The Shire: Anti-Federalist Yeoman Ideal?
“Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.” Notes on the State of Virginia (1785)
Tolkien was a Brit. No one disputes this. However, I recently reread The Hobbit, spurred of course by the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.[1] It is still an amazing book, more for its establishment of dozens of future fantasy tropes than its writing. But what makes me question Tolkien’s British bonafides is how he chooses to depict and describe the Shire – his Eden or at least its Middle-Earthly counterpart. It honestly makes me wonder if he wouldn’t have been a colonial sympathizer.
Consider the Shire, Tolkien’s Holy Grail of the good life. It is an agrarian pre-industrial society, populated by thousands of tiny yeoman plowing the frontier, with an absent (federal) government no one remembers and a neutered (local) government that everyone ignores. It’s Thomas Jefferson’s societal ideal! Or at least the bastardization of modern libertarianism.
Ever reliable Wikipedia has a pretty good synopsis of Jeffersonian Democracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffersonian_democracy). The high points are the reverence for the ‘yeoman farmer’ and a belief that the government threatened personal liberties. Jefferson’s Anti-Federalists – aka the Democratic-Republican Party forerunner to today’s Democratic Party – were formed in opposition to Federalist Party of fellow founding father Alexander Hamilton and largely responsible for the Bill of Rights. To over simplify, in Jefferson’s mind, government is a perpetual necessary evil and the ‘proper’ society is one that is populated largely by self-reliant, self-sufficient farmers.
Which is an interesting position for him to take politically, since on his plantation Jefferson was an industrial innovator. He established a pre-industrial nail factory and encouraged the development of interchangeable parts in the U.S. Army. See Willard Randall’s Thomas Jefferson: A Life if you’re interested in some of the more interesting contradictions of Jefferson’s life.
In short, we have a British author basing one of the most famous societies in fantasy literature on the agrarian ideal of an American Founding Father.[2] Instead of an idealized historical Britain, the Shire is an idealized America that even its biggest champion failed to live up to the ideal of.
More than that, the policy issues of the Shire seem rather petty, especially compared to the problems of the wider world. *Spoiler Alert* Even the confrontation with Saruman and Wormtongue at the end was more a symbolic conflict between modernization and the idealized agrarian society than a true policy conflict. The overarching idea seems to be that true conflict is the result of external influence. In like-minded, largely homogeneous[3] societies, internal conflict is limited to bickering in-laws and how much contact one should have with outsiders/elves.
Despite Tolkien’s firm grasp of languages and mythology, this is a rather narrow and limited view of any society’s politics. Even in his own country, directly following the end of World War II – a major influence on Tolkien’s work – Winston Churchill was voted out of office,[4] largely due to a resurgent labor movement that felt they had been ignored by Churchill’s Conservatives during and after the War. Where is the Shire’s labor movement? I think it’s obvious that the Baggins family are analogous to upper-middle class British Conservatives, at least before the incident with the dragon. Do you think the Gaffer and Samwise – again, before his social mobility following the Lord of the Rings – have the same economic interests?
For that matter, what about ethnic/racial division? The Harfoots are the most numerous ethnic group of hobbits. Do they oppress the Fallowhides or the Stoors? Are their existing ethnic voting blocks? The Mayor of Michael Delvin is pretty powerless but there has to be some incentive for pursuing the position. Is there affirmative action in the government hiring of sheriffs to patrol Stoor and Fallowhide communities?
In the end, the point the Shire more closely resembles the American political ideal of Jeffersonian Democracy. Additionally, the depiction of Shire politics presupposes that conflict comes from the outside and ignores internal divisions. This is a failing of Jeffersonian Democracy as well and a seemingly perpetual belief about politics in many societies. Politics is about the resolution of conflict and conflict or the potential for conflict exists in all societies, even idealized ones created by British linguistics professors.
[1] Like everything else about that movie, even the title was longer and more bloated.
[2] A later post will detail how much I dislike that term or at least those who have appropriated it.
[3] We’ll discuss homogeneous vs. heterogeneous societies and their impact on politics. See Jessica Trounstine’s work (http://faculty.ucmerced.edu/jtrounstine/index.htm) on diversity and the provisions of public goods if you’re interested. There’s some good IR work on this issue as well.
[4] Actually, his party lost the majority in Parliament, meaning he couldn’t form a government with himself as Prime Minister, but we’ll avoid a detailed discussion of Presidential vs. Parliamentary systems for the moment.
“Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.” Notes on the State of Virginia (1785)
Tolkien was a Brit. No one disputes this. However, I recently reread The Hobbit, spurred of course by the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.[1] It is still an amazing book, more for its establishment of dozens of future fantasy tropes than its writing. But what makes me question Tolkien’s British bonafides is how he chooses to depict and describe the Shire – his Eden or at least its Middle-Earthly counterpart. It honestly makes me wonder if he wouldn’t have been a colonial sympathizer.
Consider the Shire, Tolkien’s Holy Grail of the good life. It is an agrarian pre-industrial society, populated by thousands of tiny yeoman plowing the frontier, with an absent (federal) government no one remembers and a neutered (local) government that everyone ignores. It’s Thomas Jefferson’s societal ideal! Or at least the bastardization of modern libertarianism.
Ever reliable Wikipedia has a pretty good synopsis of Jeffersonian Democracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffersonian_democracy). The high points are the reverence for the ‘yeoman farmer’ and a belief that the government threatened personal liberties. Jefferson’s Anti-Federalists – aka the Democratic-Republican Party forerunner to today’s Democratic Party – were formed in opposition to Federalist Party of fellow founding father Alexander Hamilton and largely responsible for the Bill of Rights. To over simplify, in Jefferson’s mind, government is a perpetual necessary evil and the ‘proper’ society is one that is populated largely by self-reliant, self-sufficient farmers.
Which is an interesting position for him to take politically, since on his plantation Jefferson was an industrial innovator. He established a pre-industrial nail factory and encouraged the development of interchangeable parts in the U.S. Army. See Willard Randall’s Thomas Jefferson: A Life if you’re interested in some of the more interesting contradictions of Jefferson’s life.
In short, we have a British author basing one of the most famous societies in fantasy literature on the agrarian ideal of an American Founding Father.[2] Instead of an idealized historical Britain, the Shire is an idealized America that even its biggest champion failed to live up to the ideal of.
More than that, the policy issues of the Shire seem rather petty, especially compared to the problems of the wider world. *Spoiler Alert* Even the confrontation with Saruman and Wormtongue at the end was more a symbolic conflict between modernization and the idealized agrarian society than a true policy conflict. The overarching idea seems to be that true conflict is the result of external influence. In like-minded, largely homogeneous[3] societies, internal conflict is limited to bickering in-laws and how much contact one should have with outsiders/elves.
Despite Tolkien’s firm grasp of languages and mythology, this is a rather narrow and limited view of any society’s politics. Even in his own country, directly following the end of World War II – a major influence on Tolkien’s work – Winston Churchill was voted out of office,[4] largely due to a resurgent labor movement that felt they had been ignored by Churchill’s Conservatives during and after the War. Where is the Shire’s labor movement? I think it’s obvious that the Baggins family are analogous to upper-middle class British Conservatives, at least before the incident with the dragon. Do you think the Gaffer and Samwise – again, before his social mobility following the Lord of the Rings – have the same economic interests?
For that matter, what about ethnic/racial division? The Harfoots are the most numerous ethnic group of hobbits. Do they oppress the Fallowhides or the Stoors? Are their existing ethnic voting blocks? The Mayor of Michael Delvin is pretty powerless but there has to be some incentive for pursuing the position. Is there affirmative action in the government hiring of sheriffs to patrol Stoor and Fallowhide communities?
In the end, the point the Shire more closely resembles the American political ideal of Jeffersonian Democracy. Additionally, the depiction of Shire politics presupposes that conflict comes from the outside and ignores internal divisions. This is a failing of Jeffersonian Democracy as well and a seemingly perpetual belief about politics in many societies. Politics is about the resolution of conflict and conflict or the potential for conflict exists in all societies, even idealized ones created by British linguistics professors.
[1] Like everything else about that movie, even the title was longer and more bloated.
[2] A later post will detail how much I dislike that term or at least those who have appropriated it.
[3] We’ll discuss homogeneous vs. heterogeneous societies and their impact on politics. See Jessica Trounstine’s work (http://faculty.ucmerced.edu/jtrounstine/index.htm) on diversity and the provisions of public goods if you’re interested. There’s some good IR work on this issue as well.
[4] Actually, his party lost the majority in Parliament, meaning he couldn’t form a government with himself as Prime Minister, but we’ll avoid a detailed discussion of Presidential vs. Parliamentary systems for the moment.