The modern invention of ‘dynasty’ : an introduction

Abstract

Historians tend to take ‘dynasty’ for granted. It is assumed that ‘we’ know what ‘dynasty’ is; and that the concept unproblematically corresponds to the empirical reality of a historical institution present in all ‘pre-modern’ rulerships. Taking as its point of departure the peculiar history of the word itself, which acquired its current meaning only in the second half of the eighteenth century, this article sets out a research agenda for historicizing ‘dynasty’. It argues that ‘dynasty’ is not simply a neutral historical term, but a political concept that became globally hegemonic in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the expansion of European colonialism. The article maps out three main trajectories for rethinking history beyond the totalizing concept of ‘dynasty’. First, it points toward a more complex and less hierarchical vision of pre-capitalist, especially extra-European, societies. Second, it considers how capitalism produced new modes and ideologies of hereditary transmission of sovereignty and property and theorizes a link between ‘primitive accumulation’ and the political form of the royal/princely ‘House’. Third, it centres the role of colonialism–European imperial expansion as well as anti-colonial non-European nationalisms–in globalizing ‘dynasty’ as a category of power.