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.