Thanks Jared! Would you consider this reblog a Longshot alternative? It only took 48 seconds to put together.
Didn’t make it into this year’s edition of Longshot, but here’s my submission anyway, in the style of Lapham’s Quarterly’s excellent Deja Vu blog:
An Offer You Can’t Refuse
by Jared Keller
While the social contract dominates how we think about basis of government and society, the proto-states that formed under anarchy were often simply bandits who settled down, wore a crown, and demanded tribute.
South Carolina, 1760: As European colonists pushed westward toward the open lands of the New World, the agricultural fringes of Britain’s fledgling colonies experienced a surge in violent crime as organized bandit raids threatened the welfare of the settlers inland of the colony. In South Carolina, the fallout of the Cherokee war of 1760-1761 left many settlers without homes, and children were abandoned during native raids. Hunting also pushed well into the boundary of the local natives, the Creek Indians, hurting the already tense relationship with colonists. The bandit problem had become so bad that an organized band of yeomen and established farmers took up arms against the increasingly bloody bandits on the fringes of South Carolina’s agricultural communities. While their dominance over South Carolina was unquestioned and their violence spilled over onto other innocent farmers, the lack of law enforcement and a court system made the South Carolina regulators the lesser of two evils on the bloody frontier.
California, 1851, 1856: The Gold Rush of 1849 brought a flood of prospectors and entrepreneurs into the Wild West, where the population of the fledgling port of San Francisco exploded in just a few short years. With an ethnically mixed population, a virtually non-existent municipal government, and fear of arson at a fever pitch, local business leaders banded together to form the San Francisco Vigilance Committee, incarcerating, interrogating, and executing suspected criminals. While the actual crime rate in San Francisco was fairly low, the Committee created their own legitimacy by spreading panic through the press, and the businessmen and merchant elite who steered the organization profited mightily from controlling the city’s growing trade operations. A reformed committee in 1856 even ousted the legitimate Democratic machine, taking control of the city’s municipal government as the “People’s Party.” Where the ballot box failed, the San Francisco vigilantes ruled by the gallows.
Italy, 1861: Before Sicily’s transition out of feudalism the nobility owned most of the land and enforced law and order through their private armies. After 1812, the feudal barons steadily sold off or rented their lands to private citizens, and following Italy’s annexed Sicily in 1860, large share of public land were redistributed to private citizens. While citizens suddenly discovered the joys of private ownership, the nobles also released their private armies, letting the authorities take over the responsibility of properly enforcing property rights and contracts. Stuck an ineffective police force, newfound landowners turned to extralegal protection from larger criminal enterprises. The protection racket, nicknamed “La Casa Nostra,” became the modern-day Mafia.
China, 1926: After World War I, China became dominated by roving warlords, who roamed the countryside pillaging and plundering in the most theatrical of senses. Warlord Feng Yuxiang was noted for his exceptional ability to raise an army and oust predatory bandits. Rather than destroy and pillage, Yuxiang took control of north-central China, using his soldiers to keep rival bandits out of his territory. Those living in his domain found Yuxiang’s continuing — yet marginally lighter — taxation preferable to the devastating raids of marauding hordes, allowing his industrious subject to produce enough for him to the warlord to live comfortably without resorting to perpetual predation. Yuxiang ruled his territory until his ouster in the late 1930s, when he became a commander in China’s military, but before then, he was known as the wisest, fairest, and kindest of the nation’s myraid autocrats
Russia, 1997: With the collapse of the Soviet Union came the collapse of Moscow’s centralized law enforcement, and towns across Russia found themselves overwhelmed by a sudden rise in crime. Legitimate businesses and foreign firms were forced to turn to krysha (literally “roof” in Russian) to protect their financial interests until the laws and court systems that were liquidated by the end of Soviet Communism were rebuilt. Almost every business, from the curbside vendor to huge transnational conglomerate, paid protection to the krysha to keep their land and capital safe from the tide of thuggery.
“In principle, there is rule of law,” Valera, a police officer, told the Washington Post in 1997. “But in practice, it’s hard to find.”