What is the relationship between Calvinism, discipline and the rise of the early modern state in Europe? Does the rise of the early modern absolutist and bourgeois state lie in the Marxist analysis in the centralisation of power due to change in alliances between the emerging merchant classes and a backtracking nobility? Or does it lie in the Bellicist model of militarization and the centralisation of power with the rise of standing armies in the sphere of the emergence of newer technologies and greater competition between territorialities and empires?

Philip Gorski, a professor of historical sociology at Yale, provides a novel criticism of the existing literature on the formation of the state by citing the exceptional circumstances under which the Netherlands and the Prussian state emerged. For Gorski, the answer for their rise lies not in merely their socio-economic and militaristic exceptionality but in the intersection of the rise of Calvinism after the reformation and the spirit of discipline that were important catalysts for influencing the formation of the state, thus, naming it the Disciplinary Revolution. In his book The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2003, Gorski takes inspiration from Weber’s essay on the role of the protestant ethic in the spirit of capitalism and Foucault’s theory on discipline and repression and combines them to study the origins of the state in regions where the politics of confessionalization took root to influence the formation of the Dutch and the Prussian states.

In the first chapter, Gorski criticized the seminal texts on the origins of the state by grouping them under either the Marxist school which believes the State to be the product of the socio-economic and political changes (pg. 3) and the Bellicist school which believes the State to be the product of militaristic competition in Europe leading to centralization of power and the creation of a powerful bureaucracy and standing army (pg. 5). Gorski also criticized the existing literature on the intersection of self-discipline and state-formation, essentially, the writings of Oestreich and Norbert Elias, for being limited to either a legal understanding of the political formations of the state or the top-down influence of the courtly functions of the state in the history of manners, in the case of the latter (pg. 30). For Gorski, what is important is to extend Foucault’s conception of governmentality; “the manner in which the conduct of an ensemble of individuals becomes implicated to a greater and greater degree in the exercise of state power”, to the role of confessional politics within the Calvinistic states. Gorski studies how the machinery of the state got entrenched with the ideas of Calvinism in the form of social reforms; poor-rich reforms; political revolution; bureaucratization and discipline over the social order (pg. 24).

In the second chapter, Gorski focuses on the Dutch Republic considering it a product of a Disciplinary Revolution from below (pg. 39). Gorski believes that the Dutch state was strong both internally and externally, for while its prosperity was accompanied by wealth, it lacked a centralized state apparatus as well as a powerful bureaucracy (pg. 48); nonetheless, its strength had more to do with the state infrastructure than the state structure which was the product of the Calvinistic disciplinary revolution in the form of non-state governance, domestic order, administrative efficiency and military efficacy. The core of this form of discipline was provided by Calvinistic churches and its regulation of social conduct, be it through confession houses where moral disciplining and punishment was recurrent for anyone considered deviant as well as the influence of the Calvinistic clergy over the state infrastructure, especially, at the local level (pg. 72).

In the third chapter, Gorski studies the influence of Calvinism within the domains of Brandenburg-Prussia asking the central question as to how Prussia became the dominant region for state formation, despite Saxony and Bavaria having almost if not equal socio-political conditions (pg. 79). Thus, critiquing the existing Marxist and Bellicist models for limiting the study to the socio-political alliances between the crown and the nobility which led to the rise of Junker classes, Gorski forwards two arguments; “(1) the unusual autonomy of the Prussian state has its roots in the confessional conflict between the Crown and the estates during the reign of Frederick William, the Great Elector (1640-88); and that (2) the unusual strength of the Prussian state was due, in no small part, to a disciplinary revolution from above orchestrated by Frederick William’s grandson, Frederick William I (1713-40).” (pg. 112) Thus, this autonomy of the Prussian state must be sought in the history of the Calvinisation of the royal household, which led to a second reformation away from Lutheranism leading to a disciplinary revolution from above.

In the fourth chapter, Gorski studies the comparative historical sociology of the role of confessional politics within the sphere of early modern Europe. He criticizes both the materialistic literature for distancing from the role of confessional politics in state formation as well as the literature on the history of discipline and religion for not differentiating between the various strands of disciplines as well as the various groups within the Christian fold, not merely between the Catholics and Protestants but within the Protestant confessions of Lutheranism, Calvinism and other ecclesiastical divisions (pg. 154). In Conclusion, Gorski believes that by excluding the role of religion within the origins of the State, historical sociology as a discipline would deprive itself of the study of various influences over the state and other spheres of study be it regimes, revolution, nationalism and welfarism, especially, in the early modern period of Europe.

The Disciplinary Revolution as a text is a seminal contribution to the study of religion and state formation. It should be studied not merely as a critique of existing models based on socio-economic structures and militaristic geopolitics which lead to the formation of a state but as an addition to the particularities of the influences of religion in dispersed regions. However, a limitation which the author agrees with is the particularization of the applicability of the text within the regions of the Netherland and Prussia or their supposed extension to all Calvinistic regions, and not on a Pan-European or a postcolonial sphere. Regardless, what baffled me the most is the sheer extensive inter-disciplinary nature of the text moving beyond political science, sociology, history, anthropology, criminology and theology provided within a small space of 177 pages. Thus, as a student of politics and history, for me, the mere ability to combine the theory of Weber and Foucault to reach a novel conclusion about the history of the state, becomes inspirational for further research in the political and religious sociology of early modern history.

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Arman Hasan is pursuing a BA in Political Science from Ramjas College, University of Delhi.