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“Seth Abrutyn and Jonathan H. Turner provide a remarkable
understanding of human social evolution. From the nineteenth cen-
tury, the foundational question for Sociology and its derivative disciple
Anthropology has been to understand social diversity and emergent
complexities. Although this grand objective has been sidelined, The
First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies refocuses on how and
why human institutions developed. The authors deal with theoretical
discourses from emergent biological cognitive pre-adaptions for soci-
ability through kinship as the first human institution to the progres-
sive creation of corporate units, from which subsequent institutional
spheres formed. Novel social formations were created, they argue,
to deal with survival challenges generated by population growth,
unstable environments, social conflicts, and stratification – all at least
in part endogenous to institutional functioning. Bringing together
a vast scholarship that has often been fractured by controversy, they
synthesize a convincing argument about social evolution’s linkage to
biological evolution, but with novel goal-seeking objectives of group
behavior. I am excited by how they conceptualize the duality of institu-
tional formations as super-organic but effectively internalized in indi-
vidual minds. This is a tour de force, highly recommended to anyone
interested in how sociological theory and anthropology’s archaeo-
logical and ethnographic records seek to explain deep history and pro-
vide insight into present-day challenges.”
Timothy Earle, Northwestern University

“A bold departure from the current fragmented vision of social organ-

ization that characterizes most of the field of sociology, The First
Institutional Spheres in Human Societies’ breadth and depth is rarely
paralleled except for in the authors’ previous work. This book holds
the potential to be a discipline-​influencing book. Abrutyn and Turner
tell the story of the emergence of institutions, in all of its complexity,
to shed light on how this level of social organization emerged and
how this level of social organization works. They detail how biology
and social organization interact to generate the emergence of human
institutions. Their historical approach to the phenomenon gives us
a particular sort of insight that we could not get by only looking at
current instantiations of institutions.”
Erika Summers-​Effler, Notre Dame University

“In 1973, biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, in an essay criticizing

anti-evolution creationism, wrote that ‘Nothing in Biology Makes
Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.’ What’s true for biology is cer-
tainly true also for the social sciences, particularly those dealing with
socio-cultural phenomena, such as the emergence and persistence of
social institutions like kinship, government, religion, the economy, and
law. Humans built these institutions, but as Seth Abrutyn and Jonathan
H. Turner point out in this book, they built them while facing selec-
tion pressures that often prevented them from accomplishing the goals
they sought. Instead, they had to adapt to changing environmental
conditions, doing as best they could, under the circumstances. The
authors imply that, in the end, humans’ best efforts may not be good
enough to save us from the dire consequences of the very order we
helped create. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in
evolutionary analyses of social institutions.”
Howard Aldrich, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
 THE FIRST INSTITUTIONAL SPHERES
IN HUMAN SOCIETIES
Few concepts are as central to sociology as institutions. Yet, like so many socio-
logical concepts, institutions remain vaguely defined. This book expands a foun-
dational definition of the institution, one which locates them as the basic building
blocks of human societies—​as structural and cultural machines for survival that
make it possible to pass precious knowledge from one generation to the next,
ensuring the survival of our species. The book extends this classic tradition by,
first, applying advances in biological evolution, neuroscience, and primatology
to explain the origins of human societies and, in particular, the first institutional
sphere: kinship. The authors incorporate insights from natural sciences often
marginalized in sociology, while highlighting the limitations of purely biogen-
etic, Darwinian explanations. Secondly, they build a vivid conceptual model of
institutions and their central dynamics as the book charts the chronological evo-
lution of kinship, polity, religion, law, and economy, discussing the biological evi-
dence for the ubiquity of these institutions as evolutionary adaptations themselves.

Seth Abrutyn is Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at the University

of British Columbia. His research straddles two primary streams: the evolution
of human institutions, like religion or polity, and the role place and place-​based
culture play in shaping adolescent mental health and suicide. His work has won
several national awards, and can be found in outlets like American Sociological
Review, Sociological Theory, and American Journal of Public Health.

Jonathan H. Turner was named the 38th University Professor in the history of
the University of California system. He is primarily a general sociological theorist.
He has authored or coauthored 43 books, and edited nine additional books. This
book on the first human institutions is his fourth book on the topic, focusing on
the origin of human institutional systems and their evolution to the structural and
cultural base necessary for modernity.
 Evolutionary Analysis in the Social Sciences
A series edited by Jonathan H. Turner and Kevin J. McCaffree

This new series is devoted to capturing the full range of scholarship and
debate over how best to conduct evolutionary analyses on human behavior,
interaction, and social organization. The series will range across social
science disciplines and offer new cutting-​edge theorizing in sociobiology,
evolutionary psychology, stage-​modeling, co-​evolution, cliodynamics, and
evolutionary biology.

Published:

The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies: Evolution and

Adaptations from Foraging to the Threshold of Modernity
by Seth Abrutyn and Jonathan H. Turner (2022)

On Human Nature: The Biology and Sociology of What Made Us Human

by Jonathan H. Turner (2020)

Mechanistic Criminology
by K. Ryan Proctor and Richard E. Niemeyer (2019)

The New Evolutionary Sociology: New and Revitalized Theoretical

Approaches
by Jonathan H. Turner and Richard S. Machalek (2018)

The Emergence and Evolution of Religion: By Means of Natural Selection

by Jonathan H. Turner, Alexandra Maryanski, Anders Klostergaard
Petersen, and Armin W. Geertz (2017)

Forthcoming:

The Evolution of World-​Systems

by Christopher Chase-​Dunn

Maps of Microhistory: Models of the Long Run

by Martin Hewson
The First Institutional
Spheres in Human
Societies
Evolution and Adaptations from
Foraging to the Threshold of
Modernity

Seth Abrutyn and Jonathan H. Turner

Cover image: © Shutterstock
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Taylor & Francis
The right of Seth Abrutyn and Jonathan H. Turner to be identified as authors
of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data
Names: Abrutyn, Seth, author. | Turner, Jonathan H., author.
Title: The first institutional spheres in human societies : evolution and
adaptations from foraging to the threshold of modernity /
Seth Abrutyn and Jonathan H. Turner.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, [2022] |
Series: Evolutionary analysis in the social sciences
Identifiers: LCCN 2021022359 |
Subjects: LCSH: Social institutions. | Social structure. | Sociology.
Classification: LCC HM826 .A37 2022 | DDC 306–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022359
ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​12413-​1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​12408-​7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​22443-​3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/​9781003224433
Typeset in Minion
by Newgen Publishing UK
To our children,

Seth Abrutyn: To Asa and Silas Abrutyn

Jonathan H. Turner: To Patricia Turner, Donna Turner Mueller, and

Jon Turner
 Contents

Introduction 1

1 On the Origins of Human Capacities 16

2 Selection as the Force Driving Institutional Evolution 50

3 Building Human Institutions 69

4 The Dynamics of Institutional Autonomy 99

5 The First Human Institution: The Evolution of the

Nuclear Family and Kinship 119

6 The Elaboration of Kinship 134

7 The Emergence of Polity in Human Societies 153

8 The Increasing Autonomy of Polity 176

9 The Emergence of Religion 197

10 Religious Evolution and Religious Autonomy 217

11 The Emergence of Economy 243

12 The Emergence of Law 271

13 Legal Autonomy and the Expanding

Institutional Infrastructure 296

ix
newgenprepdf

x • Contents

14 Institutional Evolution to the Brink of Modernity 333

15 Institutional Evolution and Stratification 362

16 The Evolved Institutional Order and the West 383

Bibliography 416
Index 456
 Introduction

In the second preface to The Rules of Sociological Method, Émile Durkheim

(1895 [1982]: 54ff.) posited that a science of society was necessarily a
science of institutions—​their emergence, evolution, and, perhaps, decay
and death. Little did Durkheim realize that one of the central concepts
of his own sociology—​things he defined as collective ways of acting and
thinking—​would be, like many other cherished concepts, defined in so
many different ways as to mean everything and nothing. This book is
about institutions. Reasonably, one might ask why now? Why another
book on institutions? In part, sociology, we believe, is at a critical juncture.
Like so many of the major pendulum swings designed to rectify serious
omissions in mid-​century functionalism (e.g., the rise of conflict theory,
constructivism, inequality studies), the “cultural turn” (Patterson 2014)
has largely pushed structural accounts into the background. Likewise, the
cultural turn has dominated the last several decades of institutional ana-
lysis (Friedland and Alford 1991; Jepperson and Meyer 2021), reducing the
substance that consumed so many classical works, ranging from Spencer’s
Principles of Sociology to Weber’s oeuvre on “social orders” to the margins
of a theory of institutions. Institutions, however are more than cultural
beliefs and practices patterned and enduring; they are real structural and
cultural adaptations that demarcate physical, temporal, social, and sym-
bolic space.
Hence, our conceptualization of institutions is not completely new, but
it is synthetic and generative. It is a book that merges its authors’ already
shared notion of institutions, both of whom draw in different ways from
very distinctive sources. The term institution is indebted to Herbert
Spencer’s usage in the Principles of Sociology, which organized a massive
body of data around the ubiquitous structural units of organization that
appear to be building blocks of every society—​e.g., kinship, polity, and so
forth. The realism staked throughout, that institutions are produced and
reproduced by special collectives that work, consciously, to deal with indi-
vidual and collective problems and to guard this authority stems from the
“old” institutionalism of Stinchcombe (1997) and Selznick (1996), as well
as Eisenstadt (1965). And, the phenomenological and social psychological

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224433-1 1
2 • Introduction

consequences of institutions emerges from Weber’s (1978) spheres of social

action and a loose but muscular interpretation of Durkheim refracted
through Shils (1975). Our view of institutions shares some, but not much
with the myriad, loosely overlapping visions of institutions most promin-
ently promoted by new institutionalists. Indeed, they are environments in
which fields, sectors, niches, and their constituent actors—​organizations
and groups—​operate. But, they are real, emergent levels of social reality;
they occupy space, and can be touched to some degree. They are not purely
reducible to the organizations and roles that inhabit these spaces. They are
less the specific content or manifestation (e.g., capitalism or democracy)
and, instead, the general form (e.g., economy or polity).
The remainder of this introduction is organized around five myths about
institutions that are perpetuated in sociology today: (1) institutions are
reifications; (2) institutions are practices and/​or beliefs; (3) institutions are
manifest in social phenomena that inhabit their space, like organizations,
or roles; (4) premodern institutions, at least those prior to capitalism or
nation-​states, are radically different and thereby less interesting; and,
finally, (5) little can be gleaned from the analysis of the evolution of humans,
human society, or our brains and bodies. In shattering these myths, we are
able to not only situate our analysis and anticipate what the reader will
encounter throughout, but we are hopefully able to also reclaim the ter-
minology surrounding institutions.

Myth 1: Institutions are Reifications

One of the worst things to happen to sociology in the last half century
was the movement towards methodological individualism (Hedström and
Ylikoski 2010). In the search for mechanisms, out of fear that abstract social
forces were impossible to measure, and in the goal of raising emic over
etic knowledge, lived experience over generalizability, many sociologists
have abandoned the vision of a social world with emergent levels of social
reality. It is true that sociology failed to satisfyingly link the macro-​micro
levels of social reality, but it is no less true that linking these two levels does
not a science make. It is also true that every human society that we know of
has had some semblance of kinship, polity, religion, economy, and law. By
that, we mean to say that we may look at the individual roles people play,
like “mother”, or we may look at the similarities and variation in the groups
(families) that these roles are enacted daily, or we may look at the enduring
structural and cultural elements that tie present families together, as well
as link them to the past and an anticipated future. To be sure, the further
back in human history we go, the blurrier the lines between, say, polity
 Introduction • 3

and kinship become in both theory and practice. And, yet, a contemporary
human would find certain actions reflective of economic-​like behavior vis-​
à-​vis religious behavior.
But, aren’t institutions simply reifications, as Lukacs proposed
(Parkinson 1970)? Most everything in science is a reification. We cannot
see germs without special instruments, and yet we take for granted
the fact that they cause illness and by targeting them we can prevent
or alleviate their effects. Likewise, sociologists cannot “see” most of the
things we study. The self, so personal and so tangible, is constructed
through the acquisition of language and the neurobiological capacity
to identify objects that endure in memory, affect, and cognition. But,
the self is not a physical fact like gravity, nor is it visible without special
instruments designed to measure and observe it. Institutions are unnat-
ural like the self; products of human construction. But, like the self, they
are tangible things, identifiable both to the naked eye (in some ways,
more accurately than the self) and to instruments designed to measure
them. They are enduring, more so than the individuals who populate
them. And, they possess distinctive dynamics irreducible to individuals,
though as we shall see in early chapters and throughout, like the self,
they depend on our evolved brains and bodies. To anticipate the more
abstract discussions in Chapters 3–​4 and the substantive, historically
rich chapters on specific institutions (e.g., Chapter 8 on polity or 10 on
religion), we offer some rather broad and parsimonious thoughts on the
tangibility of institutions, which, subsequently, forms the basis of our
critique of the remaining four myths.
First, institutions, or what we will usually refer to as institutional spheres,
are manifest in four dimensions of social reality: physical, temporal, social,
and symbolic. The physical provides the greatest evidence of their foot-
print. Humans have always built houses, and houses have always been
the principal center of kinship activity. A naïve observer, from contem-
porary China, Chile, or Canada, would easily identify a house in a for-
aging society’s landscape regardless of the architecture or the adornment.
Arguably, a native to a foraging society, given enough time to get over the
shock of the scale and size of modern communities, would easily identify
houses and their function in those very same countries. Even more salient
are the differences between kinship space and political space. Again,
this is a relative pronouncement that depends on twin processes we will
describe in later chapters, differentiation and autonomy. In a chiefdom, for
instance, polity is discernible to a trained eye, as the chief ’s hut looks very
much like every other hut but is usually positioned in space differently.
Over time, chiefdoms develop ways of further distinguishing politics and
4 • Introduction

political action from kinship and kinship behavior. However, the untrained
eye would easily recognize a palace just as a denizen of a city-​state from
Mesopotamia would deduce that the White House or Buckingham Palace
were sites of very different events and decisions than a neighborhood with
non-​descript row houses.
These tangible distinctions are buttressed by the temporal and social
dimensions of institutional spheres. Time feels more natural than any
other dimension, and thus its manipulation and routinization allow ana-
lysis and people alike to take for granted the powerful forces regulating the
daily lives of individuals. What is real is often taken for unreal, thus for-
ever distorting the capacity to understand the social universe. The earliest
strains towards a religious sphere emerge in calendrical rituals designed
to differentiate sacred emotions, attitudes, and actions from their pro-
fane counterparts (Wallace 1966). The economy has always impinged on
kinship life, as seasonal migration was at the heart of foraging societies in
ways echoed by the daily and seasonal rounds of agrarian life or the highly
regularized, formalized pattern of industrial factory life. Ceremonial rit-
uals great and small become deeply embedded in the fabric of social life,
such as the first Tuesday of every November being Election Day in the U.S.
Every four years, the U.S. builds to a fervor as campaigns and debates gen-
erate the same sort of effervescence Durkheim spoke of until the collective
ritual of watching the results pour in and a winner be declared. It was, per-
haps, the artificial extension of the 2020 election’s resolution that made it
feel so unsatisfying and helped foment the grievances that led to the even-
tual insurrection on January 6th of the following year. In those rituals, both
big (Election Day) and small (watching the debates), our political iden-
tities are made salient and we are primed to evaluate political thoughts
and behaviors by politically-​based criteria. This ephemeral role-​taking is
many people’s only tangible cognitive and affectual connection to the pol-
itical sphere, but, as with any institution, there are myriad people devoted
to the institutional sphere’s production, reproduction, and expansion. We
can see them, hear them, talk to them. They are real. And, like a professor
devoted to her discipline or a hedge fund manager a slave to his clients,
they tend to struggle with role compartmentalization and bleed politics,
science, or economics into other encounters and interactions shaped by
other institutional spheres. As long as sociologists look at outcomes of
institutional activities in specific behaviors rather than examining the
underlying dynamics of institutions and their relations with each other,
understanding of human societies will be very limited.
Finally, it is the symbolic dimension that breaths life, or more accurately,
meaning, into the physical, temporal, and social dimensions of institutional
 Introduction • 5

life. Who are doctors? They are the people wearing white lab coats. Who are
judges? Black robes. Institutional spheres designate or signify the objects
that belong and that are foreign. That means they classify with words, in
themes of discourse that become narratives about institutional activities,
in texts, and in performance the people, places, and things that are pol-
itical or economic. Where the lines between an object’s political or eco-
nomic attachment is in doubt, we find sources of tension and contestation;
often the core of cautionary tales, fables, and aphorisms. Nonetheless, the
carving out of physical space is also a symbolic act: buildings develop archi-
tectural styles and adopt emblems and signage that transcend functionality
and double as representations. Costumes and uniforms, symbols of status
achieved or ascribed, and everyday tools all become elements of meaning
that uphold the expressive or interaction order. And while an object or set
of interrelated objects, a space or temporal distinction, or a role may not
have a firmly delineated connection to an institutional sphere, the conflict
itself underscores the belief and reality that different institutional spheres
exist and organize the self, encounters and interaction, informal and formal
groups, and, ultimately, even communities themselves. As such, we can
expect institutional spheres to have emergent properties worthy of study
in their own right. What exactly those properties are, however, constitute
our next two myths.

Myth 2: Institutions Are Practices and/​or Beliefs

As the idea that institutions were reifications took hold, a reclamation pro-
ject began across a number of disciplines, most notably sociology and eco-
nomics. The goal was how to keep the popular concept institution and its
supposed verb/​process institutionalization, without committing the sin of
treating it as a real thing. Out of this intellectual project came a loosely
connected body of scholarship otherwise known as the New Institutionalism
(Nee 2005; Powell and DiMaggio 1991). Substituting cultural models of
institutions for structural ones, institutions remained environments in
which organizations operated, but without structure and with the prac-
tical nature of professions (Stinchcombe 1997) abstracted away into the
background. In its place, grew rationalized forms, practices, and beliefs
(DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer and Rowan 1977; Thornton et al.
2012), and, at times, rules and resources (Giddens 1984; North 1990). That
is, the focus shifted from institutions as things to their consequences in
bringing about convergence or equivalence across the units of analysis that
had become far more interesting to organizational scholars: fields (Martin
2003), niches (Hannan and Freeman 1977), sectors (Scott and Meyer 1983),
6 • Introduction

and markets (Fligstein 1996; Ouchi 1980). Important and interesting, new
institutionalism—​which has long overemphasized the economic organ-
ization over other types of corporate units—​has primarily conceptualized
institutions as isomorphic forces of legal regulation (Dobbin and Sutton
1998; Edelman and Suchman 1997), normative pressures from professions
(DiMaggio 1991), or Weberian-​esque myths constraining organizational
construction (Boli, Ramirez, and Meyer 1985; Thomas et al. 1987). The
hardness or tangibility of institutions has given way to vague, but highly
flexible concepts like “logics,” whose primary consequence, phenomeno-
logically, are patterning beliefs and practices. Our view is that institutions
are real things, revealing a real character in their structure and symbol
systems that needs to be treated as a powerful force in human social organ-
ization. It is not a loose name for more fundamental processes; rather, it is
generative of these process and, hence, must be understood as whole.
There is some merit in the advances made by new institutionalism, spe-
cifically in the effects the economic sphere has on formal organizations.
However, the institutional sphere is lost amidst these analyses, relegated to
a small subset of fields or sectors, organizations, or beliefs and practices.
In The Elementary Forms, Durkheim did not define religion by its beliefs
and practices; cults were defined by these constituent elements. Religion
was (a) the moral community who (b) shared a set of interlocking “cults”
that came to (c) comprise the general way of thinking and acting in rela-
tionship to the sacred or supranatural. It is the entire system or sphere
of social organization that constitutes religion. The new institutionalists
have lost sight of the way systems pattern discrete types of organization
and communication (Luhmann 1982, 1995), exchange (Parsons 1990), or
interaction (Turner 2003). The actual arrangement of people committed
to maintaining the institutional sphere’s practical and theoretic reality are
peripheral or relegated to economic entrepreneurs (DiMaggio 1988; Levy
and Scully 2007). And the big raision d’etre of social organization—​that is,
to resolve exigencies for the sake of individual and collective survival—​is
replaced by the twin motivations of wealth accumulation and legitimation.

Myth 3: Institutions Can Be Organizations or Actors

As institutions disappear from plain view, they are rapidly replaced by
colloquialism that makes just about any social phenomenon that endures
for a period of time an institution. Social scientific concepts, of course,
like “the words of everyday language, like the concepts they express, are
always susceptible of more than one meaning, and the scholar employing
them in their accepted use without further definition would risk serious
 Introduction • 7

misunderstanding” (Durkheim 1897 [1951]: 1). To be sure, it is conven-

tional to call a person, say Ted Kennedy, who has been around an organiza-
tion for a long time an institution; to refer to a prestigious, long-​standing
organization, like Harvard, an institution. The latter, especially, harkens
back to mid-​century sociology that spent inordinate amounts of time
in mental hospitals, or what were generally termed institutions, and the
process by which a patient was admitted and socialized, institutionaliza-
tion (Goffman 1961; Scheff 1966). But, was Goffman really interested in
total institutions or the unique structural and cultural qualities of some
organizations and their pursuit of total commitment (Kanter 1968)? The
pervasive and lackadaisical use of institution, when Goffman likely meant
the verb form institutionalization, led to Coser’s (1974) co-​optation of the
term to refer to just about any type of non-​formal social organization that
thrust total commitment onto the individual. And, eventually, to the terms
used to refer to beliefs (or myths) and practices. Once it was free of any
clear system of classification, it became possible to label anything, from
voting to the handshake, to a person or an organization, as an institution
(Jepperson 1991). So, what is an institution? Is it a bureaucratic entity cap-
able of processing large batches of similar others, as Goffman intends? Is
it patterned relationships that demand and command undivided attention
and resource mobilization as Coser intends? Are they myths, beliefs,
practices, logics, or simply the taken-​for-​granted environment or con-
tainer in which the real action, organizational dynamics, occurs? Or is it
any social phenomenon capable of patterning the structure, and therefore
thoughts and actions, of individual or collective actors?
In some ways, it might be better to answer these questions by refashioning
a new conceptual tool and letting new institutionalism keep the term
institution. After all, a social scientific consensus over the term has never
existed—​e.g., in anthropological literature, for instance, institutions have
often been seen as synonymous with structural features of a society, like
“property” or “marriage” (Evans-​Pritchard et al. 1956; Hobhouse et al.
1930; Maine 1888), instead of the systems that they are usually embedded.
But, we also believe sociologists should care about how we classify phe-
nomenon, and should also care about distinguishing elements of a thing
from the thing itself. People or organizations are actors whose realities
are institutionalized, or patterned by the structure and culture of an insti-
tutional sphere. Some individuals (whether the person or the role) and
organizations can become representational. In Durkheimian terms, we
mean to say that Harvard can come to embody many cherised values of the
educational sphere, but that does not make at an institution; it makes it an
influential node in a network of other organizations and individuals who
8 • Introduction

are embedded in the educational sphere. Institutional spheres institute

certain ritualized action events, like voting or admission rituals, as well
as constitutive rules (D’Andrade 1984; Swanson 1971) that delineate what
“marriage” or “property” is and is not, but to focus only on these, or call
these institutons, is to ignore the actors embedded in these cognitive and
structural systems—​both subject to their force and purposefully engaged
in maintaining, expanding, or changing the events, their meaning, and the
rules (Stinchcombe 1997).
Popular, then, or not, we maintain the position that institutions, or per-
haps more accurately, institutional spheres are macro structural and cultural
spaces that organize virtually all human activities that are central human
concerns and a significant portion of the population. Institutions are also
the result and fountain-​head of human agency and, hence, are changed and
rebuilt by acts of individual and collective agency. This definition delimits
the range of things we can legitimately call an element of an institutional
sphere, but deliminated to particular forms of structure and culture, as
we will emphasize in the next three introductory chapters. Institutions
align nicely with many subfields in sociology that focus on a specific set of
related actors, resources, and rules: family (or what we would call kinship),
polity, religion, economy, law, as well as medicine, science, and media/​
entertainment; and this fact makes even more surprising the view that they
are “not real.” Empirically, this definition returns us to one virtue of now-​
rejected functionalism, whatever its other many faults. The evolution of
societies was seen as the evolution of institutions and the corporate units
and their cultures from which institutions are constructed. Indeed, when
refracted through an evolutionary lens, the idea of institutions is not only
salvageable but essential because institutions evolve to resolve in response
to collective problems encounted by populations organizing within a given
environment.
We need not drag out the long-​rejected notion of functional needs
or requisites; rather, we can repurpose the idea of needs or requisites to
emphasize that humans always face adaptive problems in a given envir-
onment, even the sociocultural environment of their own making.
Institutional analysis is thus the analysis of fundamental human concerns
as they adapt to ever changing environments. At the individual level, our
evolved cognitive and affective capacities appear to have made a set of
concerns salient, like justice, power, and belongingness. At the social level,
once we began organizing into larger groups, solutions to any one of these
concerns could become patterned, enduring, and the core organizing prin-
ciple around which divisions of labor came to be arranged. Institutional
spheres, then, are the outcome of the institutionalization, through acts of
 Introduction • 9

agency, of solutions to the fundamental concerns of humans as they adapt

to diverse environments, both ecological and sociocultural; and these acts
lead to the building up of social structural cultural formations that regulate
human thought, action, and organization.
For instance, in Chapters 7 and 8 we examine the selection pressures
that drove human societies 10,000 years ago, and then again 5,000 years
ago, to begin carving out political space vis-​à-​vis kinship space. At first,
the lines were enormously blurry, as chiefdom remained deeply embedded
structurally and culturally within patrilineal kinship organization. Power
remained a concern tied closely to loyalty, a concern closely aligned
with kinship. But, as the number of exigencies grew, the conditions for
distinguishing polity structurally, culturally, and phenomenologically
grew concomitant. With this autonomous political sphere came the shift
of power—​as a concern and as a resource—​from kinship to polity. That is,
power came to be the central organizing principle for organizational fields,
organizations, and individual role/​status positions; it became a generalized
currency for communication, exchange, and interaction between increas-
ingly impersonal, generalized networks of individual and collective actors
who either spent the majority of their time oriented towards politics or
who sought out the goods or services the polity offered.
This example, however, points us to the truth behind our fourth myth.
Economy was not the first institution; rather kinship was the first human insti-
tution with economy fully embedded in its structure and culture. Moreover,
economy was not even the first institutoinal sphere to become autonomous
from kinship; rather polity more autonomous before religion, economy, and
law. Moreover, yet another myth is that biology is irrelevant to sociocultural
evolution, but as we will argue, biological and neurobiological evolution were
the driving forces making institutional systems possible in the first place, and
they still are very much affected by the evolution and successive movement to
relative autonomy of each institutional sphere organizing a society. Such con-
siderations go against the grain of most sociological subfields and limitations
of “the sociological imagination.” In this book, however, we intend to demon-
strate how insights gleaned from other sciences can inform sociological level
of analysis, without sacrificing the obvious point that the sociocultural and
biotic universes constitute different realities.

Myth 4: Our Biology is Neither Determining nor Relevant Today

Since Durkheim’s (1895) Rules of the Sociological Method, sociology has
continuously drawn strong boundaries between itself and the things that
go on inside of the human organism.1 Though evolutionary thought has
10 • Introduction

nearly always had a place in sociology, it is not without challenge, anx-

iety, and, in some corners, distaste. Given the subject matter of this book—​
macro structural and cultural spheres of action—​one might ask why this
myth and its debunking even matter. Above, we’ve already claimed that
institutions are real, emergent social phenomena that are not reducible to
the individual level. So, why are we interested in evolution? There are three
answers to this question that combine to stake out one of the main goals
of this book.
First, all social organization is predicated on our evolved capacities and
dispositions in humans’ biology. Sociologists are not unique among most
humans who struggle with the practical and theoretic consequences of
seeing humans as animals. It is one thing to recognize and believe in evo-
lution, but an entirely different thing to internalize what that means for a
social science. We believe it is long past time to be clear about what we can
learn from our mammalian heritage and, especially, our primate and ape
heritance. In Chapter 1, we dig into the evolution of social organization by
way of natural selection working on our bodies and our brains. We con-
sider what other ape societies (at least three of the four remaining Great
Apes) look like and what that teaches us about the earliest human societies
some 300,000 years ago. Humans are incredibly flexible animals, having
been able to colonize just about every ecological niche on the planet. And,
yet, what we find is there are also some delimitations to what is possible.
Second, while natural selection clearly plays a major role in the con-
struction of the earliest human societies, we agree with an array of evo-
lutionary scholars who emphasize the co-​evolution, eventually, between
genes and culture (Richerson and Boyd 2005; Richerson and Christiansen
2013), although this approach often assumes too much interaction between
genes and culture. However, we also diverge from this group by proposing
two separate types of evolutionary processes. The first is Darwinian, which
recognizes some social evolution benefited the biological reproduction of
humans, and still does today, but far more important are the sociocultural
formations generated by humans with large brains and capacities for lan-
guage and culture creation. For instance, that kinship continues to survive,
as does its basic organizational unit, the family, we can be assured kinship
was created in response to selection pressures for protecting the human
genome and allowing for reproduction; and while such is still the case,
kinship as an institution reveals emergent properties that are responses to
different kinds of selection pressure emanating from adaptive problems in
the organization of humans. The result is that we must shift to sociocul-
tural evolution, which operates through selection but is still fundamen-
tally different than biological evolution. This second type of evolution thus
 Introduction • 11

shifts the focus from the individual to the social; and though just about any
social unit—​an organization, community, and so forth—​can be a unit of
evolution, we argue that institutions are one of the most important units
of evolution. Both types of evolution work on selection pressures, but the
latter is unique and more Lamarckian than Darwinian. One of the most
important changes that occurs once an institutional sphere is created is
that the human environment becomes more complex because humans are
constantly creating and changing the environments to which they must
adapt. Humans change not only the bio-​ecology of their existence; they
are also constantly changing the sociocultural environment to which they
must adapt. Not only do humans have to contend with ecological change,
but the environment itself becomes a self-​reflexive sphere in which the
second type of evolution may proceed. It is, to be sure, out of fashion to
think in terms of systems (Luhmann 1995), but the fact of the matter is
that as human institutions grow more differentiated and autonomous, they
become the primary environments for social behavior and social change.
Consequently, we outline in Chapters 2 and 3, the evolutionary process by
which institutions evolve and adapt.
And this process brings us to the third point: whenever any animal
congregates and whenever its population grows in size and density, it puts
pressure on its ecological space, creating problems that must be resolved.
Institutional spheres are, in one sense, the repositories for these solutions.
In a much larger sense, however, institutions deal with some of the most
basic exigencies facing human biology and culture. Some of these problems
are deeply rooted in our biology, like the apparent motivation to ensure
exchanges are fair and just (Decety and Howard 2013; Decety and Yoder
2017). But, when collectivized, these individual problems become group
problems, as they threaten the viability and solidarity of the group, and
consequently, other motivations like belongingness (Baumeister and Leary
1995). Thus, the intersection of individual concerns and problems related
to collective action and organization lay at the foundations of institutional
spheres. In adhering to the Goldenweiser principle (1937) that posits spe-
cific structural problems have only limited numbers of possible solutions, we
argue that there is a historical “phasing,” so to speak, by which certain indi-
vidual and collective problems intersect and, thereby, certain institutions
evolve towards greater differentiation and autonomy. By no means are we
suggesting a stage model, as evolution can move in unpredictable ways.
However, it is clear from historical, archaeological, and textual evidence
that polity precedes all other institutions, besides kinship, in its strain
towards greater autonomy (Chapters 7–​8). Subsequently, we see religious
evolution accelerate, culminating in the first autonomous religious spheres
12 • Introduction

around the middle to end of the first millennium BCE (Chapters 9–​10).
Finally, economy (Chapters 11 and 14) and law (Chapters 12–​13) begin
their evolutionary trajectories, entwined at times, and driving the other at
other points.
Indeed, by looking first at the neurology and biology of institutional evo-
lution and then teasing out unique sociocultural processes made possible
by this neurology, we are able to produce a robust theory that avoids the
trappings of reductionism, but gives our brains and bodies their rightful
due. In addition, we add an emphasis on sociocultural evolution that
eludes the biosociological ultimatum that evolution is individual, genomic,
and about fitness only. This analysis also does something else unique: it
challenges the final myth: the premodernity/​modernity “break”—​defined
however the social scientist prefers—​is a heuristic device that does more
to distort than to improve our understanding and explanation of social
change and organization.

Myth 5: Modernity Is Different From Everything Before It

Something curious happened when sociology elevated the classical canon
to a hermetically sealed chamber: the widespread, taken-​for-​granted, and
unproblematized belief that the last 150–​250 years (or, perhaps since the
nation-​state in 1648) are radically different from the 300,000 years prior.
Never mind the fact that it is unlikely that the human brain has evolved
much, if at all, making our so-​called stone-​age predecessors cognitively
and anatomically the same as modern humans. Never mind the fact that
the problems facing political systems today (Fagan 1999, 2004) or the
struggle between religion and other spheres are neither new nor radic-
ally different. Admittedly, the size and scale of both the problems and the
potential tragedy is greater today than before, and the number and diver-
sity of problems are, when studied in their detail and content, greater.
However, floods, famines, pestilence, wars, ethnic and cultural inequality,
and conflict have been around forever, and the solutions to these problems,
though occasionally “new” and surprising, remain delimited. There is, as
Weber, Marx, Durkheim, Spencer, and so forth argued, a lot to learn from
the past. And, the needless retaining of old binaries like Gemeinschaft and
Gesselschaft or premodernity and modernity do little for understanding;
rather, they delimit what we should be studying.
Underneath the substantive concerns of this chapter lies a major
meta-​concern: to understand the rise of the West and the vast majority
of major events labeled “modern,” one needs to understand the general
and specific evolutionary patterns of the last 10,000 years. One could,
 Introduction • 13

arbitrarily, point to any number of bifurcation points, or what German

philosopher Karl Jaspers (1953) termed axial moments. Sociology,
being a science of human societies forged amidst massive economic,
political, and cultural change in the 19th century, “chose” what it saw as
modernity. This book challenges these ideas by reviewing the pressures
that led to human settling down for good; for erecting massive political
systems that began to act apart from what was in the “best” interests of
significant portions of the population; for widening the conception of
the moral community to which values and norms should apply; and,
to reducing conflict between impersonal and depersonalized social
relationships that would otherwise be impossible because of geographic,
cultural, and social distances.
In so doing, we revise two classical conventions. First, we return to
the social scientific preoccupation with origins stories. Relying on a wide
variety of data sources and scientific disciplines, we posit a speculative,
yet deeply informed and plausible, theory for the origins of kinship (and,
thereby, human societies). As we move from one institution to the next,
we return to the question of neurobiology and cognitive science, asking
what are the origins of each of these spheres? From there, we ask what did
economy or polity look like in the earliest foraging societies? Again, we
draw from a wide range of sources, some lost in the “mists of time,” others
on the cutting edge of evolutionary sciences. Once established, we ask
one final question: why and how did a given institutional sphere become
autonomous (and, of course, what were the consequences)? Thus, we are
interested in a much deeper and broader evolutionary story of the origins
of human societies and each institution that we examine. We end at the
cusp of modernity, having established just how much continuity there is
between the supposed premodern era and the next stage. Secondly, this
narrative returns to the classic question: why the West? Instead, however,
of pointing to a revolutionary moment, like the Protestant Reformation,
we illustrate the gradual, multi-​linear, sometimes truncated path the West
and the rest of the world took to get to contemporary social life. If any-
thing, the collapse of Rome was the most powerful moment in Western evo-
lution, leaving a massive hole in the structural and cultural infrastructure
of Europe; a gap that presented opportunities for the religious and kinship
spheres’ entrepreneurs to grow autonomously in radical ways.

The Structure of an Institutional Analysis

The organization of the book can be conceptualized in three movements.
The first begins with the evolution of hominids and humans (Chapter 1),
14 • Introduction

the unique nature of some types of sociocultural evolution (Chapter 2),

and ends with a general theoretical model of institutions (Chapter 3) and
their autonomy (Chapter 4). In this section, we examine the biogenetic
roots of culture, pointing to the dispositions and characteristics that nat-
ural selection generated that provide the most purchase for institutions
to emerge from and, eventually, take off as evolutionary forces in their
own right. This section offers a chance to reflect on how we can synthe-
size insights from biological evolution without threatening a social science
that studies the emergent properties and dynamics of non-​biological phe-
nomenon. Following this, we describe in great detail what institutions are,
what they do, and how they too evolve. The cornerstone of this section
is the functionalist argument, repurposed and rehabilitated, that institu-
tional spheres become evolutionary forces. That is, for most of hominin
evolution, it was the biotic environment that acted on our phenotypes as
the Modern Synthesis supposes. But, with the first institution (kinship)
becoming an external force, sui generis, it too became an environment in
which individual and, more importantly, collective adaptation occurred.
With each new layer of institutional evolution (polity, religion, law, and
economy), the number of environments and unique sociocultural selec-
tion pressures grew, leading to both greater risks for human survival and
greater opportunities for creativity and growth.
In the second movement, we shift our focus from the more abstract parts
of the argument, to increasingly concrete delineations of each institution in
its chronological order of autonomous evolution. We begin with kinship,
describing what it is (Chapter 5) and why it evolved towards greater com-
plexity (Chapter 6). Reaching its adaptive limits, Chapters 7 and 8 turn to
the first autonomous institution besides kinship, polity. Again, we begin by
thinking about the biological roots of polity, highlighting the limitations
to a purely biogenetic theory of political evolution, and then describe the
polity as an adaptive structural and cultural phenomenon. Following this,
we turn to the evolutionary forces driving its growth in autonomy and the
consequences autonomy had for other institutions, including kinship. This
organizational strategy is repeated with religion (Chapters 9 and 10), and
in a different sense, with law (Chapter 11 and 14) and economy (Chapter 12
and 13). This movement ends where modernity begins, arguing that much
of what sociology accepts as its common historiography—​whether Weber’s
Protestant Reformation as birth of modernity or Marx’s industrial revo-
lution—​ is really just a continuous process that stretches back some
10,000 years with the explosion of sedentary populations.
The book’s third movement concludes with a detailed examination of the
interrelationship between institutions and the other great building block
 Introduction • 15

of human societies: stratification systems. Though we make connections

throughout, we devote time to fully unlocking a modified theory of strati-
fication that places generalized symbolic media at the core of intra-​insti-
tutional stratification. In the final chapter, we turn to both summary and
exposition. We review, briefly, where we’ve been and examine more closely
the contention that modernity is an extension or continuation of the past
rather than a radical break as Durkheim, Simmel, Weber, Bourdieu, and so
many others infer or explicitly argue. We leave the reader with the sense
that more work is necessary; work that explains how and why medicine,
science, education, media, and, to a lesser degree, entertainment became
autonomous institutions over the last two and a half centuries.

Note
1 Durkheim’s mentors were, however, very interested in biology; and while Durkheim
in his early career assumed a rather extreme sociologistic stance in order to legitimate
sociology as an academic discipline, his later work on religion and ritual was much more
willing to deal with human psychology and even biology. Thus, after 1895, Durkheim
changed his mind about much of his earlier advocacy (see Maryanski 2018).
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
king upon the throne, and make it my pleasing task to
conduct myself as a true friend of the Spaniards. The
present generation may differ in their opinions; the
passions have been too much brought into action; but
your grandchildren will bless me as their renovator;
they will reckon the day when I appeared among you
among their memorable festivals; and from that day
will the happiness of Spain date its commencement.
Thus,” he concluded, addressing himself to the
Corregidor, “you are informed of the whole of my
determination. Consult with your fellow-citizens, and
consider what part you will choose; but whatever it
be, make your choice with sincerity, and tell me only
your genuine sentiments.”
There was something more detestable in this
affectation of candour and generosity than in his open
and insolent violence. “Consult! and consider what
part you will choose, and make your choice with
sincerity!”... The Spanish nation had made their
choice! They had made it at Baylen and at Reynosa,
at Cadiz and at Madrid, at Valencia and at Zaragoza;
for life or for death; deliberately, and yet as if with
one impulse, ... with enthusiasm, and yet calmly, ...
had that noble people nobly, and wisely, and
religiously made their heroic choice. They had written
it in blood, their own and their oppressors’. Its proofs
were to be seen in deserted houses and depopulated
towns, in the blackened walls of hamlets which had
been laid waste with fire, in the bones which were
bleaching upon the mountains of Biscay, and in the
bodies, French and Spaniard, which were at that hour
floating down the tainted Ebro! Here, in the capital,
their choice had been recorded; they who had been
swept down by grape-shot in its streets, or bayoneted
in the houses, they who had fallen in the heat of
 battle before its gates, and they who in cold blood
had been sent in droves to execution, alike had borne
witness to that choice, and confirmed it, and rejoiced
in it with their dying breath. And this tyrant called
upon the people of Madrid now to tell him their
sentiments, ... now when their armies were dispersed,
and they themselves, betrayed and disarmed, were
surrounded by his legions!
Registers Registers were opened in every quarter, and, if
opened. French accounts could be believed, 30,000 fathers of
families rushed thither in crowds, and signed a
supplication to the conqueror, entreating him to put
an end to their misfortunes, by granting them his
august brother Joseph for their king. If this impossible
eagerness had really been manifested, it could admit
of no other solution than that the people of Madrid,
bitterly as they detested and heartily as they despised
Joseph, yet thought it a less evil to be governed by
him than by the tyrant himself, ... for this was the
alternative allowed them. But a census of this kind, as
it is called, like those which coloured Buonaparte’s
assumption, first of the consulship for life, and then of
an hereditary throne, was easily procured, when
neither threats, nor persuasions, nor fraud, nor
violence were spared.
The people of The ceremony of voting and taking the oath was
Madrid take the delayed till after Buonaparte’s departure, “because,”
oath of said the French journalists, “a suspicion of fear might
allegiance to
else have attached to it. The act was now more noble,
Joseph.
as being entirely free, ... as being confirmed by the
weightiest considerations whereby a people can be
influenced, their interest, their happiness, and their
glory.” With such language the better part of the
French nation were insulted, and the unreflecting
deceived, while all knowledge of the real state of
 things was shut out by the vigilance of a government,
conscious enough of wickedness to know that it
required concealment. The votes were then exacted,
the host was exposed in all the churches, and the
priests were compelled to receive from their
countrymen at the altar, and as they believed in the
actual and bodily presence of their Saviour and their
God, a compulsory oath of allegiance to the Intruder.
The Catholic system has a salvo in such cases; and
the same priests who administered the oath were
believed by the French themselves to have released
those who took it from its obligations.
Addresses to The higher ranks in Madrid had shown themselves
the Intruder. from the commencement of these troubles as
deficient in public spirit as they had long been in
private virtues. Scarcely an individual in that capital
who was distinguished for rank, or power, or riches,
had stood forward in the national cause, so fallacious
is the opinion that those persons will be most zealous
in the defence of their country, who have what is
called the largest stake in it. Addresses from all the
councils and corporate bodies of the metropolis were
dispatched to Buonaparte while he tarried at
Valladolid, ... all alike abject, and all soliciting that
they might be indulged with the presence of their
king. The Council of state, by a deputy, expressed its
homage of thanks for the generous clemency of the
conqueror. “What gratitude,” said he, “does it not owe
you for having snatched Spain from the influence of
those destructive councils which fifty years of
misfortune had prepared for it; for having rid it of the
English armies, who threatened to fix upon its
territories the theatre of continental war! Grateful for
these benefits, the Council of state has still another
supplication to lay at the feet of your majesty. Deign,
 sire, to commit to our loyalty your august brother, our
lord and King. Permit him to re-enter Madrid, and to
take into his hands the reins of government; that
under the benevolent sway of this august prince,
whose mildness, wisdom, and justice, are known to all
Europe, our widowed and desolate monarchy may
find a father in the best of Kings.” D. Bernardo Yriarte
spoke for the Council of the Indies. “It entirely
submits itself,” he said, “to the decrees of your
Majesty, and to those of your august brother, the King
our master, who is to create the happiness of Spain,
as well by the wisdom and the assemblage of the lofty
virtues which he possesses, as by the powerful
support of the hero of Europe, upon whom the
Council of the Indies founds its hopes of seeing those
ties reunited, which ought always to unite the
American possessions with the mother country.” The
Council of finance requested that it might behold in
Madrid the august and beloved brother of the
Emperor, expecting from his presence the felicity and
repose of the kingdom. The Council of war
supplicated him, through an effect of his august
beneficence, to confer upon the capital the felicity of
the presence of their sovereign, Joseph I. This was
the theme upon which all the deputations rung their
changes. The Council of marine alone adding an
appropriate flattery to the same request, expressed its
hope of contributing to the liberty of the seas.
Edicts of the Joseph meantime had exercised his nominal
Intruder before sovereignty in passing decrees. By one the circulation
his return to of French money was permitted till farther measures
Madrid.
concerning it should be announced; by another all
persons entitled to any salary or pension from the
government were deprived of it till they should have
taken the oath of allegiance to him. He made an
 attempt also in the autumn, before reinforcements
entered Spain, to place the persons belonging to his
army under civil protection: and for this purpose
required that in every district occupied by the army,
from eight to thirty stand of arms should be deposited
in every town-house, and an equal number of the
respectable inhabitants registered to serve as an
escort therewith for any officer or serjeant either on
his road as an invalid, or in the execution of any
commission. They were also to act as a patrol, for the
purpose of preventing any insults or outrages which
might be offered to the military, and if men did not
volunteer for this service, which would entitle them to
pay and rewards, the magistracy were to fix upon
those whom they deemed fit to discharge it. He
created also a new military order by the name of the
Orden Militar de España. The Grand Mastership was
reserved to himself and his successors; and the two
oldest Captains General of the Army and the Fleet
were always to be Grand Chancellor and Grand
Treasurer: but the order itself was open to soldiers of
every rank who should deserve it. A pension of 1000
reales vellon was attached to the order, and the
device was a crimson star, bearing on one side the
Lion of Leon with this motto ... Virtute et Fide; on the
other the Castle of Castille with Joseph Napoleo,
Hispaniarum et Indiarum Rex, instituit. Decrees were
also issued for raising new regiments, one to be called
the Royal Foreign, and the other the first of the Irish
Brigade.
Joseph’s On the 22d of January the Intruder re-entered that
entrance into city, from which he had been driven by the indignation
Madrid. of a whole people. At break of day his approach was
announced by the discharge of an hundred cannon; a
fit symphony, announcing at once to the people by
what right he claimed the throne, and by what means
he must sustain himself upon it. From the gate of
Atocha to the church of St. Isidro, and from thence to
the palace, the streets were lined with French troops,
and detachments were stationed in every part of the
city, more for the purpose of overawing the
inhabitants than of doing honour to this wretched
puppet of majesty, who, while he submitted to be the
instrument of tyranny over the Spaniards, was himself
a slave. The cavalry advanced to the Plaza de las
Delicias to meet him; there he mounted on horseback,
and a procession was formed of his aides-de-camp
and equerries, the grand major domo, the grand
master of the ceremonies, the grand master of the
hounds, with all the other personages of the drama of
royalty, the members of the different councils, and
those grandees who, deserting the cause of their
country, stained now with infamy names which had
once been illustrious in the Spanish annals. At the
gate of Atocha the governor of Madrid was ready to
present him with the keys. As soon as he entered
another discharge of an hundred cannon proclaimed
his presence, and all the bells struck up. He
proceeded through the city to the church of St. Isidro,
where the suffragan Bishop, in his pontificals, the
canons, vicars, and rectors, the vicar-general, and the
prelates of the religious orders, received him at the
gate, and six of the most ancient canons conducted
him to the throne. Then the suffragan Bishop
addressed him in the only language which might that
day be used, the language of servility, adulation,
impiety, and treason. The Intruder’s reply was in that
strain of hypocrisy which marked the usurpation of
the Buonapartes with new and peculiar guilt. This was
his speech:
 “Before rendering thanks to the Supreme Arbiter of
Destinies, for my return to the capital of this kingdom
entrusted to my care, I wish to reply to the
affectionate reception of its inhabitants, by declaring
my secret thoughts in the presence of the living God,
who has just received your oath of fidelity to my
person. I protest, then, before God, who knows the
hearts of all, that it is my duty and conscience only
which induce me to mount the throne, and not my
own private inclination. I am willing to sacrifice my
own happiness, because I think you have need of me
for the establishment of yours. The unity of our holy
religion, the independence of the monarchy, the
integrity of its territory, and the liberty of its citizens,
are the conditions of the oath which I have taken on
receiving the crown. It will not be disgraced upon my
head; and if, as I have no doubt, the desires of the
nation support the efforts of its king, I shall soon be
the most happy of all, because you through me will all
be happy.”
Edicts against Two rows of banqueting tables were laid out in the
the Patriots. nave of the church, where the civil and military
officers of the intruder, and the members of the
councils, were seated according to their respective
ranks. High mass was performed by the chapel-royal,
and a solemn Te Deum concluded the mockery. That
done, Joseph proceeded with the same form to the
palace, and a third discharge of an hundred guns
proclaimed his arrival there. On the day which
followed this triumphal entry, its ostentatious joy, and
the affected humanity and philanthropy of his
professions, he issued a decree for the formation of
special military tribunals, which should punish all
persons with death who took arms against him, or
enlisted others for the patriotic cause: the gallows
 was to be the mode of punishment, and over the door
of the sufferer’s house a shield was to be placed, for
infamy, recording the cause and manner of his
ignominious death. Any innkeeper or householder in
whose dwelling a man should be enlisted for the
Junta’s service should undergo the same fate; but if
they gave information, 400 reales were promised
them, or an equivalent reward. The very day that this
decree was issued, mingling, like his flagitious brother,
words of blasphemy with deeds of blood, he
addressed a circular epistle to the Archbishops and
Circular epistle Bishops of the realm, commanding them to order a Te
to the clergy. Deum in all the churches of their respective dioceses.
“In returning to the capital (this was his language),
our first care, as well as first duty, has been to
prostrate ourselves at the feet of that God who
disposes of crowns, and to devote to him our whole
existence for the felicity of the brave nation which he
has entrusted to our care. For this only object of our
thoughts we have addressed to him our humble
prayers. What is an individual amid the generations
who cover the earth? What is he in the eyes of the
Eternal, who alone penetrates the intentions of men,
and according to them determines their elevation? He
who sincerely wishes the welfare of his fellows serves
God, and omnipotent goodness protects him. We
desire that, in conformity with these dispositions, you
direct the prayers of the faithful whom Providence has
entrusted to you. Ask of God, that his spirit of peace
and wisdom may descend upon us, that the voice of
passion may be stifled in meditating upon such
sentiments as ought to animate us, and which the
general interests of this monarchy inspire: that
religion, tranquillity, and happiness may succeed to
the discords to which we are now exposed. Let us
return thanks to God for the success which he has
been pleased to grant to the arms of our august
brother and powerful ally the Emperor of the French,
who has had no other end in supporting our rights by
his power than to procure to Spain a long peace,
founded on her independence.”
A heavy load of national guilt lay upon the nations
of the Peninsula; and those persons, who, with well-
founded faith, could see and understand that the
moral government of the world is neither less perfect,
nor less certain in its course, than that material order
which science has demonstrated, ... they perceived in
this dreadful visitation the work of retribution. The
bloody conquests of the Portugueze in India were yet
unexpiated; the Spaniards had to atone for extirpated
nations in Cuba and Hayti, and their other islands,
and on the continent of America for cruelties and
excesses not less atrocious than those which they
were appointed to punish. Vengeance had not been
exacted for the enormities perpetrated in the
Netherlands, nor for that accursed tribunal which,
during more than two centuries, triumphed both in
Spain and Portugal, to the ineffaceable and eternal
infamy of the Romish church. But the crimes of a
nation, like the vices of an individual, bring on their
punishment in necessary consequence, ... so
righteously have all things been ordained. From the
spoils of India and America the two governments
drew treasures which rendered them independent of
the people for supplies; and the war which their
priesthood waged against knowledge and reformation
succeeded in shutting them out from these devoted
countries. A double despotism, of the throne and of
the altar, was thus established, and the result was a
state of degradation, which nothing less than the
overthrow of both, by some moral and political
 earthquake, loosening the very foundations of society,
could remove. Such a convulsion had taken place, and
Condition of the sins of the fathers were visited upon the children.
Madrid. Madrid, the seat of Philip II., “that sad intelligencing
tyrant,” who from thence, as our great Milton said,
“mischieved the world with his mines of Ophir,” that
city which once aspired to be the mistress of the
world, and had actually tyrannized over so large a
part of it, was now itself in thraldom. The Spanish
cloak, which was the universal dress of all ranks, was
prohibited in the metropolis of Spain, and no Spaniard
was allowed to walk abroad in the evening, unless he
carried a light. All communication between the capital
and the southern provinces, the most fertile and
wealthiest of the kingdom, was cut off. Of the trading
part of the community, therefore, those who were
connected with the great commercial cities of the
south coast were at once ruined, and they whose
dealings lay with the provinces which were the seat of
war were hardly more fortunate. The public creditors
experienced that breach of public faith which always
results from a violent revolution. The intrusive
government acknowledged the debt, and gave notice
of its intention to pay them by bills upon Spanish
America: for this there was a double motive, the
shame of confessing that the Intruder was unable to
discharge the obligations of the government to whose
rights and duties he affected to succeed, and the
hope of interesting the holders of these bills in his
cause: but so little possibility was there of his
becoming master of the Indies, that the mention of
such bills only provoked contempt. While commercial
and funded property was thus destroyed, landed
property was of as little immediate value to its owner.
No remittances could be made to the capital from that
part of Spain which was not yet overrun; and the
 devastations had been so extensive every where as to
leave the tenant little means of paying the proprietor.
These were the first-fruits of that prosperity which the
Buonapartes promised to the Spaniards, ... these
were the blessings which Joseph brought with him to
Madrid! He, meantime, was affecting to participate in
rejoicings, and receiving the incense of adulation, in
that city where the middle classes were reduced to
poverty by his usurpation, and where the wives whom
he had widowed, and the mothers whom he had
made childless, mingled with their prayers for the
dead, supplications for vengeance upon him as the
author of their miseries. The theatre was fitted up to
receive him, the boxes were lined with silk, the
municipality attended him to his seat, he was
presented with a congratulatory poem upon his
entrance, and the stage curtain represented the
1809. Genius of Peace with an olive-branch in his left hand,
February. and a torch in his right, setting fire to the attributes of
war. Underneath was written, “Live happy, Sire! reign
and pardon!” At the very time when this precious
Feb. 18. specimen of French taste complimented the Intruder
upon his clemency, an extraordinary criminal Junta
was formed, even the military tribunals not being
found sufficiently extensive in their powers for the
work of extermination which was begun. It was “for
trial of assassins, robbers, recruiters in favour of the
insurgents, those who maintained correspondence
with them, and who spread false reports.” Persons
apprehended upon these charges were to be tried
within twenty-four hours, and sentenced to the
gallows, and the sentence executed without appeal.
False Another of the Intruder’s decrees enjoined that the
intelligence Madrid Gazette should be under the immediate
published by inspection of the Minister of Police, and copies of it
the intrusive regularly sent to every Bishop, parochial priest, and
government. municipality, that the people might be informed of the
acts of government, and of public events. Joseph’s
ministers, under whatever self-practised delusion they
entered his service, conformed themselves in all
things now to the spirit of Buonaparte’s policy, and
employed force and falsehood with as little scruple as
if they had been trained in the revolutionary school.
While they affected to inform the people of what was
passing, they concealed whatever was unfavourable,
distorted what they told, and feigned intelligence
1809. suited to their views. They affirmed that the English
January. goods taken at Bilbao, S. Andero, and the ports of
Asturias, would defray the expenses of the war; and
that England itself was on the point of bankruptcy.
Such multitudes, it was affirmed, had repaired to
Westminster Hall to give bail for their debts, that it
seemed as if all London had been there; numbers
were thrown down by the press, and trodden under
foot, ... many almost suffocated, and some were
killed. Such falsehoods were not too gross for the
government where it could exclude all truer
information; where this was not in its power, it
resorted to the more feasible scheme of exciting
suspicions against England; and here the Buonapartes
had a willing agent in Morla.
Unwillingness Prone as the Spaniards were in these unhappy
of the times to suspect any person, and to act upon the
Spaniards to slightest suspicion, they were slow in believing that
believe that
Morla was a
Morla had proved false. The people of Cadiz would
traitor. hardly be convinced that their governor, whose
patriotic addresses were still circulating among them,
could possibly have gone over to the Intruder. So
many measures of utility, so many acts of patriotism
and of disinterested vigilance in his administration,
 were remembered, that the first reports of his perfidy
were indignantly received; a fact so contrary to all
their experience was not to be credited, and they felt
as if they injured him in listening to such an
accusation. He had established among them a
reputation like that which a Cadi sometimes enjoys in
Mahommedan countries, where his individual
uprightness supplies the defects of law, and resists
the general corruption of manners. A peasant, whom
he had acquitted upon some criminal charge, brought
him a number of turkeys, as a present in gratitude for
his acquittal. Morla put him in prison, consigned the
turkeys to the gaoler for his food, and set him at
liberty when he had eaten them all. There was neither
law, equity, nor humanity in this, ... yet it had an
extravagant, oriental ostentation of justice, well
calculated to impress the people with an opinion of
his nice honour and scrupulous integrity. But this man,
who in all his public writings boasted of his frankness
and of his honourable intentions, was in reality
destitute both of truth and honour; and the
revolution, which developed some characters and
corrupted others, only unmasked his. Early in these
troubles Lord Collingwood and Sir Hew Dalrymple had
Proofs of his discovered his duplicity. He had signed, and was
prior believed to have written, Solano’s ill-timed and worse-
treachery. intended proclamation, in which the English were
spoken of with unqualified reprobation, and as the
real enemies against whom all true Spaniards ought
to unite; and when warned by Solano’s fate, he joined
in the national cause, the desire of injuring that cause
by every possible means seems to have been the
main object of his crooked policy. When Castaños
wanted the assistance of General Spencer’s corps, he
threw out hints to that General that it would be
required for the defence of Cadiz; though, from
 jealousy of the English, at that very time he prevented
the Junta from bringing the garrison of Ceuta into the
field, and had given it as his decided opinion that no
English troops should be admitted into any Spanish
fortress. And while he endeavoured to make the Junta
of Seville suspicious of English interference, he
recommended to the accredited agents of England,
that they should interfere early and decidedly in
forming a central government, and appointing a
commander-in-chief, and that their influence should
be strengthened by marching an army into Spain.
Morla’s letter to But the most prominent feature of Morla’s
the Central sophisticated character was his odious hypocrisy. In
Junta; the letter which announced to the Central Junta the
capitulation of Madrid he bestowed the highest
eulogiums upon the Intruder and himself. “Yesterday,”
said he, “as a Counsellor of State I saw Prince Joseph,
our appointed King, and the object of the rabble’s
contumely. I assure you, with all that ingenuousness
which belongs to me, that I found him an enlightened
philosopher, full even to enthusiasm of the soundest
principles of morality, humanity, and affection to the
people whom his lot has called him to command. My
eulogies might appear suspicious to those who do not
know me well; I suppress them therefore, and only
say thus much, that the Junta, according to
circumstances, may regulate its own conduct and
resolutions upon this information. My whole aim and
endeavour will always be for the honour and integrity
of my country. I will not do myself the injustice to
suppose that any of the nation can suspect me of
perfidy; my probity is known and accredited, and
therefore I continue to speak with that candour and
ingenuousness which I have always used.” He also
delivered his opinion as an individual who was most
 anxious for the good of the nation, that the governor
of Cadiz should be instructed not to let the English
assemble either in or near that city in any force; but
that, under pretext of securing himself from the
French, he should throw up works against them,
reinforce the garrison, and secretly strengthen the
batteries toward the sea. And that advices should be
dispatched to the Indies, for the purpose of
preventing treasure or goods from being sent, lest
they should fall into the hands of these allies, who
having no longer any hope of defending the cause,
would seek to indemnify themselves at the expense of
the Spaniards. The Junta published this letter as
containing in itself sufficient proofs of perfidiousness
and treason in the writer. And they observed that at
the very time when this hypocrite was advising them
to distrust the English, and arm against them, large
sums had been remitted them from England, farther
pecuniary aids were on the way, their treasures from
America had been secured from the French, by being
brought home in British ships, and Great Britain had
given the most authentic proof of its true friendship
with Spain, by refusing to negotiate with Buonaparte.
and to the Shortly afterwards a letter of Morla’s was
governor of intercepted, written in the same strain to D. Josef
Cadiz. Virues, the provisional governor of Cadiz. The
thorough hypocrite talked of the good which he had
done in surrendering Madrid, and the consolation
which he derived from that reflection; he lamented
over his beloved Cadiz and its estimable inhabitants,
who had given him so many proofs of their confidence
and affection, and wished that he could avert the
dangers that impended over them with the sacrifice of
his own blood. “If it became an English garrison,” he
said, “it would be more burdensome to the nation
than Gibraltar, and the commerce of the natives would
be ruined: much policy as well as courage would be
required to prevent this. I need not,” he concluded,
“exhort your excellency to defend Cadiz with the
honour and patriotism which become you; but when
you have fulfilled this obligation, honourable terms
may save the city, and secure its worthy inhabitants.”
In consequence of this letter it became necessary to
remove Virues from the command, more for his own
sake than for any distrust of his principles, though he
had at one time been Godoy’s secretary, and though
Morla had been his friend and patron. Unwilling, and
perhaps unable to believe that one whom he had so
long been accustomed to regard with respect and
gratitude was the consummate hypocrite and traitor
which he now appeared to be, Virues attempted to
excuse Morla as having acted under compulsion, an
excuse more likely to alleviate for the time his own
feelings than to satisfy his judgement. But he felt that
under these circumstances it was no longer proper for
him to remain in possession of an important post:
high as he stood in the opinion of his countrymen, the
slightest accident might now render him suspected;
and at this crisis it was most essential that the people
should have entire confidence in their chiefs. He
therefore gladly accepted a mission to England, and
D. Felix Jones, who had distinguished himself in the
operations against Dupont, was appointed governor.
Instead of additional defences toward the sea, new
works were begun on the land side, to protect the city
against its real enemies, and Colonel Hallowell came
from Gibraltar to direct them. Ammunition and stores
in abundance were sent from Seville. The new
governor began by taking measures of rigorous
precaution. No person whatever, not even an
Englishman, was permitted to go a mile beyond the
Arrest and city without a passport. Every Frenchman in the place
cruel was arrested and sent on board the ships. This was
imprisonment intended for their own security as well as the safety of
of the French the city; for so highly were the people incensed
at Cadiz.
against that perfidious nation, and such was their fear
of treachery in every person belonging to it, that they
purposed putting all whom they should find at large to
death; and it was said that three hundred knives had
been purchased at one shop, to be thus employed.
Had there been leisure, or had the Spaniards been in
a temper for humane considerations, these persons
ought to have been supplied with means of transport
to their own country; instead of which they were
consigned to a most inhuman state of confinement.
The property also of all French subjects, under which
term the natives of all countries in subjection to
France were included, was confiscated; ... and in
consequence above three hundred shops were shut
up, and more than as many families reduced to ruin.
Thus it is, that in such times injustice provokes
retaliation, wrongs lead to wrongs, and evil produces
evil in miserable series.
Death of At this juncture, when every hour brought tidings
Florida Blanca. of new calamities and nearer danger, Florida Blanca,
the venerable president of the Central Junta, died, at
the great age of eighty-one; fatigue, and care, and
anxiety having accelerated his death. When the order
of the Jesuits was abolished, he was ambassador at
Rome, and is believed to have been materially
instrumental in bringing about that iniquitous
measure; and it was under his ministry that Spain
joined the confederacy against Great Britain during
the American war. These are acts of which he had
abundant reason to repent; but there were specious
motives for both; and this must be said of Florida
 Blanca, that of all the ministers who have exercised
despotic authority in Spain, no other ever projected or
accomplished half so much for the improvement of
the people and the country. Whatever tended to the
general good received his efficient support, and
twenty years of subsequent misrule had not been
sufficient to undo the beneficial effects of his
administration. It was Godoy’s intention that his exile
from the court should be felt as a disgrace and a
punishment; but the retirement to which it sent him
suited the disposition and declining years of the
injured man, and he passed his time chiefly in those
religious meditations which are the natural support
and solace of old age. Many rulers and statesmen
have retired into convents when they have been
wearied or disgusted with the vanities and vexations
of the world; few have been called upon, like Florida
Blanca, in extreme old age, to forsake their
retirement, their tranquillity, and their habits of
religious life, for the higher duty of serving their
country in its hour of danger. The Central Junta
manifested their sense of his worth by conferring a
grandee-ship upon his heir, and all his legitimate
Marques de descendants who should succeed him in the title. He
Astorga was succeeded as president by the Marques de
president of the Astorga, a grandee of the highest class, and the
Junta. representative of some of the proudest names in
Spanish history. The education of this nobleman had
1808. been defective, as was generally the case with
Spanish nobles, and his person excited contempt in
those who are presumptuous and injurious enough to
judge only by appearances. But he had not
degenerated from the better qualities of his illustrious
ancestry: they who knew him best, knew that he
possessed what ought to be the distinctive marks of
old nobility: he was generous, magnanimous, and
 high-spirited, without the least apparent
consciousness of being so.
Catalonia, After the fall of Madrid there was yet one quarter
1808. to which the Junta might look with reasonable hope,
amid the disasters that crowded upon them. If
Barcelona could be recovered, the acquisition of that
most important place would balance the worst
reverses which they had yet sustained. But ill fortune
every where pursued them, and there was this to
aggravate the disappointment, that their losses in
Catalonia were more imputable to misconduct than to
any want of strength. A force had been collected
there fully equal both in numbers and discipline (had
it been directed with common prudence) to the
services expected from it. After the arrival of the
troops from Portugal and Majorca, and the Granadan
army, it consisted of about 28,000 regular troops, and
1600 cavalry, besides the garrisons of Rosas,
Hostalrich, and Gerona, who were nearly 6000. The
sea being commanded by their allies, was open to
them along the whole line of coast, except at
Barcelona; and the people, who have always been
eminently distinguished for their activity, industry,
hardihood, and invincible spirit of independence, were
ready to make any sacrifices and any exertions for the
deliverance of their native land. The province too was
full of fortified places, and even in so defensible a
country as Spain peculiarly strong by nature. But to
counterbalance these advantages, there were the
confusion and perplexity, as well as the distance of
the Central Junta; the inexperience and rashness of
those who had taken upon themselves the local
government; want of science, of decision, and of
ability in the generals; want of authority every where;
the fearful spirit of insubordination, which on the
 slightest occasion was ready to break out; ... and,
above all, that reckless and unreasonable confidence
which had now become part of the Spanish character.
Siege of There was some excuse for this confidence in the
Barcelona. Catalans; they knew their own temper and the
strength of their country; and they had obtained some
signal successes before any regular troops came to
their assistance. But this remembrance, and the
knowledge that so large a regular force was in the
field, induced a fatal belief that the difficulties of the
struggle were over, and that nothing remained to
complete their triumph but the recovery of Barcelona.
And this, they said, might easily be effected: the
enemy there were weak, in want of provisions, sickly,
dispirited by defeat and desertion; the English
squadron at hand to assist in an attack upon Monjuich
and the citadel; and the inhabitants ready upon the
first appearance of success to rise upon their invaders
and open the gates. Among the French and Italians
themselves, there were some, they affirmed, who
would gladly forsake the wicked cause wherein they
were engaged, and by contributing to deliver up these
places atone for the treachery in which they had been
compelled to bear a part. This was the cry of the
people; and these representations were strengthened
by some of the citizens, who were perpetually
proposing plans contradictory to each other, and alike
impracticable: the Supreme Junta represented the
people but too faithfully, partaking their inexperience,
their impatience, and their errors; and General Vives,
surrounded by ignorant advisers, controlled if not
intimidated by popular opinion, and himself altogether
incompetent to the station which he filled, wasted the
precious weeks in a vain display before Barcelona; not
perceiving or not regarding that the possession of the
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