The modern nation state is the fundamental unit of contemporary global politics. Globalization is often understood as that which crosses the borders of the nation state--in other words as something in opposition to the nation state. Some characteristics include:

• Self-rule.
• One law for all peoples.
• Monopoly of legitimate violence, both internal and external.
• All states are assumed to be legally equal to all others.
• Integrated domestic markets and infrastructure (sometimes more ambition than reality)

But the nation state itself is a fairly recent product of the globalization of political forms. Some argue that the emergence of the modern nation state in western Europe made possible the integration of national economies that supported industrialization--and industrialization was, of course, a major impetus to modern globalization.

The purpose of this lecture is

1. To show the existence of many other forms of soveriegnty in the modern world, so that we do not take the modern nation state for granted.

The world of small states and trading ports along the oceanic and interior trade routes, and peripheral places such as Europe was extremely fluid. Few states had complete legal control over all that went on within them. Churches, overlord states, tax jurisdictions, trading groups, concessions, local lords and bandits were the norm. Flows of trade were also frequently accompanied by flows of violence. Mercenaries, military experts and weapons were common items of commerce. The lines between pirate and merchant, or between pirate commonwealth and legitimate state was often non-existent. Military entrepreneurs of all kinds could transform their enterprises into ports, city-states and even territorial states. States often made use of this trade to accumulate the tools of violence, but often at great expense.

2. To suggest some political causes for the rise of the modern nation state in the need to control violence (see Janice Thomson), proposing that the emergence of the nation state was, from the beginning, linked to the desire to better regulate global interchange.

3. To suggest a distinct characteristics of early modern Western European states was their innovations in managing and profiting from from non-state violence. Many states around the world have supported sea-borne raiding of some kind or another. But Europe was able to direct these kinds of activities from arm's length by chartering companies and privateers to engage in violence against competitors in return for a share of the profit and plunder. Thus they earned revenue while rarely suffering direct retribution.

In contrast, SE Asian ports were often founded by sea-borne marauders, but, as larger states consolidated, they (like empires) remained wary of sponsoring transnational violence. Some (admittedly speculative) comparisons with SE Asian states are:

• European ventures in military entrepreneurship were directed to places far away from Europe. The Asian trade was one of the main objects of covetousness. Asian states would be much less willing to support this kind of non-state violence in their own backyard.
• Asian entrepots profited mostly by facilitating the trade of myriad other peoples, and had little incentive to disrupt it. Europeans profited by bringing the trade back home, thus they had more incentive to grab that trade violently.
• The market for violence was already well stocked in Asia. A ruler could just go out and purchase what he needed, rather than have to support and charter his own enterprises. (The market for mercenaries within Europe was similar, and was thus never institutionalized in the way that distant seaborne violence was instituitonalized.)

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