Continuity and Innovation of State Forms and Their Interactions
State formation in this era demonstrated remarkable continuity, innovation and diversity in various regions. In Afro-Eurasia, some states attempted, with differing degrees of success, to preserve or revive imperial structures, while smaller, less centralized states continued to develop. The expansion of Islam introduced a new concept - the Caliphate - to Afro-Eurasian statecraft. Pastoral peoples in Eurasia built powerful and distinctive empires that integrated people and institutions from both the pastoral and agrarian worlds. In the Americas, powerful states developed in both Mesoamerica and the Andean region.
I. Empires collapsed and were reconstituted; in some regions new state forms emerged.
- Following the collapse of empires, most reconstituted governments, including the Byzantine and the Chinese dynasties - Sui, Tang, and Song - combined traditional sources of power and legitimacy with innovations better suited to the current circumstances.
- Traditional Sources of Power and Legitimacy
- Patriarchy
- Religion
- Land-owning elites
- Innovations
- New methods of taxation
- Tributary systems
- Adaptation of religious institutions
- In some places, new forms of governance emerged, including those developed in various Islamic states, the Mongol Khanates, city-states, and decentralized government (feudalism) in Europe and Japan.
- Islamic States
- Abbasids
- Muslim Iberia
- Delhi Sultanates
- City-states
- In the Italian peninsula
- In East Africa
- In Southeast Asia
- In the Americas
- Some state synthesized local and borrowed traditions.
- Persian traditions that influenced Islamic states
- Chinese traditions that influenced states in Japan
- In the America, as in Afro-Eurasia, state systems expanded in scope and reach: Networks of city states flourished in the Maya region and, at the end of this period, imperial systems were created by the Mexica ("Aztecs") and Inca.
II. Interregional contacts and conflicts between states and empires encouraged significant technological and cultural transfers.
- Between Tang China and the Abbasids
- Across the Mongol empires
- During the Crusades