8 ms·

When constitutions took over the world

gxqoz 6y ago
Another long review of this book that gets a bit more into the UK's lack of a written constitution: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n07/neal-ascherson/scribbles-in-a-storm https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n07/neal-ascherson/scrib... (May be behind a paywall.) Contains a rebuttal to the book's central thesis that wars beget constitutions: "It’s not hard to demonstrate that war in this period, swelling monstrously in its global extent, army numbers and killing power, could shake existing states and empires to their foundations. The cost of modern conflict – the enormous human mobilisations, the new battle fleets – emptied treasuries and laid crushing burdens of taxation on populations. The relentless search for recruits brought grief and often violence to every village. Disruption led to discontent, sometimes to revolt. But there’s no simple and direct link between warfare – and the social turmoil it provokes – and constitution-writing. Colley shows, shrewdly enough, how rulers desperate for cannon-fodder devised a connection between soldiering and the new idea of citizenship. Join the army, and you will be entitled to a vote and to the protection of new-fangled constitutional rights, all set down in writing. (This condition effectively kept women out of political life.) In that sense, warfare did sponsor some constitutions. But was it more than a single powerful factor in a bundle of upheavals, class conflicts and royal or plebeian ambitions, any combination of which could move somebody with a pen to design a new order? It would have helped to be given at least one detailed example of the way the pressures of a specific war led to a constitution. Colley cites America’s 1787 constitution, which, she argues, was not intended primarily as ‘a blueprint of a liberal democratic society’ but was a ‘grimly necessary plan for a more effective and defendable union’ in the face of military threats from Britain, Spain and even Russia. Perhaps. On the other hand, Britain in 1815 emerged emaciated and simmering with unrest after three huge wars in a generation, but developed no written constitution. The best that can be said is that people start scribbling most frequently in stormy times, when the existing state of governance no longer carries conviction with subjects, rulers or both."
- zabzonk 6y ago
  > Colley shows, shrewdly enough, how rulers desperate for cannon-fodder devised a connection between soldiering and the new idea of citizenship. Join the army, and you will be entitled to a vote and to the protection of new-fangled constitutional rights, all set down in writing. This sounds like Starship Troopers. Can you quote a constitution where being a soldier gives you rights to vote, and where the chance of being killed (and generally brutalised) was taken up widespreadly by the general public? It's my impression that for several hundred years when even the idea of voting became widespread, most people were not going to put their lives on the line for it.
- peteri 6y ago
  Oddly I was reading David Allen Green today who had this article https://davidallengreen.com/2021/03/you-say-you-want-a-written-constitution-here-are-four-online-places-where-it-is-already-written-down/ https://davidallengreen.com/2021/03/you-say-you-want-a-writt... showing that there is a written constitution for the UK.
christkv 6y ago
A constitution is only as good as the quality of the institutions that exist to defend it. Undermine the institutions and a constitution is no more worth than the paper it’s printed on.
- mc32 6y ago
  Is that true? If so, why do coups or despots write new ones if they can simply ignore the old one?
  - christkv 6y ago
    Sure they write new ones to justify their rule. I’m thinking of constitutions in working democratic countries who protect the rights of citizens and how they only provide rights as long as institutions are there to provide a a theoretically just enforcement. After all constitutions in most western countries came about to restrain the sovereign.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dfadsadsf 6y ago
    Sometimes despots write new constitution and then ignore it completely too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Constitution_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Constitution_of_the_Sovie...
  - roenxi 6y ago
    There are a lot of different people in the world. Some of them crave structure at the expense of anything else. Some crave symbolism at the expense of everything else. If a despot or coup leader writes a constitution, those people will get on side for free. It costs nothing to have a constitution. And I doubt either of us have done a survey of dictators; a lot of them probably do just ignore the local constitution. It is important to remember that people who think we should follow the intent of a 100 year old law (or even a 10 year old law) are a tiny minority group. The majority of humans are here-and-now, what-looks-like-a-good-idea-today?, what-do-I-see-in-front-of-me people.
zeteo 6y ago
The writing and amendment of constitutions does seem to correlate with the importance of conscription. The French adopted their first constitution and the "levee en masse" in quick succession. The British famously avoided conscription as hard as they could, up to the point of going into WW1 with an all-volunteer army; and they also avoided a written constitution. Israel, still relying heavily on conscription, made significant changes to its basic laws as recently as 2018. As for the US, the longer gaps in amending the constitution: 1804-1865, 1870-1913, 1971-present (yes the 27th was adopted in 1992 but proposed in 1789) correspond within a few years with periods of little to no conscription. This doesn't bode well for prospects of further amendment, by the way.
viburnum 6y ago
Probably should mention that the US constitution was written largely to protect bond speculators (against state legislatures trying to protect debtors).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- viburnum 6y ago
  Annapolis convention fizzles out in 1786, the economic crisis leads to states providing relief to debtors, then 1787 Philadelphia convention rewrites the constitution to protect the bondholder class.
didibus 6y ago
It is a little insane how many wars were happening during those time periods. I wonder if constitutions really did anything or it was just all technology's doing. Maybe, unsurprising to HN, but I believe more in technology's impact than anything else. I can get onboard with the printing press having an impact, the same way social media is having one today. Technology enabled the wars, and probably similarly ended them.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  If you think [complex series of historical events] was solely caused by [singular noun] you are almost certainly always wrong.
  - corin_ 6y ago
    I don't entirely agree with their comment, but while "technology" is a single noun, it's not a singular noun - it encompasses many different things.
- gogopuppygogo 6y ago
  I think mutually assured destruction thanks to nuclear weapons has ended large scale warfare. That technology ensures even the leaders die if a war starts. That makes it a tool of what we would consider a truly insane person. So, I agree that technology has likely ended large scale wars for our lifetime but I think we will see evolving forms of conflict. To fight is human. We are still animals after all.
  - hypertele-Xii 6y ago
    > I think mutually assured destruction thanks to nuclear weapons has ended large scale warfare. Needed to fact-check this claim. Wars [1] since the first and last nuclear weapons used in war - the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 - roughly ordered by death toll: Bangladesh Liberation War, 3M Second Congo War, 2.5M..5.4M Vietnam War, 2.4M..4.3M Korean War, 1.5M..4.5M War in Afghanistan, 1.2M..2M Second Sudanese Civil War, 1M..2M Nigerian Civil War, 1M..3M Rwandan genocide, 0.8M Soviet–Afghan War, 0.6M..2M Angolan Civil War, 0.5M Ethiopian Civil War, 0.5M..1.5M First Sudanese Civil War, 0.5M Iraq War, 0.4M..0.7M Algerian War, 0.4M..1.5M First Indochina War, 0.4M Syrian Civil War, 0.4M..0.6M War in Darfur, 0.3M Burundian Civil War, 0.3M Somali Civil War, 0.3M..0.5M Iran–Iraq War, 0.3M..1.1M War on Terror, 0.3M..1.3M First Congo War, 0.3M..0.8M plus some 4M combined from wars smaller than 250K TOTAL 23M .. 41M The estimated death toll of the last big war before that - Second World War - 56M .. 85M people. For comparison, over 100M people died in warefare in the middle ages. Checks out. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll#Modern_wars_with_greater_than_25,000_deaths_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll#Mod...

Another long review of this book that gets a bit more into the UK's lack of a written constitution: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n07/neal-ascherson/scribbles-in-a-storm https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n07/neal-ascherson/scrib... (May be behind a paywall.) Contains a rebuttal to the book's central thesis that wars beget constitutions: "It’s not hard to demonstrate that war in this period, swelling monstrously in its global extent, army numbers and killing power, could shake existing states and empires to their foundations. The cost of modern conflict – the enormous human mobilisations, the new battle fleets – emptied treasuries and laid crushing burdens of taxation on populations. The relentless search for recruits brought grief and often violence to every village. Disruption led to discontent, sometimes to revolt. But there’s no simple and direct link between warfare – and the social turmoil it provokes – and constitution-writing. Colley shows, shrewdly enough, how rulers desperate for cannon-fodder devised a connection between soldiering and the new idea of citizenship. Join the army, and you will be entitled to a vote and to the protection of new-fangled constitutional rights, all set down in writing. (This condition effectively kept women out of political life.) In that sense, warfare did sponsor some constitutions. But was it more than a single powerful factor in a bundle of upheavals, class conflicts and royal or plebeian ambitions, any combination of which could move somebody with a pen to design a new order? It would have helped to be given at least one detailed example of the way the pressures of a specific war led to a constitution. Colley cites America’s 1787 constitution, which, she argues, was not intended primarily as ‘a blueprint of a liberal democratic society’ but was a ‘grimly necessary plan for a more effective and defendable union’ in the face of military threats from Britain, Spain and even Russia. Perhaps. On the other hand, Britain in 1815 emerged emaciated and simmering with unrest after three huge wars in a generation, but developed no written constitution. The best that can be said is that people start scribbling most frequently in stormy times, when the existing state of governance no longer carries conviction with subjects, rulers or both."

zabzonk 6y ago
> Colley shows, shrewdly enough, how rulers desperate for cannon-fodder devised a connection between soldiering and the new idea of citizenship. Join the army, and you will be entitled to a vote and to the protection of new-fangled constitutional rights, all set down in writing. This sounds like Starship Troopers. Can you quote a constitution where being a soldier gives you rights to vote, and where the chance of being killed (and generally brutalised) was taken up widespreadly by the general public? It's my impression that for several hundred years when even the idea of voting became widespread, most people were not going to put their lives on the line for it.
peteri 6y ago
Oddly I was reading David Allen Green today who had this article https://davidallengreen.com/2021/03/you-say-you-want-a-written-constitution-here-are-four-online-places-where-it-is-already-written-down/ https://davidallengreen.com/2021/03/you-say-you-want-a-writt... showing that there is a written constitution for the UK.

christkv 6y ago

A constitution is only as good as the quality of the institutions that exist to defend it. Undermine the institutions and a constitution is no more worth than the paper it’s printed on.

mc32 6y ago
Is that true? If so, why do coups or despots write new ones if they can simply ignore the old one?
- christkv 6y ago
  Sure they write new ones to justify their rule. I’m thinking of constitutions in working democratic countries who protect the rights of citizens and how they only provide rights as long as institutions are there to provide a a theoretically just enforcement. After all constitutions in most western countries came about to restrain the sovereign.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dfadsadsf 6y ago
  Sometimes despots write new constitution and then ignore it completely too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Constitution_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Constitution_of_the_Sovie...
- roenxi 6y ago
  There are a lot of different people in the world. Some of them crave structure at the expense of anything else. Some crave symbolism at the expense of everything else. If a despot or coup leader writes a constitution, those people will get on side for free. It costs nothing to have a constitution. And I doubt either of us have done a survey of dictators; a lot of them probably do just ignore the local constitution. It is important to remember that people who think we should follow the intent of a 100 year old law (or even a 10 year old law) are a tiny minority group. The majority of humans are here-and-now, what-looks-like-a-good-idea-today?, what-do-I-see-in-front-of-me people.

zeteo 6y ago

The writing and amendment of constitutions does seem to correlate with the importance of conscription. The French adopted their first constitution and the "levee en masse" in quick succession. The British famously avoided conscription as hard as they could, up to the point of going into WW1 with an all-volunteer army; and they also avoided a written constitution. Israel, still relying heavily on conscription, made significant changes to its basic laws as recently as 2018. As for the US, the longer gaps in amending the constitution: 1804-1865, 1870-1913, 1971-present (yes the 27th was adopted in 1992 but proposed in 1789) correspond within a few years with periods of little to no conscription. This doesn't bode well for prospects of further amendment, by the way.

viburnum 6y ago

Probably should mention that the US constitution was written largely to protect bond speculators (against state legislatures trying to protect debtors).

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
viburnum 6y ago
Annapolis convention fizzles out in 1786, the economic crisis leads to states providing relief to debtors, then 1787 Philadelphia convention rewrites the constitution to protect the bondholder class.

didibus 6y ago

It is a little insane how many wars were happening during those time periods. I wonder if constitutions really did anything or it was just all technology's doing. Maybe, unsurprising to HN, but I believe more in technology's impact than anything else. I can get onboard with the printing press having an impact, the same way social media is having one today. Technology enabled the wars, and probably similarly ended them.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
If you think [complex series of historical events] was solely caused by [singular noun] you are almost certainly always wrong.
- corin_ 6y ago
  I don't entirely agree with their comment, but while "technology" is a single noun, it's not a singular noun - it encompasses many different things.
gogopuppygogo 6y ago
I think mutually assured destruction thanks to nuclear weapons has ended large scale warfare. That technology ensures even the leaders die if a war starts. That makes it a tool of what we would consider a truly insane person. So, I agree that technology has likely ended large scale wars for our lifetime but I think we will see evolving forms of conflict. To fight is human. We are still animals after all.
- hypertele-Xii 6y ago
  > I think mutually assured destruction thanks to nuclear weapons has ended large scale warfare. Needed to fact-check this claim. Wars [1] since the first and last nuclear weapons used in war - the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 - roughly ordered by death toll: Bangladesh Liberation War, 3M Second Congo War, 2.5M..5.4M Vietnam War, 2.4M..4.3M Korean War, 1.5M..4.5M War in Afghanistan, 1.2M..2M Second Sudanese Civil War, 1M..2M Nigerian Civil War, 1M..3M Rwandan genocide, 0.8M Soviet–Afghan War, 0.6M..2M Angolan Civil War, 0.5M Ethiopian Civil War, 0.5M..1.5M First Sudanese Civil War, 0.5M Iraq War, 0.4M..0.7M Algerian War, 0.4M..1.5M First Indochina War, 0.4M Syrian Civil War, 0.4M..0.6M War in Darfur, 0.3M Burundian Civil War, 0.3M Somali Civil War, 0.3M..0.5M Iran–Iraq War, 0.3M..1.1M War on Terror, 0.3M..1.3M First Congo War, 0.3M..0.8M plus some 4M combined from wars smaller than 250K TOTAL 23M .. 41M The estimated death toll of the last big war before that - Second World War - 56M .. 85M people. For comparison, over 100M people died in warefare in the middle ages. Checks out. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll#Modern_wars_with_greater_than_25,000_deaths_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll#Mod...