V. The Limits to Ascend
The Near East history of the Late Bronze Age provides cases in which revisionist ascension did not take place, despite the continuous presence of foreign interference in the internal political systems of different communities. These non-cases are relevant for the analysis of this work because they could either refute the argument of the theory of ascension in revisionism or prove it right, despite the outcomes reached in these cases.
The sub-region of Palestine and the Levant in the Near East provides several cases which could contradict the argument stated in this work. This part of the Near East comprised a wide number of city-states which, while fighting against one another for survival, formed a buffer zone between the three great powers of the system —Hatti, Egypt, and Mitanni. Theses city-states were centralized political units which had dominion over just a city and its immediate surroundings; they had armies and fought in the struggle for power as every other political unit.
This sub-region faced two principal periods of external control: first, Mitanni’s rule and, second, the expansion of the Egyptian empire over the region. However, despite the direct rule that these foreign powers exerted over the city-states of Palestine and the Levant, no case of ascension in revisionism took place. It is important to note that such foreign dominion was not ephemeral —as it was in the case of Babylonia with the Hittite invasion—; during the whole Late Bronze Age and even before, the states of this buffer zone and their political systems suffered a continuous state of submission to foreign patrons. So why did not they arise?
In the first place, Mitannian and Egyptian interventions and dominations had a peculiar character: though certainly the power relations between these great powers and the vassal kingdoms of the city-states were those of subjugation, the dominant powers did not weaken the local rulers. Rather than establishing a direct control over them and to ignite internal political crises, Mitanni and Egypt reinforced the ruling political units in their positions of prevalence in their internal political systems, leaving both internal affairs and relations with other city-states in the hands of the local rulers; in exchange, they demanded total obedience when needed and tributes. When a ruler needed help to assure control over his political system, his foreign patrons intervened and reestablished his rule. “[…] [T]he vassals also benefited from Mitannian support in the case of external attacks, such as the Egyptian expeditions against Qadesh, and internal ones, such as in the case of Idrimi, a usurper who had to wait ‘seven years’ to be accepted as legitimate ruler.”[1] The same happened in the case of the Egyptian rule,
[…] [the vassal states] were clearly responsible for protecting Egyptian interests locally, were carefully watched over with respect to their loyalty and had to present their tribute regularly an in full. In return, they were helped with maintaining order, so that their own security depended on Egyptian support.[2]
Thus, there was no internal crisis nor the risk of it and, therefore, there was no need to overthrow the power relation with the foreign patron.
In the second place, this trend was reinforced by the very structure of the sub-region of Palestine and the Levant. This zone of the Near East was densely populated by an important number of city-states, each of them composed just by the city, its walls and the immediate fields to feed the population. These city-states were in a clearly multipolar system in equilibrium and such a situation was hardened by the own logics of this system. Where there is a stable equilibrium of power, it becomes irrational to try to overcome such balance, because the other units would join and stop this to happen. The balancing dynamics of any system become even more sensible, acute, and self-reinforcing to the extent to which the number of players which share the equilibrium is greater. Thus was the case of the inter-city-state system of Palestine and the Levant. States did no have enough space to arise and in order to do so they would have to face an immense quantity of rivals, and certainly they would have been stopped. Political units of the international system, in order to achieve greatness and to revisit their situation, must have the potential to become powerful; these city-states did not have it.
In the third place, attempts to arise and overthrow the power relation with one of the patron powers would have resulted in opening the door to another of the great powers surrounding this buffer zone; so practically the existent power relation would have changed in who dominated but not in the nature nor the dynamics of such domination. Thus, as it actually happened, once Mitanni was out of the sub-region, another power seized control of it —Egypt— and, when this latter left the northern part the Palestine and the Levant, Hatti occupied its place.
These three factors —the establishment of mutually beneficial relations of client-patron, the structural limits in the sub-region to the growth of power, and the presence in the surroundings of great powers continuously struggling for taking control of the zone— posed a triple challenge for any city-state which sought to ascend and revisit the status quo. In order to succeed in arising, the following steps were to be achieved. First, it was necessary to increase the power of the city-state by means of expansion over the other cities but this was not possible due to the dynamics of a wide and very stable power equilibrium. Second, the foreign patron had to be expelled and its influence stopped, but, as the first step could not be completed, the revisionist power would not have the means to achieve so. Third, the great powers surrounding the buffer zone had to be deterred from intervening once the former dominant power had been forced out of the sub-region; but obviously, as the former two challenges could not be accomplished, neither could this one be achieved.
In the view of such an environment and such a constraining situation, the political units of the city-states of Palestine and the Levant rationally chose to accommodate. Thus, in this sub-region, the phenomenon of a power arising in revisionism did not take place. Despite the continuous struggle between great powers, the city-states of this part of the Near East developed in a stable environment of power relations. This is demonstrated by a curious fact:
Virtually no major new settlement was built in this period and city plans practically remained the same, surrounded by the same fortification walls. […] [T]he strong walls built at the beginning of the second millennium bc only required a few improvements and some restoration works on the gates.[3]
On the one hand, the cities could not expand during that time; they remained unchanged. On the other, they did not need to increase their fortifications; because the neighboring cities did not pose a real threat to their survival, they just needed to keep the walls in shape, in the case of need.
This case of a whole zone formed out of city-states which faced foreign domination does not refute the theory of the ascension in revisionism but accentuates its explanatory power. The intervention and subjugation of the city-states of Palestine and the Levant by foreign powers, in the first place, did not result in internal political crisis but it even increased the power of the already dominant political units in their internal political systems. Thus, the external stimulus —though it was coercive in character and it established relations of submission— did not turn into disruptive; therefore, there was no need to overthrow the power relation with the foreign power, there was no need to arise. In the second place, even if a situation of internal crisis had taken place in any of the city-states of the sub-region, the attempts to arise would have been stopped or deterred since the beginning as the structure of the environment would have made such an attempt not only irrational but impossible. Thus, the subjugated unit would have strictly preferred to wait for a change in its environment and accommodate. Thus, the stability and the dynamics in Palestine and the Levant can be explained in the light of the theory of the ascension in revisionism; these “no-cases” do not refute but contribute proving the argument of this work.