Family Power: Kinship, War and Political Orders in Eurasia, 500–2018

"This book demonstrates that elite families and political order evolved in symbiosis throughout European and Middle Eastern history. Kinship groups like noble clans and royal dynasties were preconditions of stability and legitimacy of political orders. There is a tradition in political theory, anthropology and sociology spanning four centuries that claims that kinship is incompatible with political order. This tradition argues that kinshipbased elements either disappeared before the emergence of political orders or were the foes of political order until the emergence of modernity. In contrast to this tradition, I show that neither political order in general nor the state in particular evolved in opposition to kinship groups or to kinship-based principles of legitimacy. Some scholars, like Anderson (2003: 19-23) and Oakley (2006) emphasize that dynasties and therefore kinship was central to older political orders. However, the place of kinship in the history of political order remains l