Balance of Powers
		Arnold Toynbee: Balance of Powers A Study of History v3 (1934) p299-302 Abridged for WSWG 16, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 23 May 2002 Abridgement This impact [see Ilardi] upon Italy of non-Italian powers was the challenge which the generation of Machiavelli [1469-1527] had to encounter. In Machiavelli's generation, Italian statesmanship was being handicapped, and 'barbarian' statesmanship was being facilitated, by the operation of one of the regular laws of 'the Balance of Power.' The Balance of Power is a system of political dynamics that comes into play whenever a society articulates itself into a number of mutually independent local states, and the Italian Society that had differentiated itself externally from the Western Christendom circa 1071-1475 had at the same time articulated itself internally in this very way. The political movement to extricate Italy from the Holy Roman Empire had been initiated and carried through by a host of 'communes' or city-states which were striving, each for itself, to assert a right to local self-determination, so that the creation of an Italian World apart and the articulation of this world into a multiplicity of local states were coeval events in Italian history. The Balance of Power operates in a general way to keep the average caliber of states low in terms of every criterion for the measurement of political power: in territory, population, and wealth. It operates in this way through a system of pressures: a state which threatens to increase its caliber above the prevailing average becomes subject, almost automatically, to pressure from all the other states that are members of the same political constellation, and it is one of the laws of the Balance of Power that in any given constellation of states in which the political units are in this dynamic relation with one another, the pressure is greatest at the heart of the constellation and relaxes progressively towards the periphery. At the center, every move that any one state makes with a view to its own aggrandizement is jealously watched and adroitly countered by all its neighbors, and the sovereignty over a few square feet of territory becomes a subject for the bitterest contention. It commonly happens that at the center of the constellation, no appreciable political result is produced by the statesman's ablest efforts. On the other hand, in the easy circumstances of the periphery, the second-rate statesman can annex a province or even a whole continent without arousing as much opposition as his brilliant contemporary in the central region has to face when he seeks to annex a single fortress or a single village. The domain of the United States can be expanded unobtrusively right across North America from Atlantic to Pacific, the domain of Russia right across Asia from Baltic to Pacific, in an age when the best statesmanship of France or Germany cannot obtain unchallenged possession of an Alsace or a Posen. Comment.The writer of Shang-jywn Shu 12 [a Chinese statesmanship text of uncertain authorship and date, associated with a Chin statesman] notes that within the Chinese constellation of states, a landlocked power attempting military action against a neighbor is liable to counterattack from all four neighbors, whereas a sea power has at least one safe frontier, and thus an inherent strategical advantage. This echoes Toynbee's center/periphery point. The sea power the text had in mind was undoubtedly Chi. Unfortunately for the Toynbee formulation, and for that matter for the SJS 12 one, the state against which concerted "Balance of Power" reprisals were most conspicuously mounted by other Warring States was precisely coastal Chi. The first such action in 0313 expelled Chi from occupied Yen and restored the monarchy of Yen. The second, in 0284, expelled Chi from conquered Sung and awarded Sung territory to several adjoining states; the King of Chi himself died as a refugee in a neighboring state. Yen and Sung were both "old" states, and thus familiar members of the Chinese constellation. The state which most conspicuously avoided the Balance of Powers reaction was Chin, which in 0318 conquered adjacent Shu, and spent the next ten years absorbing and developing it. By 0308 Chin had doubled its area and more than doubled its food producing capacity, without any response from the other states other than relief that Chin's aggressiveness seemed to be contained, or harmlessly expressed. In 0308 Chin renewed its aggressions toward the east, and by 0221 had absorbed the other states into the first Chinese empire. Shu was not "old," it was not even Sinitic. Its culture and language were distinctly alien. Toynbee's formula must thus be revised to define "center" not in rigid geographical terms, but as "center of cultural sensitivity" or "focus of cultural attention." We may then notice that the American and Russian expansions were also not at the expense of "old" members of the European constellation, but were made into barbarian territory, against civilizations whose eclipse did not register on the European screen as deplorable or even worrisome events. Statesmen ancient and modern know that territory is power. But in practice, that perception is easily overridden by sentimental considerations. The most cold-eyed practitioners of the Balance of Powers theory in recent times seem to have been the British, who have regularly intervened on the Continent against any power which threatened to become Continentally predominant, knowing that only in a divided Europe can a small England hope to play an important role. [After the fact of the Chin conquest, it became obvious that the other states should have made resistance to Chin their highest priority. A whole class of "what-if" literature came into being, recording the speeches of diplomats urging such alliances at various local courts. Uncritical historians (eg, the Cambridge History of Ancient China, 1999) have treated these imaginary episodes as facts. Sinology is still in its infancy]. A frequent complication in Balance of Powers situations is alliance with external powers against a threatening "internal" member of the constellation. It can happen that the external power is the ultimate beneficiary, or even the victor, in such situations. Examples abound.   All lectures and abstracts posted on this site are Copyright © by their authors.   19 Apr 2002 / Contact The Project / Conferences Page