The Brunch Table

I’ve been thinking a lot about citizenship lately…you’ll notice that Bush, and Reaganists in general, don’t like to say that word too much. “Consumer” tends to be the word they choose instead. A while back, I read Philip Dray’s history of the Ku Klux Klan, At the Hands of Persons Unknown, and it had a lot of interesting asides about the persistent factions in American politics that have always opposed the concept of citizenship–taking the philosophical position that the rights of a citizen of the republic undermined the landlord’s power over those who lived on his property. (The Confederacy is the most famous of the anti-citizen movements, but the beliefs certainly aren’t confined to the South; the Bushes are thoroughbred New Englanders.) He keeps coming back to those opposing poles of citizen vs. landlord as the fundamental unresolved issue in American society…and, following from that, he says that “white” and “black” (or, more technically, “non-white”) are not ethnic categories, but the political states of “non-citizen” and “citizen” that correspond to ethnic categories (Bantu, German, Mexican, English, etc.).

So, in this vein, I found a little writeup the other day on Roman citizenship, which I’ll now share with y’all:

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ROMAN COLONIZATION from www.ualberta.ca/~csmackay/CLASS_378/Citizenship.html

1. Conquered people designated as “free” (they could keep their own government) or “tributary” (government installed by Rome).

2. New tributary government turned into a “municipality.” Old local rulers were often granted Roman citizenship and given positions of authority, but under a Roman magistrate.

3. Once sufficiently urbanized, the municipality would be turned into a “colony.” Colonies had more autonomy–they could once again run their own governments–but they were required to let Roman citizens settle there (land grants were often offered as a reward to distinguished Roman soldiers). Colonies were also expected to adopt Roman culture and language.

4. Roman citizenship was bestowed by government grant. Military service was the most common way for colonial subjects to become citizens. Citizenship could be inherited and conferred by marriage; colonial soldiers would return home after their tour of duty with a Roman name and a certificate of citizenship, marry, and make more Romans. Near the end of the Empire, after generations of soldiers had created large citizen populations in the colonies, the Roman government found the rights and protections guaranteed to citizens a serious inconvenience to their rule. So they solved the problem by declaring every subject of the Empire a citizen–and abolishing the rights that came with citizenship.