Countries were originally characterized as progressing through several states to “civilized.” This is not in favor today.
“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step toward the goals requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.“– Martin Luther King
Though not common today, in the 19th century and earlier, scholars and philosophers sometimes proposed stages that every country “naturally” went through in the “progress” from a indigenous grouping to a “civilized” state. Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) in his 12 volume A Study of History was the most recent well-known proponent of this idea. Another was Oswald Spengler‘s (1880-1936) The Decline of the West.
When you are serious about building a world for your RPG (or fiction), you may want to adopt some form of national/country progression, if only to help you organize your history. I tried to come up with a set of polity stages that might help organize your world. I’m not presenting these as “progress” that should be desired, though this is certainly how those 19th-century folks thought of it.
The Progression
Here is the “progression”:
- Tribe: Frequently governed by a sort of vote. Population of dozens, covers a few square miles. Shamanistic religion, mob military. Subsistence (hunter-gatherer or agricultural) economy
- Tribal State: Frequently a form of monarchy. Population in thousands, area hundreds of square miles or less. Single religion. Not much military organization. Agriculture required. States require surplus production (usually from agriculture) to have an actual government and religious hierarchy (sometimes combined). This leads to…
- City-State (Autocracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy, Democracy): E.g. common in Mesopotamia, later in ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy. Population tens of thousands to a few hundred thousand, hundreds to a few thousand square miles, population heavily concentrated in one city. Have a state religion, political leader is usually religious leader as well. Organized military, may even have generals though political leaders are also the military leaders.
- Independent State/Country: All kinds of governments, but monarchy is most common, though the Roman Republic was not a monarchy. Populations can range in the hundreds of thousands or even more, area can be similar to city state or much larger. Religion may support but not be part of the government, or is part of the government (Roman state religion). Military has its own institutions often separate from politics.
- Nation-State: At first I listed this as “nation”, but “nation” actually refers to a people of similar ethnicity and language – who may be in separate countries (Italians in both Italy and Switzerland), or may not have an independent country at all. We can think of a “nation-state” stage arising from countries. A strong example is revolutionary/Napoleonic France. This stage won’t necessarily occur, but often has occurred historically. Another is the coalescence of many German principalities into one state.
- Industrialized Country: You might add one more stage to this, what might be called a modern country or industrialized country. These are usually democracies or autocracies. They may be secular (nonreligious) or closely aligned with some religion, or perhaps with some political ideology. Armies are highly professional, with the entire state providing manpower in wartime (the draft).
Out of Favor
Toynbee was a tireless cheerleader for his ideas, but after he died they fell out of favor. A major reason for failure was the many exceptions to his progression that he had to try to explain (yes, I read some of his work long ago). There are no doubt exceptions to my explanation above, as well.
Your Turn: How do you classify your world’s countries?
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