One difference between savage peoples and barbarian peoples is that the former are small, dispersed nations which for some particular reasons cannot unite, whereas barbarians are ordinarily small nations that can unite. The former are ordinarily peoples of hunters, the latter shepherds. This is (…)
Since these peoples do not live in a limited, circumscribed terrain, they will have many occasions for of quarrels among themselves ; they will fight over fallow land just as our citizens fight over inheritances. Thus they will find frequent opportunities to fight over their hunting grounds, (…)
It is principally the distribution of lands that bloats the civil code. In nations where there has been no such distribution, there will be very few civil laws.
One can call the institutions of such peoples practices rather than laws.
In nations of this type, old men who remember things of (…)
These peoples enjoy great freedom : for since they do not till the land, they are not tied to it ; they are nomads, vagabonds ; and if a chief wanted to take their freedom from them, they would immediately go seek it with another chief, or else they would withdraw into the woods and live there (…)
Aristippus, following his shipwreck, was able to swim to a nearby shore ; he found geometrical figures traced in the sand, and was overcome with joy, judging that he had come upon a Greek people and not barbarians.
Assume you are alone, and arrive by some accident among an unknown people : if (…)
When a people does not have the use of money, nearly all the injustices it knows are the result of violence, and weak people by joining together defend themselves against violence. These are merely political arrangements. But among a people where money is instituted, one is subject to injustices (…)
What most assures the liberty of peoples who do not till the land is that they know nothing of money. The yield of the hunt, of fishing or of livestock cannot be gathered in sufficient quantity, nor kept long enough, for a man to be in a position to corrupt everybody else ; whereas when there (…)
If what the relations tell us is true, the constitution of a people in Louisiana called the Natchez is an exception to this. Their chief disposes of the property of all his subjects, and makes them work at his whim ; they cannot refuse him their heads : he is like the Turkish sultan. When the (…)
The Arabs and the Tartars are pastoral peoples. The Arabs are in the broad category we have mentioned, and are free, whereas the Tartars (the most singular people on earth) live in political slavery. I have already given some of the reasons for this latter fact, and have some to add.
They have (…)
Among themselves, the Tartars appear gentle and humane, and they are very cruel conquerors : the city dwellers they take are put to the sword ; they consider they are showing them mercy when they sell them or distribute them to their soldiers. They have destroyed Asia from the Indies to the (…)
Montesquieu
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