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Authors: Philip Bobbitt
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of this event immediately appreciated its implications: in 1498 the Venetian senate declared that “the wars of the present time are influenced more by the force of bombards and artillery than by men at arms” and desperately began trying to organize to meet this challenge. Others, too, recognized this moment as a turning point. Francesco Guicciardini, the Florentine diplomat and statesman, wrote in the 1520s:
Before the year 1494, wars were protracted, battles bloodless, the methods followed in besieging towns slow and uncertain… Hence it came about that the ruler of state could hardly be dispossessed. But the French, in their invasion of Italy, infused so much liveliness into our wars that whenever the open country was lost, the State was lost with it. 6
Facing such a strategic challenge, Italian cities could no longer simply rely on their high walls and fortified towns to protect them. Machiavelli, writing in 1519, said that after 1494, “[n]o wall exists, however thick, that artillery cannot destroy in a few days.” Suddenly walls, towers, moats—all were rendered obsolete. 7 As a result, princes and oligarchs made a pact with an idea: the idea was that of the State, and its promise was to make the ruler secure. The State—a permanent infrastructure to gather the revenue, organize the logistical support, and determine the command arrangements required for the armies that would be required to protect the realm—was established to govern according to the will of the ruler. In time, however, it would become clear that it was not the prince's immortality that was gained by this move, but the State's. Just as Renaissance princes had foundthey needed more secure, more professional armed forces than the seasonal contributions of medieval knighthood could provide, so the new Renaissance state would gradually turn to less idiosyncratic guidance than that offered by princes in order to aggrandize its wealth and power.
Thus, the modern state originated in the transition from the rule of princes to that of princely states that necessity wrought on the Italian peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century. It is certainly true that there were states before this period; but these, like the city-states of Thucydides, did not self-consciously think of themselves as juridical entities separate from (and sometimes operating in opposition to) the civil society. 8 For Thucydides the State is never a thing—it has no “legal personality” as we might say. The State is always an irreducible community of human beings and never characterized as an abstraction with certain legal attributes apart from the society itself. The modern state, however, is an entity quite detachable from the society that it governs as well as from the leaders who exercise power. This detachment gives the State its potential for immortality.
We can date the appearance of such a way of looking at the State to the time when the legal and material attributes of a human being were ascribed to the State itself. All the significant legal characteristics of the State—legitimacy, personality, continuity, integrity, and, most importantly, sovereignty—date from the moment at which these human traits, the constituents of human identity, were transposed to the State itself. This occurred when princes, to whom these legal characteristics had formerly been attached, required the services of a permanent bureaucracy in order to manage the demands of a suddenly more threatening strategic competition. (The first permanent legations, for example, accredited to a particular court rather than merely serving as temporary emissaries, date from this period.) This strategic competition provoked what Finer has defined as the essential characteristic of the modern state: that
the paramount organ of government is subserved by specialized personnel; one the civil service, to carry out decisions, the other—the military service to back these by force where necessary and
Before the year 1494, wars were protracted, battles bloodless, the methods followed in besieging towns slow and uncertain… Hence it came about that the ruler of state could hardly be dispossessed. But the French, in their invasion of Italy, infused so much liveliness into our wars that whenever the open country was lost, the State was lost with it. 6
Facing such a strategic challenge, Italian cities could no longer simply rely on their high walls and fortified towns to protect them. Machiavelli, writing in 1519, said that after 1494, “[n]o wall exists, however thick, that artillery cannot destroy in a few days.” Suddenly walls, towers, moats—all were rendered obsolete. 7 As a result, princes and oligarchs made a pact with an idea: the idea was that of the State, and its promise was to make the ruler secure. The State—a permanent infrastructure to gather the revenue, organize the logistical support, and determine the command arrangements required for the armies that would be required to protect the realm—was established to govern according to the will of the ruler. In time, however, it would become clear that it was not the prince's immortality that was gained by this move, but the State's. Just as Renaissance princes had foundthey needed more secure, more professional armed forces than the seasonal contributions of medieval knighthood could provide, so the new Renaissance state would gradually turn to less idiosyncratic guidance than that offered by princes in order to aggrandize its wealth and power.
Thus, the modern state originated in the transition from the rule of princes to that of princely states that necessity wrought on the Italian peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century. It is certainly true that there were states before this period; but these, like the city-states of Thucydides, did not self-consciously think of themselves as juridical entities separate from (and sometimes operating in opposition to) the civil society. 8 For Thucydides the State is never a thing—it has no “legal personality” as we might say. The State is always an irreducible community of human beings and never characterized as an abstraction with certain legal attributes apart from the society itself. The modern state, however, is an entity quite detachable from the society that it governs as well as from the leaders who exercise power. This detachment gives the State its potential for immortality.
We can date the appearance of such a way of looking at the State to the time when the legal and material attributes of a human being were ascribed to the State itself. All the significant legal characteristics of the State—legitimacy, personality, continuity, integrity, and, most importantly, sovereignty—date from the moment at which these human traits, the constituents of human identity, were transposed to the State itself. This occurred when princes, to whom these legal characteristics had formerly been attached, required the services of a permanent bureaucracy in order to manage the demands of a suddenly more threatening strategic competition. (The first permanent legations, for example, accredited to a particular court rather than merely serving as temporary emissaries, date from this period.) This strategic competition provoked what Finer has defined as the essential characteristic of the modern state: that
the paramount organ of government is subserved by specialized personnel; one the civil service, to carry out decisions, the other—the military service to back these by force where necessary and
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