is as a whole remarkable for its

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readiness to use Welsh concepts to describe Welsh institutions’. We may go one step further than this and argue that the whole character of territorial kingship and lordship, illustrated in sources such as the Survey, is remarkable for its willingness to use and adapt kin-based institutions within its mechanisms of government. Ties of kinship were not viewed as complicating factors within the inchoate state organizations of the period. Nor was there any effort to dismantle the patterns of kinship that structured much of Welsh society during the period. Rather, there was a willing accommodation between two worldviews, combining territorial and state-based means of governance with social conceptions of space and society. Such a mutual interdependency illustrates the fundamental peopling of local government within Wales during this period.

The Medieval State: Different not Worse? People were crucial to the process of state formation that took place during the Middle Ages. The role played by kings and a broader ruling class was instrumental in the growing territorialization of power that was characteristic of the period. Medieval kingdoms were inherently unstable in character. Medieval communities were also resistant to change in many instances. Strong individuals were required to instigate and sustain the twin interrelated motors of medieval state formation: the creation of extended kingdoms that were relatively stable for a particular period of time; and the development of new forms of state administration that were based on the partitioning of a territory into administrative subdivisions. In addition, these individuals could begin to promote the beginnings of a state habitus or a state idea within their body of officials and administrators. It is in this confluence of state personnel, state organizations and state territories that we witness the generative processes behind medieval state formation. Obviously, this was not a straightforward process. Indeed, it can be argued that it was distinctly ‘messy’ at two levels. The inherent instability of medieval kingdoms, especially during the early Middle Ages, meant that any tendency towards greater organizational and administrative sophistication could be undermined by a subsequent period of political and/or military instability. Internecine strife between contenders for a particular kingship equated to a period of stagnation, if not deterioration, in the political and organizational stability of states. The process of state formation that characterized the medieval period is messy for a second reason, namely the piecemeal manner in which these developments took place. Although there was a greater sense during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of the existence of political and territorial units that are familiar to modern eyes – England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland to an extent – it is clear that many

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different kings, princes and lords were promoting alternative and ‘bitty’ versions of the state-making process within their own lands. In this sense, we need to think of multiple takes on the process of state formation taking place within the Atlantic archipelago during the medieval period. As is discussed in the next chapter, the only real challenges to this plural process of state formation came during the modern period, firstly during the sixteenth century with the creation of a greater England that encompassed all the lands of Wales and, secondly, during the eighteenth century, with the union of the English and Scottish crowns and parliaments. I have argued, furthermore, that the role of people in sustaining the process of medieval state formation was not confined merely to those guiding hands stationed in the emerging apparatus of the ‘central’ state. A key aspect of the territorialization of power that took place within the Middle Ages – indeed, the aspect that made the process real to the majority of the population – was the way in which it extended downwards into the government of localities. It was through the workings of local units of administration – the shire, the sheriffdom and the commote – rather than through the activities of the royal court that the general population of medieval Britain experienced the growing interference of the state in their lives. If we accept this point, then the key people who helped to drive forward the medieval state-making process were those individuals who acted as the state’s representatives in the various localities; people such as Alexander of Argyll in Scotland or the various landowners and ecclesiastics that acted as ealdormen within Alfred’s Wessex. The motivation behind these individuals’ support for new state organizations, of course, needs to be questioned. In the vast majority of instances, it was surely personal gain that explained the commitment of these individuals to maintain the king’s peace and financial resources within the localities. Nonetheless, there is surely, also, some indication of a commitment amongst these local representatives of the king to what we may term a ‘state project’. The MacSorleys’ support of the Scottish crown’s campaign in the Isle of Man and their presence in the Scottish court during discussions regarding the royal succession are surely indicative of a kindred that was being drawn into the ‘community of the realm’ of Scotland. Without this local support for a process of state formation, it is doubtful whether the reproduction and transformation of the organizational and territorial fabric of the Scottish state could have continued as it did. Finally, I have suggested that we need to re-evaluate the role of kingroups within the whole process of medieval state formation. I have maintained that it is now untenable to argue that kin-groups were always retarders of a medieval state-making process. To be sure, an emphasis on custom and tradition could lead kin-groups to contest any attempt to change the way in which things were done. The evidence discussed from

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north Wales, though, would seem to portray a situation in which the interests of kin-groups and the state could become intertwined. Indeed, in many ways, it was an organizational ‘dovetailing’ of kin- and state-formations that facilitated the development of a more efficient state form during the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as a unit of kinship and a unit of state administration became fused, one with the other. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, such concerns became less important. Although kin-groups were still present and still exercised an important role in political and economic life (e.g. in Wales, see Davies 1969), there is an overall sense of a shift towards a more state-centred society. State organizations and territories, unfamiliar in many places and for many people during the earlier Middle Ages, were now commonplace, in one form or another (e.g. Harvey 2003; Jones 2000b; Lilley 2000). The political and organizational anomalies that characterized the medieval period were also coming under increased scrutiny and criticism. Demands were being made to create more homogeneous state organizations and territories. It is this new world of the early modern period, and the role played by state actors within it, that is examined in the next chapter.

Chapter Four

Embodying Early Modern State Consolidation

The production, taxation and subsequent consumption of beer seems a strange place to start a chapter that examines the embodiment of the process of state consolidation in the British Isles during the early modern period. A focus on these issues, and the role played by the Excise in managing them, is, nonetheless, highly significant for it illustrates the key interactions between state organizations, state territories and state personnel that were crucial to the consolidation of the early modern state. The role of the Excise was to act a source of income for the English state of the early modern period, through taxing the production of beer and other staples. Created during the Civil War, the Excise had been privatized or de-statized – to use a term more usually applied to the state in late modernity – in 1662 to tax farmers. These would collect and keep the moneys due on the production of beer but would pay up front for the privilege of doing so. The Excise was gradually reincorporated into the central state apparatus in the late seventeenth century and was administered wholly by the state from 1683 onwards. As Ogborn (1998a: 295; see also Braddick 1996: 149; Chandaman 1975) notes, this was a seminal moment for the English state as an organization since it signalled, more generally, the shift from a system of tax farming to one that was directly controlled and administered by the state.We should not underestimate, either, the territorial significance of this development. The changes of 1683 meant that there existed a ‘national administrative system’ that was subdivided into 36 ‘collections’ and 886 ‘districts’ or ‘divisions’ (Ogborn 1998a: 296). The Excise was laid out, therefore, as a territorially demarcated and subdivided national organization that enabled the English state to collect information concerning the production of beer within its territory. It demonstrates clearly, thus, the significance of the collection of information – and of monitoring more generally – for the growing intensification of state power during the early

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modern period (see Giddens 1981; 1985). And yet this was also very much a peopled organization. Officers were responsible for collecting information within the various districts or divisions; supervisors overlooked the work of officers at the ‘collection’ level, and the whole system was monitored at the national level by a series of commissioners. Ogborn (1998a) focuses on the contribution of one commissioner, Charles Davenant, to the success of the system, both in the theoretical context of developing new and more scientific ways of measuring the volume of barrels and in more practical ways, through his extensive travels in England and Wales. In a very real sense, therefore, the activities of Excise officers within this new system of state administration were shaped by the organizations and territories within which they worked. At the same time, these individuals helped to make more meaningful and effective these new organizations and territories of state government, at a variety of different geographical scales. It was the interaction between these three elements that helped to constitute the trajectories taken by the process of state consolidation in England and Wales during the early modern period. The development of the Excise shows some of the important changes affecting political forms during the early modern period. Numerous political and economic developments took place during this period, which led to a fundamental shift in the nature of the state. As I argued in Chapter 2, the consolidation of state forms in the British Isles was characterized by a gradual and tentative transformation of organizations, territories and people. In England, for instance, new organizations and early forms of bureaucracy sought increasingly to regulate all kinds of social, economic, political and cultural activity. There was a concerted effort during the sixteenth century, in particular, to create more systematic and extensive forms of state bureaucracy. This was part of the so-called ‘Tudor revolution in government’, driven forward by Thomas Cromwell (Elton 1953: 320–69; Edwards 2001: 140–70). Key changes at the centre included the formalization of the Privy Council – into a ‘formal governing board instead of an informal inner ring’ (P. Williams 1979: 30) and one that separated out into a Privy Council proper and an associated Star Chamber dealing with judicial matters – the creation since the early fourteenth century of the King’s or Queen’s Council, the growing power of a Parliament which drew the various shires and boroughs into a system of government and which gave formal assent to tax-raising initiatives, and the systematization of the activities of the Chancery and Exchequer (see P. Williams 1979: 21–54). What is significant with the vast majority of these changes is that they were not characterized by the formation of a new state apparatus de novo but rather signalled the growing systematization of organizations that pre-dated the modern period. A further increase in the scale and scope of the state apparatus took place from the late seventeenth century onwards. Much of the

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impetus for these organizational changes came from the need to wage, and prepare for the waging of, war (for a discussion, see Mann 1980). As Brewer (1994: 22) has keenly noted, a key change within the English state of the late seventeenth century onwards was the development of a ‘comparatively uniform and centralized administration of public monies through the Treasury and the Exchequer’ facilitated by the existence of ‘national institutions and the absence of institutionalized regionalism’. One way of measuring this shift is through noting the growing numbers of state employees. In the period between 1649 and 1660, Aylmer (1974: 169; see also 1973) was only able to note a total of 1200 officials of state, a tiny number when compared with some continental states at the time. By 1720, this figure had increased at a staggering pace to 12,000 permanent employees (Holmes 1982: 244, 255).While most government departments had increased in size during this period, it is clear from Brewer’s (1994: 66–7) work that the main sources of expansion were those departments most closely involved with securing the revenue of the English state – Customs, Excise, the Treasury, the Exchequer etc. This was a central ‘fiscal-military’ state (Brewer 1994) that was growing in influence or, as Mann (1984) has put it, in its infrastructural power. New organizations, and the expansion and systematization of existing organizations, were key to this whole process of transforming the state apparatus. Equally important changes took place with regard to the territorial form of the English/British state. We can distinguish two significant and related geographical changes that characterized the growing sophistication of the state during this period, the one more political, the other more organizational (for an earlier parallel, see Chapter 3). One key change to the political geographies of the British Isles during the early modern period was the increased incorporation of the various territories into one relatively unified political entity. The most clear-cut act of incorporation during this period was the so-called Acts of Union between England and Wales in 1536 and 1542.These Acts represented the fulfilment of a long-term effort to develop a higher level of territorial unity between the two countries (see Kiernan 1980: 108). The situation in Scotland and Ireland was a little more complicated (for an account, see Davies 1999: 449–552). Scotland had remained an independent kingdom, despite threats from England, for the whole of the Middle Ages. Not until the death without issue of Elizabeth I in 1603 was there any sense in which Scotland and England should become united as kingdoms, as James VI of Scotland also became James I of England. This was not, however, an organizational union of two states. Although the crowns of the two countries had been united, the Parliaments of Scotland and England remained separate (Morrill 1995: 17–20). Gradual attempts to develop a political and organizational commonality between Scotland and England proceeded throughout the seventeenth

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century. These efforts reached their zenith with the union of the Parliaments of England and Scotland in 1707, under Queen Anne. Despite the Scottish rebellions of the first half of the eighteenth century, from that period onwards, England and Scotland were considered to be part of the one state of Great Britain. Ireland was incorporated into an English state from an earlier period, although its political status vis-à-vis England was always a little ambiguous. Henry VII, the first of the Tudor kings, had encouraged the Irish Parliament to assent to the authority of the English Privy Council, so that any legislation passed by the former could only become valid by being confirmed by the latter. As another indication of the growing English interference in Irish affairs, Henry VIII after the Reformation began to be described as ‘King of Ireland’ and as the ‘Head of the Irish Church’, titles that were also used for subsequent kings and queens of England. In all this, we witness the English state’s efforts to extend its immediate sphere of influence outwards from the English core to encompass its Scottish and Irish neighbours. At one level a successful instance of aggressive state-building, it could also be described as a sustained period of imperialism and colonialism (see Canny 1998). The second key development was that of more uniform and effective units of administration, which helped to underpin this new territorial entity. States had to make good their claims to sovereignty through the development of effective and systematic forms of administration. Sustained efforts were made from the sixteenth century onwards to bring a degree of coordination and uniformity, firstly to the haphazard political geography of the English state and secondly – much later and much more tentatively – to the administrative geographies of the British Isles. A key early sign of this transformation was the extension of a system of shires and Quarter Sessions into all regions of England and Wales (see Figure 4.1). This change ensured that law and order was practised at the local level in a far more consistent manner than had previously been the case. Subsequent developments with regard to the Excise, discussed above, also speak of a growing sophistication of units of administration throughout England and Wales with regard to taxation. Witnessing these changes, we can concur with Kiernan (1980: 1), who has argued that the period between 1550 and 1650 represented ‘a crucial phase in the long-drawn transition from “medieval” to “modern”, and in the development of governments and their connexions with social groups or classes’ (see also Ellis 1995). But I would be remiss if I did not also draw specific attention to the peopled aspect of this transformation of state forms in the British Isles during the early modern period. Some work on the development of the English state, in particular, has emphasized how people were linked with the emergence of the new state organizations and territories of the early modern period. In general terms, authors such as Corrigan and Sayer

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Figure 4.1 of Union

The systematization of local government in sixteenth-century England and Wales: the Acts

(1985) and Underdown (1996) have examined the changing political identities of the population of England and Wales during the early modern period and the way in which this helped to undergird some of the more organizational changes that were taking place. Underdown (1996: 19–44), in talking of a ‘political nation’, has shown how the English and Welsh gentry were very much exercised by the great events of the seventeenth century. Corrigan and Sayer (1985), too, have shown how the consolidation of the English state was as much a process of large-scale cultural, as well as bureaucratic and organizational, change. The process of state consolidation that took place during this period, therefore, was grounded in the changing identities and loyalties of state personnel. But it is Braddick (1991; 1994; 1996; 2000: 21 especially) who has done most to emphasize the significance of the role of individuals in reproducing the English state

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of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries or, in other words, of shaping the emergence of different state organizations and territories. What helped to sustain the process of state consolidation in England and Wales during this period, according to Braddick, was the extent to which it was dependent upon a sense of collaboration between the bureaucracies of the central state and the representatives of the state working in the various localities (Braddick 2000: 27–8; see also Corrigan and Sayer 1985: 16; Bloch 1967: 371). As I mentioned in Chapter 1, the latter group were not officers of state in any strict sense: they were rather members of the local gentry who were cajoled or coerced into working as the state’s representatives. Members of the local gentry could fulfil a number of different roles in the shires of England and Wales, ranging from duties as Justices of the Peace (JPs) on the Commission of the Peace to the more onerous positions of sheriffs and deputy Lord Lieutenants. Braddick (2000: 30) maintains that ‘the backbone of Elizabethan local government was the commission of the peace, and its individual members, the justices of the peace’. The fact that the state enjoyed a high level of legitimacy in England (Braddick 1994: 13), especially when compared with other European states, can be explained by the stress that officers of the central state placed upon collaborating with the gentry in the various localities rather than on imposing their own vision of a new rational and centralized form of government upon them. In a very real sense, therefore, people were key to the transformations taking place to state organizations and territories within England and Wales during the early modern period. Although the three elements of this emerging state of the early modern period have been discussed in isolation, the crucial significance of the process of state consolidation in the English state of the period – and indeed in all states, I would argue, to greater or lesser degrees – was the way in which it was characterized by an interaction between all three. The brief vignette concerning the Excise during the seventeenth century illustrates this point. The remaining sections of this chapter also seek to show in a more sustained manner the character of the interrelationships between state personnel, state organizations and state territories, specifically in the English state of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There are three interrelated empirical discussions in the subsequent sections, which focus on different scales of activity within state government. The first section examines the peopling of the central state bureaucracy. Two closely linked sections follow in which I discuss a key mechanism for securing a more coherent state organization and territory at both the national and local level, namely the Quarter Sessions of the Peace, peopled by JPs. Clearly, this was an important organization that enabled the English state to extend its governmental reach downwards into the localities but at the same time, its universal application throughout the whole of the English state also

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contributed to a growing sense of national order. I focus, firstly, on the formal mechanisms of securing this legal order through JPs, as well as the informal consistency achieved through the publication of a guide to being an efficient JP, written by William Lambarde. Following this, I show how these national organizations, territories and ideals were applied within a particular locality. I focus in particular on the activities of an individual who is already familiar to readers, namely Sir John Wynn. An examination of his role as a local landowner and officer of state in north Wales during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries illustrates how the new social and spatial prescriptions of the English state of the period were implemented on the ground. I want to highlight two important themes in discussing these issues. First, there is clear evidence that the shift from the medieval to the early modern period did not represent a marked disjuncture with regard to state forms within the British Isles. Certain authors have, admittedly, sought to illustrate the difference that modernity made to the state. White (2004: 129), for instance, in his discussion of the ‘birth of the modern state’, refers to the fact that ‘medieval society stands in sharp contrast to the modern nation-state era’ (see also Dandeker 1990: 1–2; Giddens 1985). Even a superficial examination of the early modern evidence, it would seem to me, would indicate a need to think through a more long-term consolidation of the state rather than an early modern period of state formation (Tilly 1990), in which pre-existing organizations were invigorated and extended. Second, the openness and contingency of the process of early modern state consolidation also need to be stressed. It is important not to fall into evolutionary or teleological accounts of the process of state consolidation. State consolidation is not driven by some inner logic. Nor is it something that was predestined to happen (see Spruyt 1994). I want to argue that one way in which we can stress both the continuity between pre-modern and modern state forms and the contingency of the early modern process of state consolidation is to focus on the negotiation between different elements within the state personnel/state apparatus/state territory nexus. A focus on the peopled aspect of the state, in particular, shows the themes of continuity and immanence that were crucial to the early modern period of state consolidation in Britain.

Peopling the Central State Apparatus Clearly, the process of consolidation that affected the state within the British Isles during the early modern period was steered, to a large extent, by the political centre (though see the arguments in Ellis 1995: 40–1). As such, it is important to consider the peopling of the central state – and the

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relation of the people of the central state to the state’s developing organizations and territories. For much of the period under consideration in this chapter, the people of the central state, as noted above, were a relatively small group of people that were centred on the person of the head of state. This is especially true at the beginning of the sixteenth century, a time in which highly personalized mechanisms of rule were still apparent. The role of the king or queen, in particular, was still crucial for the day-to-day issues of government. Henry VIII, for instance, was a key figure within his own government. Williams (1979: 23) notes, for instance, that Sir Ralph Sadler complained in 1536, stating as follows: ‘I think it will be hard to get any bills signed at this time . . . As ye know, His Grace [Henry VIII] is always loth to sign’. The perception that Henry VIII was inattentive to royal business demonstrates the crucial role that the king or queen still played within the machinery of central government (see also Ellis 1995: 52–8). Although the numbers of officers of state were beginning to increase, it is clear that much of the state government of the period depended on the king or queen, and their immediate coterie of royal officials, much as it had done during the Middle Ages. It would be unwise, therefore, to view the early modern period – especially the sixteenth century – as a period that was characterized by a fundamental and rapid shift in the relationship between state personnel and the organizations and territories of the state apparatus. Rather, it was a slow and tentative foray into new forms of government. In addition to the head of state, we need to consider those people who were part of the inner royal circle of the court. It was these, and the relationship that existed between them and the head of state, that determined the direction in which the royal government at the centre developed. The significance of this group of people, and its varied character, is made clear by Williams (1979: 25), when he argues that ‘the people who counted in royal politics were those with access to the restricted areas of the court. Ministers of state, great noblemen, and royal favourites could expect this as a matter of course’.Williams (1979: 24–5) describes in detail an example of the personal character of the royal government during this period by focusing on evidence from Elizabeth I’s reign. Her reception of courtiers on a peripatetic tour of England in 1572 was noted by Paul Hentzner, a German traveller who was visiting the queen at the time. Hentzner noted the way in which the queen received courtiers in her Presence Chamber on her way to chapel. Williams (ibid.) takes up Hentzner’s account: He [Hentzner] and his party were admitted by leave of the Lord Chamberlain and waited with many noblemen, councillors, and gentlemen for the Queen’s appearance. She emerged from her apartment preceded by officers of the household and as she went along ‘spoke very graciously, first to one, then to another, whether foreign ministers, or those who attended for

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different reasons’. In the antechapel petitions were presented to her before she went to her devotions. Ceremony was effectively combined with informal contact.

Here, we see the line between personal and informal contact between queen and courtiers and governmental business being blurred. Informal contact between the king or queen of this period and their courtiers was essential for the smooth running of state government. Even during the early seventeenth century, this highly personal and personned form of government at the centre was still prevalent. As Aylmer (1974: 10) has noted in his study of the government of Charles I between 1625 and 1642, ‘the King still ruled as well as reigned’. This did not mean that there were no efforts made to systematize the workings of the central state during the early stages of the early modern period. The two key, relatively formal, mechanisms of government were the Privy Council and the Star Chamber. The Privy Council during the 1540s and 1550s, according to Elton (1953: 320–69), was part of a ‘revolution’ in Tudor government inspired by Thomas Cromwell. It became an advisory and executive body for the monarch, and the monarch’s main governing board concerned with administration (for an account of the responsibilities of the Privy Chamber during Elizabeth I’s reign, see P. Williams 1979: 31–2; see also Morrill 1995: 23–6). The Star Chamber, on the other hand, was concerned with legal and judicial matters. Elton makes much of this separation of administrative and legal responsibilities since it signals an effort to rationalize the workings of the central state. Others, however, have questioned the degree to which these developments represented a radical overhaul of the mechanisms of government within the central state. Williams (1979: 30), for instance, has maintained that the actions of the ‘new’ Privy Council were not particularly novel, when compared with its predecessors during the reign of Henry VII. Similarly, the lines of demarcation between the Privy Council and Star Chamber were not particularly well drawn. Significantly, this may be due in large part to the way in which both bodies were peopled. The membership of the two bodies was, effectively, the same, apart from the presence of two judges within the Star Chamber. In this regard, it is likely that there would have arisen considerable overlap in the interests of, and the decisions made by, the two bodies. The peopling of the Privy Council also allows us to elaborate in more detail on a key change in the political geographies of the early modern period, namely the formal incorporation of Welsh, Irish and, subsequently, Scottish lands into a broader English/British political entity (Ellis 1995). The process of political unification was reflected in the peopling of the central state (Morrill 1995: 23–6). Aylmer (1974: 19–22) has examined the

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constitution of the Privy Council during the reign of Charles I in the early to mid-seventeenth century. Here, we can witness how the new political realities of an expanded state were being reflected in the peopling of this key organization within the central government. During the mid-1630s, for instance, the Lord Treasurer of Scotland had become an ex officio member of the Privy Council, thus signalling the importance of Scotland and Scottish considerations within the deliberations of the central government of England. In a similar vein, the Lord Presidents of Wales and of the North – the heads of the ‘regional’ tiers of government of the Council in the Marches and the Council of the North – were admitted as members of the Privy Council on a regular basis between 1625 and 1630 (more broadly, see Ellis 1995). It is clear, too, that Parliament increasingly played an important role in structuring the form and functions of government at the centre. Admittedly, we need to be wary of overstating the distinctiveness of Parliament vis-à-vis the other administrative branches of government, especially during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. As Aylmer (1974: 9) has noted, the majority of MPs during the early sixteenth century also held administrative posts within the central government. Notwithstanding this point, it is clear that Parliament by the early modern period had succeeded in cementing its key legal and financial role in facilitating the functioning of the government of the realm of England. Its laws applied throughout the whole of England and were considered to be superior to other laws and customs (see Elton 1974). It also played a key financial role. Only Parliament could grant a monarch the right to levy direct and indirect taxes (see below for further discussion). According to Williams (1979: 34), it had also become far more independent of the monarch than had previously been the case, especially during the Middle Ages. During the sixteenth century, it had impeached royal favourites, as well as refusing royal grants of money in the form of subsidies, or at least was able to enforce strict conditions in granting them. In addition to playing a key role in the grand political, economic and cultural changes of the sixteenth century, it was also involved, for the majority of its time, in the more mundane aspects of government at and from the centre. Williams (1979: 37–8), for instance, draws attention to the activities of Parliament in the notable year of 1536. Historians have tended to focus on this year because of its significance with regard to the dissolution of the monasteries and the Act of Union between England and Wales. Clearly, both key Acts possessed wideranging implications for the territorial government of England. In the same year, however, Parliament was involved in the passing of another sixty-one, less noticeable Acts: new laws were passed to regulate the cloth trade as well as the price of meat. Although such Acts have received less academic attention, they still signalled an attempt by the state to create a

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far more centralized and homogeneous understanding of the territory of England and Wales.1 The relatively informal and ad hoc character of the central state apparatus became reduced in significance during the latter stages of the early modern period.The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for instance, witnessed explicit re-evaluations of the role of the king in the governance of the state. We bear witness to this shift in emphasis in the so-called 1701 Act of Settlement or, to give it its full name, the ‘Act for the further limitation of the crown and the better securing the rights of the subject’ (Horwitz 1977: 222). Various sections of the Act: limited the religious choices open to the monarch, and his or her use of foreign advisers; removed placemen from the House of Commons; gave judges more independence from the crown; and made privy councillors – part of the king’s remaining coterie of personal officials – more accountable to Parliament (Brewer 1994: 140–1).The 1701 Act was part of a broader shift in the character of the central state. A marked difference existed between the central state machinery of the eighteenth century when compared with that of Tudor times. From the late seventeenth century onwards, there developed, inter alia, a ‘sizeable public administration devoted to organizing the fiscal and military activities of the state’ (ibid.: xvii).The key development, in this regard, was the expansion of those central government departments concerned with collecting revenue. In a relatively short period at the turn of the eighteenth century, for instance, the number of people employed in the collection of revenues within the English state doubled to 6000 (ibid.: 67). Of the various revenue departments, the most significant by far was the Excise. Between 1690 and 1782, for instance, it grew fourfold and became a key means through which the English state raised revenues for its various military campaigns (ibid.). It is clear, at this level, that the overarching condition for this shift in the scale of the central English state lay in the changing character of European geopolitics. In addition to the changing size of the central English state during the tail end of the early modern period, others have drawn attention to its changing character as an organization. Aylmer (1974: 9–10) has argued, for instance, that a key change occurred to the form of governmental administration during the seventeenth century as state officials increasingly assumed a state habitus. The administrators of the early seventeenth century had been explicitly political creatures. A number of them were MPs as well as being paid administrators of central government. The situation changed during the late seventeenth century as a formal distinction between politicians and administrators became emplaced. Instead of a central state administration that was based on officers paid through fees, it began to approximate what we understand by a state bureaucracy, in which highly differentiated employees were paid through equally differentiated

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salaries, and whose progression through the paid ranks of government was regulated by a detailed career ladder (though see Chapter 5). The quality of people admitted into this bureaucratic world was also strictly governed, either through entrance examinations or through on-site training in the form of apprenticeships (Brewer 1994: 69). Not surprisingly, perhaps, it was the Excise that adhered most closely to the new administrative ideals. As Brewer (ibid.: 68) notes, its efficiency was based upon a mixture of appointing the right people and ensuring that they followed closely the new and emerging bureaucratic prescriptions. These new practices of government were predicated upon A complex system of measurement and bookkeeping, organized as a rigorous hierarchy based on experience and ability, and subject to strict discipline from its central office.

This new administrator was both a product and a producer of the more efficient and systematic forms of central government being developed during this period. The three key aspects of the emerging bureaucracies of the eighteenth century were ‘security of tenure, longevity of service and departmentalism’ (Brewer 1994: 81). At the turn of the eighteenth century, a time of political turmoil and only inchoate and relatively ill-defined government departments, the tenure of offices was uncertain – service brief and transitory. The lines of demarcation between departments were blurred, leading to the creation of an administrative class of ‘gifted allrounder[s]’ (Holmes 1982) who were able to flit from one department to another. The divide between government and civil society was equally illdefined. Many officers of the central state spent spells working within civil society, employed, more often than not, as clients of aristocrats or politicians. Matters changed throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as officers remained within fledgling bureaucracies for longer periods of time, being promoted from junior to more senior ranks. Brewer (1994: 80; see also Collinge 1978: 8) notes, for instance, that seventeen officials who began their career in the Navy Board as ordinary clerks between 1660 and 1773 reached the giddy heights of Principal Officer and Commissioner of the Navy. This system of internal promotion meant that those individuals who oversaw the running of particular departments had acquired a great store of knowledge and experience concerning the practices and customs of their departments. Lines of demarcation between departments (Aylmer 1974: 8), and between central government and civil society, also became more significant. Different departments developed their own procedures and routines, which made a potential transition from one department to another a more daunting prospect. This deterrent to administrative mobility was further exacerbated by the development of inter-departmental

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rivalry. The link between state functionaries and civil society also became less important as new bureaucratic practices became more entrenched. According to Brewer (1994: 84), these changes had a noticeable impact on the character of the people of the central state, stating that ‘this orderly system did not breed administrators of great imagination or powerful vision. It produced orderly and precise men, who were industrious rather than innovative’. In all this, we witness the beginnings of the emergence of the state bureaucracy, as ‘administration became settled; routine set in’ (ibid.; see also Weber 1947: 330). In spite of this radical shift in the character and scope of central government throughout the early modern period, it is clear that various efforts were made to contest the increasing size and bureaucratization of the state. Ordinary people working and living in various parts of England and Wales could contest the changes that were afoot. Similarly the agents of the state working in the various localities could take a dim view of the growing reach of state organizations. These two themes will be discussed at more length in a subsequent section. It is significant, however, that contestation also occurred in the centre. Politicians of the age, for instance, viewed an increase in the number of state bureaucrats as something that helped to buttress the independence of the monarch vis-à-vis MPs, as the elected representatives of the state. A large bureaucratic machinery was viewed as something that was synonymous with an overbearing monarchy – a sign of continental absolutism in many ways – and was, therefore, something that should be shunned (with regard to the Excise, see Brewer 1994: 148). A large administration was viewed, therefore, as a symbol of the replacement of an elected peopled central state by appointed officials who would, naturally, support the agenda of the monarch. At an even more fundamental level, members of the new administrative class could, on occasion, challenge the development of the new bureaucratic state form – and, by implication – its territorial form.The persistence of nepotism within the workings of the central state illustrated the way in which the alleged impartiality and disinterested character of the emerging bureaucracy of the eighteenth century could be challenged (see Brewer 1994: 81). Holmes (1982: 249–51, 259–60) provides an illuminating and in-depth account of the professional career of one long-term government official, Sir Philip Ryley. He was first employed in the administration of Charles II and quickly gained promotion, becoming an Agent for Arrears of Taxes and, subsequently, Commissioner for the Excise. In fulfilling these roles, he displayed a high level of conscientiousness and vigour, being commended and financially rewarded for his efficiency. At one level, therefore, he could be considered as one of the ‘new men of government’ (ibid.). At the same time, Ryley demonstrates many aspects of an older regime in which patronage and self-interest were clearly evident. Specifically, he took

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on numerous roles that were nominal in nature and, yet, which offered considerable financial reward, including, most notably, the Surveyor General of the Woods. His career illustrates the complexity of the character of central government during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and, especially, the way in which state officials could equally support and subvert the emerging state bureaucracy. Sir Philip Ryley, in this case, subverted the prescriptions of the emerging state for his own personal gain but his actions alluded to a broader range of contexts within which state officials, and potentially those in civil society, could influence or contest the state’s projects and strategies. In this section, I have attempted to explore the changing form and functions of the central state apparatus during the early modern period, focusing specifically on its peopled characteristics. Part of the significance of the state during this period, however, was its ability to reach out and influence the lives of its citizens in a more routine and effective manner. Government at the centre was never solely that. In order to rule effectively, central government needed to possess practical means of coordinating activities in the provinces and localities and it is these political geographies of centre–local relations – and the role of state personnel in structuring them – that are discussed in the following two sections.

The Body Politic: JPs and the Political Constitution of England and Wales Clearly, the central state during this period was striving to ensure that a relatively systematic form of rule was being adopted within its territory and over its people. Part of this process was driven forward by the passing of new laws that applied to the whole of the country or by creating new organizations, whose remit extended throughout the whole of England and Wales. A number of authors have outlined some of the major shifts in the governance of England and Wales during the sixteenth century (Ellis 1995; Kiernan 1980: 108; Morrill 1995). These far-reaching changes included the extension of English common law into the whole of Wales, as well as to the palatinates of Chester and Durham during the mid-sixteenth century. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, other forms of governmental organization represented efforts by the central state to extend its reach outwards into the localities.The best example, in this regard, and one that has been alluded to already in this chapter, was the Excise. Its formation as a territorial and bureaucratic ordering of the state within England and Wales represented a crucial period of change. In taxing all sales of certain goods – leather, soap and beer, for instance – it created a systematic and territorial subdivision of political and economic space in England

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and Wales. Furthermore, it was a system that encouraged, and was predicated on, continuous and systematic acts of monitoring and surveillance (Ogborn 1998a). It is important, obviously, to be aware of these fundamental developments to the character of the English state – in both organizational and territorial terms. But in focusing on the peopled character of the state during the early modern period, it becomes imperative, I would argue, to concentrate our attention on the role and practices of JPs.These were members of the local gentry who were commissioned by the Crown to act as their unpaid officials within the shires of England and Wales. It was the JPs, therefore, who acted as the main conduits of governmental power in the various localities of the state. Corrigan and Sayer (1985: 38–9), for instance, in their commentary on the social and cultural constitution of the English state during this period, draw attention to the key role played by the system of JPs in creating a sense of uniformity for the state. Indeed, for one commentator (Gleason 1969: 1), JPs were so crucial to the creation of a relatively homogeneous set of state institutions that they came to ‘symbolize the polity of England’. Their roles within the localities were numerous, and it is worth quoting this extended passage from Williams (1979: 408), which demonstrates the broad range of their responsibilities: Well-established by 1485, JPs had extensive judicial authority over murders, felonies, misdemeanours, and offences against economic and social regulations. In practice they seem, in the course of the sixteenth century, to have yielded up to the assizes their jurisdiction over felonies and to have occupied themselves mainly with petty larceny, unlawful assembly, affray, riot, and forcible entry. In addition they were in principle burdened with the ‘stacks of statutes’ which Parliament expected them to enforce. But it is doubtful whether these burdens weighed upon them as heavily as they claimed, for many of the statutes were totally ignored in Quarter Sessions. Even so, JPs did have considerable duties ‘out of sessions’, which probably compensated for their virtual surrender of jurisdiction over felonies. Individual Justices took sureties for good behaviour, ejected men who made forcible entries, examined suspects. A pair of Justices could arrest rioters, send rogues to the houses of correction, give or withhold bail, license alehouses, nominate overseers of the poor, and perform a score of other tasks. By the end of the sixteenth century a loose organization was being formed to assist them: divisions were organizations within counties for which particular Justices were held responsible and they were beginning to hold regular divisional meetings, later to be known as ‘petty sessions’.

Clearly, therefore, JPs were viewed as a key mechanism through which the central state could monitor and govern the localities. But how did the central state ensure that its prescriptions were adhered to by the various

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JPs operating within the localities? In this sense, we need to distinguish between two different yet related aspects of the imposition of the norms of the central state on the localities. At one level, we need to think about the way in which the central state could coerce or enforce its representatives in the localities to meet its demands and impose its norms upon the general population. There were a number of opportunities open to the Crown in order to ensure the loyalty of its magistrates. The process whereby individuals were selected for membership of the Commission of the Peace, although ‘an irregular but complicated procedure’ (Gleason 1969: 47), enabled the Crown to intervene in the government of the localities. In theory, the sovereign appointed individuals to the Commission of the Peace under the Great Seal. In practice, the Lord Chancellor or the Lord Keeper controlled the appointments process. Obviously, none of these high officials of the central state could ever be acquainted with the thousands of individuals who served as JPs and, as such, they depended on the advice that they received from Lord Lieutenants of the various shires, as well as established JPs. One law, however, was designed to ensure that only certain people were, in fact, able to serve as JPs. In 1439, a statute required that JPs should possess lands that were worth £20 per annum. By 1732 this had been raised to £100 (ibid.: 39–40). The central state’s control of JPs did not end with their entry into the Commission, since it was possible for the former to monitor the practices of JPs and their adherence to the regulations appertaining to the Commission of the Peace in a close manner (e.g. Ballinger 1926: 60). Recalcitrant JPs, for instance, could be called up in front of the Star Chamber in order to answer for their misdeeds. The Star Chamber (and the Privy Council) could be used to remove individuals from the Commission of the Peace. Sir Thomas Hoby, for instance, although a long-term member of the Commissions of the Peace of the East and North Riding of Yorkshire, and a member of the Council of the North (the ‘regional body’ created to govern the north of England in 1537), was ejected from the Commission for a short while during the early sixteenth century. This ejection came following a letter from the Privy Council in which Sir Thomas was chastised for his lack of respect towards the President of the Council of the North (Gleason 1969: 38). In more general terms, Edwards (1929: iii) has argued that the Star Chamber was a key organization through which the ‘rapacity of the Tudor gentry’, magistrates included, could be curbed. Clearly, there were formal mechanisms in place through which the central state could ensure that JPs represented its needs and priorities within the various localities of the state. But in addition to this formal imposition of state norms during the early modern period through the monitoring of the practices and character of the JP, we should also pay heed to the more informal mechanisms that

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helped shape the attitudes of the JPs as a group of people. Much has been made by various authors concerning the less tangible shift in political identity that helped underpin the process of state consolidation in England and Wales (e.g. Corrigan and Sayer 1985; Underdown 1996; Braddick 1991; 1996). A key aspect of this shift, with regard to JPs, was the way in which their qualifications, character and comportment changed throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Of the JPs examined by Gleason (1969: 83–4), for instance, only nine out of 128 had attended a university or an Inn of Court in 1562. By 1636, this figure had risen to 129 out of 183. As Caspari (1954) has noted, this change in the educational character of JPs was part of a broader shift in the attitudes of the gentry towards learning in general. The shift can be viewed as a testimony to the changing identities and habits of the gentry living and working in the various localities. These were now individuals who were more attuned to the needs of government and, as such, were willing to alter their personalities, practices and set of experiences accordingly (cf. Bourdieu 1977). In many ways, these various forms of centre–local interactions – some formal and coercive, other more informal and popular – illustrate some of the broad themes raised in Chapter 2, most notably Allen’s (2003; 2004) work on the multifarious forms of relational networks that characterize the connection between different political and social actors. In this sense, it is not enough merely to demonstrate that ‘chains of command’ (P. Williams 1979: 407–20) existed between centre and localities during the early modern period.We need to interrogate, instead, the character of those linkages and the various ways in which they were constituted: through recourse to intimidation, coercion, cajolement and flattery. My aim in the remaining paragraphs of this section is to focus on the more subtle, informal and, in my mind, more interesting engagements between the central state and its representatives in the localities. One important way in which we can illustrate this informal process of engagement with a centrally defined set of norms is in the context of the ‘unofficial’ manual or guide for JPs – the Eirenarcha – first published by William Lambarde in 1581.The manual acted as a key non-human actant that facilitated the extension of a networked territoriality to all parts of England and Wales during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But before discussing the nature of the Eirenarcha, it is important to elaborate briefly on its author, William Lambarde (see Figure 4.2). Lambarde was born in 1536 in London and made his fortune in the city. He was educated in Lincoln’s Inn and it was here that he gained his understanding of the administration of the law. Lambarde also possessed a desire to communicate his understanding of the law, and other matters, to all interested parties. As Read (1962: 6) puts it, ‘it was characteristic of Lambarde that wherever his interests lay his pen followed fast’. During his time at Lincoln’s Inn, for instance,

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Figure 4.2 William Lambarde, author of the Eirenarcha, by Unknown artist, oil on panel, 22 1/2 in. × 171/2 in. (572 mm × 445 mm) © National Portrait Gallery, London Lambarde produced the first published version of the Anglo-Saxon laws (ibid.: 6). After moving to Kent, he also wrote a geography of the county in A Perambulation of Kent (ibid.). This was followed shortly after by his Eirenarcha, published in 1581, soon after he became a member of the Commission of the Peace. Indeed, Lambarde makes clear in his preface to the Eirenarcha that his original concern was to write a treatise that he himself would find useful, given his previous inexperience of the Commission of the Peace. He decided ‘for mine owne Information and discharge in the Seruice it Selfe, to looke diligently into that portion of our Lawe which concerneth the office of the Peace, werewith I had before that time very litle or none acquaintance’ (Lambarde 1972 [1581]: preface).The aim of the Eirenarcha was to act as a practical guide to Justices of the Peace throughout England and Wales. The Eirenarcha, in this sense, filled a large gap in the market. The previous guide – the so-called New Boke – was published by Fitzherbert in 1538 and so an up-to-date guide on the workings of the Commission of the Peace was needed sorely. The Eirenarcha was incredibly popular (Glazebrook 1972: 3). First published in 1581, its print run of 1500 copies had been exhausted within a

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year. The book was reprinted twice before being published as a second edition in 1588. In addition, there were another eight re-printings and editions between 1588 and 1619. Lambarde’s work was also highly valued. William Fulbeck, writing in 1600, complimented Lambarde’s style of writing, his breadth and depth of knowledge concerning legal issues and concluded by arguing that Lambarde ‘hath bin so universally beneficiall to the whole Realme, that whosoever despiseth his workes, bewraieth himselfe’ (quoted in ibid.). Lambarde was, moreover, more than a recorder of good practice within the Commission of the Peace. He also advocated the development of new rules and regulations and, as such, could clearly be considered as a forward-thinking and imaginative legal commentator. He encouraged JPs to work more effectively in order to ensure that the administration of justice proceeded more efficiently. He also lobbied the Lord Chancellor to remedy perceived deficiencies in the law. Indeed, as Glazebrook (1972: 4) notes, Lambarde’s reason for dedicating the Eirenarcha to the Lord Chancellor was that he hoped the latter would be able to improve the Commission of the Peace at a national level. There is strong evidence that Lambarde perceived well the crucial role played by JPs in maintaining law and order within England and Wales and their role as key chains in the link between central government and the localities. In his ‘Charges to Quarter Sessions’, uttered in Maidstone in 1582, for instance, he maintained that the role of the JP was very much like that of the physician: For as the physician will not give medicine until he understand the grief of his patient, the which also he can never perfectly do without his own report and telling, so neither can the laws, which are the very salves of our country sores, be discreetly applied by us without the aid of you [JPs] as you are, who by reason of your manifold doings and dispersings in the shire abroad do not only see and understand but do also many times in your own persons taste and feel of the griefs of the same and are therefore specially chosen out to make report of them. (quoted in Read 1962: 69)

Building up somewhat of a head of steam, Lambarde maintained that JPs should be active in their efforts to root out all ‘evils that infest and trouble the country’: the ‘disorders of alehouses’, ‘idle rogues and vagabonds’, ‘wanton youths’, ‘unlawful gaming’ and various other malefactors (ibid.: 70). What is significant within this tract is the way in which JPs were portrayed by Lambarde as the lynchpins of an effective system of government. Their significance was seen clearly to derive from their ability to combine an intimate knowledge concerning their localities with a sense of the national priorities being promoted by the central state. JPs, almost by definition, as academics such as Braddick (1991) have noted, were

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individuals who had to ‘juggle’ an interest in local and national affairs. As Gleason (1969: 2) puts it, JPs were ‘men who provided half of the members of the Elizabethan House of Commons and administered the Stuart countryside’. But what of the prescriptions of the Eirenarcha itself? Lambarde sought to explain the reasoning that should shape the actions of JPs throughout England and Wales. His advice ranged from the abstract – on the nature of the Justices of the Peace, the significance of the word peace, the history of the Commission of the Peace – to more practical issues and it is these latter issues that will detain us. Much of the first book revolved around the latitude afforded to individual Justices outside of the Sessions: to deal with individual breaches the peace, forcible entry into lands or tenements and breaches of the peace committed by a multitude, most commonly in the form of a riot or unlawful assembly. The second book, in turn, dealt with specific aspects of trials heard by the Justices: how to deal with confession, with information heard in private, how to examine in trials and the procedure involved in indictments (ibid.). The wide-ranging character of Lambarde’s advice testifies to his grasp of the procedures and regulations linked to membership of the Commission of the Peace. But in order to show the depth and quality of the advice meted out by Lambarde to his fellow Justices of the Peace, it is necessary to focus more closely on one specific example. Lambarde elaborates at length on the means by which JPs should react to riots and unlawful assemblies. The focus on such issues is not surprising. Riots, rebellion and insurrection were a fact of political and social life in England and Wales during the early modern period. Obviously, such gatherings represented a threat to the internal stability of the state. As Lambarde (1972 [1581]: 172) himself puts it, ‘the assemblie of many for breach of the Peace, offereth more daunger and hurt, both generallye to the Commune wealth wherein it happeneth, and perticularly to him against who it is bent, than the force of any one or two turbulent persons can bring’ (see P. Williams 1979: 350). Distinguishing between these different types of assembly may have been relatively straightforward at a theoretical level but, as Lambarde himself noted, the practical distinction between them was far more difficult to ascertain. Part of the aim of Lambarde’s entry on these issues, therefore, was to posit a more consistent definition between different types of unlawful assembly (Lambarde 1972 [1581]: 175), ones that could be of practical use to the ordinary JP ‘in the field’. Lambarde’s criteria for distinguishing between a riot, an unlawful assembly – and latterly a route – need not detain us here. The key significance of his discussion of these terms is that it illustrates the practical difficulties facing the ordinary JPs as they sought to make sense of the common law. Indeed, despite Lambarde’s efforts to make sense of these issues on behalf of his fellow JPs, the system was still dependent upon

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value judgements made by individual magistrates. According to Lambarde (ibid.: 177), ‘the Order and Circumstance of the doing, muste also bee brought into iujdgement with it’. In other words, the process of ascertaining whether an act represented a riot, an unlawful assembly or a route was dependent, at heart, on JPs’ ability to determine the tenor or the character of the gathering of people. Whatever the practical difficulties of trying to distinguish between these different types of unlawful assembly, what was less contentious was the importance of the role of the magistrate in suppressing these instances of political and social instability. Lambarde is quite clear about the steps that an individual magistrate should and should not take in dealing with such riots and unlawful assemblies. According to common law, an individual magistrate could seek to prevent a riot or unlawful assembly from proceeding, either through the taking of sureties or through confiscating weapons (ibid.: 180). Similarly, an individual JP could record a riot or unlawful assembly, making note of the unlawful acts carried out during the affray. Individual JPs, however, could not conduct an enquiry into a riot or unlawful assembly once it had taken place. Nor could he distribute fines to those individuals who had allegedly taken part in the unlawful assembly (ibid.). Such acts of examination, trial and penalty were to be conducted by two or more JPs, preferably in the context of the court of Quarter Sessions. The guidance offered by Lambarde is highly significant in the context of this book. It shows how the practical application of the common law in England and Wales during the early modern period was dependent upon JPs making difficult decisions as part of their day-to-day activities in the Commission of the Peace. Although more JPs had received formal training at University or the Inns of Court towards the latter part of the early modern period, it must be remembered that many of these were lay people with little in-depth knowledge of the law. As part-time and unpaid officers of state, therefore, they occupied an invidious, yet crucial, position in the extension of state power – in territorial and functional senses – that was taking place during the period. Moreover, it was the ordinary JP, in many ways, that defined the limits to state intervention, for instance through deciding whether a meeting of people should be considered lawful (and therefore beyond the interference of the state) or unlawful (thereby falling within the state’s purview). Clearly, therefore, this was a highly peopled way of ordering the legal and territorial apparatus of the state. Despite the publication of the Eirenarcha, it is likely that different magistrates would classify similar practices in different ways, as a result of a whole range of factors. These factors would include the character of their own ‘local culture’, their associations with people within their locality, and their own personal characters. The process of state consolidation that took place during this period

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was highly variegated and plural in character. This theme is developed further in the following section.

Shaping and Steering the Local State Actors of different kinds were at the centre of the process of state consolidation in England and Wales during the early modern period. People had to make sense of the organizational and territorial aspects of the state apparatus that was being created. People, too, constituted the new organizations and territories of government through their various practices. Nowhere do we witness this peopling of the early modern state more than in the government of the localities. Loades (1997: 4) makes this point forcefully when he argues that: By the end of Elizabeth’s reign England was highly unified, but not particularly centralized . . . Elizabeth knew perfectly well that her power was restricted, although she would never have admitted the fact. It was restricted by those same men who upheld it, and the limitation was the price of their support.The queen could not tax at will, and she could not make law without the consent of parliament. Nor could she enforce law without the cooperation of her more substantial subjects. Just as a feudal monarchy had rested upon the contract of homage between the king and his tenants-in-chief,Tudor monarchy rested upon an unwritten understanding between the monarch and the ‘political nation’.

Despite the seeming precariousness of this political relationship, it is also important to recognize the cultural shift that took place during the early modern period as members of the local gentry began to view their commitment to the politics and culture of the ‘nation’ overtaking their commitment to the localities where they were based (e.g., Corrigan and Sayer 1985; Braddick 1991). Although there is much merit in such ideas, they can lead to an assumption in which the national and the local or, alternatively, the central and the local, are viewed as discreet entities. Holmes (1980) has shown, however, that the so-called county community of the Stuart period, one which was supposedly at odds with that of the state during the seventeenth century, was actually constituted through recourse to state organizations.The county community and the state, in other words, existed in a far more recursive and even ‘symbiotic’ relationship with each other, to the extent that they could be considered to be ‘institutionally inseparable’ (Braddick 1994: 15). We need to think through the extent to which we can speak of a central state apparatus during this period whose interests were totally distinct from those of the locality. In a similar way,

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we also need to view local government during this period as something that was constituted by its engagement with the politics of the centre (for similar discussions in later periods, see Ogborn 1991; Duncan and Goodwin 1988). This is certainly a conception of the relationship between the centre/national and local/shire that Massey (1994), among others, would recognize. Obviously, there is much to be gained from adopting such a relational take on the politics of the local during this period.There still remains a problem of terminology here, however, in that it is difficult to jettison such terms as ‘local’ or ‘national’ politics. Suffice to say that in referring to ‘local’ and/or ‘national’ politics, I also fully concede that these scales of political engagement are constituted through reference to political forces taking place at other spatial scales. The remaining paragraphs of this section seek to elaborate on the role of individuals in reproducing the organizations and territories of the state within localities and in negotiating this difficult relationship between the politics of the centre and the localities. I want to focus, in particular, on the experiences of one important landowning family in north Wales during the early modern period, the Wynns of Gwydir. The family had risen to prominence during the late fifteenth century as they benefited from the gradual dissolution of landholdings held by various kin-groups in northwest Wales (Jones 1995; Jones 2004b). A key turning point in their fortunes was their relocation to a new family estate in Gwydir in the Conwy valley. This enabled them to extend the size of their landholdings and ascend into the ranks of the lesser gentry. Key figures in the Wynn family include Morus Wynn during the early sixteenth century and Sir Richard Wynn in the seventeenth century, the latter developing strong associations with the court in London. The most prominent member of the family, however, was Sir John Wynn, the individual who featured at the very beginning of Chapter 1. Although he achieved a great deal of notoriety because of his reckless and antagonistic behaviour, he also acted as a key figure in the social, cultural and political life of north Wales during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Along with other members of the family, he acted as the mainstay of state government in north Wales for much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Members of the family filled key posts in the state administration of a number of counties, including Caernarfonshire, Denbighshire and Meirionnyddshire (Figure 4.3). The Wynn family ‘considered it their prime task to extend and strengthen government in a shire long accustomed to enjoying good order and in an area where lawful government had, in the past, been a cause of major concern’ (Jones 1995: 191–2; see also 1972). John Wyn ap Maredudd, for instance, was a member of the first Commission of the Peace in Caernarfonshire and Meirionnyddshire in the years following the Acts of Union (Jones 1995: 192–3). Morus Wynn, his successor as head of the family, also played a

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The Wynn family’s administrative stamping grounds

prominent role in the government of north-west Wales, acting as sheriff of Caernarfonshire in 1554–5, 1569–70 and 1577–8, as commissioner for the suppression of piracy in 1566–7, and as a member of parliament for Caernarfonshire in 1553–4, 1558–9 and 1563–7. He also acted as a JP for Caernarfonshire, Denbighshire and Meirionnyddshire from 1555 onwards (ibid.: 194;Williams 1956).The apogee of the family’s status in north Wales

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Figure 4.4 Sir John Wynn of Gwydir, 1st Bt, by William Sharp, after Unknown artist, line engraving, 61/8 in. × 41/2 in. (156 mm × 114 mm) © National Portrait Gallery, London came, however, during the tenure of Sir John Wynn as the head of the family (see Figure 4.4). This can be measured, in part, by the various administrative roles that he took on during his lifetime, including acting as: sheriff of Merionnyddshire in 1588–9 and 1600–1, of Caernarfonshire in 1587–8 and 1602–3, and of Denbighshire in 1606–7; member of parliament for Caernarfonshire in 1586–8; deputy Lord-Lieutenant of Caernarfonshire in 1587–8; and JP for all three counties for much of his life. In addition, he became a member of the Council of the Marches in 1603, under the patronage of Lord Zouche (ibid.: 198). But Sir John Wynn’s status could also be measured in other, more intangible ways. Lewis Bayly, Bishop of Bangor, for instance, could liken the house of Gwydir, with Sir John Wynn at its head, to a horse that did not know its own strength (quoted in ibid.: 191). Similarly, Sir John began to turn in more exalted – and more nationally orientated – circles, which again testifies to his high social status within the politics of the nation. During a visit to London in 1612, for instance, ‘he kissed the Prince’s hand . . . and dined at Court’ (Ballinger 1926: 94). It may not be too fanciful to suggest that Sir John Wynn considered himself to be a true gentleman who was

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‘free from drunkenness and frenzy and . . . entering the first part of old age’ as a key member of the local government of England and Wales (ibid.: 44). Subsequent members of the Wynn family did not reach the same giddy administrative heights within the locality, though two of Sir John Wynn’s sons, Sir John Wynn junior and Sir Richard Wynn, became closely associated with national political life. Sir John Wynn junior was closely associated with court life, while Sir Richard Wynn became treasurer to Queen Henrietta Maria (ibid.: 202). The death of Sir John Wynn senior, however, had, to all intents and purposes, ‘signified the end of an era in regional government in north Wales’ and of the place of the Wynn family within it (ibid.: 201). The above outline of the involvement of the Wynn family in the government of north-west Wales would seem to indicate a family that was firmly committed to the advancement of new forms of state administration within the region. If we scratch a little under the surface, however, we see a more complicated picture in which various members of the family – Sir John Wynn senior prominent among them – reinforcing, altering and contesting the new organizations and territories of government being adopted in north-west Wales during this period.To begin with, we should not underestimate the difficulties facing members of the Wynn family in their efforts to govern remote localities such as north-west Wales. The physical pressure of work could lead to difficulties in ensuring the effectiveness of state organizations such as the Commission of the Peace. In 1617/8, for instance, Sir John Wynn complained that he ‘daily receives complaints of felonies, which will grow to a head if not shortly suppressed . . . Sir John does his best, to his great toil and trouble, and therefore desires assistance, so that he may not be oppressed by the burden’ (Ballinger 1926: 131). Local government was not helped by the attitude of the population of north Wales towards the new state organizations and their agents. In an enquiry conducted in 1574 into the status of the Forest of Snowdon, the sheriff of Caernarfonshire experienced considerable difficulty in gaining access to information from the inhabitants of the county (ibid.: 9). He found the ‘people forward and was ashamed to see their savage behaviour, whereof the like has not been seen in any other county’ and argued that ‘no good can be done until the Earl’s officers come there to work terror in the minds of the forwardly bent’ (see also ibid.: 112). One cannot help but be reminded here of Lambarde’s advice to JPs concerning their roles and responsibilities as part of the Commission of the Peace. Writing in leafy Kent, it would have been relatively straightforward to paint an idealized vision of the workings of the Commission of the Peace. Matters were slightly different in peripheral north-west Wales where ordinary people were not used to the prescriptions of the English state and were likely, therefore, to contest and possibly undermine new mechanisms of

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government at every turn. Not surprisingly, there is some evidence to suggest that state personnel in north Wales began to adapt their practices so as not to deliberately antagonize the population under their supervision. Sir John Wynn ‘advise[d Sir John Salusbury] to avoid rousing the people who are never willing to be taxed’ (ibid.: 63). Whether we view this as Sir John Wynn’s attempt to contest the extension of state power into north Wales or as an indication of his efforts to tailor the impact of the state on the population of the region is a moot point. It does demonstrate, however, the key influence of the agents of the state on the development of state power within particular localities during this period (see also Jones 1955; Howells 1967 passim). Although we might choose to adopt a relatively neutral stance when trying to decipher Sir John’s impact on the implementation of state government in north Wales, it is clear that others – in the Council in the Marches for instance – were willing to berate him for his unwillingness to fulfil the duties expected of him as the state’s key representative in northwest Wales. Many letters demonstrate the widespread perception amongst key individuals in the central state apparatus that Sir John was reticent in fulfilling his governmental obligations. Lord Pembroke, referring to Sir John’s lack of progress in levying troops in north Wales (Ballinger 1926: 32), stated that: let them therefore contribute willingly and liberally and give their help in this service. They have ever been forward in Commarthas [a form of rent or tax] for their own private gains, let them therefore be more forward still in this Commartha, for the good of the whole State’ (on a broader note see Edwards 1929: iv).

Indeed, it is clear that members of the gentry saw their roles as state personnel as an important way of maintaining their own status within the localities, rather than being roles that they fulfilled for purely statal reasons (Braddick 2000: 30–1). The power that they acquired as a result of their activities as representatives of the state could act as useful levers in local disputes, whether with regard to land or influence. Many of the letters sent by, or addressed to, Sir John Wynn, for example, concern the need to ensure adequate representation for his family and friends on the list of state personnel in north Wales (Ballinger 1926; see also Jones 1955: passim; Howells 1967: 39). There are many other instances of accusations being brought against various members of the Wynn family, which reflect their desire to extend their physical control over the land of north Wales, often through the use of illegal measures (Ballinger 1926: 112–13; for charges brought against Morus Wynn, see Jones 1955: 44–5). These cases illustrate the way in which local politics and state administration could become entangled to

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the extent that it was often difficult to distinguish in practice between the public role and private interests of the Wynn family (Braddick 2000). The Wynn family were also to play an important part in the development of new territories of state power in north-west Wales during the early modern period. We need to note the hierarchical and coherent territorial organization that was put in place by the English state at this time (Braddick 2000: 17).The Council in the Marches, from 1471 (G.Williams 1992: 3), had acted as a ‘regional’ tier of government linking the Royal Council with local communities in Wales. Beneath this regional tier lay a number of shires, parishes, townships and circuits, which were all part of a common territorial framework designed to serve the needs of the state (Ballinger 1926: 43–4). But this was not merely an empty or abstract conception of the territory of the state. Each level of the territorial hierarchy was inherently peopled, with sheriffs being responsible for the government of the shire, JPs being linked to circuits and constables and overseers being responsible for parishes or townships. Conversely, we can see how a lack of activity on the part of state personnel could render state territories less meaningful and effective. Sir John’s advanced age in the seventeenth century meant that he experienced difficulties in discharging his duties on the JPs’ circuit, especially during winter months. In a letter to Robert Lewys at Gray’s Inn in London in December 1609 (ibid.: 82), he admitted that ‘Sir John seldom travels in winter, especially to Carnarvon, and is therefore resolved to have his son John put in the Commission of the Peace for co. Carnarvon’. Here, a JP’s lack of activity on the circuit undermined the effectiveness of a fundamental aspect of state territorial government within the shire. It is equally clear that the emerging state apparatus impacted on the character of part-time officers of state. Members of the Wynn family managed a balancing act between their role as local landowners and officers of the Crown. Morus Wynn was a ‘mid-Tudor Welsh uchelwr representing two distinct traditions – the conservative Welsh uchelwriaeth, based on concepts of military and kindred leadership and the rarer qualities of the courtier renowned for his gracious conduct’ (Jones 1995: 117). Other members of the local gentry for much of this period sought to combine these divergent ideals. A number still employed poets to write eulogies for them (Jones 1992). These poems drew on images and allegories that had been used to sing the praises of the independent Welsh princes of the thirteenth century. Sir John Wynn, for instance, was described in one poem as a ‘chieftain and protector of men’ (ibid.: 15). Sir John was interested in sponsoring an English–Welsh dictionary (Jones 1995) and was consistently criticized for his overt sense of duty to his kinspeople and his immediate locality (Ballinger 1926: 58). He also commissioned a history of the family’s exploits in The History of the Gwydir Family at the beginning of the

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seventeenth century (Wynn 1927; Jones 1990). The aim of the History was to chart the family’s long links with key figures in the history of north Wales. But, at the same time, these were individuals who increasingly sought to engage with the new opportunities offered to them by the English state apparatus. Sir John Wynn promoted an identity that tried to combine the local with the ‘national’. He sought to develop a series of marriage alliances with leading members of the English gentry. He also tried to ensure that his sons were educated as English ‘gentlemen’ in universities or Inns of Court in order to assure their status within the new administration of the state (Ballinger 1926: 34). Officers of state were expected, increasingly, to possess certain qualities: classical education, religious instruction and a knowledge of European languages (more broadly, see Skinner 1978, vol. 1: especially 213–21; 241–3). The development of these new ‘national’ identities for state personnel was also reflected in an individual’s comportment (see Braddick 2000: 21). William Wynn, a son of Sir John, wrote to his brother in 1639, explaining to him the intricacies of London fashion (Ballinger 1926: 266), stating that ‘the frieze coats they use now are not above three quarters of a yard long; the buttons of middle size and for the breast only. If the coat be of frieze it need not be lined; but if it be of cloth, it will be well to line it with plush.’ Sir John Wynn was clearly an individual who was engaging with a new ‘national’ society, in which a University education and London fashions were becoming ever more important. The complex act of negotiation between traditional Welsh and newer English identities, nevertheless, created a certain amount of uneasiness for the Wynns. Sir John, in particular, was unsure about aspects of this new national culture. For instance, although he sought to develop new marriage alliances with members of the lesser gentry in England, he was still uneasy concerning the qualities of English women. Sir John wrote to his son-inlaw, Sir Roger Mostyn, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, stating that (ibid.: 108): it is easier to have good women in this country [Wales], where they are simple and know no vice, than in England where a great deal of virtue is taught, but where they incline more to vice, because of the liberty which the English fashions allow to women.

Perhaps mirroring their part-time, if not half-hearted, engagement with the new organizations and territories of the English, it can be argued that the Wynns were effective combiners of two political and cultural identities. Although Sir John was proud of his encounter with the king and although he was somebody who sought to engage more fully with a national form of politics, society and culture, he was also somebody who was proud of his connections to a Welsh past. In this context, Sir John Wynn was an

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individual who occupied a ‘twilight world of government and self-service’ (Braddick 2000: 42).

State Personnel and the Embodiment of Early Modern State Consolidation Much has been made of the continuity and contingency that signified the transition from the medieval to the early modern state. Rather than developing new state organizations de novo, there is a strong case to be made for viewing the early modern process of state consolidation as one in which medieval state forms were invigorated and made more systematic (Tilly 1990). In a similar context, the contingency of this period of transformation has been highlighted (Spruyt 1994). Various organizational and territorial options were open to state leaders at the beginning of the early modern period and the ‘success’ of the medium-sized state in England and Wales, and in a wider European context, was not predestined to happen in any way. The empirical discussion in this chapter indicates that one way in which we can elaborate in concrete ways on both these themes is to focus on the peopled character of the early modern state. State personnel, whether in the emerging bureaucracies of the central state or located in the various localities, embodied the continuity of state forms from the medieval to the early modern periods.The continuing importance of the sovereign in ruling as well as reigning, of ties of nepotism within various state departments and of links of kin within the various localities speaks of state personnel of different kinds who bridged the divide between medieval and early modern state forms. Similarly, the latitude afforded to state officials in reproducing state forms, particularly with regard to local government, alludes to an early modern process of state transformation that was highly contingent, variegated and plural in character. A range of individuals in both the central and local state apparatuses, as well as a variety of non-human actants, were enrolled within these organizational and territorial developments. Such comments raise more philosophical questions concerning the role played by the servants of the state in reproducing it as a territorial organization. At one level, it may be possible to refer to state personnel as individuals that contested, challenged or undermined the functional and territorial prescriptions of the state. Sir John Wynn, for instance, demonstrated a high level of inefficiency in the governance of north Wales. Was Sir John Wynn, in this sense, guilty of challenging or even undermining the central state’s initiatives within north Wales? To be sure, his lack of enthusiasm for his responsibilities as JP, deputy Lord Lieutenant or sheriff, may well have detracted from the ability of the state apparatus to monitor and

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affect the various economic and social activities taking place within north Wales during this time. Conversely, to what extent was Sir John Wynn an individual who ultimately facilitated the extension of state power into north Wales by massaging the state’s norms so that they became more palatable to the ordinary person in the street? At one level, this is an empirical question, which can be answered by examining the degree to which the state’s representatives fulfilled or ignored their duties in the localities. But it is also a philosophical question concerning the role of people within the organizations and territories of the state. If we are serious about moving away from an understanding of the state as a bureaucratic and unpeopled monolith and if we take seriously the peopling of the state during all time periods, then we need to focus on how individuals – dotted throughout the state’s apparatus – can make a difference to the way it works. Determining whether the actions of individuals within the state apparatus actually contribute to more or less effective means of state government is, at heart, a matter for conjecture since any satisfactory answer to such a question would depend, in the last instance, on normative assumptions about what the state should do or what it should seek to achieve.This is a theme that is taken up further in Chapter 7.

Chapter Five

The State of High Modernity: the Age of the Inspector

The Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government There can be few better symbols of the increased infrastructural power of the modern state – in organizational, territorial and personal terms – than the census, the decennial act of overt surveillance conducted by the state on its population. There is a tendency, however, to take the census for granted and to undervalue its immense significance. It is worth pausing, in this respect, to remind oneself of the implications of the census, in terms of a peopled and territorial state apparatus. The best illustration of its significance appears in the words of the Registrar General of Great Britain, the head of the census office, published in 1854. The Census of 1851, to which he referred, was evidently dependent on the comprehensive organizational and territorial reach of the British state of the period. He outlined the means through which the country was subdivided for the purposes of the census as follows: The local machinery by which these objects [various forms of population statistics] were to be obtained in England and Wales was based upon the subdivisions of the country introduced by the Poor Law and Registration Acts. The 624 Registration Districts (which are generally identical with Poor Law Unions), each having a Superintendent Registrar, are divided into 2190 Subdistricts, each have a local Registrar of births and deaths. These Subdistricts were, for the purposes of the Census, again divided into 30,610 Enumeration Districts, each being assigned to one Enumerator, who was required to complete his enumeration on one day, March 31st (General Register Office 1854: 1).

The above quote is significant for a number of reasons. First, it shows how the basic structure of the census, which was set out during the

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mid-nineteenth century, has been preserved more or less intact until today (see Dewdney 1983; Higgs 1989: 7–10). Second, it illustrates the organizational, territorial and peopled aspects of the state apparatus that underpinned the census. The census was based upon a clear organizational structure that was derived from the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. It was similarly based upon the territorial structure put in place by the 1834 Act, as well as being dependent upon its various personnel.1 In addition to this pre-existing organizational and territorial framework, certain temporary measures were put in place for the administration of each census, most significantly the designation of new territorial units – the enumeration district – and the employment of enumerators. The state played an active role in monitoring even these temporary administrative measures: The scheme for the division of each Sub-district into Enumeration Districts having been prepared on this principle by the Registrar, was revised by the Superintendent Registrar, and finally approved by the Registrar-General.The Registrar nominated persons to be the Enumerators of the various districts, and these nominations were, in like manner, subject to the approbation of the Superintendent Registrar and to the ultimate sanction of the RegistrarGeneral (General Register Office 1854: 1–2).

It was this enlarged organizational and territorial capacity of the state, evidenced in the census, that enabled the state to increase its infrastructural coordination of its people and territory. The Registrar General’s outline of census procedures further emphasizes the high levels of infrastructural efficiency that were part and parcel of the census: Within about two months after the taking of the Census, all the Householders’ Schedules, amounting to about 4,300,000 distinct Returns, and the Enumeration Books, more than 38,000 in number, had been received at the Central Office; and on the 7th June 1851, ten weeks from the day of enumeration, a statement of the gross population and number of houses, obtained from the Summaries forwarded with the Returns, was communicated to the Secretary of State, and at once made public (ibid.: 3).

The census was, therefore, a key feature of emerging governmental technologies during the nineteenth century. A variety of different human and non-human actants were brought together into an organizationally and territorially framed network that was critical for the distanciation and coordination of state power during the period. And, yet, while the census is rightly viewed as a key instance of the increased infrastructural coordination of the modern state (Hannah 1999; Mann 1984), we should not underestimate the extent to which it also masks a certain failing and myopia on the part of the state. In a relatively frank

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admission, the Registrar General admitted that extensive revisions were required of the population estimates published by the General Register Office in the few weeks after the completion of the census. ‘[I]n order to ensure accuracy’, the Registrar General (General Register Office 1854: 3) argued, ‘it was considered an indispensable process to examine . . . every total throughout the Enumerators’ Returns, as well as to revise each separate column of information for the purpose of rectifying conflicting statements and other errors.’ Completing this process of verification entailed the checking of more than twenty million entries, which appeared on more that one and a quarter million pages of the Enumerators’ Books. Although one can view this process of verification as something that further demonstrates the meticulousness of the British state in charting the extent and character of its population, it surely also belies a relative lack of confidence among the civil servants of the General Register Office, particularly with regard to the work of its various enumerators.To a large extent, such uncertainty was warranted. Behind the façade of organizational efficiency lay a process that was highly dependent upon the judgements made by individual Enumerators. Enumerators, for instance, were asked to estimate the numbers of people within their Enumeration District living in barges, house boats, barns etc., as well estimating the people who were temporarily away from their homes and people who usually lived elsewhere (ibid.: 2). Despite the pretensions to objective uniformity and efficiency contained within the administration of the census, many of the statistics produced by it were based on individual guesswork. Similarly, the Enumerators’ books were, seemingly, riddled with errors to the extent that civil servants within the General Register Office were forced to tally all entries a second time. As Higgs (1989: 14) has so aptly put it, ‘it is important to recognize . . . the relatively poor quality of some of the agents involved; illiterate householders, slap-dash enumerators, and registrars who did not supervise the work properly’. In this respect, the workings of the nineteenth-century census, as well as demonstrating the burgeoning power of the British state of high modernity, also shows some of its major limitations. Individual state personnel clearly facilitated this extension of state power but, at the same time, their admittance into the state apparatus could qualify the state’s effectiveness at a fundamental level (Driver 1989: 272). The productive tension between new state organizations, new state territories and new state personnel recurred throughout the British state of the nineteenth century and forms the immediate focus of enquiry for this chapter. A number of historical geographers have examined the transformation of the British state that took place during the nineteenth century and it is significant that they also have focused, at least implicitly, on the interaction between state personnel, state organizations and state territories that facilitated this process. Driver (1989), for instance, has explored the

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development of Poor Law Unions and the related workhouse system in England and Wales during the mid-nineteenth century. The most fascinating aspect of his work, at least to my mind, deals with the role played by state agents – at a number of different scales – in reproducing the new state forms that were emerging during this period. In arguing that it is ‘important to see official policy in its social and administrative context’, Driver (1989: 272; more broadly, see Driver 1985) draws attention to the various categories of people – in the central Poor Law Authority, in other government departments, in civil society and in more local Boards of Guardians – that were implicated in the specific organizational and territorial trajectories taken by the Poor Law. As Driver (ibid.) puts it, ‘far from being preordained by the 1834 Report, central policy between 1834 and 1883 represents the outcome of a series of conflicts and compromises between different authorities and interests’. Philo’s (1987; see also 1992) work, too, speaks of a consolidation of British state power during the nineteenth century that was predicated, at least in part, on the practices and ideologies of a variety of state personnel. Philo’s (1987) specific focus on the extension of a national and state-underwritten system of ‘mad-houses’ in England during the mid-nineteenth century enables him to show how the growing institutionalization of the ‘mad-business’ was associated with a contemporaneous professionalization of ‘mad-doctors’. The creation of the state-sanctioned professional, therefore, shaped, and was shaped by, a related formation of a new state organization to deal with lunatics. Moreover, the social and organizational separation that was characteristic of the ‘mad-business’ during this period was mirrored by a similar spatial separation of lunatics from a sane society (ibid.: 401–4). In all these developments, we witness the productive tension between people, organizations and territories that has so characterized the transformation of the state over time. The focus on the nineteenth century in these contributions and, indeed, in this chapter is significant, since it was a period in which the British state underwent a so-called ‘revolution in government’. Echoing Elton’s famous description of the Tudor revolution in government (see Chapter 4), authors such as MacDonagh (1958: 53) have argued that the ‘function and structure of executive government changed profoundly in the course of the nineteenth century’. Key to this revolution in government was a two-fold shift in the extent and character of the English state. In terms of its extent, it is clear that the English state of the nineteenth century began to grapple with a far greater number of social and economic issues than it had previously done. A variety of social or economic ills, throughout the nineteenth century, fell under the state’s gaze. Factory and industrial legislation became a cause of concern, for instance, with a total of ten separate Acts being passed between 1802 and 1867. Twelve Acts were promulgated in

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the field of local government and public health between 1829 and 1866; eight different Acts with regard to the poor law were passed between 1782 and 1865; and a further five education Acts were passed between 1833 and 1870 (Evans 2001: 489–94; see also Fraser 2003: xv–xxiii). The preparation and passing of such legislation, of course, required numerous state personnel and there was a marked increase in their numbers throughout the nineteenth century. In 1780, for instance, there were only approximately 16,000 government employees but, by 1870, this figure had increased to 54,000 (Evans 2001: 358). A further illustration of the increasing scope of government can be found in the workload of MPs. From the 1830s onwards, the role of being an MP gradually attained the status of a fulltime job. Parliamentary sessions gradually increased in length and there was also a corresponding lengthening of the parliamentary day. Perhaps the most apposite indicator of the growing business of central state government during this period has been noted by Evans (2001: 272): ‘twenty-five volumes of Hansard will take the reader from 1820 to 1830; sixty-three must be slogged through to get from 1840 to 1850’. The business of politics, and with it the role of state government, was clearly waxing from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Equally fundamental changes took place in terms of the character of the English state as it shifted from being viewed as merely a ‘gigantic embodied policeman’ to an organization that had to respond to, and legislate concerning, a variety of social, economic, cultural and environmental challenges (Maitland 1950: 505; MacLeod 1988: 2). A key example of this change was its growing organizational commitment to a variety of different social ills, ones that were increasingly being viewed as legitimate objects of government (also Driver 1988: 276–7). Further developments took place in the context of the more detailed territorialization of state power. The key change, in this respect, took place with regard to the creation of Poor Law Unions as the territorial unit upon which the implementation of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was based. The Poor Law Unions were created through the grouping together of different parishes, a process that was implemented on the advice of Assistant Commissioners (Driver 1989). But, significantly, the Poor Law Unions also became the territorial focus for a number of other administrative roles and responsibilities. We have seen, for instance, how the Poor Law Unions acted as the territorial crutch around which the census of the nineteenth century was based (Ogborn 1991). The key change was seen, however, in the context of the British state’s continuing professionalization. As I showed in Chapter 4, the beginnings of a state bureaucracy, staffed by competent and professional individuals, could be witnessed from the eighteenth century onwards. This shift in the character of British government at the centre continued apace throughout

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the nineteenth century. The vast majority of government employees were appointed on merit by the second half of the nineteenth century. A key driver of this change was the increase in the scope of government itself, noted above, a development that required more, and more varied, civil servants. Key thinkers within government circles were also demanding a shift in the character of government, most notably Sir Charles Trevelyan and Sir Stafford Northcote with their publication of the Report on the Organization of the Civil Service in 1853. Trevelyan and Northcote’s report berated the civil service for appointing the ‘unambitious, and the indolent or incapable . . . whose abilities do not warrant an expectation that they will succeed in the open professions’ (quoted in Evans 1978: 112; see also Gordon 1999: 343–8). As Evans (2001: 360) notes, such comments were, by the 1850s, relatively unfair since a growing proportion of civil servants, especially in the Foreign and India Offices, were being appointed on merit. The Treveylan–Northcote Report, nonetheless, acted as a further spur to the growing professionalization of the civil service during the period. In 1870, William Gladstone introduced a wholly open competition for the appointment of civil servants and, to all intents and purposes, the overt importance of patronage for civil service appointments and promotions had ceased (ibid.: 361). The professionalized and bureaucratized habitus of the modern state had assumed its full force. In this respect, the fundamental change in the character of the British state during this period is all the more surprising given the prevalence of an ideology of political economy that stressed the need to reduce the scope and influence of the state at all costs. Such a laissez-faire approach advocated a strict limit on the interference of the state, especially in economic affairs, and a related emphasis on the need to curtail its expenditure. Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister between 1812 and 1827, for instance, ‘had always favoured free trade and stated his belief as early as 1812 that “the less commerce and manufactures were meddled with the more they were likely to prosper” ’ (Evans 2001: 238; quote from Brock 1941: 42). As well as reflecting the prevailing liberal ideology, such statements also reflected the economic exigencies of the period. The Napoleonic Wars, which had finally been terminated, had placed a great drain on the country’s resources and the efforts to service the national debt led to a continual strain on the state’s finances. At first glance, it is difficult, in this sense, to explain the expansion in the scale and scope of the British state during the course of the nineteenth century. How could a society that advocated liberal and laissez-faire attitudes countenance the proliferation of state activities that took place during this period (Burn 1964; Lubenow 1971)? This is a question, indeed, that has exercised the minds of a number of social, economic and political historians of the nineteenth century. As Bartrip (1983: 63) puts it:

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Did mid-nineteenth century England constitute an ‘age of laissez-faire’ which gave way to an ‘age of collectivism’, or did an ‘age of mercantilism’ merge into one of state regulation during which process . . . the state exercised considerable control over the day-to-day lives of its citizens?

The British state during the nineteenth century, therefore, was faced with a number of difficult questions. What was the role of the state? In what, how and where should it interfere? What should it leave well alone? A number of competing interpretations have sought to shed light on this issue. One way of reconciling these differing tendencies has been to recognize the existence of different prevailing ideologies and, consequently, different stages of attitudes towards state interference during the nineteenth century. Such an approach was popularized by Dicey at the beginning of the twentieth century, when he identified three stages of state legislation within Britain.The first phase of ‘quiescence’, between 1800 and 1830, was characterized by a lack of state legislation. This was followed by a second stage of ‘individualism’, between 1825 and 1870, in which the state sought to curtail any governmental imposition on individual liberty. There came, finally, a third ‘collectivist’ phase, between 1865 and 1900, in which state interference in social and economic processes was countenanced so long as it benefited the mass of the people (Dicey 1905). According to such an interpretation, the apparent inconsistency between laissez-faire attitudes and growing state interference can be explained away by noting their association with particular periods within the nineteenth century. The contradiction between the two sets of ideologies – one liberal and individualist, the other collectivist – is merely a temporal illusion. It would seem, however, that every effort to periodize the past in such a way, although seductive at first glance, is ultimately doomed to failure (see more broadly Jones and Phillips 2005; Ogborn 1998b). Dicey’s periodization of the nineteenth century has been roundly criticized by subsequent generations of historians, specifically for its over-simplification of a complex set of social and governmental processes taking place during the nineteenth century (see, for example, Parris 1960). As well as criticizing Dicey’s contributions, this work has also posited new ways of reconciling the existence of two apparently countervailing ideologies during the period. One set of historians have argued that the ideologies of liberalism and laissez-faire are as much a myth as they are a reality of nineteenth-century attitudes towards political economy. Brebner (1948), for instance, has argued that a focus on the ideology of liberalism is misleading in the context of nineteenth-century state intervention. Government legislation grew in extent from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards, especially so after approximately 1830. His empirical focus lies on the regulation of juvenile chimney sweeps. A succession of different laws were passed during the

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nineteenth century as a way of regulating this activity (in a broader context, see Holmes 1976; Parris 1960). At the same time, others have argued that the nineteenth century as a whole was not truly collectivist or interventionist in character at all. Despite the increasing governmental legislation that characterized the nineteenth century, it has been maintained that the vast majority of it was a dead letter or, in other words, legislation that was not implemented in any real sense. As Bartrip (1983: 66) has incisively noted, when considering the regulation of juvenile chimney sweeps, one could come to the opposite conclusions drawn by Brebner in his study. He argues that ‘the case of the juvenile chimney sweeps illustrates the inability of the state to regulate effectively even in an area in which it was consistently committed’. In this sense, there is very little evidence of effective state intervention during this period. More recently, certain authors have attempted to navigate a middle route through this debate. As Evans (2001: 363) aptly notes, ‘[n]o classical economist, from Adam Smith onwards, had denied that the State must fill gaps which private enterprise could not or would not fill’. The Benthamite Utilitarians, described by Evans as ‘second-generation laissez-faire philosophers’, promoted Bentham’s dictum: ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation’ (quoted in ibid.). Belief in this Utilitarian principle enabled the most avowed liberals to countenance state intervention, so long as it led to the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’. Perkin (1977: 111), too, complicates the relationship between individualism and collectivism during the nineteenth century when he identifies ‘at least two kinds of laissez-faire individualism and at least seven kinds of collectivism’. Furthermore, he notes that ‘several kinds of collectivism overlapped and were perfectly compatible with one kind of individualism, if not both’. We witness, here, the complicated relationship between advocates of state intervention and those who saw it as an unwarranted infringement of human and economic rights. In many ways, the sanctioning of state intervention – or, in the terms of this book, the sanctioning of the reproduction and extension of organizational and territorial aspects of the state apparatus – was highly contested and dependent upon particular circumstances. I want to argue that people – either as independent advocates or reformers or as various types of state agent – were at the heart of this continual negotiation of the role and extent of the state during the nineteenth century. They were individuals who showed an ambivalence towards their own practices, which also reflected the British state’s uncertainty concerning its role during this period. This, then, is the broad theme that acts as the focus of enquiry for the remaining sections of this chapter. In particular, the chapter focuses on the issue of industrial regulation that was gathering pace during the nineteenth century, specifically that relating to factory production. Examining this

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issue enables us to illustrate empirically some of the broad themes raised in the introduction, namely the qualitative shift in the number and extent of state organizations, their use of spatial and territorial order, and the key role played by state agents in facilitating and contesting these developments. The key figures within this process of transformation were the various inspectors and other assorted specialists that embodied the process of state transformation, and the associated revolution in government, which characterized this period.

The Age of the Inspector The key role played by state agents – either as civil servants or various categories of government inspectors – in the process of state transformation that took place during the nineteenth century has long been recognized by historians. MacDonagh (1958: 59), whose work did much to highlight the so-called revolution in nineteenth-century government, drew attention to the significance of the appointment of government inspectors, arguing that it represented ‘a step of immense, if unforeseen, consequences’ since it ‘brought the [legislative] process into life’. The significance of inspectors for the fundamental changes affecting the British state of this period was such that the nineteenth century has been described as the ‘age of the inspector’ (Burn 1964: 17). But whereas historians have acceded to the critical role played by government inspectors in shaping new state organizations, laws and policies, they have not emphasized the equally great contributions made by government inspectors to the evolving territorial form of the state during this period. Nor have they stressed in sufficient terms the way in which the subjectivities of government inspectors could be shaped by their diverse experiences ‘in the field’. In this way, I want to suggest that inspectors reflected the ambiguity associated with state intervention in the nineteenth century. The experience of inspecting could lead particular inspectors to radical re-evaluations of their own – and the state’s – role in governing society, leading them to demand an increase in state intervention in economic and social processes. The majority of inspectors, however, were unsure, even nervous, of their duties and responsibilities. In negotiating these ambivalent attitudes towards governmental inspection during the nineteenth century, various inspectors were centrally involved in the unfolding geographies of the emerging state apparatus. Furthermore, their changing positions within this apparatus could also lead individual inspectors to re-evaluate their place within, and attitude towards, the state habitus. Government inspectors performed a variety of roles. Most fundamentally, they were involved in ascertaining the degree to which the enforcement

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of state legislation took place in numerous fields. As such, they were to ‘assume supervisory and enforcement responsibilities previously undertaken locally or not at all’ (Bartrip 1982: 606). The degree to which inspectors could actually enforce an activity or regulation, however, varied considerably. There is evidence, for instance, that some inspectors did not wish to enforce a specific activity, particularly if they were dealing with powerful industrialists (e.g., ibid.: 616). Government inspectors, too, were in the vanguard of the state’s attempts to collect information concerning various social and economic processes taking place within its boundaries (more broadly, see Driver 1988: 277).The production of reports, which ‘indicated the degree of compliance with the law and the appropriateness of that law’, became a key feature of the inspector’s role during the nineteenth century (ibid.: 606). In this way, inspectors became the ‘eyes and ears’ of government (MacLeod 1988: 14; see also Driver 1985). Government inspectors, more significantly, could also play a crucial broader role in advocating legislative change. We witness their potential, in this respect, in MacDonagh’s model of the nineteenth-century revolution in government. According to the MacDonagh (1958) model, the enactment of a piece of state legislation came about as a result of the identification of a certain social or economic ‘evil’, by either social reformers or politicians. The appointment of government inspectors in order to monitor the implementation of the initial Act, in turn, drew attention to its failings and to the full extent and character of the social or economic evil that the original Act was supposed to counter.These inspectors, civil servants or assistant commissioners – ‘statesmen in disguise’ – recommended revisions and improvements to the original legislation through their official reports and memoranda, so that governmental intervention was augmented. The whole process of reform, according to MacDonagh, was carried forward through an internal dynamic, within which the state agent – most clearly the government inspector – played a leading role (Perkin 1977: 106–7; MacLeod 1988: 12). Government inspectors acted as a key fulcrum around which the transformation of the British state during the nineteenth century progressed.We should be wary, however, of ascribing a constant role for government inspectors throughout the whole of this period. Much work by historians has shown how the character of the work of inspectors varied throughout the nineteenth century, as the professionalization of government, discussed in the introduction to this chapter, proceeded. MacLeod (1988) describes these various stages as follows. First came the temporary specialist, assigned to a particular government department or type of social or economic activity for a short period of time, and who possessed only a broad-based and general understanding of the social and/or economic issues with which he (and they were only men during the first half of the nineteenth century) was concerned. This person was followed by the inspector, who lay at the

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‘cutting edge of expertise’ (ibid.: 14), and who was viewed as a ‘repository of central knowledge, wisdom and tradition . . . a skilled adviser, a beneficial mediator as well’ (H. Finer, quoted in ibid.: 13). These freewheeling and multi-talented inspectors were gradually tamed by the mid-1870s through processes of ‘departmentalization’ or, in other words, tied to specific government departments and to the rules, regulations and norms that existed within them. Finally came a ‘triumph of law’ towards the end of the nineteenth century, in which the role of the maverick and influential inspector receded, playing second fiddle to civil servants trained in the emerging bureaucratic machinery of Whitehall (MacLeod 1988: 16). Despite the rather romantic undertones within this work, MacLeod provides an interesting account of the growing professionalization and bureaucratization of the roles of inspectors throughout the nineteenth century. It shows how the role of inspectors could change, and be changed by, the developing character of state bureaucracy during this period. Legislation and the role of inspectors were by no means constant, either in a thematic or a sectoral sense. Significant variations existed in terms of those areas of social or economic activity which benefited from the official scrutiny afforded by inspectors. Bartrip (1982: 607) has illustrated the differential gaze of government during this period (see Table 5.1). Certain key points arise from this table. Firstly, the growing role of government inspection was a long-drawn-out process that extended through much of the nineteenth century. The establishment of an inspecting precedent did not lead to a rash of government inspectors being employed in order to scrutinize all social and economic activities taking place within the boundaries of the British state. Secondly, it is important to note that certain activities were subject to government scrutiny far more than others. In 1875, it is noticeable that factories, tithe commutation, education, public health and the mercantile marine were deemed to be most needy of government inspection. Other activities and processes were only lightly scrutinized. Indeed, as Bartrip (1983: 80) aptly notes, the two largest spheres of economic activity during the nineteenth century – domestic service and agriculture – were not subject to government inspection at all. Finally, we may note the lack of relationship between the date of commencement of inspection and its subsequent thoroughness. One would have assumed, at a theoretical level, that the social and economic evils (MacDonagh 1958) that required the most immediate inspection would have been the subject of appropriate legislation sooner rather than later and would, also, have benefited from the most extensive forms of inspection by 1875. The converse might also be supposed; less problematic activities would have been the subject of legislation later during the nineteenth century, subsequently experiencing only lenient forms of inspection. No such pattern exists in Table 5.1, which suggests that government legislation and inspection progressed in a rather

Table 5.1

The growth of the culture of inspection in nineteenth-century Britain (from Bartrip 1982:607) No. in office in 1875

Area of inspection

Year est.

Schools of anatomy

1832

5

Factories

1833

54

Lunacy

1833

6

Emigration Poor Law

1833 1834

2

Prisons

1836

2

Tithe commutation

1836

50

Education Railways

1839 1840

140 4

Mines

1842

26

Public health/local government Mercantile marine

1848

59

1850

111

Charities

1853

3

Juvenile reformatories Burial grounds

1854

2

1855

1

Police

1856

4

Vaccination Salmon fisheries

1861 1861

5

Alkali works

1863

Oyster and mussel fisheries Contagious diseases in animals Explosive substances

1866

1

1869

20

1875

2

Legislation that empowered the inspector Schools of Anatomy Act (2 and 3 Will. IV, c. 75) Factory Act (3 and 4 Will. IV, c. 103) Lunacy Act (3 and 4 Will. IV, c. 36) Colonial Office Order Poor Law Amendment Act (4 and 5 Will. IV, c. 76) Prisons Act (5 and 6 Will. IV, c. 38) Tithe Act (6 and 7 Will. IV, c. 71) Committee of Council Minute Railways Regulation Act (3 and 4 Vict., c. 97) Mines Act (5 and 6 Vict., c. 99) Public Health Act (11 and 12 Vict., c. 63) Mercantile Marine Act (13 and 14 Vict., c. 93) Charitable Trusts Act (16 and 17 Vict., c. 137) Youthful Offenders Act (17 and 18 Vict., c. 86) Burial Grounds Act (18 and 19 Vict., c. 108) Police (Counties and Boroughs) Act (19and 20 Vict., c. 69) Privy Council Order Fisheries Act (24 and 25 Vict., c. 109) Alkali Act (26 and 27 Vict., c. 124) Oyster and Mussel Fisheries Act (29 and 30 Vict., c. 85) Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act (32 and 33 Vict., c. 70) Explosives Act (38 Vict., c. 17)

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more haphazard and contingent way during the course of the nineteenth century. Following this broad contextual discussion of the character of government inspection during the nineteenth century, I want to focus, in particular, on one type of economic activity that was highly contentious, namely that of factory regulation. The focus on factory production is warranted for a number of reasons. The social conditions of factory production had been a key issue of debate for much of the early nineteenth century and, in many ways, provided the precedent for subsequent legislation and inspection in other spheres of socio-economic activity. In addition, as Bartrip (1982: 612) maintains, ‘[t]he Factory Act, 1833 . . . contained the most detailed and far-reaching exposition of inspectorial powers ever produced in Britain’ and, as such, provides an invaluable insight into the role played by government inspectors in reproducing new state forms. I focus in particular on the significant contribution of Leonard Horner to the early evolution of factory inspection and legislation during the 1830s and 1840s.

Leonard Horner and the Regulation of Factory Production The Industrial Revolution set in train a number of far-reaching changes to the social and spatial ordering of society.Within geography, Gregory (1982; 1989; see also Carter 1989) has shown how factory production was predicated on revolutionary ways of organizing the time and space of raw materials, human labour and finished products. Most pernicious for the factory workers of the time was the new forms of temporal and spatial discipline that were imposed on them. One columnist in the Leicester Journal of 1846, for instance, commented on the soul-destroying nature of factory labour as follows: For 12 mortal hours does the leviathan of machinery toil on with vigour undiminished with pace unslackened and the human machines must keep pace with him. What signify languor, sickness, disease? The pulsations of the physical monster continue and his human agents must drag after him (quoted in Fraser 2003: 12).

The grind of factory work was especially unbearable for those children and young people who worked in the factories of the period. Children and young people were particularly vulnerable to the many dangers – physical and moral – that resided within the factory gates (ibid.: 12–13). The employment of children and young people in factories also meant that they could not, in the majority of circumstances, take advantage of what little formal education was on offer during the period. Admittedly, some

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education was linked to factory employment but there was still a strong argument made during the nineteenth century concerning the impact of formal employment, especially in factories, on the educational opportunities afforded to children (see Evans 2001: 290). The employment of children in factories – along with broader questions to do with the length of the working day – became viewed as manifest social evils during the early to mid-nineteenth century. Concerted efforts were made throughout the nineteenth century to react to this social evil by devising legislation that would reform industrial practices within factories. Bartrip (1983: 68) has denoted three separate periods of factory legislation during the nineteenth century (see also Thomas 1948). The first period, from 1802 until 1832, was characterized by various ineffective forms of legislation, predominantly because the legislation lacked any administrative machinery to back it up. More effective forms of legislation, and an associated administrative machinery, were enacted between 1833 and 1863 and were centred on the textile industry and allied trades. It was not until a later period, between 1864 and 1901, that equally effective Acts were enacted, which dealt with other factory-based trades and industries. Within this broad spectrum of legislation, it is imperative to focus in particular on the Factory Act of 1833. The original campaign for factory reform had been led by protesters and reformers such as Richard Oastler and the Reverend George Bull. Their protests had fallen on sympathetic ears in the person of Michael Sadler, MP. A committee under his chairmanship produced a ‘damning litany of abuse, exploitation, factory cripples, immorality and premature death – all attributed to the factory system’ (Evans 2001: 288). The main recommendation of the report was to limit the factory working day to ten hours. A subsequent Royal Commission under the chairmanship of Edwin Chadwick changed the nature of the debate somewhat by focusing in more detail on the labour of children within factories. Its recommendation – that children under the age of nine should not be employed in textile mills and that those between nine and thirteen were to be limited to an eight-hour day (with two hours a day being set aside for education) – was accepted by Parliament in August 1833 (Marvel 1977: 383). Most significantly in the context of this study was the employment of four inspectors in order to monitor factories’ adherence to the new law (Fraser 2003: 22; Bartrip 1983: 69). Up until 1878, each of the four inspectors acted as relatively independent heads of their own particular district. This highly devolved structure was only called into question towards the latter part of the nineteenth century as its administrative unwieldiness became increasingly apparent. The situation was resolved in 1878 as a result of a Royal Commission’s recommendation that a Chief Inspector of Factories should be appointed, a role that was first fulfilled by an Inspector Redgrave (Martin 1969: 429).

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There has been much debate, in this regard, concerning the effectiveness of the 1833 Act. Academics such as Peacock (1984) have sought to demonstrate the success of inspectors and magistrates in facilitating the prosecution of law-breaking factory and mill owners. For Peacock, the high percentage of successful prosecutions made against factories and mills that contravened the 1833 Factory Act demonstrates the effective role played by inspectors in monitoring manufacturing activity at the time, along with the able support offered to them by magistrates in the various localities (see also Nardinelli 1985). Indeed, the roles of factory inspectors and magistrates alike enabled Thomas (1948: 70) to claim that the 1833 Factory Act should be viewed as the ‘first effective factory act’. As another illustration of its alleged success, Lord Ashley, who had been intimately involved in the passing of the Bill, could assert that one in every eleven mill owners in Great Britain had been convicted of some offence or other under the 1833 Act in only two years after it had been passed (Marvel 1977: 384). Bartrip (1982; 1983; 1985), on the other hand, has sought to elaborate on the insufficiencies of the Factory Act of 1833 (and indeed of other subsequent Factory Acts), focusing in the main on the inadequate number of inspectors that were able to ensure compliance with it. He maintains that ‘the resources of the factory department . . . were always severely stretched’ (Bartrip 1983: 71). It was only towards the very end of the nineteenth century, according to Bartrip, that the situation was alleviated somewhat with the appointment of a far greater number of lowlevel factory inspectors and of the creation of regional offices for factory inspection (ibid.). Support for Bartrip’s viewpoint comes from Leonard Horner, one of the most prominent factory inspectors of the mid-nineteenth century. He was well aware of the limitations of the 1833 Act, especially in terms of its practical implementation (Horner 1971 [1840]: 1).There is evidence, too, that the enforcement of the terms of the 1833 Act varied considerably in a geographical sense. Scottish manufacturers, for example, were able to lobby for Leonard Horner, the inspector that had been assigned to their territory, to be replaced by James Stuart who was, seemingly, far more sympathetic to their practices. The situation was slightly different in England, where inspectors were able to prosecute a number of mill owners from the very outset, thus providing a slightly more encouraging account of the efficacy of the Act. At one level, therefore, it is possible to study the 1833 Act through examining general themes with regard to its enactment and implementation. And, yet, in a very real sense, we must look at the work of the individual inspectors if we are to fully elucidate the effectiveness of the 1833 Act, as well as showing their intimate association with the evolving organizational and territorial form of the state (in a related context, see Driver 1989; Ogborn 1991; Philo 1987). In this context, we can do no better than focus on the life and work of Leonard Horner, FRS, FGS, who acted as an

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Figure 5.1

Leonard Horner, Inspector of Factories. Photo: Heriot-Watt University Museum and Archive

Inspector for the Factory Act of 1833 between 1833 and 1859 (see Figure 5.1). He has been described as the ‘most impressive and influential of the first English factory inspectors’ (Martin 1969: 412) and his work drew positive comments from even Karl Marx in Das Kapital.2 Horner was born in Edinburgh in 1785 as the second son of a wealthy and successful linen merchant, one John Horner. Both Leonard and his elder brother Francis Horner (later MP and a prominent Whig) were brought up in the politicized and educated life of Edinburgh at the turn of the nineteenth century. Leonard was educated in the Edinburgh High School and, subsequently, entered the University of Edinburgh in 1799 at the age of fourteen, where he studied moral philosophy and political economy, as well as mathematics, chemistry and geology. He left the University of Edinburgh at the age of nineteen in order to become a partner in his father’s linen business, being based in its London branch. He subsequently spent time working as an underwriter for Lloyds of London and also travelled extensively in Europe, visiting Italy and the Rhine Valley.

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It is clear that his upbringing as a Scot, a Whig and a Protestant influenced his attitude towards his work as an inspector, teaching him to ‘value independence and to feel a sense of public duty and the claims of conscience’ (Martin 1969: 415). He became a firm believer in the principle of Utilitarianism, namely the belief that social forms should be of the most benefit to the most people. But it is his background as a Protestant and his interest in science that shaped his later career as a government inspector. Both his religious and scientific backgrounds emphasized, according to Horner, a need for rationality. In a letter to his daughter, written in 1857, he maintained that ‘I suppose it is a rare quality, the possession of that candour which would be as ready to admit to a fact against as in favour of a preconceived opinion’ (Lyell 1890 vol. 2: 279, original emphasis). Horner, therefore, was a man with a remarkably open opinion concerning all aspects of British society, which derived from ‘the traditional Protestant esteem for independence and rationality’ (Martin 1969: 418). Horner brought this belief in the need for a rational, methodical and scientific approach to his activities as a factory inspector. He was appointed to a vacant post as a factory inspector under the 1833 Factory Act, under the patronage of Francis Jeffrey, the Lord Advocate of Scotland. After a brief period as Inspector of Scottish and Northern Irish factories, Horner took on the responsibility of monitoring textile production in the north of England, which included the county of Lancashire, the heart of British textile production. There is some evidence to suggest that Horner was considered to be the most active and valuable of the four factory inspectors employed by the Home Office during this period. Martin (1969: 428), for instance, has noted how Home Secretaries habitually consulted Horner in advance of the formal meetings held with the four inspectors. This leads her to suggest that Horner ‘was in effect, if not in name, the leading Inspector’ during this period. But Horner also from the very outset demonstrated an ambivalent attitude towards governmental intervention in factory production. He was sympathetic to the needs of the factory owners, for instance, especially during his early years as a factory inspector. He was convinced in his treatise on child employment within factories and mills, furthermore, of the need for an amendment to the 1833 Act ‘for the sake of the honest mill-owner who strictly obeys the law, but is exposed to unfair competition from the too easy evasions of it by his less scrupulous neighbour’ (Horner 1971 [1840]: v). At the same time, he fervently believed that the form of state regulation ensconced in the 1833 Act did not run contrary to the received wisdom of political economy. For Horner The wealth of the country surely depends, in no inconsiderable degree, on the people who are engaged in works of industry, being capable of performing the greatest possible amount of labour in a given time, without impairing

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their health . . . To cultivate the intelligence, and increase the probability of useful inventions, by improving the natural faculties of the working classes, must also be considered a source of national wealth (ibid.: 15–16).

But despite the importance of these philosophical musings, it is clear that the key driving force behind much of Horner’s stance on government inspection was his desire to protect children and young people from the exploitation of unscrupulous parents and factory owners. He could argue that Parental authority confers no right on a father wantonly to mutilate the little finger of his child; ought he to be permitted to do what is a thousand times worse, to enfeeble him and spread disease through his whole frame, to leave him as low in intelligence as a brute, and to infect him with the most dangerous of all pestilences, a corrupt, depraved mind? If the father has his natural rights, so has the child; and if the father robs him of these, the State must become his guardian, and restore them to him (ibid.: 18).

Despite signs of commitment to state intervention in factory production, it is noticeable that Horner, for much of his period in office, was relatively loath to prosecute factory owners that were in breach of the Act. Since there was a need for factory inspectors to develop what was, in many instances, a long-term working relationship with factory and mill owners, inspectors and their superintendents often chose a more conciliatory approach to enforcing the requirements of the Act. Horner was no exception. He tended to avoid formal prosecution if he was confident of his ability to change the practices of factory owners through his own personal influence. And, yet, he was not averse to pursuing prosecutions, especially in instances where flagrant abuses of the Act had taken place or when his own personal trust had been flouted (see Parliamentary Papers 1840: passim; Martin 1969: 430). We witness clear evidence of Horner’s methodology with regard to his role as a government inspector in his replies to the Select Committee on the implementation of 1833 Factories Act, convened in 1840. The Select Committee, to which Horner acted as a key informant, considered a number of different issues, enabling Horner to elaborate on a variety of themes: the practical ways in which the Act was being implemented within Horner’s region in the north of England; the administrative innovations developed by Horner and his superintendents within their district; the extent to which the 1833 Act was being flouted by various factory owners; the types of violation of the Act and the techniques used to commit and detect them; and the many ways in which the 1833 Act could be amended and improved (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 1–153). It is impossible to give full consideration to all the themes discussed by the Select Committee.

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Rather, I want to focus briefly on a number of different issues that illustrate Horner’s contribution to the evolving organizational and territorial form of the state during this period. I discuss a number of issues that illustrate: the role played by government inspectors in defining the territorial configuration of the Act; the organizational and peopled consequences of the implementation of the terms of the Act; and the role played by Leonard Horner in reproducing and ultimately amending the form of the Act. A key feature of Horner’s testimony to the Select Committee was his detailed account of the contribution of people to the reproduction and transformation of the state territories used to implement the Act. Since June 1836, Leonard Horner had, in his own words, acted as the inspector for a northern region that incorporated the counties of Lancashire, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Durham, Northumberland and a major part of Yorkshire including ‘the North Riding . . . and the West Riding, including the parish of Saddleworth, and a line drawn from Skipton till it joins the North Riding; what the superficial extent is I cannot say’ (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 1).The relatively indeterminancy of the territory administered by Leonard Horner is immediately obvious, especially with regard to his duties in Yorkshire. There is a clear sense in which the inspector of this region was actively involved in defining its territorial remit. The territorial extent of this northern region was dependent upon the practice of factory supervision, especially in the area between Skipton and the North Riding. Such a theme is further reinforced if one digs a little deeper into the territorial history of the inspection process associated with the 1833 Act. In this regard, the northern district had been the one that posed most difficulties, both in terms of its territorial extent and the high numbers of factories and mills located within it. In the period immediately after the promulgation of the Act, the territorial extent of the four districts allocated to the four inspectors was as follows. Robert Rickards was responsible for a large and highly industrial area that included Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, north-west Derbyshire and north Staffordshire, as well as the northern Welsh counties of Caernarfonshire, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Anglesey. Leonard Horner, as was noted above, oversaw Scotland, Northern Ireland and the four northern counties of Cumberland, Westmoreland, Durham and Northumberland. The eastern, southern and south-western counties of England were allocated to Robert J. Saunders, while Thomas Jones Howell was responsible for inspecting the lands of Derbyshire and Staffordshire that lay outside Rickard’s district, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, together with the remaining counties of Wales (Parliamentary Papers 1834: 423 quoted in Thomas 1948: 98). The distribution of these four districts proved to be troublesome (see Figure 5.2). The area covered by Saunders’ district was huge, although he only supervised approximately 300 factories and mills. Rickards’ responsibilities,

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Figure 5.2

The territorial reconfiguration of inspection districts during the 1830s

in particular, were nigh on impossible to discharge since his district covered a large area and comprised of approximately 2,700 factories that employed more than 250,000 workers. It should come as no surprise that Rickards literally collapsed under the strain of coordinating the inspection duties within this district (Thomas 1948: 98) and subsequently resigned his post. Rickard’s resignation led to Horner’s transfer from the Scottish district to the one that had previously been under Rickard’s control but Horner, once ensconced in his new district, faced the same difficulties that had led to Rickard’s resignation. Matters were brought to a head in 1837 when Horner was asked to assume inspectorial responsibility for the four northern counties, in addition to those that already existed within his district. It is significant that the inspectors, themselves, decided to rearrange the territorial boundaries of their districts. Under the new arrangements, Stuart was to supervise the whole of Scotland and Northern Ireland, totalling some 600 factories. Horner assumed responsibility for the four northern counties from Stuart but lost control over most of the West Riding of Yorkshire, parts of Derbyshire and Staffordshire to Saunders, and north Wales, most of Cheshire and parts of Derbyshire and Staffordshire to Howell. Howell took over control of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset and part

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of Wiltshire from Saunders, leaving him with just over 1,000 mills. The remaining parts of eastern and southern England comprised Saunders’ district, which contained nearly 1,200 mills. According to the inspectors, the new territorial arrangement worked well, enabling them to discharge their responsibilities more effectively (Parliamentary Papers 1839: 537 quoted in Thomas 1948: 99–100). We witness here a clear instance of the inspectors, as a result of their administrative experience, actively producing the new state territories of factory inspection in England and Wales. The organizational framework, which helped the terms of the Act to be implemented, was also highly peopled in character. Four superintendents worked under Leonard Horner’s guidance, and the relationship that should exist between the inspector and his deputies was clearly spelt out in a letter from the Home Secretary to each inspector. Each inspector was instructed to inform the superintendents under their charge to adhere to the following regulations: First, that they are to act in all matters connected with their official duties, under the direction of the inspector of the district in which they are employed; and to conform, in all respects, to the instructions which they shall receive from him. Second, that they are to allow no other occupation to interfere with their official duties; but be at all times ready to perform any duty required of them by the inspector of the district, which he shall deem necessary for the due execution of the Act. Third, that they must not make any communication whatever, public or private, of any matters coming to their knowledge from the inquisitorial character of their office . . . except in the course of their official duty in administering the Act, or when required by the inspector of the district . . . [Also] that the superintendents shall give a detailed and full account of each day’s employment to the inspector of the district, and that they shall severally report each special case of prosecution to the inspector (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 68).

The above quote illustrates the extent to which the process of inspection conducted by each superintendent was monitored by the inspector and, ultimately, by Parliament, as a result of their scrutiny of the annual reports that were produced by each inspector. Horner, as inspector, combined a role as a hands-on inspector of factories with a more general managerial one. As he himself maintained, ‘I have thought that I better fulfil my duty by general surveillance, not omitting personal inspection by any means’ (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 64). But despite the seeming omnipotence of the inspector, Leonard Horner could still complain that he possessed few mechanisms through which he could admonish or discipline recalcitrant superintendents. As Thomas (1948: 106) aptly notes, the relationship between inspectors and their superintendents could often lead to ‘personal squabbles’. In this sense, the administration of the process of

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Table 5.2 The number of mills and factories within the region controlled by Leonard Horner, factory inspector, in 1840 (from Parliamentary Papers 1840: 44)

Lancashire Lancashire Lancashire Lancashire

Division A Division B Division C Division D

Yorkshire West Riding Division A Yorkshire West Riding Division C Yorkshire West Rising Division D Yorkshire North Riding Division A Durham Division Northumberland Division Cumberland Division B Westmoreland Division Grand Total

Employing none under the age of 18

Mills

Firms

407 365 426 367 1565 38

306 299 380 313 1298 33

39

36

2

82

81

4

10

8

2

15 7 41 22 1819

14 6 38 22 1536

7 3 11 5 26

Empty 31 10 9 11 61 5

1

2 1 3

27

80

inspection was dependent upon a high level of personal negotiation and person management. A recurring theme in Horner’s testimony to the Select Committee was that the lack of numbers of factory inspectors severely constrained their effectiveness as government employees. The four superintendents that worked under Horner were charged with visiting each of the approximately 1,800 mills within their own district three times in every year. As Table 5.2 clearly demonstrates, the small number of superintendents and inspectors meant that it was extremely difficult for the terms of 1833 Act to be efficiently implemented. The task facing each superintendent was, indeed, onerous. Horner illustrated this point through reference to the work schedule of an un-named superintendent over a four-month period: I find that in the A superintendency for November, December, January and February last, or 121 days, 96 days were returned by the superintendent as

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having been engaged in official business. On 75 of those days mills were visited, from one mill to eighteen in one day, and from three mills to fiftyfour mills in one week. The total number of visits was 487, which gives an average of 29 nearly per week, taking the whole week, and six-and-a-half for each day engaged in visiting (ibid.: 66).

A superintendent was required to work with zealous commitment in order to earn his relatively meagre salary of £350 per annum, out of which his travelling expenses were also to be paid.3 Horner was, obviously, only halfjoking when, in reply to a question asking him whether he and his superintendents were resident within their district, he stated that ‘[r]esident we can hardly be called anywhere, moving about so much as we do’ (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 62). Horner explained in his replies to the Select Committee that his superintendents faced a difficult task in trying to reconcile the need for rapid and efficient coverage of the factories and mills within the district with the thoroughness required of their roles. Horner himself maintained that ‘I have been three hours in a mill sometimes; but I should say that if a mill is in good order, a largish mill may be gone through in about three-quarters of an hour to an hour’ (ibid.: 67). While three-quarters of an hour may not seem to be an overly long period of time to examine one factory or mill, it does, however, compare extremely favourably with the inspection activities of one superintendent under Horner’s charge, who was said to have visited twenty-seven mills in the same day, covering a total of some forty-seven miles! One inducement for superintendents to carry out such cursory inspections, as Horner makes clear, was the fact that they were expected to pay their travelling expenses out of their own salaries. Factory inspections that were, to term them charitably, efficient in the extreme meant that superintendents would be required to expend far less money on overnight stays in inns and other hostelries. Horner, however, sought to counter such examples of bad practice by emphasizing the need for a more careful examination of factories’ adherence to the terms of the 1833 Act. In reply to a question directed towards him in the Select Committee, he maintained that ‘[b]oth in conversation and in correspondence I have cautioned them again and again not to go over the ground too rapidly’ (ibid.: 67). As well as highlighting the practical difficulties involved in enforcing the 1833 Act, the relative lack of superintendents within Horner’s district also led to certain key aspects of the law being undermined. In order to prosecute factory owners who were in contravention of the 1833 Act, the cognizance of an offence had to happen within fourteen days of the infringement of the law. The fact that superintendents visited factories only three times a year, obviously, meant that a number of different offences, even if noted, went unpunished. Horner was especially critical of what he

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saw as a fundamental weakness in the 1833 Act. He argued that ‘[i]f every section of the law had been violated on the 17th of January, and I go to the mill on the 1st of February, I cannot touch [the factory owner]’ (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 11). At one level, therefore, the actual embodiment of the inspectors and superintendents – while crucial for the implementation of the 1833 Act – also posed certain difficulties. What further exacerbated the situation was the relative lack of governmental technologies afforded to the inspectors and superintendents in their efforts to discharge their duties. We see this most clearly with regard to the inspectors’ role in determining the efficacy of the law in ensuring that children and young people of different ages were not incorrectly employed in mills and factories. A key area of debate revolved around the ability of inspectors to ascertain the correct age of workers. The Act was dependent on the work of surgeons (or medical practitioners) in issuing certificates concerning the age of children, especially for those that were older than nine and thirteen years old. The Act stated that children under nine years old were not allowed to work in mills and factories at all, whereas those between nine and thirteen years old were only allowed to work for a maximum of eight hours. A major bone of contention was linked to the improper issuing of such certificates, with employers, employees, surgeons and local government officials coming under suspicion (ibid.: pp. 37–43). Certificates were issued in the surgeon’s place of work and there was considerable concern, as a result, that certificates were being issued for an older child, only for it to be used by another, much younger child to gain employment. Similarly, local magistrates were roundly chastised by Horner and members of the Select Committee for not ensuring that the process of certification took place legally. Local magistrates were supposed to countersign each certificate in order to ensure that employees did not successfully hoodwink employers but, as Horner intimated, I do not suppose that in one case in a hundred the magistrate ever sees the child. I may state what is a very common practice, that periodically the certificate-book, containing perhaps a hundred certificates, is sent up to the petty sessions, and the magistrate, as fast as he can sign, puts his name, without asking any questions whatsoever (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 39).

In other circumstances, inspectors and superintendents themselves were called upon to estimate the ages of various types of factory workers. This situation arose, in particular, when the state’s officials were asked to monitor factory production that took place at night. By the terms of the 1833 Act, no persons under the age of eighteen were allowed to work in factories and mills during the hours of night. Horner intimated in his

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evidence to the Select Committee of 1840, however, that inspectors and superintendents faced considerable difficulty in ascertaining the age of adult or near-adult workers since certificates testifying to the age of individuals were not required for adult workers. He recalled a case in which a factory in Glossop, Derbyshire was suspected of employing young people (under the age of eighteen) during its night-time operations. He stated as follows: The room where I slept was opposite the gate of the factory, and I rose and looked out as the people were going into the factory then, and I could perceive none, having been there also the preceding night when they were at work (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 6).

But, in elaborating further, Horner intimated that ‘I can only judge by appearance. There is no certificate required by law to prove that they are above 18 years of age, in order to entitle persons to work at night’ (ibid.). This situation was not improved until the Registration Act of 1837, when the registration of births became a legal stipulation in Britain (Martin 1969: 431). In the meantime, Horner, ever the scientist, sought to develop quasiobjective means of ascertaining the age of children and young people working in the factories and mills of the north, particularly through measuring their height and the condition of their teeth (ibid.). Clearly, there is very little evidence here of a coordinated and concerted attempt by the state to regulate the work carried out by children and young people within factory production. Such testimony surely serves to highlight the tentative manner in which the state – in an organizational and personal sense – reached out to its working citizens during this period. The limited technologies available to the state’s officers and organizations meant that its gaze was imperfect. Certain practices, individuals and spaces easily evaded the surveillance proffered by the state’s inspectors, superintendents, surgeons and magistrates. But, at the same time, we should not decry the considerable efforts made by Horner and his deputies to ensure that the terms of the 1833 Act were adhered to by the various factories and mills within their district. There has been some debate, in this regard, whether inspectors such as Horner should be viewed as ‘disinterested professionals’ or as individuals who ‘were strongly committed to further reform’ (Peacock 1984: 208). The evidence that appears in Horner’s reports to Parliament, his answers before the Select Committee and his treatise on the employment of children in various industries in Britain, I would argue, is suggestive – at least at one level – of an individual who sought to justify the interference of the state in economic processes, especially with regard to the regulation of children and young people. He could argue as a result of his experience as a factory inspector and his research on the regulation of paid work amongst children and young people in other countries that the

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state must become the guardian of a child whose individual rights were being encroached upon by either unscrupulous employers or parents (Horner 1971 [1840]). As well as espousing a more active state interference in economic processes at an ideological level, Horner was also, as befitted his role, a keen instigator of more practical means of improving the state regulation of factories and mills.We need to think about this advocacy role in two separate contexts. Firstly, individuals such as Horner were key contributors to national re-evaluations of government policy. As Martin (1969: 431) puts it, Horner ‘used every means open to him to press his opinion on the public, on Parliament and in particular on the Home Office’ concerning improvements that could and should be made to the 1833 Act. Horner’s evidence to the Select Committee demonstrates that the viewpoint of the government inspector who possessed considerable practical experience of working in the field was deemed to be of great importance whenever government considered amending and improving state strategies or policies. Two whole days were spent going through Horner’s suggestions for recommended amendments to the 1833 Act. Some of his most thoughtful recommendations were directed towards major sticking points and loopholes within the 1833 legislation. These suggestions were wide-ranging and included thoughts on: the most appropriate means of tightening up the process of certifying children and young people, most especially through the appointment of surgeons by inspectors rather than mill owners (ibid.: 96); the need to separate out the basic salary and travelling expenses of superintendents in order to ensure more thorough inspections of factories (ibid.: 103–4); and the role that inspectors could play in improving the education of children within the context of factory work (ibid.: 105). In all, such evidence demonstrates that Horner was more than a mere administrative functionary. He was, rather, a governmental innovator – a ‘statesman in disguise’ – who was able to discern the faults of the current legislation and to suggest practical means of remedying them. In Horner’s (1971 [1840]: 1) own words, the 1833 Act had been defective because it had been ‘in some degree legislating in the dark’ and, in these circumstances, the role of the active, thorough and thoughtful inspector was of paramount importance in shaping evolving state organizations, territories, policies and laws. MacDonagh (1958: 59) has argued that government inspectors or executive officers were of key importance in the development of government policy through the nineteenth century since it was they who, ‘through hard experience and manifold failures, . . . [were able to make clear] . . . the very grave deficiencies in both the restrictive and executive clauses of the statute; and this quickly led to demands for legislative amendments in a large number of particulars’. It is evident that Horner played this important role as a legislative innovator in a highly effective way during his time as a factory inspector.

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Secondly, we need to consider how individuals like Horner were intimately involved in the development of the more mundane practices and spaces of government during this period (Thomas 1948: 108–9; in geography, see Driver 1985; 1989). Government inspectors, in the period between 1833 and 1844, under Clause 18 of the Act, ‘were given unprecedented powers to make regulations and even to act as magistrates to enforce penalties on the spot when they detected a breach of the Act’ (Martin 1969: 427–8). Horner, himself, admitted that he had had little experience of employing magisterial powers during his early years as an inspector. What was more crucial, according to Horner, was his effort to codify and regulate the more mundane aspects of the inspection process. He stated that When the law first came into operation, a certain amount of machinery was necessary to carry it into execution; by machinery I mean books, records, and so on; each inspector was left to frame his rules and regulations for his own particular district according to his own views (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 70).

As well as developing new governmental technologies for inspectors, Horner, too, in concert with his fellow-inspectors (Thomas 1948: 108), attempted to devise systematic instructions for his superintendents, which would aid them in their work. The reasoning behind this innovation was explained in the prelude to the instructions: I earnestly hope that you will attentively and uniformly conform to them, as well as to any further instructions which I may feel it my duty to transmit to you from time to time, by which I anticipate, among other advantages, that our joint duties will be performed with greater advantage to the public service, and greater convenience to ourselves (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 149).

In making such a statement, Horner was clearly demonstrating his Utilitarian credentials as he sought to highlight the benefits accruing to both the British public and the inspection staff themselves through the standardization of their procedural norms. The inspectors’ instructions to their superintendents, in addition, provide a fascinating insight into the workings of the early factory inspection process, as the inspectors – with Horner in the lead – sought to tease out the more practical aspects of the monitoring role performed by inspectors and superintendents. In Section 1, for instance, which dealt with the procedures that superintendents should employ when visiting factories, the instructions state the following: I

Continue the practice, hitherto followed by the superintendents in all the inspectorships, of visiting the interior of the factories, unless admittance be refused.

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II

Report to the inspector every case where you are refused admittance to the interior of the factory, and the reason assigned. III At each visit of inspection inquire into the observance of all the enactments of the law, and especially of those respecting the restricted ages of children and young persons, and their hours of work, the meal hours, and the school attendance of the children; inquire also as to the observance of the rules and regulations of the inspectors. (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 150)

In addition, superintendents were required to check the register of workers, the certificate book, the time register and the school certificates in order to ensure that the terms of the Act were not breached. Certificates testifying to a child’s age were singled out for special attention, not surprisingly given the degree to which this procedure was abused. Superintendents were instructed as follows: Send for some of the children and young persons who have been taken into employment since your former visit, and see whether their strength and appearance justify the ages mentioned in the certificate. If they do not, call the attention of the surgeons to the cases. If the surgeon appears to you to be in the habit of granting certificates improperly, bring the subject under the notice of the inspector. (ibid.)

As well as showing the emphasis placed by the inspectors on the need to monitor the ages of children and young people working in factories and mills, the above quote begins to show us the extent to which superintendents sought to complement their verification of written texts provided to them by factory owners and managers with a first-hand assessment of the workers within the mill. The superintendents, in this regard, were encouraged to walk through the factory in order to check whether the information contained in the various notebooks and registers kept by the factory managers tallied with the ‘reality’ on the shop floor. In this vein, Rickards, one of the early inspectors, had justified such an approach by arguing that ‘[n]othing can make a factory law really efficient but a constant inspection of the interior of mills’ (Parliamentary Papers 1836: 162 quoted in Thomas 1948: 104). In doing so, superintendents followed the strict orders given to them by the inspectors: (a)

Take down in your memorandum book the names and ages of some of the children and young persons, and afterwards examine if they are entered in the register of workers, and if they have certificates of age. (b) In like manner ask some of the workers as to the hours of work, of meals, and of school attendance, and ascertain whether their statements correspond with the entries in the books etc. (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 150–1)

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The administration of the inspection process by superintendents also entered the inspectors’ systematic gaze. Superintendents were instructed, for instance, to: ‘[k]eep full notes of your visits to the mills, and of all the official business in which you are engaged’; ‘[k]eep copies of all the letters you write on official business’; ‘[e]nter your visits to the mills weekly in the visiting book supplied to you by the inspector, in the manner directed by him’; ‘[a]s a general rule . . . employ Saturday in writing up books and other records, and in correspondence with the inspector’; ‘[m]ake a weekly report to the inspector of your visits and other official employment, in the form prescribed by him’; ‘[m]ake a monthly return of prosecutions’; ‘[e]nter in your visiting book every new mill-occupier you may hear of’. The superintendents, just for good measure so it seems, were also reminded that ‘[t]he Home-office franks must not be used for any other purpose than official business’ (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 152)! The evidence provides a flavour of the activities of state personnel and their connections with a complex web of human and non-human actants that helped to reproduce the organizational and territorial fabric of the state at this time. The most fascinating aspect of the instructions, nonetheless, appears in the later sections of the document, where, in discussing other general instructions, superintendents were advised on the appropriate manner with which they should deal with the owners of factories and mills, as well as their representatives.This evidence provides a glimpse of the uncertain attitudes demonstrated towards the process of factory inspection, both by individual inspectors and the British government. The later sections of the document state that ‘[i]n all your intercourse with mill-occupiers and their work-people, show the utmost courtesy and forbearance consistent with a firm and honest discharge of your duty’. In the section that deals with procedures for pursuing prosecutions, also, the document advises superintendents to adopt a most conciliatory and almost apologetic manner: Where irregularities are met with, it is but justice to be slow in imputing them to wilful or gross negligence; nevertheless, the length of time which has elapsed since the Act came into operation, the explanations which have been given, and the numerous prosecutions which have taken place and have been reported, remove all reasonable excuse for a plea of ignorance of the law. Show, by a close examination, that obedience to the Act, and compliance with the regulations of the inspectors, will be required; but endeavour, as much as possible, to effect this by explanation, respectful admonition, and warning; make it evident that when you find things wrong, you do so with regret, and that the punishments of the law will be employed only against wilful and obstinate offenders. (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 151)

The reference to the air of ‘regret’ that superintendents should impart when discovering breaches of the Act echoes, I would argue, the broader, almost

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apologetic attitude of the state towards intervention in private matters of all kind, which was prevalent during much of the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century, after all, was in many regards an age of individualism, in which it was believed ‘that the individual was best left to pursue his [sic] own interests without any more interference by the state than was necessary to ensure the same freedom for other individuals’ (Perkin 1977: 111). Despite Horner’s and some of the other inspectors obvious commitment towards the regulation of employment issues within factories and mills, they were people of their time and, in this sense, it can be argued that the inspectors’ advice to their superintendents on prosecuting factory owners in breach of the 1833 Act literally personified the dominant attitude towards state intervention in this period (see Martin 1969: 434–42). But if inspectors were creatures of their time, we should not lose sight of their high principles and commitment to their work. It is in this context that the contribution of Leonard Horner stands out. He was truly a pioneer in the field of factory inspection, being described by one author as a ‘passionate innovator, a jack-of-all-trades and an autocratic power unto himself rather than a career administrator in a London office’ (Martin 1969: 432). Although sometimes a prickly and overly assured man, he was also a key driving force behind the regulation of factories and mills throughout much of the nineteenth century. In this context, his contribution to factory regulation and legislation – as well as to the broader sphere of social reform – was great.

Embodying a Tentative State Consolidation A series of far-reaching recommendations for change were made to the 1833 Factories Act on the basis of the contribution of Horner and his colleagues to the Select Committee. Fox Maule’s subsequent bill before Parliament incorporated these recommendations, covering a variety of issues, including: the raising of the definition of young people from eighteen to twenty-one; the reduction of the working day for children between nine and thirteen years old to seven hours; an increased regulation of factory schools; more stringent measures to reduce overworking; and a more systematic and fairer allotment of meal times. The bill also recommended that an office of Inspector-General be created, which would be supported by a properly staffed office in London. In addition, it was recommended that the number of superintendents should be increased in order to improve the monitoring of the implementation of the Act in factories and mills (Thomas 1948: 187–90). As it happened, the bill did not pass through Parliament because of a change of government. But, in many ways, it acted as a precedent for the 1844 Act, which significantly amended the terms of the previous Act.

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Restrictions of a six-and-a-half-hour working day were put in place for children between eight and thirteen years of age. In addition, regulations for the making up of lost time were tightened up considerably, and more stringent regulations concerning meal times were introduced. Similarly, the role of surgeons in certificating the age of children was made more transparent and systematic. But perhaps the most radical change of the 1844 Act was the formal inauguration of the half-time system, where children, when not attending to their work, were required to attend school in order to further their education (ibid.: 213; see also Bartrip and Fenn 1980). In addition, schoolmasters were to certify that the children had attended school for the period of time that was required as a condition of their employment. The administration of factory inspection also changed during the later nineteenth century. The early latitude afforded to individual inspectors – with regard to the employment of various practices of government – was slowly standardized and centralized. In 1878, for instance, a Chief Inspector of Factories was created with a view to standardizing inspection procedures throughout Britain. The numbers of inspectors increased, particularly during the 1890s. The character of factory inspectors, as well as the character of their work, also changed. Female inspectors were employed from 1893 onwards, for instance, in order to ascertain the working conditions of women in factories (Livesey 2004). In moving to a more standardized mechanism for monitoring the implementation of the 1833 and subsequent amended Acts, the role of inspectors and their superintendents also began to change. The process of inspection in general lost the freewheeling charm of its earlier period, becoming more departmentalized, legalistic and bureaucratic (MacLeod 1988). State personnel were not passive observers of these fundamental legal and administrative developments.The implementation of the 1833 Act, and its subsequent amendment, show how state personnel, as government inspectors and superintendents, as members of select committees and as MPs, were actively involved in the transformation of the organizational and territorial aspects of the state apparatus during the nineteenth century. Many have argued that the lynchpins of this process of governmental reproduction and reform were the inspectors themselves who could bring their knowledge and intellect to bear on both the ideological and practical aspects of state intervention. Their wide-ranging experience enabled them to contribute with authority to ongoing philosophical debates concerning the political economy of the state. But they were equally at home when discussing the practical and mundane aspects of the emerging state of the period: with regard to daily practices of factory superintendents and local magistrates for instance. MacLeod (1988: 18) succinctly explains the significance of these individuals for the changing form of the state during this period:

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Called into play by the needs of government, the pressures of professional opinion or the protagonists of reform, [the late Victorian specialist] conveyed a new sense of mission to government activity, and defined a new vocabulary of the ‘politically possible’.

But at the same time, these were people who betrayed in their individual vicissitude the broader uncertainties concerning the appropriateness of state intervention in nineteenth-century Britain. They could be, at one and the same time, zealous in their commitment to rooting out transgressions against the 1834 Act and tentative in the way in which they prosecuted their duties. Ironically, the actions and arguments of these individuals ultimately brought about their own downfall as the all-powerful and all-seeing inspector was gradually replaced by lower-level bureaucrats, constrained by professional etiquette and departmental protocol. Some might argue, in this respect, that the growing bureaucratization of the state during the nineteenth century signalled a decline in the role of individuals in actively shaping state organizations and territories.The contribution of this new age of officials, however, was equally important for the reproduction of state forms. The contribution of state officials may well have been less visible during the later nineteenth century but I would contend that their growing administrative competence and bureaucratic wherewithal bears testimony to the increasingly routinized character of state power during this period. Factory inspection, along with other areas of state activity, was increasingly accepted as an administrative norm rather than being viewed as an unfamiliar and unwarranted intrusion by the state into private matters. State personnel, as well as reflecting this change in the role of the state, were also active contributors to its development throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Chapter Six

Breaking up: People and the Late Modern UK State

The previous two chapters have alluded to the growing professionalization and bureaucratization of the British state during the modern period. While the beginnings of the process were witnessed during the eighteenth century, it had achieved more or less its full force by the late nineteenth century. During this latter period, the British state had begun to take on the rational, scientific and bureaucratic form described by Weber in his writings on the state. State personnel were becoming more attuned to the Weberian ideal by routinely acting as depersonalized and well-educated state functionaries. The development of new technologies of rule, by the same token, had ensured that the infrastructural coordination of the British state was relatively secure. But while these striking developments testify to the growing consolidation of the British state over the modern period, it is equally clear that they did not fully expunge state personnel from the organizational and territorial fabric of the state. Even today, the UK state still bears witness to the active role of state personnel in reproducing and transforming state organizations and territories. The clearest manifestation of the role of people in reproducing UK state forms in recent years has been in the context of the far-reaching transformations that have been associated with its de-nationalization through the process of devolution (Jessop 1990). Many social scientists have commented on the way in which the relative certainties of the UK state during the modern period have given way to a new politico-geographical hotch-potch. The UK state of late modernity is comprised of a series of tangled organizational and territorial political geographies consisting of: a Parliament in Scotland; Assemblies in Northern Ireland and Wales; and Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) and a London Assembly in England (see Figure 6.1). As a result of these developments, the unitary system of government that previously characterized

Figure 6.1

The political geographies of the UK post 1997

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the UK state is gradually being replaced by a quasi-federal one. According to some commentators, devolution represents ‘the most radical constitutional change this country has seen since the Great Reform Act of 1832’ (Bogdanor 1999: 1). Similarly, Gamble (2002: 22; cf. Marr 2000) has argued that ‘the carapace of Britain’s ancien régime has been broken’ to such an extent that the national British state should now be viewed as one amongst many actors that are seeking to shape political processes, economic development and cultural geographies within the UK state space. Politicians themselves have also highlighted the momentousness of the whole devolution project. One of its main architects, Prime Minister Tony Blair (2000: 2), for instance, maintained that When we came to office, the Party of no change – the Conservatives – were left without any seats in Scotland or Wales. Forces for change were left with no alternative but status quo or separatism. Devolution at long last offered a sensible modernization of the partnership in the UK. Let Scotland and Wales do what they do best locally. Let the UK do what it is right to do together.

Tony Blair, and New Labour as a whole, sees devolution as a key transformation in the political geographies of the UK state, one which can help to ensure its socio-economic and political future. Given these statements, the reader can be forgiven for thinking that the period between 1997 and 1999 represented the beginnings of the devolution of power to the various regions of the UK. But a certain administrative devolution of power had been a feature of the political geography of the UK for much of the twentieth century. Scotland possesses a relatively long history in a UK context of various forms of devolution. While different legal, educational and ecclesiastical structures had always existed in Scotland, the main impetus for devolution came in 1939, with the formation of the Scottish Office as a way of coordinating the various governmental policies that applied to Scotland (MacLeod 1998). Further changes took place during the post-war period. For instance, the Highlands and Islands Development Board (HIDB) was established in 1956 as a ‘means of facilitating economic assistance in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland’ (Fairley and Lloyd 1995: 43), while the Scottish Development Agency (SDA) was created in 1975, once again, as a means of enhancing economic development within lowland Scotland. There has also been a long-standing recognition of Northern Ireland as a separate administrative entity within the UK state (Carmichael 2001: 33). A Parliament existed here between partition in 1921 and the installation, due to civic unrest, of ‘direct rule’ in 1972. At this point, the Office of the Secretary of State (NIO) was formed with overall responsibility for the government of the territory. The NIO dealt with a broad range of responsibilities from this period onwards,

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including: economic and social policy; constitutional and security issues, including law and order; political affairs; and policing and criminal justice (Goodwin et al. 2002). Wales, on the other hand, has had a relatively short history of administrative devolution when compared with Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Welsh Office (WO), the specific government office concerned with the territory of Wales, was formed in 1965. Other key organizations in Wales were the Welsh Development Agency (WDA), the Development Board for Rural Wales (DBRW) covering mid-Wales, and the Land Authority for Wales (LAW). England’s enigmatic role within the territorial politics of the UK – being stretched between the UK scale and that of regions existing within England – helps to explain the lack of administrative devolution that has been afforded it over the twentieth century. Given the above statements, it is clear that the significance of the most recent round of devolution lies in the fact that it has added – in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales at least – a layer of executive devolution on top of the administrative devolution that had preceded it. The new governmental forms that have been created in the three ‘national’ territories are now obliged to develop policies and strategies of their own, which are more attuned to the needs of the societies, economies, cultures and environments that they seek to govern (Bogdanor 1999). As well as signalling important changes to the organizational and territorial framework of the UK state, I want to propose that devolution represents an unparalleled opportunity to study the role of people in reproducing and transforming UK state forms – specifically state organizations, policies, strategies and territories. The significance of devolution, I would argue, is that it has created new scenarios for the unfolding and dynamic relationship between people and the organizational and territorial aspects of the UK state apparatus. In this changing political and organizational landscape, agents have had to make sense of their role within new organizations, their relationship with new territories of governance, along with their new responsibilities, loyalties and working practices. Furthermore, it is these self-same individuals who have also been the agents of change, helping to create – through their actions – new organizations and state territories. In this way, state personnel have helped to ‘narrate’ (Jessop 2001) the devolution settlement in the various UK territories. Adopting such a viewpoint, once again, emphasizes the contingency and openness of the reproduction and transformation of the state. A peopled state is never singular, never uniform and never unproblematic. Focusing on the role of people in shaping the UK’s new state forms, therefore, forces us to acknowledge that devolution represents an inherently uncertain foray into the governmental future rather than being a new set of organizations, whose policy and territorial remits have been set in stone. Moreover, devolution is also illustrative of a proliferation of opportunities for various actors in civil society to

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access and influence various branches of the state apparatus. This change has come about through the formation of new organizations of governance and their peopling by a wider range of state personnel. This theme is discussed at further length below. The connections between state personnel of different kinds and the new state forms of devolution have been the cause of both popular and academic concern. Popular debate regarding the peopling of devolution has been witnessed in each of the UK’s devolved territories. One brief example, concerning Alun Michael’s time as First Minister for Wales, was discussed at the beginning of Chapter 1. It is significant that similar debates have taken place in Scotland.Viewed initially as a trailblazer for the other devolved territories, devolution north of the border has been viewed subsequently as something of a damp squib. As Mitchell (2001: 45) has put it, the ‘high hopes attendant on the creation of the Scottish Parliament have given way to a more realistic assessment of its potential’. Significantly, part of what has contributed to the lacklustre performance of the Parliament, it is argued, has been the lack of leadership shown by the Scottish Executive. Donald Dewar, the so-called father of Scottish devolution, in particular, was criticized for being an individual who had acted merely as a ‘caretaker’ or, in other words, somebody who did not possess the enthusiasm to ensure that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish version of devolution was pushed to its limit (ibid.: 49). In addition, his close associations with the Labour Party on a UK level may also have compromised his willingness to challenge it in any significant way. Things changed with the unfortunate death of Donald Dewar and the emergence of his successor, Henry McLeish, as the new First Minister for Scotland. The latter sought to portray the new administration, under ‘Team McLeish’s’ leadership, as one that could kick-start a Parliament that had been stalled in first gear. Although McLeish sought to promote a distinctly Scottish take on institutional arrangements, policy innovation and symbolic politics, his progress has been hampered, not least due to an apparent lack of political foresight and embarrassing political clashes with the Labour Party in London (ibid.: 54). In Dewar’s and McLeish’s stints as First Minister, we witness the role of key state personnel in shaping the evolution and reproduction of state forms. Both may have professed different attitudes towards devolution – and of Scotland’s role within it – but their contributions to the development of the Scottish Executive were strangely similar. Both were unable, for different reasons, to energize the Scottish Parliament into the progressive, distinctive and forward-looking organization that the Scottish electorate had expected on the eve of devolution (ibid.: 45). In more theoretic contexts, considerable work has been carried out on the role of people in facilitating new forms of regional governance and new regional economies. Two linked areas of research are especially appropriate

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in this context. First, debates within the so-called new regionalism have placed great emphasis on the influence of cultural factors on the evolution of political and economic formations. Institutions, along with norms and networks of trust, are said to play a critical role in the production of successful political and economic development (M. Jones 2001). Amin and Thrift’s (1995; also Amin 1999) conceptual framework of the ‘new institutionalism’ has been especially important within the new regionalism. Economic success, according to these authors, is not exclusively related to economic factors but is rather linked to a wide range of social, cultural and institutional structures. Significantly, it is devolved organizations, operating at a regional scale, that have the potential to embed global process. Drawing inspiration from developments in the economically successful regions of Western Europe, Amin and Thrift suggest that four factors make regions ‘institutionally thick’: a number of organizations that represent private and public sector interests; networks of cooperation between these organizations; coalitions and the existence of sanctions to minimize rogue behaviour; and the identification of a common territorial agenda (in a related context, see Cooke and Morgan 1998; Storper 1997; see also Environment and Planning A 2001). Clearly, state personnel are key elements within each of these four factors. They help to embody formal and informal connections between different regional organizations. They are also key figures within the regional coalitions that help to define the common regional agenda (Jones et al. 2004; 2005; Storper 1997; for criticisms, see MacLeod 2001; Lovering 1999; M. Jones 2001). In a related context, work on social capital has stressed the contribution that networks of trust and reciprocity make to delivering successful societies, economies and polities. Putnam (1995: 664–5), one of the key proponents of the concept of social capital, views the term as something that relates to ‘features of social life – networks, norms and trust – that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives’ (see also Coleman 1988: S98). Putnam (1995; see also 1993a; 1993b; 2001) notes three features that help to sustain social capital: firstly, the existence of networks that bring individuals into contact with one another; secondly, the development of norms of action within these networks; and, thirdly, the existence of sanctions that can limit rogue behaviour within the network (see Mohan and Mohan 2002). It is significant that the concept of social capital has been applied to the study of the practice of formal government, especially at the regional scale. Putnam’s (1993a) work, for instance, has examined the importance of social capital for the ‘success’ of regional government in Italy. His research demonstrated that the more successful regional governments – regions such as Emilia-Romagna – are characterized by high levels of public participation in community and regional associations and high levels of trust in political and social institutions.

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Conversely, the least successful regions – in general those in the south of the country – are characterized by low levels of community interaction and trust and a sceptical attitude towards regional government. Such work, once again, alludes to the potential contribution of state personnel and a broader civil society to the trajectories of regionalization at both a European and a UK scale (Keating 1998; 2004). The concepts of the new regionalism and the new institutionalism, on the one hand, and that of a regional and governmental social capital, on the other, illustrate how contemporary theorists are beginning to examine the contribution of cultural norms and networks of trust – in other words, highly peopled factors – to the reproduction and transformation of regional states and economies. In addition, the references within these concepts to the formal and informal linkages that should exist between state personnel and other regional actors problematize our understanding of the boundaries between states and civil society (see Chapter 1). Much has been made, in this regard, of the functional changes that have also affected the contemporary state: Jessop (1990), for instance, with his talk of a process of de-statization and Goodwin and Painter (1996) with their exploration of the notion of after-Fordism as a mode of regulation. Both concepts refer to the increasing role played by a variety of private and voluntary sector bodies, in concert with central, regional and local government, in carrying out the state’s role in managing and distributing resources, and providing services (Dear and Clark 1978). De-statization and a shift to governance has had the effect of blurring the boundaries between states and civil society and nowhere is this ambivalence more evident, I would argue, than in the context of state personnel. Some of the worst administrative headaches in post-devolution Britain have revolved around the ambiguous and mutating status of devolved organizations and their related personnel (Laffin and Thomas 2001). Such statements, of course, echo the case studies in Chapters 3 and 4, as well as the more conceptual material discussed in Chapter 2. A focus on particular state strategies or projects makes it difficult to delineate the boundary between the state and civil society and nowhere is this more apparent than in the context of a peopled and devolved UK state (see Mitchell 2006). I focus on the role played by state personnel in reproducing, and being affected by, devolved state forms in the UK in the remaining sections of this chapter in four contexts. Firstly, I want to make some broad comments regarding the challenges and opportunities that have faced state personnel as a result of the executive form of the devolution of power that took place after 1997. Secondly, I focus on how state personnel have dealt with the difficulties of working within newly formed organizations and, in an associated context, their contribution to the development of new organizations, along with their new organizational cultures. Thirdly, I will discuss the way

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in which state personnel have been important ‘bridging’ mechanisms between organizations within the various territories (see Coleman 1988). I focus here on how state personnel within various organizations can contribute to a key policy aim within devolved politics, namely the need to ensure that various aspects of governance complement one another or are ‘joined up’. The fourth theme is more explicitly geographical and focuses on the relationship between state personnel and territorial politics and consciousness. Specifically, I will examine how the practices of state personnel can contribute to, and benefit from, the regional and/or national cultures within which they operate (see R. Jones 2001). Much of the empirical material discussed in the subsequent sections draws on approximately 100 semi-structured interviews, undertaken as part of an ESRC-funded project between 2001 and 2002, with those key actors, at both a political and an administrative level, involved in shaping and delivering the character of economic governance in the UK post-devolution. In particular, I discuss the interplay between state personnel and devolved territorial organizations involved in economic development in Scotland,Wales, Northern Ireland and the East Midlands region of England. For reasons of space, I do not elaborate in detail on the constitutional and administrative settlements in each of these regions. For further detail regarding the general contours of organizations and territories of economic development in each of these regions, see Goodwin et al. (2002; 2005) and Jones et al. (2004; 2005).

The Challenges of Executive Devolution in the UK It has been maintained that the executive devolution that took place in the period between 1997 and 1999 has the potential to transform governance in the UK by promising a ‘policy-making process [that] is more open, more transparent and more inclusive than the semi-secret world of administrative devolution which preceded it’ (Morgan and Rees 2001: 164; Parry 2001: 39). In addition to their increased openness, devolved bodies are also possessed of new policy-making opportunities. As Wendy Alexander, a Minister within the Scottish Parliament put it, these new devolved state forms have a chance of ‘growing a government’ that can act in a proactive way within the UK (quoted in Parry 2001: 40). My aim in this section is to examine the impact of this shift into a more executive form of devolution on the peopling of the newly devolved bodies. If government is now more open, more transparent, more inclusive and more active, then what additional challenges are facing state personnel? By the same token, how are state personnel of all kinds contributing to this more executive style of devolved government?

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One key manifestation of this more executive form of devolved politics has been an increased political involvement in all aspects of governance within the devolved administrations. New relationships have had to be developed between often inexperienced elected representatives and a civil service that had been used to merely administering laws and policies devised in Westminster and Whitehall (Laffin and Thomas 2001). In Scotland, for instance, the insertion of a new tier of elected government within the existing institutional architecture has had an impact on the nature of relationships between individuals within the Scottish Executive and personnel in organizations that seek to implement policies and strategies of economic governance. One person working in Highlands and Islands Enterprise, for instance, maintained that: The devolution process definitely has had a huge effect, without doubt. In the past the link to ministerial level would have been so different. Now you’ve got meetings with Ministers every other week and there’s a sense that they are really involved in these matters. I doubt that a UK government Minister would have been very clear what our remit was.

In Northern Ireland, too, there has grown a belief that the increased involvement of elected politicians in the political process has energized the government of the province. Prior to devolution, Permanent Secretaries within the civil service had a great deal of power, having control over much of the day-to-day running of departmental affairs. It was argued by many, in this respect, that devolution had brought about a culture change, owing to the more engaged and hands-on approach emanating from the new Northern Ireland Executive. As one individual put it, ‘it’s trite to say we have seven day a week ministers with devolution, and some of the ministers that you would come across under direct rule in the past would have worked exceptionally hard, but by and large, you were finding that they were in Northern Ireland, two or three days a week, whereas with the locally elected ministers, [they] have higher information levels and knowledge’. As the above quotes begin to show, the shift from a purely administrative to a more active and executive form of devolution has posed particular challenges for civil servants. Prior to the executive devolution of power in 1997–9, regional organizations were, on the whole, merely transmission belts for decisions and policies made in Westminster and Whitehall. Now, these regional organizations – especially those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – have to develop their own policies and strategies that are, theoretically, more attuned to the needs of the people within their territory. Civil servants in some territories have struggled to make sense of this change in the character of regional government. In Northern Ireland, for example, one respondent noted that the early days of devolution witnessed the

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development amongst Northern Ireland’s politicians of an attitude concerning the need to ‘change, or make way’. He argued further that the interesting thing . . . is that, when devolution first came into being there was a hell of a lot of resistance by some individual permanent secretaries, and they have now disappeared from the scene. To all intents and purposes, they were running Northern Ireland.

There is now, conversely, some evidence to show that civil servants are beginning to become active and energized participants within executive devolution. Research in Northern Ireland, for instance, has illustrated the more positive contribution that civil servants are beginning to make to the devolution process: in ‘what was called “the democratic deficit” there was very little local political oversight over what was going on right across the work of the civil service and this department . . . that has now changed’ (see also Carmichael 2001). In addition, civil servants supporting the Scottish Executive have seemingly become more ‘hands on’ and approachable in their contribution to economic governance within the territory. One respondent stated: Because the perception that I have is that they [civil servants] are much more – you can see faces now – whereas before you wouldn’t have. You know you wouldn’t see people at all . . . I certainly think they are because they see a Minister regularly that they feel the pressure as well.

The new world that civil servants now operate in was highlighted, too, by respondents from within the civil service in Wales. One source suggested that ‘the democratization process has affected staff, because, whereas previously the only person you needed to worry about was the minister, now you’ve really got to worry about the whole process, and it’s meant a much more outward-facing way of working’. In many ways, this has necessitated civil servants in Wales ‘unlearn[ing] their old ways’ (Laffin and Thomas 2001: 45) in order to operate more according to a Welsh agenda but also one that was attuned to Wales’ place within an international and global marketplace: Caricaturing now, but at the Welsh Office we were quite happy to be under the wing of the British structures. Well, we’re not there anymore, in fact they’re our competitors in some respects. And so you’ve got to start believing in yourself more, that you can go out to New York or other member states [in Europe] and talk to them as equals.

The evidence discussed above can give the impression of a civil service that has struggled to cope with, or has deliberately withstood, the shift to

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more executive forms of devolution. While this might be the case in some instances, it is clear that civil servants in other cases have been active and supportive promoters of the enhanced capacities of devolved organizations. In any case, the contribution of civil servants to new executive forms of devolution – positive or negative – do not merely reflect their own personal attitudes towards the changing working conditions within which they find themselves. In a very real sense, executive devolution has led to capacity problems that are overwhelming civil servants in the various territories. Parry (2001: 39), for instance, has noted how civil servants in Scotland were dismayed by their workload within the new executive body, stating that the ‘volume of business from the Scottish Parliament exceeded all expectations’. One civil servant from Wales, too, indicated as follows: Fundamentally the staff in the Welsh Assembly were based in the Welsh Office which was an office department looking at central government . . . it was basically tweaking Whitehall policy. The aspiration of the Assembly is to have its own policies and to be outward facing . . . yet we still only have those staff that we had in the Welsh Office and yet we’ve also got to service, I think from yesterday, ten ministers.

The new pressures caused by executive forms of devolution, as well as more public demands concerning the need for a more inclusive and representative devolution project, have led to the inclusion of a more varied type of individual within the mechanisms of devolved government. This development has taken place in two main contexts. Civil servants in the various devolved administrations are now recruited, at all levels of responsibility, from a far wider pool of talent. One respondent from Northern Ireland, for instance, when asked whether devolution had changed the type of people that were being recruited into the civil service, answered as follows: ‘I think it has. I think there’s been a huge increase in people with, you know, greater diversity within the civil service; people with local government experience, people with business experience, it’s a very, very different civil service than what it was five years ago.’ Similar developments have taken place in the context of the devolved administrations’ elected representatives. The creation of new executive forms of devolved administration in 1999 has enabled a broader variety of individuals to enter into the political process.Three types of people, broadly speaking, were keen to become members of the new political class within each of the devolved territories. Most problematic, in many ways, were those sitting MPs who decided to augment their political roles by becoming political representatives of the new Parliament or Assemblies. Of course, the election of MPs – with potentially strong links to British takes on territorial politics and to party political machines that existed at a British

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national scale – raised interesting questions concerning their commitment to the territory that they represented. This was especially the case between 1999 and 2001 when many of these individuals shared their time between being elected representatives of their respective territory and members of the British Parliament. Few, now, choose to negotiate such a difficult political route, partly due to pressures of time but also because of public suspicion of the sustainability and appropriateness of such arrangements. The other two key sources of politicians for the nascent devolved political bodies have been from local government, and from miscellaneous public services, mainly education. In general terms, the backgrounds of these politicians have certainly had an impact on the executive role played by the devolved administrations. Morgan and Rees (2001; see also Morgan and Mungham 2000), working on the evolving devolution settlement in Wales, have shown how the histories of Assembly Members (AMs) in local government and education have had an impact on the trajectories of government within the territory. They draw specific attention to the debates that took place during the early years of the Assembly surrounding the territorial and scalar form that education and skills training should take in a devolved Wales. In the immediate aftermath of the Labour election in 1997, there was much impetus for the promotion of a regional and business-dominated framework for education and training in a devolved Wales, one that would be based in large part on the predecessor Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs). As Morgan and Rees (2001: 158–63) have shown, however, the strong links that existed between a number of AMs and local government and further education encouraged them to question such an organizational and territorial settlement. A number of AMs promoted an alternative view of the process of skills training, seeking to portray it in educational, rather than business terms, and something that should be, therefore, closely associated with local government and local education authorities. The upshot of this debate was an initial increased emphasis on the public sector and the local scale within the Learning and Skills Bill and a relative marginalization of private-sector interests and the regional scale (though see below). Clearly, in this context, the public-sector backgrounds of Assembly politicians – and the coalition of interests to which it led within the Assembly debating chamber – contributed to a significant shift in the form and function of executive devolution in Wales. More specifically, the incorporation of a new cadre of politicians into the devolved administrations has raised interesting questions regarding their competence as individuals and politicians. Laffin and Thomas (2001: 46–7), for instance, have focused on the lack of experience of those individuals who were charged with peopling the NAfW’s first Cabinet. Only Alun Michael possessed any previous ministerial experience, having been a Home Office minister and a Secretary of State for Wales. Another member, Rhodri Morgan, had been a long-serving

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MP in Westminster. As Laffin and Thomas (2001: 46) point out, perhaps with unintended sarcasm, ‘the remaining cabinet members had limited political and administrative experience, although four had been local councillors’. Evidently, these individuals had to negotiate a ‘steep learning curve’ if they were to make full use of the Assembly’s powers. The changing character of the recent process of devolution has, therefore, led to a marked shift in the cultures and working practices of politicians and civil servants alike. Executive devolution has, similarly, been shaped by the practices of the self-same individuals. But if state personnel have been deeply implicated in the changing character of devolved government, they have also been linked closely to its organizational structure. This second kind of connection is discussed in the following section.

New Devolved Organizations, New Organizational Cultures A key aspect of the peopling of contemporary devolution in the UK has revolved around the problems of staffing new regional organizations. The process of devolution has led to the proliferation of organizations of governance and these have all, to a greater or lesser extent, emphasized the need to develop new organizational cultures that can act as a source of inspiration for state personnel. State personnel, too, are viewed as the active producers of these new organizational mentalities. The emphasis on such themes has extended from debates concerning the leadership of devolved organizations to the more mundane contexts within which ‘ordinary’ state personnel work. Key here has been the extent to which state personnel have assumed a state mentality or habitus that can contribute to the perceived effectiveness of devolved forms of governance. I begin by focusing on issues to do with the leadership of devolved state forms. In Chapter 1, I discussed the public consternation surrounding the election of the Labour nominee for the role of First Minister of Wales, prior to the first National Assembly elections. Much public ire was directed towards Alun Michael, MP, because of his strong Blairite credentials (R. Jones 2001). Alun Michael’s subsequent success in the election to become the putative leader of the Labour Party in Wales helped to tarnish the reputation of the National Assembly. It also served to ensure that Alun Michael received a rough ride when he was subsequently elected as the First Minister for Wales, from Welsh AMs and the Welsh public alike (see Scully et al. 2004). The leadership of the National Assembly for Wales, therefore, became a highly charged and symbolic issue, which chimed with much broader public concerns regarding its organizational independence from a Labour-dominated Westminster. Alun Michael’s close association with the Labour Millbank machine and his perceived lack of commitment to the

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National Assembly for Wales were viewed as something that hamstrung the effectiveness of the whole devolution project in Wales. In a more positive context, the potential contribution of inspired agents of change was seen to be crucial to the development of an organizational ethos in each of the territories and regions. Admittedly, these charismatic leaders have been rather noticeable by their absence within devolved politics, although there are a few exceptions. Research on Northern Ireland, for instance, has shown how one minister was held in esteem within the province by civil servants and the general public alike. His force of personality, constructive approach to working with other actors and business background contributed to his ability to perform his duty as minister, in perhaps less than ideal political circumstances. One respondent maintained, for example, that [The minister] has a committee up on the hill, every department has its committee that scrutinizes them. And he has . . . gone to great lengths to establish good relations with that committee. That’s because he’s an astute politician, he knows they will be scrutinizing him and he keeps them very well informed. Doesn’t do everything that they would want him to do, but has a good relationship . . . he’s quite open with them, always ensures that they get information before anyone else gets it, talks to them regularly, cordial relationship. Very interesting relationship. He’s an Ulster Unionist and the chairman of the committee’s Sinn Fein, very good working relationship nurtured by both of them . . . Very smart, and not just smart, I don’t mean smart as in guile, I mean sensible, very sensible cooperation.

In addition, the minister’s knowledge of the ‘scene’ in Northern Ireland increased his credentials as a politician and manager. One person involved in implementing devolved governance in Northern Ireland, for instance, argued that ‘our own minister has been a councillor for many years, and I must say, it’s actually very hard to write a briefing for him, because he knows more than most of us do . . . And that comes from very high level local knowledge of what happens on the ground, from a local government and business point of view’. In a similar way, the issue of political leadership was noted as something that was a crucial aspect of the evolving form of government in the East Midlands. For instance, research focusing on the East Midlands Regional Development Agency (EMDA) illustrated how various respondents emphasized the role of the Chair of EMDA in shaping a new organizational attitude and culture. The Chair was seen to have had a beneficial impact on the evolving ethos and culture of the organization. EMDA’s operational culture was said to have been clearly informed by the Chair’s business experience (see also EMDA 2002). One EMDA employee explained that, in contradistinction to other quangos, EMDA, through its Chair, had

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instigated a culture of ‘get up and do things, take risks, don’t worry about it, get on and do things’ (see Jones et al. 2004). Issues of positive leadership, in this context, were seen to impact in a beneficial way on the workings of the new organizations of the state. Similar concerns about the development of positive connections between state personnel and devolved organizations have arisen in more mundane contexts. Newly formed organizations have tried to generate a coherent corporate loyalty or an organizational culture for their workers. Education and Learning Wales1 (ELWa), for instance, the body charged with implementing all aspects of post-16 education within Wales between 2001 and April 2006 (see ELWa, 2001a; 2001b; 2002), sought to promote a united organizational culture throughout the whole of its relatively short period in existence. One employee argued that ‘our success depends on the success of our policies and that means having everyone in the organization “pulling together” ’. It was also believed that the benefits brought by this sense of common purpose could be augmented through the development of a sense of loyalty towards ELWa’s activities. One high-level Welsh Assembly politician, for instance, referred to the need to encourage a sense of loyalty towards the organization amongst its employees, maintaining that ‘I think people ought to be proud of who they work for’. He added that ‘they don’t want to go down the pub and then hear the conversation turn to ELWa and then slink off into a corner’. Rather, ELWa personnel should ‘actually want to be able to say “well actually I work for them” and be proud to do so, kind of thing’. For this individual, therefore, issues of ‘corporate identity’ were seen to be crucial to the success of ELWa as an organization (see Jones et al. 2005). Certain organizations though, admittedly, have faced difficulties in developing a common set of cultures. This has especially been the case because of the difficulties experienced by certain personnel in adjusting to the changed organizational and territorial structures that now exist within the devolved territories. One important method of countering this problem has been through the appointment of new personnel to the organization and through an associated effort to rid the organization of others less open to change. In this respect, one ELWa employee explained that 120 employees, some possessing ‘baggage’, were made redundant within the organization. Furthermore, the appointment of new people was viewed as a process that would help to ‘bring an ELWa feeling to the organization’. Significantly, similar processes also took place in EMDA, where the appointment of people with little ‘institutional baggage’ enabled the development of a common agenda for all personnel. Part of the problem has been the fact that new devolved organizations have often been formed as amalgams of previously existing bodies (for reviews, see Foley 2002; Morgan and Mungham 2000; Morgan and Rees 2001; Tomaney and Mawson 2002). The fact that these predecessor

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organizations possessed different working practices and cultures, and often different pay and conditions, has proved to be a challenge for the development of a strong organizational culture. One set of tensions has arisen in the context of harmonizing the working cultures of personnel previously employed in organizations that existed at ‘arm’s length’ from formal government and those coming from a civil service background. In Northern Ireland, for instance, Invest Northern Ireland (INI) has been formed as a super-organization, whose responsibility it is to promote economic development within the region. But this new organization has also been characterized by internal divisions that have arisen from previous organizational legacies. The main division has been between staff previously employed by the Local Enterprise Development Unit (LEDU), who were characterized as people who were used to showing initiative and taking risks, and the civil servants of the Industrial Development Board (IDB) and the Industrial Research and Technology Unit (IRTU). Former LEDU staff, in particular, have found it difficult to adjust to the different ‘speed’ of working in INI, as the following quote illustrates: In terms of flexibility, response times, on a scale of one to ten, LEDU was sitting about six, could do better. In Invest Northern Ireland, you’re really coming down to about three, a bigger and slower organization. Equally so, you’ve got to understand that those from IDB and IRTU, they were maybe sitting at one or two on the same scale. So they’re now thinking ‘this is getting a bit fast for me’.

Staff who previously worked for English Partnerships in the English regions have also taken time to acclimatize to the new working conditions within RDAs (see also Jones et al. 2004). A Board member of EMDA, for instance, explained that these individuals ‘found it hardest to fit in’ since they felt ‘their status was at risk and took a bit of settling down’. Similar tensions have been apparent in Wales but these have been based on a different organizational legacy (see AGW 2003). ELWa-National Council, the body concerned with training in a post-devolution Wales, was formed on the basis of four pre-existing Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs). One high-level ELWa employee explained the problems of developing a ‘common culture within the organization’. The four TECs possessed ‘very distinctive styles and distinctive cultures’. Consequently, ELWa was seen to have ‘inherited those different cultures, different ways of working. Even though the TECs were working to common objectives set by the Assembly, their internal business processes were very different.’ The key point that the interviewee wanted to make, in this respect, was the ‘cultural issue about becoming one organization’. Another ELWa employee added that the variety of employment practices within the pre-existing organizations, in terms of salaries and working conditions, had compounded the

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problems faced by ELWa (see Jones et al. 2005). The disbanding of the quango and its incorporation into the structures of the Welsh Assembly Government in April 2006, one would assume, will lead to a further set of challenges for those people working within the organization. Given these various problems, the need for staff to develop new common frames of reference has been viewed as crucial. One interviewee in Northern Ireland, for instance, spoke of the need for people to ‘erase bits of their corporate memory’. In doing so, personnel could be ‘de-programmed’ and then ‘re-programmed into Invest Northern Ireland ways’. Although the terminology used here has somewhat sinister undertones, it clearly illustrates the key difficulties faced in attempting to shape a new culture and organizational identity within these new bodies. The hope is that the passage of time will aid this process. For one interviewee in Northern Ireland, the ‘only hope is that three years down the line, you get rid of those people who don’t want to be here, and the only people who are left are the ones who want to be here and drive things’. Much of the emphasis in a post-devolution UK, therefore, has been on developing a common working ethos and culture among the personnel of various organizations that have sought to implement devolved policies and strategies. It is these individuals, critically, who have had to make sense of the devolution settlement in their day-to-day practices. Therein, I would maintain, lies the significance of the role of state personnel in the development of effective working cultures within these new organizations. Especially in Wales, there is a sense in which the rationalization of the organizational and territorial form of devolved state apparatuses has been an ongoing process, which continually asks questions of those people who are charged with staffing state bureaucracies. This has been due, in part, to the politically charged character of devolution in which politicians must be seen to be ‘doing something’, even if this leads to devolved organizations, strategies, policies and staff being in a continual state of flux. It is apparent, in this respect, that the examples discussed in this section have come from Northern Ireland, the East Midlands and Wales. Scotland is noticeable by its absence. Scotland has experienced somewhat of a more stable organizational settlement since 1999, with few new organizations being created. This has enabled it to avoid the majority of the problems discussed with regard to the creation of new organizations of economic governance in the other three territories.

State Personnel and the ‘Joining up’ of Regional Governance In addition to the difficulties that have been faced by state personnel in dealing with the formation of new organizations of governance in the

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various territories and regions of the UK, there has been also an expectation that they should be proactive in developing strong links between the organization within which they work and other organizations operating within their specific region or territory. Much has been made, in this respect, of benefits that come in the train of the development of such regional coalitions of interest (e.g. Amin 1999; Amin and Thrift 1995; see also Coleman 1988; Putnam 1993a; 1993b; 2001; for broader criticisms, see Whitehead 2003: 9). As well as being academic concerns, it is clear that such issues have acted as a source of considerable debate in policy and practitioner circles in a devolved UK. Politicians within the devolved administrations have sought to create a ‘joined-up’ ethos of collaboration between different organizations of governance. One Welsh politician, for instance, elaborated on the efforts made to introduce this new mindset, stating that the Welsh Assembly had encouraged different agencies to ‘work together’ and had cautioned against ‘turf wars’ (see also Storer and Cole 2002). The respondent elaborated on the higher levels of inter-organizational cooperation that now existed: You’ve got an economic development committee and education and lifelong learning committee and it’s very interesting that what we’ve seen this year is the coming together of those two ministers, where we now have joint meetings involving the two ministers and the two chairs of the WDA and the national council ELWa . . . We would not have seen that at all in the past so it’s bringing these sorts of key bits together.

Parry’s (2001: 40) work on Scotland, as well, demonstrates the efforts that have been made there to counter any ‘silo’ mentality within the new administration. In the administration’s early years, for instance, there was a deliberate ‘mismatch’ of ministers and departments. While this may have led to some confusion in the inchoate Scottish Parliament, it also helped to ensure that firm boundaries were not erected between different governmental roles. Crucially, it was the common interests of ministers in more than one department that enabled the ‘joining up’ of government within Scotland at this time. Two important factors have contributed to this increasing inter-organizational collaboration. At one level, much has been made of the smaller scale of regional government and of the almost inevitable increase in formal and informal contact between state personnel that comes in its wake. One respondent involved in governing Northern Ireland, for instance, maintained that at the strategic level, we have regular meetings with the other departments, for example the department of education, the permanent secretary there and

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I have very regular meetings . . . So it’s a constant and active working arrangement, helped by the fact that we’re a relatively small jurisdiction and everybody knows everybody.

The policy-making context of the new devolved bodies has also necessitated an increased interaction between different organizations. This has taken place as staff seek to make sense of the devolution settlement, specifically in terms of the delineation of spheres of interest and policy responsibilities. One official in the East Midlands, for instance, discussed the common spheres of interest between EMDA and the East Midlands Regional Assembly (EMRA), arguing that the definition of responsibilities in these cases could be ‘tricky’. Informal relationships, however, were considered key to the whole process of organizational demarcation. The interviewee maintained that ‘the more we worked on it, the more we decided it wasn’t actually going to help anybody until everyone understood more about what was going on in the region’. Similarly, the new executive context within which these devolved bodies work has posed considerable problems with regard to their capacity, ones which could only be dealt with satisfactorily through increased collaboration. The development of new policies was viewed, thus, as a product and a facilitator of a new collaborative approach. This was certainly the case within Wales. A high-level Assembly politician noted the lack of capacity that departments possessed in order to develop new policies in isolation. For practical reasons such as these, increased levels of collaboration were necessary within devolved territories and regions. This point was emphasized by an ELWa employee. He argued that the whole point of devolution was to ‘make our own policy’, but ‘because we don’t have the capacity, or we didn’t have the capacity or expertise, we have to make policy on a collaborative basis. We have to work with [the] WDA, [the] ASPBs [Assembly Sponsored Public Bodies]’. Inter-organizational coordination has been promoted in formal and informal ways. For instance, efforts have been made in the East Midlands to identify a common agenda for all agencies of economic governance operating within the region. One important factor in this region has been the adoption of an Integrated Regional Strategy (IRS) for the region, produced by EMRA in December 2000 (EMRA 2000). The IRS represents the region’s sustainable development strategy and as such it ‘seeks to apply the National Sustainable Development Strategy’ (ibid.: 1) to an East Midlands’ context’ (Figure 6.2). Significantly, the IRS has also been used as an overarching regional strategic framework that can draw together other regional strategies, integrate regional policy-making, and provide a framework for developing future regional policies and strategies. The IRS also emphasizes the importance of vertical and horizontal policy coordination within and outside the region (see also Foley 2002). As well as providing a territorial

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HORIZONTAL COORDINATION

International relations V E R T I C A L C O O R D I N A T I O N

Intergovernmental co-operation

Overall European Union (EU) policies

Member state national policies

National sectoral policies

Regional sectoral policies

Inter-regional relationships

Subregional/local interrelationships

EU sectoral policies

Subregional/local policies

Subregional/local sectoral policies

(from EMRA 2000)

Figure 6.2

The East Midlands’ Integrated Regional Strategy (from EMRA 2000). Used with permission

and spatial understanding of the devolved government that should operate in the East Midlands region, the IRS also provides a governmental framework around which all regional staff can coalesce. Similar developments with regard to formal inter-organizational collaboration have occurred in Scotland. At a local level, Local Economic Forums (LEFs) were formed in April 2001 to facilitate cohesion and counter the ‘congestion’ that was said to exist with regard to local economic development prior to devolution (McCarthy and Newlands 1999; Scottish Executive 2000).The significance of LEFs is that they draw together all agencies – and, significantly, all agents – involved in promoting economic development at the local scale in Scotland. Instances of informal linkages have also been important mechanisms for developing inter-organizational capacity. Personal relationships have been

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viewed as being particularly effective as bridging mechanisms in the East Midlands, for instance, especially at a high level. Two senior people within the regional governance of the region maintained that ‘informal relationships, informal meetings and discussions’ have been crucial. In doing this, there was a feeling that ‘one builds up, hopefully, a good working relationship, and we can’t over-estimate the personal influence’. But at the same time, it is clear that this emphasis on forging stronger connections between different organizations has not been simple. One interviewee in Scotland, for instance, referred to the existence of vested interests, which made the coordinating role of LEFs difficult to achieve: You can’t get a vested interest in the form of a local authority, a vested interest in the form of a LEC (Local Enterprise Company) and anyone else in the room and say right who’s going to do what? They will all defend their corner.

Similar tensions, arising from the importance of pre-existing ‘organizational identities’, were also prevalent in Northern Ireland. It is important to note that the civil service in Northern Ireland was somewhat unusual on the eve of devolution in that it was organized along departmental lines, in variance with the civil service in Scotland and Wales, where functions were exercised by a single department of state in each case (Carmichael 2001). This structure posed problems in the immediate post-devolution period, given the new emphasis on developing policy and governing in a more holistic way. Citing the example of the Executive Programme Funds – designed to promote collaboration between departments in Northern Ireland – the following interviewee pointed to resistance to joined-up working: there’s huge rivalry between departments and huge protocol. We were doing, in my old job, some work for the DOE [Department of the Environment], and to get departments to work together, they had executive programme funds [given to departments for joint initiatives] . . . brilliant, I think they had 139 applications . . . The departments could not, they didn’t know how, they didn’t have a way of writing a joint bid and they had no relationship with any other department to write a bid.

There have been efforts to improve this situation in Northern Ireland, as in the other UK territories, but this has often involved forcing relationships upon different organizations. One civil servant in Northern Ireland argued, in this context, that: we have to work harder at inter-departmental activity and we are, how can I best express this? We are active on that front, although I’m not sure we’ve got it absolutely right. I was asking my staff recently how many inter-departmental

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groups we’re involved with and the answer is forty-five. So I think we have probably overdone it in that sense.

The above quote illustrates the costs, in terms of effort and time, that have come in the wake of the attempts to develop strong associations between different regional organizations. Significantly, these are costs that are borne out by the individuals who embody the links between the different organizations. Indeed, there is a sense throughout each of the devolved territories of a ‘partnership overload’. Issues of collaboration – and the role of individuals in promoting it – have also been played out in territorial and scalar contexts. State personnel have, in many instances, enabled the development of more coherent territorial and scalar relationships between different organizations, and different branches of the same organization. Territorial and scalar considerations have been particularly pertinent in the context of governing a devolved Wales and I want to focus briefly on some of the issues that state personnel in ELWa have had to grapple with in this respect (for a longer discussion, see Jones et al. 2005). The national, the regional and the local scale all play an important part in ELWa’s organization. Until recently, when it went through a process of nationalization and re-statization, the most important scale for the organization has been the regional scale (see Figure 6.3). For instance, ELWa for a long period did not possess a national headquarters and ‘operate[d] as a decentralized organization with strong emphasis on the regional delivery of [its] programmes’ (ELWa 2001b: 42). Executive staff were, therefore, located across the four established regions of Wales. In addition, each Regional Office was attached to a regional advisory committee, whose responsibility lay in drawing up annual Regional Statements of Needs and Priorities. The reasons for adopting such a devolved structure were manifold. In part, they reflected the need to counter a perceived centralization of decision-making power in Cardiff (cf. Hollingsworth 2002). More significantly, it represented a legacy from the regional structure of TECs, the predecessor organizations charged with facilitating the training and skilling of employees for business and industry in Wales (see the discussion in Morgan and Rees 2001). I want to suggest that the emphasis within ELWa on the regional scale for the first few years of its existence demonstrates the importance of examining the territorial and scalar context of the transformation and reproduction of state organizations under devolution. The regional structure was said to bring certain benefits, most specifically an awareness – through the Regional Statements of Needs and Priorities – of the specific educational and training requirements of the various parts of Wales. Such an emphasis on subsidiarity, of course, chimed well with the whole ethos of devolution. At the same time, the regional and devolved structure adopted by ELWa led to certain

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Figure 6.3

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The four governmental and administrative regions in Wales

day-to-day difficulties for the people working within the organization. One difficulty lay in its novelty as an organizational and territorial structure. One employee noted, for instance, that The challenge is that people are not used to it . . . We’ve got different responsibilities in different places but once that’s settled down and it becomes a way

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of working, I do believe it will be very efficient and a very effective model, but it’s difficult for people as you would expect in any situation, but it’s not an unusual arrangement.

A particular difficulty revolved around the management of flows of information within such a devolved structure. Even though a great emphasis was placed on the management of information, problems still arose ‘because this place is full of knowledge but we don’t know what we don’t know’. In addition, the lack of organizational integration afforded by the regional structure was seen as a distinct drawback by some respondents. Part of the problem revolved around logistical difficulties, as the following individual makes clear: We’re distributed so within my directorate and within my teams I’ve people in all the different offices. Team leaders in our offices, and that obviously means that on a practical level it’s much, much harder to operate in a very integrated way, because with people around you, you can talk immediately. So a great deal of effort and resources are used travelling around Wales. I think the implications of saying we’re an all-Wales body with no HQs makes communications more difficult.

Clearly, in this respect, the scalar and territorial dynamics of ELWa’s regional structure led to considerable confusion for the people working within the organization.They were charged with making the regional structure of the organization work effectively but, as the above quotes show, this was easier said than done. It may be that the recent reorganization of ELWa, and especially the increased emphasis on centralizing decision-making in south-east Wales through processes of ‘renationalization’ and re-statization, ultimately reflected the inability of personnel within the organization to make its innovative territorial and scalar structure work effectively. In this case, state personnel, through their practice, called into question the organizational and territorial form of the devolved state. The other important territorial and scalar consideration with regard to devolution has arisen in the context of the relationship that should exist between the devolved administrations and the central UK state. Key, in this respect, has been the development of various formal and informal relationships between the different devolved administrations in order to ensure that there exists a common framework within which they are able to implement their policies and strategies. As noted by Hazell (2000) and Trench (2001), there now exists an array of formal mechanisms that seek to minimize the potential for conflict and competition between the devolved administrations, including: the main Joint-Ministerial Committee, a highlevel committee which possesses a wide-ranging remit; ‘functional’ JointMinisterial Committees, which deal with specific aspects of governmental

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policy at a UK level and across the different territories; and concordats between different administrations, which seek to deal with specific policy issues. At present, there is little evidence of serious discord between the different territories but, as many commentators have noted, this situation may well change with the election of different parties to power in the various territories and at a UK level (e.g. see Trench 2001; Jeffery 2002).The development of political differences between the various territories, with some potentially being borne out of the existence of different territorial and national identities within the UK, may well test the formal and informal mechanisms that currently foster inter-territorial coordination, thus leading to potential territorial tensions throughout the UK. This connection between the territorial and national identities of state personnel and the transformation of devolved government is discussed in the following section.

Territorial Identities and the Reproduction of Devolution Territorial identities – either national or regional – have also impacted on the development of organizational cultures and an inter-organizational consensus within the devolved territories (see Mohan and Mohan 2002). The existence of territorial identities has the potential to contribute either to a consolidation of intra- and inter-organizational cultures within each territory or to a challenging of the workings of new organizations of governance in the devolved territories. This issue is linked most closely to the association of the devolution project to ideas of democratic representation, where new devolved bodies are supposed to represent more effectively the desires and needs of their regions (see R. Jones 2001; see also Paasi 1991; 2002). More broadly, it also illustrates the state–society relationship that can help to sediment a more effective synergy between regional state personnel, regional state organizations and regional state territories (Hobson 1998). It is clear from the research on the connections between devolution and economic governance that territorial identities have played an important role in the development of productive interrelationships between state personnel and the emerging state apparatus. Respondents in all four territories were keen to emphasize that devolution had changed the nature of their work, along with their overall commitment to the regions that they represented. One official working in the Government Office for the East Midlands (GOEM), the regional branch of the central UK state apparatus, for instance, maintained that he was ‘here for the East Midlands’ rather than being ‘here for the government’. He added that ‘because I’m an East Midlander, and I think, you know . . . well, hang on a minute, if the government’s not about helping people, what is it about?’ Others working in Wales

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also argued that issues of territorial identity or nationalism influenced their commitment to the organizations within which they worked. One respondent in ELWa argued that devolution had led to an increased commitment to Wales as a country. For this person, ‘there is an intangible feeling of “this is us in Wales trying to do something for Wales” ’. Another ELWa official concurred, arguing that ‘quite a lot of people, particularly people who have been there a long time, people who are born and bred here and then you know they see no reason to move anywhere else, and they feel “let’s do it for Wales” ’. In both these quotes, there is a palpable sense of territorial identity, which, I would argue, translates into a firm commitment to the organization. Here, territorial identity can be viewed as a key motivating factor for state personnel that, in turn, impacts on the effectiveness of regional organizations in positive ways. Scotland, in this respect, provides an interesting example of the link between territorial identities and the workings of devolved government. At one level, work by Mitchell (2003) has shown how the Scottish civil service displayed a proactive attitude towards regional government prior to 1997, more so than their counterparts in Northern Ireland and Wales. Members of the civil service in Scotland tended to emphasize the distinctiveness of Scotland, and of their role in sustaining that distinctiveness, during the whole of the latter half of the twentieth century. In this regard, the executive devolution of power to Scotland, through the creation of the Scottish Parliament, has only served to invigorate what was always an active Scottish civil service. At the same time, certain territorial divisions exist within Scotland, which may counteract the development of a united Scottish take on devolution. Echoing Agnew’s (1987; 1996) comments on the existence of many scales of identity within Scotland, a number of interviewees highlighted the spatial and scalar tensions that characterized economic governance within this territory (Figure 6.4). One interviewee in Dumfries and Galloway in Lowland Scotland, for instance, was critical of the perceived lack of sensitivity of national representatives to the needs of the locality: We have people who come down regularly from Glasgow, all of the time, from Scottish Enterprise (SE), who have never been down to Dumfries and Galloway, have never been there in their lives, they didn’t know what it was like, so we have that.

Another respondent in Scotland explains the nature of this conflict in the following quote: Answer: we [Local Economic Company] maintain that they don’t really understand what’s happening on the ground, and they [SE HQ] maintain that we don’t understand what’s happening at national level. So there . . .

Figure 6.4

The national and local framework for economic governance in Scotland

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Question: Never the twain shall meet? Answer:Well exactly, you know, but it’s that, I mean, I’ve been in economic development many, many decades, but that’s the nature of it. That’s what it is all about. And there is always a friction between local economic development and national economic development.

The main tension that has arisen in many of the devolved territories, therefore, lies between reconciling national policy directives with the particular needs of various localities (cf. Jones and MacLeod 2002). This has certainly been the case in Wales. Regional tensions, linked to regional forms of identity, have been most obvious with regard to north Wales (Hollingsworth 2002). One ELWa employee in the region stressed this point by stating that there had always existed a strong commitment towards north Wales within that particular regional office. A sense of spatial iniquity helped to create a feeling that north Wales was ‘fighting against the odds’, especially when compared with the south-east, located near the centre of political and economic power in Cardiff. The same employee argued as follows: We try to get Rhodri [Morgan, the First Minister] here to speak to the forum at least once every year, we have Sue Essex [the Minister for Finance] about once or twice every year and we try to get Jane Davidson [the Minister for Education] . . . This is where north Wales is to a disadvantage, of course. I mean our colleagues in South East Wales in particular are meeting with people in social places etc. and it’s so much easier for them to articulate their needs. They can do it at rugby matches, everywhere, so we have a disadvantage.

It becomes apparent, in this context, that a territorial identity at the regional scale within Wales can call into question the efforts to generate a sense of territorial cohesiveness at the Welsh scale. Northern Ireland, too, provides another illustration of the tensions in terms of identity politics that can exist within a devolved territory and which can mould the character of devolved government in important ways. To a certain extent, councillors who have been raised on the sectarianism of local politics still dominate devolved politics within Northern Ireland. This political backdrop has contributed to a paucity of governmental and political talent. The Northern Ireland Assembly, according to one respondent, is really struggling to develop [its] own policies and systems and ways of working, and again I would say there’s a major difficulty in that, within our political system. I’m not sure we have the thinking, or we have the leaders. Because again, the local councils are not really a nursery, the kind of nursery that you would want for people coming up through the political system,

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they’re just orange and green. So the kind of people you might want to develop don’t come through the system.

The broader impact of civil society in Northern Ireland on the development of a meaningful form of devolution within the province continues to be a thorny issue, albeit one that has been placed on the political back burner following the suspension of the Assembly. Equally significant tensions with regard to territorial identity have become apparent in the context of the relationship between the devolved territories and broader British governmental imperatives. A certain conflict exists, for instance, between the central and regional branches of the UK state operating within England, one that is evidenced in the cultures of the staff working in GOEM. I have already referred to the response of one interviewee who, because of his upbringing in the East Midlands, felt wholly committed to the regional agenda that was being promoted there. Other staff in GOEM have had to take more difficult decisions in their efforts to reconcile their commitment to the East Midlands region with their loyalty to their employers in the central state (in a related context, see Mawson and Spencer, 1997; Musson et al., 2003; RCU 2001). One official working in GOEM, when asked whether they were a regional actor or a central government actor in the region, answered that ‘we’re both of those, but it depends on what day of the week it is in my case’. The official, in many ways, found it difficult to reconcile both roles but went on to argue: I guess your loyalty always ends up with the government. Don’t think I’ve ever found myself in a position where I actually was publicly against government policy – at the end of the day one is a civil servant. That’s what I’m employed to do. But, I guess the reason you can reconcile it is because what government wants you to do is to make the region work as effectively as you can.

Similar tensions have existed in more party political contexts. The role of the Labour Party within the devolved territories offers a good illustration of the association between the peopling of government and broader issues relating to group identity. It has been asserted that the Labour Party in the UK has always been characterized by a somewhat schizophrenic character, in that it is the only ‘party with a major presence in the “periphery” which is committed to the maintenance of the British state’ (Morgan and Mungham 2000: 82). The Labour Party, as such, has been a key player within devolved politics since 1999 at the same time as being a party that is not, by any stretch of the imagination, wholly supportive of it in principle. The Welsh Labour Party, for instance, has traditionally been a centralizing one that has favoured a close association with the political organizations, if not the broader culture, of Britain. It is significant, in this

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regard, that the campaigns both for and against devolution in Wales drew heavy support from the Labour Party. Countering Ron Davies’ campaign to secure a Welsh Assembly were other key figures in the Welsh Labour Party who were averse to the notion of devolution for a whole range of reasons (see ibid.: 97–119). Significantly, the Labour Party’s varying responses to the issue of devolution during the referendum campaign has led to continuing concerns regarding the role of Labour AMs within the running of the Assembly itself. For instance, Morgan and Mungham (2000: 211) have evaluated the composition of the first Labour Cabinet, formed after the Assembly elections in 1999. Significantly, they suggest that some of the more competent Labour AMs were not chosen to be a part of this Cabinet, because of a perceived belief in their lack of loyalty to the Labour Party machine and a related overzealous commitment to a Welsh project. Evidently, issues of territorial identity have the potential to make an impact on the decisions made by state personnel, on their commitment or otherwise to the organization, and by implication, to the region within which they work. It is in this context that territorial identities may influence the trajectories of devolution in the various territories and regions of the UK. The picture painted by the various interviewees, however, is not a straightforward one. State personnel in the various territories often have to negotiate a difficult set of territorial and scalar commitments – between locality, region and nation-state. I would argue that it is these negotiations, along with their intended and unintended consequences, that necessitate studies of the association between the territorial identities of state personnel and the unfolding dynamics of state organizations and their territories of governance.

Devolution in Prospect State personnel – either as politicians or civil servants – have been deeply implicated in the reproduction of the territorial and regional state forms of the post-devolution UK. In dealing with and promoting more executive forms of government, in staffing new organizations, in building bridges between different organizations, and in their connections with regional and national forms of group identity, state personnel have helped to shape the contours of the devolution settlement as it stands today. As well as being an empirical reality in each of the devolved territories and regions discussed in this chapter, the peopling of devolved state forms is also clearly a policy and academic aspiration. Framed in terms of staff taking ownership of the organizations within which they work or, in alternative academic contexts, with regard to notions of the new regionalism and social capital, it would

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seem to me that such a peopling of the late modern state is set to continue and thrive. The irony, in this respect, is that the latitude afforded to state personnel within a contemporary UK state, which is characterized by seemingly increasing bureaucratization and a related ‘control freakery’, may well be decreasing. Part of the popular criticisms of the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales, for instance, is that they have not ploughed policy furrows that have been distinct enough from their Westminster counterparts. At another level, it is possible to argue that the freedom experienced by devolved state personnel at present is curtailed by the existence of a broad consensus, at both the national and international scales, concerning the most appropriate means of intervening in social, geopolitical and economic issues. Attitudes towards the national and regional state’s role in promoting economic development, for instance, display a remarkable consistency throughout much of the Western world. The internationalization of policy regimes in the context of globalization has meant that all states and regions now adhere to the same principles; the contemporary challenges associated with economies and populations are conceived of in the same way. So are the solutions to these problems, namely the need to create a more skilled workforce, to enhance entrepreneurship and so on (see Jessop 1990). One individual involved in education and training in Wales colourfully expanded on this theme: we scoured the world looking for something a bit different. One of the team, who’d been on holiday to Hawaii, above and beyond the [call of] duty, called in at Hawaii economic development department, and brought back a brochure that talked about ‘we must focus on innovation, we’ve got some natural in-built abilities here, oceanography and a range of other things, we could have spin outs from that. University of Hawaii is a blah blah blah, but we do actually have problems with low skilled people, tourism industry’s taken a bit of a hit, we need to strengthen this, what about the movie business, couldn’t this be a great place for locations’. And I thought ‘change the name, and change some of the sectors and clusters and you’ve basically got it’. Go over to Atlanta, New South Wales, you go to Queensland . . . there are no new solutions.

Given such a convergence of policy regimes and goals, the difference that people can make to devolution – with regard to economic development policies and strategies at least – may well be limited. And yet at the same time, it seems as if the devolved administrations of the UK are beginning, after an initial period of uncertainty and/or lethargy, to flex their organizational muscle. Devolution is, increasingly, making a difference to the policy landscape of the UK in a range of different contexts (see, for instance, Adams and Robinson 2002; Bulmer and Burch

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2002; Hazell 2000; 2003; Local Economy 2002; Regional Studies 2002; Regional Studies 2005; Scottish Affairs 2002; Trench 2001). If this policy experimentation continues, and the most recent signs are promising in this respect, then the opportunities available for state personnel actively to develop new strategies and policies may well proliferate. As I argued above, it may be that a change of administration will bring about a more variegated and less consensual politico-geographical terrain within the UK. The saliency of people within such a politically differentiated UK would, I contend, become far more apparent. Devolved state organizations and territories, furthermore, are still being reconfigured into new forms and, as such, state personnel will continue with their unenviable task of making sense of the unsettled devolution ‘settlement’. State personnel, too, are the ones tasked with making these new organizational and territorial arrangements work, often under difficult circumstances. The recent re-nationalization (in territorial and scalar senses) and re-statization (in terms of a consolidation back into formal governmental control) of post-16 education and training in Wales, for instance, illustrates the ongoing negotiations between state organizations, state territories and state personnel in Wales. Ron Davies’ (1999) oft-quoted aphorism that devolution should be viewed as a ‘process rather than an event’ may well have been prophetic in this respect. Although used as a way of outlining the potential for a further future devolution of power, it is also highly appropriate as a means of conveying the continual emergence of the state in a post-devolution UK. Emerging, disappearing and re-emerging state organizations and territories have been driven forward by state personnel and have, at the same time, questioned the practices and ideologies of those self-same people. State personnel have been both producers and products of this state ‘in motion’ (Peck 2001).

Chapter Seven

Conclusions: Peopling the State

Throughout People/States/Territories I have been at pains to illustrate the active contribution of state personnel of different kinds to the reproduction of a territorialized state apparatus. The various branches of the state apparatus are inherently peopled. Such a focus reaffirms the need to rethink our conceptualizations of the state within the social sciences. There is a need to consider the state as an inherently heterogeneous organization, in which the peopled application of state strategies and projects is highly varied. Despite its pretension to uniformity and bureaucratic homogeneity, all states to greater or lesser degrees are shaped by the practices of those people that inhabit them, as sovereigns or political leaders, politicians, bureaucrats and more menial employees. In a similar fashion, a focus on the peopling of the state shows how state territoriality is inherently fractured and multiple. Different individuals throughout the long-term consolidation of the state within Britain have contributed to its continually emerging and mutating territorial form. In this respect, we need to take heed of the complex territorialities of political forms and not just the complicated territorialities and spatialities associated with the private interests of capitalism (Lefebvre 2003: 86) if we are fully to understand the political geographies of the state. States, therefore, in both organizational and territorial contexts, are very much the product of networks of people and non-human actants (see Painter 2006). But while these human and nonhuman actants help to produce state organizations and territories in both material and discursive senses, we also need to acknowledge how these organizations and territories condition the actions of state personnel of all kinds. In other words, and contra some anthropological or purely relational work on the state, we need to think about how state organizations and territories help to ‘frame’ the practices and identities of state actors (Whitehead, Jones and Jones forthcoming).The organizational framework of shires

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that was systemized in Wales during the sixteenth century, for instance, helped shape the functions, mobilities and identities of individuals such as Sir John Wynn. The key, as I discussed in Chapter 2, is how we conceive of the connections between these different elements in the people/states/ territories nexus. While some conceptual approaches, such as the SRA, might well advocate a collapsing of people into organizations – and logically territories, I would argue – I think that the methodological and analytical difficulties that this presents are difficult to ignore. In this regard, I would argue that we must live with a certain separation of people, states, and territories if we are to make any empirical headway in ascertaining their different contributions to the long-term process of state transformation. Building on these points, there is a clear sense in which the methodological and conceptual approach advocated in People/States/Territories can enable geographers and social scientists more broadly to begin a more productive and useful dialogue between neo-Marxist, neo-Weberian and post-structural or post-Marxist state theory. While there remain certain epistemological differences between these three conceptual strands, it would seem to me that an examination of the various individuals that people the state may offer one way of facilitating a conceptual dialogue between them. People – as state bureaucrats, as instruments of capital, and as human actants, for instance – act as key elements within these academic schools of thought. So do the connections between these people and the state organizations and territories that they inhabit and continually reproduce. An examination of the people, state and territory nexus, I would argue, can lead to a more frank and open engagement between these different approaches to understanding the state. The conceptual and empirical discussion contained within this book has also re-evaluated debates concerning the specificities of the process of state transformation that has taken place within the UK. The discussion of the medieval state in Chapter 3 illustrated how it was possible to posit a different kind of relationship between people, and the feudal relationships that they were part of, and the emerging state apparatus of the time. Social relationships, in this respect, were not necessarily inhibitors of emerging state apparatuses but were rather complementary facilitators of the extension of state power, in both functional and territorial contexts. Similarly, Chapter 4 showed how an examination of the peopled aspects of the early modern state could enable us to reinforce two sets of ideas that have gained currency with regard to the academic study of the political geographies of this period: the need to view the emerging political frameworks of the early modern period as ones that were highly contingent in character; and the need to consider key instances of continuity between the political and social forms of the pre-modern and early modern periods. The discussion in Chapter 5, too, illustrated how a consideration of the peopled aspects of

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the state of high modernity, particularly with regard to the notion of inspection, emphasized the tentative and ambiguous attitude of the state towards intervention in social and economic practices. The study of the role of factory inspectors illustrated the equivocal state that so characterized the UK during the nineteenth century. Finally, Chapter 6 showed how state personnel are products and producers of a contemporary UK state – both centrally and regionally – that is in a continual state of flux and emergence. Executive devolution, since its inception in 1997, has thrown up a series of ongoing challenges for state personnel in each of the UK’s different territories and regions, albeit to varying degrees. State personnel, in this respect, have been at the heart of efforts to make sense of the unsettled devolution settlements and this seems set to continue into the future. The theoretical and empirical discussions that have taken place in the preceding chapters also possess some broader conceptual ramifications. First, the preceding discussion possesses implications for how we think about the agency of state personnel. A project that is concerned with exploring the role of people in reproducing, transforming or contesting state organizations and state territories can, almost unwittingly, overemphasize the actions of those charismatic or influential individuals that have been able to make obvious contributions to this process. The role of the MacSorley clan in brokering the extension of Scottish royal and statal power into the Western Isles, in this respect, was self-evident. Similarly, Leonard Horner’s contribution to the shaping of the bureaucratic and spatial prescriptions of the Factories Act of 1833 is plain for all to see. A focus on the activities of this type of state agent may arise for any number of reasons. The careers of these individuals, for instance, may well be more colourful and interesting.Their careers as servants of the state are definitely more likely to be well documented, thus providing greater opportunity for detailed study. What is less recoverable is the contribution of more mundane officers of state to the reproduction of state forms, especially during earlier periods of history.The role played by enumerators and clerks in collecting information for the decennial census, for instance, was critical to the extension of state power during the nineteenth century but their practices, identities and ideologies have, to a large extent, been lost. The danger, in this respect, is that the relative lack of emphasis placed on the less well-recorded activities of more lowly officers of state, when compared with their charismatic and well-documented counterparts, can give the impression that the latter are the key agents for shaping the form taken by state organizations and territories. To a certain extent, it is useful to distinguish between the role of different types of people in reproducing and transforming state forms. Weber’s efforts to distinguish between the charismatic state leader and the more humble and routinized state functionary alluded to the significance of such a viewpoint (Weber 1991: 90–5).

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Following Weber, it is likely that charismatic leaders will play a more important role in instigating the transformation of state organizations and territories than will their more run-of-the-mill counterparts.The discussion of the development of the Wessex/English state during the early tenth century, for instance, ascribed much significance to the contribution of Alfred the Great, as its political and spiritual figurehead. Research on the East Midlands, too, showed how EMDA derived much of its inchoate organizational and territorial coherence from the personality and drive of its chief executive. Following Weber’s line of argument further, it may be possible to argue that the crucial contribution of more lowly state personnel lies in their day-to-day adherence to routine practices that help to reproduce state organizations and territories. The role of superintendents in following the instructions laid down to them by Leonard Horner is a good case in point. These individuals were less concerned with bureaucratic innovation than they were with ensuring the smooth operation of an emerging set of statal practices and technologies. While there may well be some validity in adopting such a viewpoint, it would be unwise to equate too closely state leaders with organizational innovation and more humble state functionaries with the reproduction of the state apparatus. At one level, we need to think of how individuals operating at relatively high levels within the state apparatus have been key agents of stability. Part of Alfred the Great’s success as a leader, for instance, was his ability to embody a sense of political and organizational stability for the state of Wessex. The nature of the historical evidence, in this respect, may provide a false impression of the balance between the reproduction and transformation of state forms. The majority of Sir John Wynn’s role as a JP – in the courts of the petty sessions and on the circuit around the shire – does not appear in any documentary evidence. It is only when he succeeded in transgressing that role or in pushing its limits that his actions are recorded, most notably in the form of stern rebukes from higher authorities. Similarly, the majority of the actions and identities of more lowly state personnel may well be lost to history and historical geography but it is likely, if only at a theoretical level, that they will have contributed to both the reproduction and transformation of state organizations and territories. Their contribution to the transformation of state forms may well have been less dramatic than their more illustrious counterparts but they would have managed, through incremental changes to procedure, to help to alter state organizations and territories. It is useful, in this respect, to refer again to Bourdieu’s (1977: 72) idea of habitus. As was discussed in Chapter 2, the habitus tends to be viewed as something that relates more to the reproduction of a particular social structure, including state forms. But the habitus portrayed by Bourdieu is not one of stagnation or stasis. It can react gradually to social, political or institutional changes within a given society.

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It may be possible to tailor these broad sentiments to the more specific context of the role of ‘ordinary’ state personnel in gradually changing state forms. Some of the evidence discussed in the context of contemporary state restructuring in Wales, for instance, showed how all grades of civil servants reproduced and subsequently questioned a regional state form within the country. In particular, the questioning of the appropriateness of regional state forms within Wales did not take place overnight but was, rather, a product of incremental and long-standing contestations of state organizations, along with their territorial and scalar manifestation. Moreover, these contestations of state forms were borne out of a series of mundane practices and related difficulties. Evaluating the significance of these different kinds of agency is difficult but Mann’s work on the twofold character of state power may be of some use in enabling us to determine the relative importance of state personnel in transforming and reproducing state forms. The contours of Mann’s (1984) arguments are now well known. He has maintained that power may take on two forms within all states. At one extreme lies a despotic power in which states are able to exercise arbitrary acts with little heed given to the needs of its population or citizens. Alternatively, states also possess a degree of infrastructural power, which refers to their ability to affect the lifeworlds of their citizens in a routine manner (see Chapter 2). These two different types of state power are, by no means, mutually exclusive and may be associated in a number of different combinations (see Table 7.1). The significance of Mann’s work for the present discussion is that these different types of state can be seen to reflect different roles for state personnel. Those states possessing low infrastructural coordination are very much dependent upon the actions of a charismatic state elite, in terms of both reproducing and transforming state forms. Bureaucratic and authoritarian states, on the other hand, are more likely to include a large group of more low-level state bureaucrats whose significance lies in their ability to reproduce state organizations and territories. The existence of a strong level of infrastructural coordination within a particular state does not underplay the significance of a charismatic state elite. A despotic and infrastructural power may be exercised by state elites, particularly within Table 7.1

The variants of state power (from Mann 1984:191) Infrastructural coordination

Despotic power

Low High

Low

High

Feudal Imperial

Bureaucratic Authoritarian

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authoritarian states. Mann’s schema, therefore, helps us to think through the particular types of influence that various classes of state official may have in different states. Mann’s account of the relative significance of despotic and infrastructural power, as well as being a commentary on the different forms that power may take within different types of state, can also be viewed as a proxy measure of the relative influence of state elites and more lowly bureaucrats within the same state at different points in time. While I would not want to assert that there is a necessary association between different types of state and particular periods of time, which also reflects differing prevalences of infrastructural and despotic tendencies, it is clear that the British state, for instance, has developed higher levels of infrastructural coordination over time at the relative expense of its more despotic propensities. Chapter 5, in particular, showed how a gradual departmentalization and bureaucratization of government, which took place during the nineteenth century, changed the roles of government inspectors. The experience of H.S. Tremenheere, the first government inspector of mines, amply illustrates the increased efforts made during this period to bring a sense of uniformity and routine to the practices of government inspectors. In reply to a request by the Home Office that he should take up an office post, in which he would be responsible for ‘supervising correspondence from the Mining and Manufacturing Districts’, Tremenheere asserted that ‘personally the routine of office work was not to my taste. I preferred a free hand in such work as was before me’ (quoted in Edmonds and Edmonds 1965: 63). Here was a civil servant who tried to rebel against the growing tide of routinization that was affecting all aspects of government within Britain during the nineteenth century. His tale says much about the change in the relative importance of the routine actions of an army of civil servants versus the charismatic leadership offered by state elites. I would suggest that the growing infrastructural power of the state during the modern period – along with its heightened bureaucratization and routinization of governmental activities – has left less space for pioneering and cavalier state elites to transform the organizational and territorial fabric of the state. But I stress again, there is no necessary or predetermined link between particular time periods and the role played by different types of state personnel in either reproducing and/or altering state forms. The answer to such questions is dependent, in the last instance, on detailed empirical enquiry into the contribution of state personnel to unfolding state projects and strategies. In a related context, it is also important to revisit another theme that has been raised in the previous chapters, particularly with regard to the activities of Sir John Wynn. I refer here to the ability of state personnel actively to contest state organizations and territories. The numerous letters that berated Sir John for his lack of commitment to the state project and

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its numerous strategies can be viewed, at one level, as evidence of his active contestation of the process of state consolidation taking place in north Wales during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. And yet at the same time, Sir John’s efforts to change or ignore the various prescriptions of the English state during this period can be viewed as testimony to his ability to massage the extension of state power into north Wales so that it became more acceptable to the people that were to be governed. At one level, we can seek to approach this issue by examining the motives of state personnel, such as Sir John Wynn. In situations where he sought to minimize the impact of the state on the inhabitants of north Wales – for instance, through protecting them from too onerous a taxation – it may be possible to view Sir John as an individual who sought to contest an individual state strategy so that a broader state project could succeed. Alternatively, where Sir John sought to use the new machinery of the English state at a local level to feather his own not inconsiderable nest, it is fairer to describe him as an individual who merely contested state projects and strategies for his own personal gain. But such an approach may well be, ultimately, unsatisfactory. Since all states are inherently peopled, heterogeneous and fractured entities, then it may well be disingenuous to speak of an active contestation of state forms that is somehow separate and distinct from particular state projects and/or strategies. The literature on ‘entanglements of power’ (Sharp et al. 2000) and on the association between ‘domination/resistance’ (Pile and Keith 1998: 3 especially) means that it can be dangerous and misleading to attempt to talk of acts of contestation that are separate from processes of consolidation and/or domination. Acts of contestation exercised by state agents, therefore, contribute in an indirect and sometimes indeterminate way to both the reproduction and transformation of state organizations and territories. As Sharp et al. (2000: 7, emphasis added) maintain: Resistance is woven into the heart of the state apparatus itself, in part because state power is based upon different axes of power – economic, military and informational – which do not always work in perfect consort. The bureaucratic modern state duly involves a range of different branches, interests and agents, each of which tends to operate with different agendas, support networks and constituents. Power is thereby entangled within the state, and resistances are insinuated throughout its various apparatuses.

Contestation, as such, is a fundamental aspect of the hegemony exercised by all state forms, especially when one’s conceptual and empirical focus is trained on the proclivities of state agents. As well as contributing to the heterogeneous quality of the state apparatus, I have also emphasized throughout that a focus on the peopling of the state can also draw attention to the relational composition of a fractured

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and fissured state territoriality. State territories, despite their pretence to uniformity and homogeneity, are intimately bound up with the practices and proclamations of a variety of state personnel. Similarly, relations between these individuals help to constitute, to a large extent, the territorial form that states take. Sir John Wynn, in his travels around north Wales, was a generator and innovator, with regard to the territorial structures of shires, parishes and circuits that existed there. Leonard Horner and his fellow inspectors of factories, in a similar vein, were active shapers of new territories of state government during the mid-nineteenth century. State personnel within a devolved UK, too, have had to make sense of new constitutional settlements and have, subsequently, reproduced these territories and scales of governance through their working practices and cultures. Such a close association between people and state territories, I would argue, calls for a more sustained dialogue between those theorists of relational space and those who view territory as a key precursor and product of political action. While there is some value, in both a descriptive and a more normative sense, in seeking to emphasize the marked differences between these two approaches, I firmly believe that a key aim of human geography over coming years must be to delineate the common ground between the two camps. Some research has already begun to do this (M. Jones 2005; Jones and Fowler forthcoming) but I suspect that much more could be done to illustrate how state territories are the product of the actions of individuals and relationships between them. In following such a research agenda, we could begin to show how territory is ‘contingent, socially constructed [and] ideologically informed’ (Delaney 2005: 11). Furthermore, in conducting such work ‘the forms of power which are inherently connected to territory may become more visible, and justifications, more clearly partial and partisan’ (ibid.). State territories, however, are not merely the product of the actions and statements of state personnel. They are defined and continuously reproduced by various state projects and strategies, which provide a greater degree of permanence to state territories than do the practices of state personnel. In this sense, state territoriality is produced as a result of an oscillation between the day-to-day practices of state personnel and the more permanent spatialities that are associated with the state apparatus. State territory is, thus, both heterogeneous and homogeneous, fractured and uniform in equal measure. And yet, following on from the points made above, it is possible to argue that the relative importance of the territorial homogeneity and heterogeneity of the state has varied over time.With the growing infrastructural power of the modern state – and, in a related context, the increasing contribution of state personnel to the reproduction rather than the transformation of state organizations – it can also be posited that the scope of state personnel to produce new spaces of governance that are somehow at odds with the homogeneous

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territoriality of the state is limited. During the modern and late modern period, state personnel are, largely, able to work only within the uniform territorial context provided to them by the state apparatus. I would not want to wholly refute such an argument. At the same time, I would reiterate that there is no necessary tendency during the modern and late modern periods for a structural, more permanent and homogeneous state territory to overwhelm more peopled, practised and contingent forms of state territoriality. Other work that I have been involved in has shown how the definition of contemporary territorialities within Britain has been a process borne out of continual negotiation between different groups within the state apparatus and civil society. Policies that have sought to deal with the governance of the Welsh language in a post-devolution Wales, for instance, have led to the definition of numerous territorialities within Wales, which have been the product of political debate and negotiation (see Jones and Fowler forthcoming). In this context, I would want to maintain that the reproduction of state territorialities is, ultimately, always an ongoing, poly-vocal and contingent process (see also Paasi 2002). The geographical focus on Britain also raises important issues that need to be discussed. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, an examination of the changing political forms contained within the British Isles over the long term forces us to grapple with a problematic terminology. Even the term ‘British Isles’ has been queried in the context of postcolonial studies of a so-called ‘Atlantic archipelago’ (Pocock 1975; 1982; Tompson 1996). It is clear from the empirical chapters of this book that processes of state consolidation and transformation occurred in a number of different locations and at a variety of different scales within the geographic context provided by these islands, leading to a tangled series of political geographies. But the empirical focus on Britain deserves our attention for another reason. Focusing solely on the experiences of people in shaping, and being shaped by, state organizations in Britain raises questions concerning the applicability or usefulness of the approach advocated in this book to studying the peopling of the process of state transformation in other ‘national’ contexts. Since the process of state consolidation is a multifarious and contingent one, I would not want to state categorically that state forms in all countries have developed through an interplay between state agents, state organizations and state territories. The approach advocated in People/States/Territories, therefore, should be viewed more as a methodological or analytical tool for studying the important contribution made by state personnel to the transformation of state forms, rather than being a general theory of state organizational and territorial reproduction per se. Determining the broader theoretical utility of a ‘peopled’ vision of the state – in which state personnel and a territorialized state apparatus have been in a constant state of emergence – would involve a more sustained testing of its tenets within a

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range of different statal contexts. One could imagine, for instance, useful comparisons being made between the peopling of socialist/post-socialist, colonial/postcolonial and the more established capitalist states of the north and west. Following the lead of People/States/Territories, I would argue that such a project would also need to examine the peopling of these different kinds of states over time in order to address the role played by state personnel in the reproduction and transformation of state forms. Such a project, obviously, lies beyond the remit of this book and, indeed, would necessitate a breadth and depth of politico-geographical and historical knowledges that is difficult for one person to imagine, let alone possess. All the same, I suspect that people have been involved in shaping, and being shaped by, state forms in all states throughout history. I want to illustrate the saliency of this claim very briefly by considering two instances of the crucial peopling of state forms in the geographical area contained within contemporary France.The first example comes from the early Middle Ages, a time during which much of this area was controlled by the Carolingians, the descendants of Charlemagne the Great. At the same time as political leaders like Alfred the Great were struggling to devise means of controlling extended territories and larger groups of people in more effective ways in Wessex/England, kings across the Channel were grappling with the difficulties of governing an extended Carolingian empire. As one would expect, the main means of achieving some semblance of political and military order throughout the empire was through promoting a feudal system of rule. The key individuals, in this respect, were the comites or counts who controlled territories or fiefs on behalf of the king. In addition to these individuals, missi dominici (or envoys of the ruler) were appointed as representatives of the kings to be sent out to the various localities when the need arose. The interesting feature of this two-tier system of feudal government was the relationship that existed between these two types of royal official. Comites, because of their entrenched social and territorial power within particular fiefs, could increasingly ignore, if not challenge, the directives issued by the royal court. Following on from this, fiefs, granted by kings on a temporary basis to these individuals, could very easily become quasi-independent lordships (Bloch 1961: 190–210). The role of missi dominici was to counter the freewheeling and self-serving tendencies of comites by being dispatched to the various localities and reporting back on the administrative capacities of the comites (Poggi 1978: 19). Some have argued, in this respect, that the ability of missi dominici to affect the comites’ mode of local administration was limited since ‘only in the most extreme cases of misbehavior or disobedience was there much chance that a count’s decision would be reversed or that he would lose his office’ (Strayer 1971: 69). I want to suggest, nonetheless, that the roles played by the comites and missi dominici represented two alternative forms of peopling the Carolingian state/empire, ones

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which also possessed far-reaching implications for notions of political organization and territorial rule at the time. The comites represented a feudal and highly devolved form of political authority, as argued in Chapter 3, and, as such, speak of a political organization and territorial empire that were equally fractured and disjointed in character (Elias 1982: 23; Dodgshon 1987:173–4). The missi dominici, on the other hand, represented an early and tentative stab towards the centralization of political authority within the Carolingian empire. As officers who received their payment, authority and directives from the royal court, they spoke of an inchoate state project that was far more uniform and centralized in character, both in organizational and territorial senses. In this sense, two sets of state officials, ostensibly concerned with the local government of the Carolingian empire, entailed totally different visions of the organizational and territorial fabric of political forms that were emerging at the time. The work of Bourdieu (1996) provides another tantalizing and fascinating illustration of the peopling of the French state, albeit in more recent times. Focusing on the period after the civil unrest of May 1968, Bourdieu’s book discusses the role of elite schools in shaping the character and identities of the leaders of the French state and its related industries. Particular well-educated and well-connected individuals, according to Bourdieu, have since this period experienced a process of separation and isolation within various elite schools. This process, which is ‘recognized as a legitimate form of election’, subsequently ‘gives rise in and of itself to symbolic capital that increases with the degree of restriction and exclusivity of the group so established’ (Bourdieu 1996: 79). For Bourdieu (ibid.), ‘the monopoly’ is thus ‘converted into a nobility’; elite schools become tools for the continued reproduction of a hegemonic power rather than offering possibilities for liberation and emancipation. The significant point as far as the present argument is concerned is that the noble class that attends these elite schools assumes a key role in peopling the higher echelons of, inter alia, the French state. Instead of following Weber’s account of an increasing bureaucratization of the state and its peopling by a technically competent and depersonalized meritocracy (as discussed in Chapter 2), Bourdieu alludes to a ‘state magic’, in which the seemingly objective granting of an academic title by elite schools actually masks a far deeper association that exists between elite schools – along with their alumni – and the symbolic violence exercised by the state (ibid.: 374–7). According to Bourdieu, therefore, it is the ‘academic verdict’ of elite schools, distinguishing as it does between a state elite and a subservient state population, that has helped to frame the patterns of social, economic, political and cultural hegemony that have existed, and continue to exist, within the French state. The production of a state elite, therefore, compounds the various inequalities that are inherent in the French state form.

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These brief illustrations of the contribution of people to the reproduction of state forms in France shows the potential applicability of the methodological and analytical framework discussed in People/States/Territories to other states in a variety of different time periods. While I would hope that the strengths of such an approach have become apparent by now, I recognize too that the sole focus on the peopling of the state apparatus – in organizational and territorial senses – represents a relatively narrow interpretation of how to conceive of the ‘people of the state’. As was discussed in Chapter 1, and as has become apparent in a number of the subsequent chapters, the line of separation between the state and civil society is a particularly difficult one to draw. In normative contexts, medieval state theorists, for instance, described a series of intense connections between medieval political forms, along with their rulers, and the societies that they sought to govern (Coleman 2000). Much later, and at a more conceptual level, Gramsci (1971) has shown how the state is highly dependent upon civil society in order to generate its political, economic and social hegemony. In other ways, too, more recent theorists have sought to advocate a more sustained dialogue between government and civil society, particularly as a way of promoting more inclusive and energetic political, economic and social formations (see Amin and Thrift 1995; Putnam 1995). This work – written at different time periods and from a variety of different perspectives – encourages us to think through the various connections between the state apparatus and civil society and, in a broader context, behoves us to examine the different ways in which states can be viewed as inherently peopled entities. Following on from this work, it seems to me that there are three other ways of augmenting our understanding of the peopled state. First, there is scope to examine further Foucault’s contention that the art of government from the eighteenth century onwards has involved a form of biopolitics linked to a ‘population’ or, in other words, an effort to ‘rationalize problems presented to governmental practice by the phenomena characteristic of a group of living human beings constituted as a population: health, sanitation, birth rate, longevity, race’ (Foucault 1997: 73; Dean 1999: 99). The concept of the household, which had formed the basis for state government in the period prior to the eighteenth century, was increasingly replaced by the notion of a population, both as a ‘field of knowledge’ and as a ‘domain of regulation and action’ (Dean 1999: 94). It seems to me that there is room to examine the impact of such a changed conception of the appropriate form of government on the organizational and territorial framework of states from the eighteenth century onwards. Legg (2005), for instance, has shown the value in examining the scalar and territorial contexts of Foucault’s concept of biopolitics through an exploration of colonial India (cf. Findlay 2003) but I would maintain that there is room to extend and supplement this research through examining the

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organizational and territorial changes that underpinned this shift in the object of government. Second, the relationship between the organizational and territorial fabric of the state and the forms of citizenship, democracy or civic nationalism that exist within its boundaries is deserving of more sustained enquiry. States, throughout their history, have not viewed themselves as bureaucratic organizations whose sole purpose is to govern particular territories.Writers, from a variety of different perspectives, have examined states’ efforts to bind human populations into a greater sense of loyalty towards their political organization. At a general level, the ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983) of the civic nation has provided much ideological support for the state’s various projects and strategies (for an account, see Gellner 1983; Hobsbawm 1990). In a more specific context, the notions of citizenship and democracy have acted as key discourses through which a population has been able to negotiate its relationship with the state apparatus. As Barnett and Low (2004: 1) emphasize, despite the existence of various mechanisms through which it is possible to express one’s politics within the contemporary world, it is noticeable that ‘the most significant global trend of the last two decades has been the proliferation of political regimes that claim to be democracies’. Citizenship, expressed through democratic engagement, has come to represent a watchword for the vast majority of political regimes (Dunn 1992) and, yet, its social and territorial form has experienced a sustained period of transformation over recent years. Citizenship is a ‘key source of tension’, as individuals and governments seek to negotiate its political and territorial meaning in the face of, inter alia, processes of globalization, growing neo-liberalism and the threat from terror (Marston and Mitchell 2004). It would seem to me that there is a need to focus our energies on understanding the imbrication of new forms of political identity with the changing organizational and territorial form of the state. To what extent are citizens involved in questioning existing state forms? How are evolving state projects implicated in the refashioning of citizen identities? Third, and building on the previous theme, we need to examine in more detail the relationship between civil society and the state’s continually emerging organizational and territorial form. The role played by actors in civil society in both contributing to, and undermining, a state project has been continuous if not constant since the initial formation of states. As Deakin (2001: 16) puts it, ‘the space occupied by civil society has evolved as part of a dynamic process of adaptation and change . . . in part in response to shifts in the external environment’. Of course, for much of history, this ‘external environment’ has been provided by the state. After years of dominance in the provision of public goods, it is now undergoing a period of sustained retrenchment, particularly in the field of social welfare

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(Jessop 1990; Deakin 2001: 17). But, of course, the relationship between the state apparatus and various groups within civil society does not represent a zero-sum game. States and civil society have conditioned each other’s existence throughout history to greater or lesser extents.The initial impetus within MacDonagh’s (1958) model of the nineteenth-century revolution in government, for instance, came from the identification of certain social or economic ‘evils’, largely by social reformers. Interested parties in civil society, therefore, played a key role in the increasing ambit of state organizations in Britain during the nineteenth century. More recently, research has shown how the shift to voluntarism in contemporary Britain has not come about simply as a result of growing disinterest by the state in regulating social and economic activities. There is evidence that the state continues to steer strongly the type of voluntary action that takes place (see Edwards and Woods 2004; Whitehead 2003). In this sense, there is considerable scope to examine more explicitly the connections between different groups in civil society and the emerging territorial and organizational framework of the state. Finally, I want to re-state the possibility for social and political betterment or emancipation that arises through a consideration of the state as a peopled organization. Allen (2003; 2004), in particular, has argued that one advantage that accrues from viewing power as something that is inherently relational and topological in character is that it opens up the possibility of intervening in unequal and oppressive relations of domination. ‘The many different avenues of interaction that play across the gap between here and there’, as he puts it, ‘create the possibility for political intervention – for negotiation, appropriation, displacement, accommodation and, of course, resistance’ (Allen 2004: 25). As I suggested in Chapter 2, I would maintain that a conception of the state apparatus as something that is inherently peopled in nature increases the opportunities for influencing its organizational and territorial make-up, as well as its various projects and strategies. If the state does not comprise ‘an insulated domain of anonymous “policymakers” and “authorless policy conventions”‘ (Peck 2001: 451), then surely the range of mechanisms through which state projects and strategies can be altered and challenged proliferate. In theory, all state agents represent access points into the state apparatus for various groups within civil society. By the same token, all state agents can, theoretically, alter the trajectories taken by state organizations and territories so that they develop policies and strategies that are more equitable, constructive and ecological in character. This point is especially pertinent in a contemporary period in which many state practices and ideologies, seemingly, pay little heed to the preferences and needs of their citizens. Thinking about the state as a peopled organization, I would argue, offers some hope for producing state forms whose various projects and strategies seek to liberate rather than to oppress and terrorize.

Notes

Chapter 1 1 The one exception is the recent body of work on the anthropology of the state. The contribution made by this work is discussed at length in Chapter 2.

Chapter 3 1 State rulers in the period in question, especially when one focuses in particular on the British Isles, were, without exception, men.

Chapter 4 1 Parliament was also significant in a more peopled sense. The people that constituted the two houses of Parliament managed to integrate the politics of the centre with the politics of the locality. This is a theme that is discussed in detail in the fourth section of this chapter.

Chapter 5 1 A slightly different system existed in Scotland during the nineteenth century, based on Sheriffs, Counties and parochial schoolmasters (General Register Office 1854: 2). 2 The following paragraphs draw on Martin’s portrait of Leonard Horner. Horner’s two volumes of published memoirs do not, unfortunately, have much to say concerning his time and experience as a factory inspector, being more concerned with his private life and his scientific interests (see Lyell 1890, 2 vols.).

190

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3 Three of the superintendents working under Leonard Horner were paid a salary of £350 pounds per annum while a fourth was only paid £250 on account of the relatively small size of his district (and therefore the relative lack of travelling expenses accrued by him) (Parliamentary Papers 1840: 67).

Chapter 6 1 ELWa in the period after its formation comprised two distinct elements, namely the post-16 training roles that had previously been undertaken by the four predecessor Welsh Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) – existing under the new label of ELWa-National Council – and a more educational role that was associated with the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils for Wales. The research on which this chapter is based focuses on the work of ELWaNational Council since this is the aspect of ELWa’s work that ties in most closely with themes of economic governance. For the sake of brevity, however, I refer to this one branch of the broader ELWa organization as ‘ELWa’ throughout the chapter.

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Index

Act of Settlement 90 Act of Supremacy, 1535 19 Actor Network Theory (ANT) 41–3 Acts of Union 82, 89, 102 æstel (reading aids) 61 after-Fordism 149 Age of the Inspector 11, 119–23 agency 24–5, 29–31, 32, 175–88 see also state agents Agnew, J. 168 Alan fitz Rother 74 Alexander of Argyll 73–4, 78 Alexander, Wendy 150 Alfred the Great 58–66, 78, 178, 184 Allen, J. 40, 41, 43, 96, 188 allodial lands 57 Amin, A. 13, 43 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 61, 64 Anne, Queen of England 83 Anne verch John 1, 2 Aquinas, Thomas 15, 16, 56, 63 De Regno 16–17 Archer, M. 30 Argyll 74 army 25 Asser 61–6 Aylmer, G.E. 88, 89, 90 Barnett, C. 187 Barrow, G. 66, 68, 70

Bartrip, P.W.J. 116, 118, 121, 123, 124, 125 Bayly, Lewis 104 beer 80–1 Benthamite Utilitarianism 118, 127, 137 biopower 14, 37, 186–7 see also M. Foucault Blair, Tony 6–7, 145 Bloch, M. 52 blood feud 67 Boards of Guardians 114 see also Poor Law Unions border 39 Bourdieu, P. 37, 38, 178, 185 Braddick, M. 5, 85, 98 Braudel, F. 24 Brebner, J.B. 117, 118 Brenner, N. 13–14, 32 Brewer, J. 82, 90, 91, 92 Britain 9, 48, 183 see also British state British state 8, 9, 116–17, 120, 143, 166–7, 173 see also Britain Brooks, N. 59 Bull, Reverend George 124 Caernarfonshire 2, 3, 8, 102–4 Calhoun, C. 38 cameralism 18 Campbell, J. 62, 63, 64

INDEX

cantrefi 66, 67, 69 capital 28, 30 capitalism 31 rhizomatic 40 Carolingian Empire 53, 54, 184–5 Caspari, F. 96 census 111–13, 177, 189 Chadwick, Edwin 124 charisma 23 Charlemagne 16, 53, 184 Charles I of England 88, 89 Charles II of England 92 Charles-Edwards, T. 67, 75, 76 Chief Inspector of Factories 124, 141 chiefdoms 51 children 117–18, 123–40 chimney sweeps 117–18 citizenship 44, 187 civil servants 11, 116, 151–3, 179 see also civil service civil service 115–16, 151–3, 179 see also civil servants class conflict 31 Coleman, J. 16, 56, 57 comites 184–5 Commission of the Peace 11, 85, 95, 97, 98, 99, 105, 107 see also JPs common good 16–17 Commonwealth 20 commotes 66, 67, 69 contestation 109–10, 188 see also emancipation Corbridge, S. 46 corporation theory 17 Corrigan, P. 5, 83, 94 Council in the Marches 1, 89, 104, 105, 107 Council of the North 89, 95 Cromwell, Thomas 81, 88 Danish invasion 58–66 Das Kapital 126 Davenant, Charles 81 Davies, Ron 12, 172, 174 Deakin, N. 187 Dean, Sussex 61 Deheubarth 70

209

Deleuze, G. 14, 40–1, 43, 44 democracy 187 de-nationalization 32, 143–74, 177 Denbighshire 102–4 Deputy Lord Lieutenant 85 de-statization 149 de-territorialization 40 Development Board for Rural Wales 146 devolution 12, 143–74, 177 administrative 145, 150–5 executive 145, 150–5 Dewar, Donald 147 Dicey, A.V. 117 discipline 123 dissolution of the monasteries 89 Dodgshon, R.A. 7, 51, 52, 55, 67 Driver, F. 113, 114 Duke of Hanover 21 durée 24 early modern period 2, 5, 11, 80–111 East Midlands 159, 160–1, 163, 167, 171, 178 Integrated Regional Strategy (IRS) 160–1 East Midlands Regional Assembly (EMRA) 160–1 East Midlands Regional Development Agency (EMDA) 156–7, 158, 160–1, 178 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) 150 Edinburgh 126 education 23–4, 96, 108, 124, 141, 185 Education and Learning Wales (ELWa) 157, 158, 160, 161, 164–6, 168, 170, 190 Regional Offices 164–6 Regional Statements of Needs and Priorities 164 Edwards, I. ab O. 95 Einhard 62 Eirenarcha 96–101 see also William Lambarde Elias, N. 55

210

INDEX

Elden, S. 21 Elizabeth I of England 82, 87–8, 101 Elton, G.R. 88, 114 emancipation 188 see also contestation Emilia-Romagna 148 England 59, 82, 93, 146 Chancery 81 Customs 82 Exchequer 81, 82 Excise 80–1, 83, 85, 90, 91, 93 Lord Chancellor of 95, 98 Lord Keeper of 95 regional bodies in 12 Treasury 82 English Civil War 80 English state 1–4, 5, 11, 59, 80, 82, 84, 85, 90, 94, 105, 107, 178, 181 Enumeration districts 111–13 Enumerators 112–13 Essex, Sue 170 eurocentrism 14 Europe 14, 49–56 Evans, E. 115, 116, 118 Factories Act, 1833 12, 123, 124–40, 177 Inspectors 11–12, 123–42 Select Committee in relation to 128–40 Superintendents 131–40, 190 Factories Act, 1844 140–1 factory legislation 124 factory owners 127–8, 133, 139–40 family 41 fashion 108 fealty 52 feudalism 15, 52–6, 73–4, 184 see also feudal state fief 52–4, 184 Foreign Office 116 Foucault, M. 14, 18, 36–7, 38, 40, 186 and administrative state 36–7 and biopower 14, 37, 186–7 and government 18, 36–7, 186–7 and governmental state 37

and governmentality 38 and power 36–7 France 70, 184–6 Fulbeck, William 98 gafael (holding) 69, 75 segmentary 75–7 territorial 75–7 Gamble, A. 145 gender 30, 41 gentry 85, 95, 96, 101, 107, 108 German medieval historiography 54 Giddens, A. 24–5, 27, 29, 31, 50 Giles of Rome 17 Gladstone, William 116 Gleason, J. 96, 99 Gledhill, J. 51 Goodwin, M. 149 governance 12, 51–2, 55, 59, 66–7, 143–74 economic 150, 152 military 59 government 93, 116 inspectors 119–42, 177 joined up 159–67 local 66–77, 78, 93–109 technologies of 134–5, 137–9 Government Office for the East Midlands (GOEM) 167, 171 Grafton, A. 18 Gramsci, A. 8–9 Gray’s Inn 107 Great Britain 83, 125 see also Britain General Register Office of 113 Registrar General of 111, 113 Gregory, D. 123 Gruffudd ap Cynan 69 Gruffudd ap Llywelyn 69 Guattari, F. 14, 40–1, 43, 44 gwely (bed) 75–6 Gwydir 102 see also Sir John Wynn Gwynedd 69–70, 76 habitus 37–8, 90, 96, 178–9 see also state habitus Hay, C. 30 Henry II of England 71

INDEX

Henry VII of Enland 83 Henry VIII of England 19, 87 Hentzner, Paul 87 Higgs, E. 113 Highlands and Islands Development Board 145 Highlands and Islands Enterprise 151 Hobbes, Thomas 19–20 Hoby, Sir Thomas 95 hollowing out 32 Holmes, C.J. 92, 101 Holy Roman Empire 21, 56 homage 52 Horner, Francis 126 Horner, John 126 Horner, Leonard 123–40, 177, 178, 182, 189, 190 as innovator 136–40 as protestant 126–7 as Whig 126–7 House of Commons 90 Howell, Thomas Jones 129–31 Hugh of Beckley 75–6 hunting 63 Hywell ap Cadell 69 identity politics 43 imperialism 83 India 39 India Office 116 industrial regulation 11–12 information, collection of 80–1, 94, 119–40 Inn of Court 96, 100 Inspector Redgrave 124 Institutioneller Flächenstaat 54 Invest Northern Ireland (INI) 158, 159 Ireland 9, 82, 83 Irish state 9 Isle of Man 71, 74, 78 Italy 148–9 James VI of Scotland, James I of England 82 James Stuart 125 James the Steward 73

211

Jeffery, Francis 127 Jessop, B. 29, 30, 31, 149 John Balliol 73 John of Paris 17 John Wyn ap Maredydd 102 Joint-Ministerial Committee 166–7 Jones, M. 32 Justices of the Peace (JPs) 85, 86, 93–101 see also Commission of the Peace Kent 97, 105 Keynes, S. 61, 62 Kiernan, V.G. 83 king 15–17, 53–5, 56–66, 87, 90, 184 see also sovereign King William of Scotland 71 Kingdom of the Isles 71–4 kingdoms 16–17, 53, 56–66 Barbarian 17, 57 Frankish 53, 62 Welsh 69–70 kin-groups 8, 10, 51, 66, 67–77, 78–9, 102 kingship 57 Kinkardineshire 70 kinship 3, 11, 41, 67–77, 78–9, 107 Labour Party 6–7, 145, 171–2 Laffin, M. 154, 155 laissez-faire 116–19 Lambarde, William 86, 96–101, 105 see also Eirenarcha Lancashire 127 Land Authority for Wales 146 La Perrière 18 Lapidge, M. 62 Latour, B. 14, 40, 41–2, 44 Lefebvre, H. 33, 36 legal system 2, 17, 64 Leicester Journal 123 Lewys, Robert 107 Liebniz 21 Life of Alfred 61–6 Life of Charlemagne 62 Lincoln’s Inn 96 Lloyds of London 126

212

INDEX

Llyfr Iorwerth 69, 75 Llywelyn ab Iorwerth 69 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd 69 Loades, D. 101 Locke, John 20 London Assembly 143 Lord 15, 49–56, 73–4 Lord Ashley 125 Lord Lieutenant 95 Lord Liverpool 116 Lord Pembroke 106 Lord President of the North 89 Low, M. 187 Loyn, H.R. 58, 66, 67 MacDonagh, O. 114, 119, 120, 136, 188 Machiavelli 18, 20 MacLeod, R. 141 MacSorleys 71–4, 78, 177 ‘mad-houses’ 114 magistrates 95, 100, 134, 137 see also JPs Magnus Barelegs 71 Mann, M. 3, 26, 82, 179 marriage alliance 108 Marsilius of Padua 15 Martin, B. 127, 189 Marx, Karl 28, 126 Massey, D. 43, 102 Maurice of Nassau 25 McDonald, R.A. 71, 73, 74 McLeish, Henry 147 Meirionnyddshire 102–4 Members of Parliament (MPs) 89, 90, 92, 115, 153 Mercia 63 Michael, Alun 6–7, 147, 154, 155–6 Middle Ages 7, 8, 9, 10–11, 49–79, 82, 184 church 62, 65 Miliband, R. 28–9 military academies 25 mints 64–5 missi dominici 184–5 Mitchell, J. 147, 168

Mitchell, T. 39 Morgan, K. 154, 172 Morgan, Rhodri 7, 154–5, 170 Mostyn, Sir Roger 108 Mungham, G. 172 Napoleonic Wars 116 National Assembly for Wales 12, 143, 160 First Minister 6, 147, 155–6 members (AMs) 154–5, 172 national identity 108 see also nationalism, territorial identity national mercantilism 18 nationalism 28, 33, 187 see also national identity, territorial identity nature 41, 63 Navy Board 91 nepotism 92 networks 13, 14, 40–4 nobility 57 non-human actants 42, 45, 109, 112, 139, 175 Northcote, Sir Stafford 116 Northern Ireland 145–6, 151, 153, 156, 159, 160, 163–4, 170–1 Executive Programme Funds 163 Industrial Development Board (IDB) 158 Industrial Research and Technology Unit (IRTU) 158 Local Enterprise Development Unit (LEDU) 158 Permanent Secretaries in 151 sectarianism 170–1 Northern Ireland Executive 151 Northern Ireland Office 145 Northern Irish Assembly 12, 143 North Wales 1–2, 3, 102–10, 170, 181, 182 Norway 71–4 Oastler, Richard 124 Offe, C. 4 Ogborn, M. 80, 81 Owen, D.H. 76

INDEX

Painter, J. 149 Parliament 89, 124, 131, 135, 189 British 154 English 81, 83, 89 Irish 83 of Northern Ireland 145 Scottish 12, 83, 143, 147, 160 Parnet, C. 41 Parry, R. 153, 160 Patronage 11 Peacock, A.E. 125 Perkin, H. 118 Personenverbandstaat 54 Philip the Fair 17 Philo, C. 114 place 24 Poggi, G. 6, 22, 26 police 18 political community 16–17 political nation 5, 84, 96 political official 23 political theorists early modern 10, 17–21 Medieval 8, 10, 15–17 politics of connectivity 44 politics of propinquity 43 Poor Law Amendment Act 112, 115 Poor Law Authority 114 Poor Law Union 111–13, 114, 115 Poulantzas, N. 30 power Church 15 despotic 27, 179 entanglements of 181 infrastructural 11, 27, 68, 179–80, 182–3 macroassemblages of 40 networks of 36, 41 social 26, 40, 41 state 15, 17–18, 36, 42, 73, 100, 106, 114, 177 Powys 70 pre-state societies 3 Privy Council 81, 88–9, 95 Putnam, R. 148–9

213

quarter Sessions 83, 85, 94, 98, 100 queen 87, 89 see also king, sovereign rationality 16–17, 21, 22–4, 127 Read, C. 96 reason of state 18 Rees, G. 154 region 24 Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) 143 regionalism, new 148, 149, 160 registrar 112 Registration Districts 111 relational turn 13, 43–4 religion 41 re-nationalization 164, 166, 174 Report on the Organization of the Civil Service 116 representations of space 33 representations of territory 33, 35 re-statization 164, 166, 174 revolution in government nineteenth-century 11–12, 111–19, 120 Tudor 11, 81, 88 Reynolds, S. 50 rhetoric 63 rhizome 40, 41 Rickards, Robert 129–30 riots 99–100 Roman Empire 51 Rose, N. 38 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 19–20 Royal Commission 124 royal court 87 Ryley, Sir Philip 92–3 Sack, R. 26, 27, 31 Sadler, Michael MP 124 Sadler, Sir Ralph 87 Sahlins, M. 3, 54 Salusbury, Sir John 106 Saunders, Robert J. 129–31 Sayer, D. 5, 83, 94 Scale 31–2, 42–3

214

INDEX

Scotland 52, 66, 68–9, 70–4, 82, 145, 153, 159, 160 First Minister of 147 Local Economic Forums (LEFs) 162, 163 Local Enterprise Company (LEC) 163, 168–70 Lord Treasurer of 89 Scott, W.W. 70 Scottish Development Agency 145 Scottish Enterprise 168–70 Scottish Executive 151, 152 Scottish Office 145, 168 Scottish state 9, 70–4 self-government 37 sheriff 1, 2, 3, 8, 66, 68–9, 70, 85 sheriffdoms 66, 68–9 shire 59–61, 62, 64, 66, 68–9, 95, 175–6 Skinner, Q. 20 Smith, Adam 118 social capital 148–9, 160 soldiers 25 Somerled 71–4 sovereign 10, 15–17, 21, 53–5, 56–66, 87–8, 90, 92, 184 see also king, queen sovereignty 19–21, 52 spaces of representation 33 spatial practices 33 spatial selectivity 32 Spruyt, H. 11 Star Chamber 81, 88–9, 95 state administration 22–4, 66–77, 83, 90–2, 105, 129–40 agents 24–5, 27, 28–31, 32, 34, 38, 119, 129–42, 146–74, 175–88 anthropological studies of 38–40, 189 apparatus 2–3, 4, 30, 33, 34–5, 38, 40, 44–8, 82, 86–93, 101, 111, 141, 147, 175–88 and civil society 8–9, 18, 39–40, 77–9, 91–2, 146, 186, 187–8

and private property 18 as peopled organization 2–4, 21–4, 27, 28–31, 44–8, 49, 81, 88–9, 90–1, 111–13, 129–42, 143, 146–74, 175–88 British see British state bureaucracies 5, 8, 21–4, 27, 55, 85, 86–93, 116, 121, 143, 179–80 bureaucrats 21–4, 180 capitalist 4, 28–36 consolidation 10, 17, 52, 79, 81, 84, 85, 86, 90, 100, 109, 114, 181 early modern 4, 17–21, 25, 80–111, 176 elite 5, 28–9, 56–66, 155–7, 177–80, 185 English see English state executive 28 feudal 52–6, 77–9, 176 see also feudalism fiscal-military 82 formation 51 functions 4 habitus 37–8, 77, 90, 96, 108 Irish see Irish state late modern 143–74 Medieval 4, 10, 15–17, 49–79, 109, 176 modern 17–21, 21–8, 34, 111–42, 176–7 officials 22–4, 34, 35, 38, 39, 63, 74, 77–9, 90–2, 108, 129–40 organizations 2–3, 7–8, 10, 33, 35, 36, 40, 41, 44–8, 55–6, 77–9, 80–1, 101, 112–13, 129–42, 146–74, 175–88 personnel 1, 2, 5, 7–8, 10, 21–4, 28–9, 42, 84, 90–2, 106, 109, 113, 115, 129–42, 143, 146–74, 175–88 professional 114, 115–16, 120–1, 143 projects 2–3, 13–14, 30, 32, 34, 35, 36, 39, 41, 43, 44–7, 146, 149 Scottish see Scottish state space 33–5, 42–3, 145

INDEX

strategies 3, 13–14, 30, 32, 34, 35, 39, 41, 43, 44–7, 146, 149 territoriality 3–4, 7–8, 10, 17, 25–7, 31–6, 41, 42–4, 45–8, 55–6, 77–9, 80–1, 107, 129–42, 146–74, 175–88 Welsh see Welsh state state-making process 3, 67 state theory Marxist 4, 10, 28–9, 48 neo-Marxist 13–14, 29–36, 45, 47, 176 neo-Weberian 45, 47, 176 post-Marxist 10, 36–44, 48, 176 Weberian 5, 10, 21–8 St David’s 61–2 strategic relational approach (SRA) 29–33, 35–6, 176 strategic selectivity 29, 30 structural selectivity 4 structuration theory 24–5, 29, 31 structure 24–5, 29–31, 32 Superintendent Registrar 112 Survey of the Honour of Denbigh 67, 75–7 taxation 106, 181 teleology 9–10, 50 territorial identity 30, 167–72 see also national identity, nationalism territorial practices 33, 107, 182 territorial trap 34 territoriality 3–4, 17, 20–1, 25–7, 31–6, 42–4, 45–8, 107, 129–40, 146–75, 175–88 territories of representation 33, 35 territory 3, 4, 17, 25–7, 31–6, 42–4, 107, 129–40, 146–75, 175–88 Thomas, A. 154, 155 Thomas, M.W. 125, 131 Thrift, N. 43 Tilly, C. 17, 51 time-space 24–5 topology 13, 36, 43–4 training 23–4

215

Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) 158–9 Treaty of Perth 73 Treaty of Westphalia 20, 21 Tremenheere, H.S. 180 Trevelyan, Sir Charles 116 Tudor 83, 95 revolution in government 11, 81, 88 twnc pound 75–6 two swords theory 15 tyranny 15–16, 18–19, 56 tyrants 16, 56 uchelwriaeth 107 Underdown, D. 84 United Kingdom 12 university 96, 100, 108 unlawful assemblies 99–100 vassal 15, 49–56 Wales 52, 66, 67, 68, 74–7, 82, 93, 146, 153, 159, 170, 173, 179, 183 Lord President of 89 war 20, 25, 82 Weber, Max 4–5, 21–8, 143, 177, 178, 185 Welsh Assembly Government 159 Welsh Development Agency 146 Welsh language 183 Welsh Office 146, 152 Welsh state 9 wergeld 67 Wessex 52, 58–66, 78, 178 Westminster 151 White, G.W. 86 Whitehall 121, 151 William ap Thomas ap Humphry 1, 2 William, Earl of Ross 73 William of Ockham 15 Williams, P. 87, 89, 94 workhouses 114 Wormald, P. 59 written documents 61 Wynn, Ellis 1 Wynn, Morus 102–3, 107

216

INDEX

Wynn, Sir John (of Gwydir) 5, 11, 86, 102–10, 176, 180–1, 182 as Deputy Lord Lieutenant 102–10 as JP 102–10, 178 as Sheriff 1, 2, 3, 8, 104, 105 see also Sheriff

Wynn, Sir John Junior 105 Wynn, Sir Richard 102, 105 Wynn, William 108 young people 123–40 Zouche, Lord President 1, 2, 3, 104