Eugen Peter Schwiedland: Review of Richard Thurnwald’s Entstehung von Staat und Familie (1921)

Schwiedland’s review presents Thurnwald’s study of the origins of state and family as a comparative account of political and economic differentiation. Drawing on Thurnwald’s investigations in the South Sea Islands, it follows three structural types, then extends the comparison to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Its organizing proposition is that forms of government develop alongside broader changes in social organization. Schwiedland reports this framework without sustained criticism, retaining its hierarchical language of peoples and developmental stages.

The first, “Papuan” type rests on a clan without social stratification:

Only the biological differences of age and sex mark certain clusters within the community.

Leadership belongs to older men; hunting and gardening are divided by sex. Collective work coexists with individual ownership of what people produce, while the family remains economically dependent on the clan. Marriage is individually constituted but regulated by elaborate prescriptions, and exchanges between clans supply goods unavailable locally. The account therefore distinguishes the absence of class hierarchy from the absence of property, regulation, or exchange.

The second, “Melanesian” type introduces differentiation through settlement by an incoming population and the federation of clans. Slavery and chiefly polygyny generate inequalities; raiding leaders acquire economic and personal power, while wizards monopolize spiritual authority. Larger gatherings facilitate commodity exchange, including rudimentary markets and money. Political enlargement, specialized authority, and widening exchange thus appear as connected developments.

In the third, “Polynesian and Mikronesian” type, caste and landlord domination organize social relations:

The patriarchic family, emancipated from the clan, is economically independent.

This independence does not mean generalized freedom: the population owes labor and tribute to higher ranks. Soldiers and priests live from dependent producers, while crafts and other occupations become specialized. Schwiedland connects these changes to a wider field of trade and marriage relations, improved implements, and differentiated monetary uses. The family’s changing economic position is situated within a broader reorganization of hierarchy and production.

The concluding comparison places this third type near the early societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Aristocratic and temple power gives way to officials under a despotic ruler; taxation gathers products into depots and redistributes them to officials. Yet administrative allocation coexists with private exchange and highly developed commerce. The review’s final sentence makes explicit the spatial principle uniting its sequence:

These types, indicating characteristic stages of political and economical development, draw attention to the fact that the socialised area covered in the consecutive political bodies becomes always larger.

The review’s significance lies in this compact linkage of political scale, social stratification, household autonomy, occupational specialization, and exchange. It conveys a developmental schema whose central movement is the enlargement of organized social relations, rather than offering detailed evidence for each transition.