State Formation and the Military. In practice it took a long time before the state reached the level of abstraction that made it a ‘legal person’.1 The first of three main steps in this process was the reorganisation of the community away from the concept of the genos, the right of blood, to the demos, the right of the people, in the course of eradicating tribal power structures in favour of promoting a more inclusive concept of the polity.2 The medieval ages were marked by a large number of different territorial polities, cities, and parochial, monastic and ecclesiastic communities competing for available power sources. These were weak states in which standards of governance were yet to be developed, and military organisation was based on personal affiliation.3 Actually, European composite monarchies ‘came to be called states only during the first half of the seventeenth century'.4 In a further step of abstraction of statehood, a distinction emerged between the ruler and the state or, more precisely, between the state treasury and the monarch’s private purse. This, however, did not happen all of a sudden and not everywhere simultaneously.5 It is the systematic state-building endeavours resulting from the French-driven revolutionary wars, the 1860-70 1 Xxx Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxx (1999), The Rise and Decline of the State, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2 Xxx Xxxxxxx (1999), p.56; This reform of the political organisation of community came with general military service directly related to political rights in a relatively strong state, see Xxxxx, Xxxxxx (1999), Les Institutions Grecques à l'Epoque Classique, Xxxxxx Xxxxx, Paris 3 Xxxxxxxx, Xxxx (2000), Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschichte, Xxxxxx de Gruyter, Berlin/New York, p.11
