근대화 프로젝트와 중세국가 연구 - 조지프 R. 스트레이어(Joseph R. Strayer)의『근대국가의 중세적 기원론』을 중심으로

Abstract

Joseph R. Strayer deals with the meaning of the state in his book On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State, which was written in 1970. In the book, he examined the definition of a state from the perspective of European History. His theory of the state is based on the situation in the United States in the 1960s. At that time, the United States was dealing with internal conflicts and divisions between the power of the state and civil society, as well as the ramifications of the Cold War. Strayer described the characteristics of state-building in Europe. Firstly, he recognized the state as having positive attributes because it had developed through rational processes such as the formation of institutions. In recommending England as the best model among many different countries, he showed an Anglophilic propensity. The fact that only a few governing elites founded and developed the state is another characteristic of the medieval state that Strayer focused on, and this is called laicization. Strayer further equated state-building with the formation of institutions. Finally, he advanced ideas which broke with the dominant discourse that divided the Middle and the Modern Ages before and after the 16th century. But his approach had several problems. For Strayer, the state was an entity that should be respected, so his theory of the state ignored the dark side of violences, which the state uses. He also ignored the common people who play an important role in the establishment of a modern state. He understood state-building simply as a top-down process conducted by only a few governing elites. Furthermore, his theory of the state, which emphasized the particularity of Europe, not only ignored regional characteristics of non-European countries, but also, by postulating the 12th century as the starting point of the Modern Ages, he divorced the new Modern Ages from the past. Strayer’s book was written at the time of the Cold War, when the United States adopted Wilsonism as its foreign policy. During this time, one of the main purposes of the United States was to support the Third World, and Strayer actively participated in this policy making in the same way as his teacher, C. H. Haskins. Thus, the book was planned as a project on modernization. Strayer combined historical fact and contemporary ideology and wrote the book with realistic purpose. In the conclusion, Strayer used history as the weapon of political ideology, while, on the other hand, based on a realistic and practical view of history, he demonstrated the efficacy of historical study. At this point, his study contains a plethora of suggestions concerning the mutual relationship between history and ideology.