BrewerDP. Pdf

 

11 

some very large ones, and the weather and the air is too cold for the produce of any grain’ 

(LJ(A) iv.53; see also iv.62, LJ(B) 30–1, WN I.iii.8). Note that Smith reads this as saying that 

the Tartars (as long as they remain on the steppes) cannot go beyond the pastoral stage, the 

second of his sequence  of stages. One could just as well read it as expla ining why the 

inhabitants of the steppes are pastoralists even in a world in which arable agriculture  more 

generally preceded, or developed alongside, pastoralism. 

The Tartars are important to Smith’s story in two ways. First,  Tartar invasions have played a 

key role in the historical narrative.  ‘More  of the great revolutions in the world have arose 

from them than any other nation in the world’ (LJ(A) iv.53). It is worth quoting the Lectures 

to illustrate this point. (This is a very abbreviated version of a more detailed account.) 

If we look back into the first periods of profane history of which we have any distinct 

account, we find Cyrus with his Persians over running Media; this nation appears 

undoubtedly to have been a Tartar nation. 

…

 The Medes too, who possessed those 

countries  before them, appear  to have been Tartars originally. 

…

  The Parthians, who 

afterwards over ran that country, were without doubt a Tartarian nation; and made a noble 

stand against the Roman arms. After this time Cengis Kan 

…

  arose amongst the same 

nation; and 2 or 300 years after, Tamerlane of the same country made still greater 

revolutions. But previous to these the Huns made very great commotions in the affairs of 

the world.  [They]  drove out the Ostrogoths, who in the ir turn drove out the Wisigoths, 

[who] in their turn, under the different leaders Theodoric and Aleric, over ran all Italy and 

Gaul and continued there till they were repelled by Charlemagne. (LJ(A) iv.53–5) 

The governmental structures of Europe were indirectly shaped by Tartar incursions at the 

time of the fall of the Western Roman  empire, but the connection was much more direct in 

the major states of the east. The governments of ‘the eastern countries, were all established 

by Tartarian or Arabian chiefs. The present Sultans, Grand Seignors, Mogulls, and Emperors 

of China are all of Tartarian descent’ (LJ(A) iv.108). Smith counted the Arabs as essentially 

the same as the Tartars,  equally constrained to pastoralism by the geography of their 

homeland.  The Arabs appeared only once on the wider stage  but to devastating effect in the 

original expansion of Islam. 

Second, the Tartars are important analytically as the exemplars of the pastoral stage, used to 

define a form of government and law which, Smith argued, was the natural result of a 

pastoral and nomadic or semi- nomadic way of life. Since pastoralism came before agriculture 

in his sequence of stages, the Tartar form of government is the starting point for the evolution 

of more developed forms of government and law in the following agricultural stage. 

Where hunting societies have little scope for the accumulation of wealth, and hence  little  

need for a concept of property, the pastoral stage sees the accumulation of large herds of 

---

 

12 

animals, protected by a notion of property in moveable objects but not  necessarily or 

normally of private property in land.

11

 Those who have no herds of their own must depend on 

those who do, while the rich can only use their wealth to support dependents (LJ(A) iv.7–8, 

LJ(B) 20).  Key  decisions such as going to war may be made by apparently democratic 

assemblies but the rich, with their many dependents, are bound to have more influence. ‘They 

therefore who had appropriated a number of flocks and herds, necessarily came to have great 

influence over the rest; and accordingly we find in the Old Testament that Abraham, Lot, and 

the other patriarchs were like little petty princes’ (LJ(B) 20).

12

 Nomadic pastoralists go to war 

as a body, with their families and herds, so the loser loses everything and the leader of the 

winning side can often recruit most of the losers to his army. The steppe cannot support large 

numbers in one place for long, but  an army or a people (the two could be the same) on the 

move could become very large, hence the devastating, if irregular, irruptions from the steppes 

into settled countries and the despotic powers of their leaders (LJ(A) iv.39–40, LJ(B) 29). 

Smith then used this account of Tartar, or pastoral-stage, society to argue that various 

societies which had (just) reached the more advanced agricultural stage still bore the marks of 

their pastoral past, thus making the stages theory, and the ordering in which the pastoral stage 

precedes agriculture, more plausible. The most important cases are the early Greeks and the 

Germanic tribes which brought down the western Roman  empire, since they stand at the 

beginnings of classical civilization and of modern Europe, respectively. Thus, in the Wealth 

of Nations, he referred to ‘those nations of husbandmen who are but just come out of the 

shepherd state, and who are not much advanced beyond that state, such as the Greek tribes 

appear to have been about the time of the Trojan war, and our German and Scythian ancestors 

when they first settled upon the ruins of the western empire’ (WN V.i.b.16). 

Smith found several ways in which Homeric Greece resembled his model of pastoral society.  

The first inhabitants of Greece, as we find by the accounts of the historians, were much of 

the same sort with the Tartars. Thus renowned warriors of antiquity, as Hercules, Theseus, 

etc. are celebrated for just such actions and expeditions as make up the history of a Tartar 

chief. 

…

 We see that at the Trojan war the expedition was not undertaken with a view to 

conquest but in revenge of goods that were carried off; and that when the city was taken 

each returned to his home with his share of the spoil. All the disputes mentioned  to have 

happened by him [Homer] were concerning some women, or oxen, cattle, or sheep or 

goats. (LJ(A) iv.56–7)  

‘In Homer every thing is valued as worth so many oxen; the arms of Glaucus were worth 100 

oxen and those of Diomede worth 9’ (LJ(A) vi.98). ‘[A]t the time of the Trojan war 

…

 there 

                                                 

11

 Though tribes may have exclusive territories from which other tribes are excluded (LJ(A) i.49). 

12

 Previously cited as one of very few biblica l references.  

---