Books in the Studies in Social Discontinuity series

An account of the evolution of European states. It shows how interactions between the wielders of power on the one hand and the manipulators of capital on the other resulted in three state formations each of which prevailed over long periods. It argues that to conceive European state development as a simple, unilinear process is untenable.

* As is an anthropologist, Barfield succeeds in testing abstract models of society against the detailed historical record* The author has an accessible, narrative style. .