Samuel Finer - The History of Government

The History of Government

Finer's magnum opus, The History of Government from the Earliest Times, is a comparative analysis of government systems, past and present. Polities covered include the Sumerian city states, the kingdom of Ancient Egypt, the Assyrian Empire, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the Persian Empire, the Classical Greek city republics, the republic and empire of Rome, the Chinese Empire under the Han, the Tang, the Ming and the Qing, the Byzantine Empire, the Arab Caliphate, Mamluk Egypt, the European feudal kingdoms (including the emergence of representative assemblies), the Italian Mediaeval/Renaissance city republics (e.g. Florence and Venice), Tokugawa Japan, the Ottoman Empire, the Mughal Empire, and the modern state as it emerged in Europe, including themes of absolute versus parliamentary monarchy, the transplantation of European state models overseas, the Age of Enlightenment, the American and French revolutions, the constitutionalisation of the European monarchies, and industrialisation.

The conceptual prologue includes a classification of government systems in terms of combinations of four elements: Palace (monarchy), Forum (democracy), Church (organised religion) and Nobility. Government is not analysed in isolation but explained in the context of economics, technology, agriculture, geography, religion, law, warfare, etc. – giving a picture of how a state works as a mechanism, explained in language designed for the general reader. Finer had hoped that it would be a single volume, but three volumes were published, approximately 1,700 pages in all.

History of Government occupied Finer's retirement years, 1982 to 1993. After a heart attack in 1987, he was only able to complete 34 out of the projected 36 chapters; the missing two chapters would have been on the exportation of the modern state model outside the 'West', and on the variations on the theme of modern totalitarianism.