W.G. Runciman on the tendency of human societies to form varieties
W.G. Runciman, 5 June 1986
“... the poleis of Archaic Greece, the baillis who first appear in the administrative echelons of the French monarchy in the reign of Philip Augustus, the armed retainers of tenth and 11th-century Japan who attached themselves to regional lords rather than to the central government, the early English factory-owners still ... ”