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1 a Distant Province As a Challenge: an Extreme Case Study on Upper Lusatia

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1 a Distant Province As a Challenge: an Extreme Case Study on Upper Lusatia 1 A distant province as a challenge: an extreme case study on Upper Lusatia The present book attempts to deliver new insight into the general principles that govern human social behaviors, based upon an in-depth study of a particular region. In historical writing such works are typically called ‘case studies’; however, unlike in social sciences, in history, archeology or history of government this idea is employed not as a strictly conceptualized analytical tool, but rather as a useful metaphor (cf. Gerring 2007, 193). Moreover, a case study methodology, which has been formalized and developed in social sciences (Kothari 2004, 113–117; Yin 2014), should not be applied to historical cases (Rowley, 17; Yin 2014, 12). However, the concept of a ‘case study’ is used to refer to practices that have long been applied by historians: formulating or testing more general hypotheses based on specific examples or their exemplification through specific statements (cf. Orum, Feagin, Sjoberg 1991, 4–5; Wieviorka 1992, 161–162). An example of such a case study in its broad sense is practically every work written from a microhistorical perspective or any sort of monograph, no matter if it focuses on a town, region or institution. The epistemological status of such studies is no different from the one typically ascribed to social sciences case studies. Historical case studies also trigger the processes of empathy and understanding, which in turn lead to generalizations and exemplifications (cf. Stake 1978, 5–6). There is only a small difference between social and historical sciences in the degree of the abstractedness of research procedures and conclusions, which is smaller in the case of the latter (cf. Winkelmann 2011, 13). A special type of case study, which is applied in both social and historical inquiry, is the so-called extreme case study. According to Markku Jahnukainen (2010, 379), research conducted in an extreme case study framework is focused on highlighting “the most unusual variation in the phenomena under investigation, rather than trying to tell something typical or average about the population in question”. From the present work’s perspective, of even greater importance is John Gerring’s view (2007, 101): “Often an extreme case corresponds to a case that is considered to be prototypical or paradigmatic of some phenomena of interest. This is because concepts are often defined by their extremes, that is, their ideal types”. The extreme case that will be of special interest in this book will be the exercise of power by political authority centers in a region, which under Owen Lattimore’s (1955/1962, 480–481) concept of the radii of the impact of the political center, could effectively be integrated militarily, but not economically, and only hardly: with regard to political-administrative integration. In those regions, four opposing sets of factors were in play: 1) the highest costs of immediate management; 2) the lowest return rate on expenditures; 3) the best opportunity for autonomous entities to establish a lordship that would be independent from the political center; and 4) the highest costs of maintaining internal 2 A distant province as a challenge: an extreme case study on Upper Lusatia and external peace. Governing such a region was a tough puzzle for rulers, especially given the challenging technical and logistical conditions of medieval reality. At that time, the only way to keep remote provinces under control was to delegate multiple responsibilities to the local representatives of the supreme authority (cf. Oppenheimer 1929/1990, 97–101). The only rational strategy in such situations was optimization; however, if it was to be applied, potential profits and losses had to be considered on each occasion (cf. Holm 2010, 231–232). Accordingly, studying the history of the areas that were most remote from the centers of political power can yield interesting findings about the standards and methods of governing political structures in the Middle Ages as well as selection strategies, and also shed some light on their effectiveness. The present work is designed to address these issues in relation to the history of Upper Lusatia until 1156, which is the time of the arrival of the Burgrave of Budyšin, the first permanent high-rank representative of the supreme authority. 1.1 “Technology” of governance of and in the provinces in the Early and High Middle Ages: basic ideas, notions and methods of research In his classic work on the sources of social power, Michael Mann (2012, 5–6) rightly points to the organization of power as the key to understanding how societies work and how their internal dynamics drive changes in them. According to this researcher, by focusing on the organizational aspects of power, it is possible to effectively disregard specific human motivations in favor of a logistic analysis not of goals themselves but of the means of attaining them. Quite similar conclusions were reached by Richard Jenkins (2009, 141–147, passim), who investigated the problem from a different methodological perspective. He defines power as effectiveness in achieving objectives. A similar approach will be pursued in this book, as will be demonstrated in the following subchapter. Of particular interest in the present chapter will be the methods of exercising power and governance known to the rulers of Central and East-Central Europe in the tenth to twelfth centuries, which is the period this work is about. One does not need to thoroughly analyze medieval chronicles to conclude that the rulers and magnates of the times more resembled today’s gangsters in terms of their behavior than Brussels technocrats. Nevertheless, they also needed to constantly reorganize and muster available supplies just to be able to undertake military efforts, to demonstrate ostentatious generosity and to support religious foundations (cf. Bachrach 2009, 391–394, passim). There is no doubt that medieval Western rulers did not have such institutional instruments at their disposal as the Byzantine emperors or many Islamic emirs did (cf. Mann 2012, 392; Wickham 2001, 3–4; Pohl 2006, 10–11, 15–16, 32–33; Jones 2000a, 509–510). A medieval king or a prince could hardly ever be compared to a modern general, whose orders are obeyed with absolute precision. “Technology” of governance of and in the provinces in the Early and High Middle Ages 3 He was more of a conductor of an orchestra in which every musician, no matter what instruments they had brought, wanted to play first violin (or even wanted to do the conducting themselves). Nevertheless, medieval Western monarchs could effectively mobilize subordinate groups of people and territories (cf. Jones 2007, 10–11) with the Liudolfing dynasty being a prime example (cf. Bachrach 2009, 391–394). With no such instruments as a well-developed bureaucracy, regular tax revenues, a permanent army or a stable hierarchical judicial system, these rulers were able to secure both internal and external peace (the former within existing standards, i.e. with private war as an established legal measure, cf. Brunner 1939/1965, 1–110, passim; Deutinger 2009, 142, passim) or even make impressive conquests. All of this took place within network, multi-level and polycentric social structures with the predominance of personal ties over institutional ones (cf. Keller 2009, 127–128). While there is no point in debating here whether or not such structures could be called states (cf. Althoff 2005; Bachrach 2009; Keller 2009; Deutinger 2009; Goetz 2009; with further ref.), it needs to be emphasized that governing those structures or their constituent entities had little to do with the concept of public government or management as we know it today, i.e. the sheer transmission of commands from the political center down the hierarchical administrative-military ladder (cf. Pohl 2006, 32–36, passim; Goetz 2009; see also more general remarks about the nature of a medieval state: Brunner 1939/1965, 111–164, passim). To properly describe the relations of power in the Middle Ages, it seems more appropriate to apply the term governance, used in the title of the present book, as it is ‘softer’ and ‘broader’ than government. It is more effective in describing and analyzing the rules according to which medieval European societies were organized. Those rules were based on networks of various relations that implied the need for multiple entities to cooperate with each other to attain a specific goal. Under this system, each of those entities could demonstrate a degree of legitimacy in its actions and autonomy with regard to the political center (cf. Bevir 2012, 11–15). This concept is also convenient, as it does not imply the strict division between the private and public spheres of life, which is now taken for granted, but was not perceived as such a thousand years ago. For the same reasons, the term ‘governance’, which is pre-modified with various words (e.g., corporate governance, good governance, global governance, e-governance, multi-level governance, meta-governance, etc.) is now becoming increasingly popular in the age of globalization, the growth of multinationals, and the crisis of national states (cf. Bevir 2012, 3; Bevir 2013, 1–2). This new family of concepts has created its own terminologies and methodologies. Parallel to the studies on governance, research is being conducted into the concept of ‘governmentality’, which is derived from Michel Foucault’s approach to the notion of power (cf. Henman 2011; for insights into the relations between the concepts of governance, governability and governmentality see Bevir 2013, 61–62). However, given the history of the Middle Ages, the meticulous work of experts on organization, politics and society is of hardly any use as it concerns 4 A distant province as a challenge: an extreme case study on Upper Lusatia the contemporary world, which is fairly remote from medieval reality, at the very least due to the different mental and technological constraints.
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