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On Kings
In anthropology as much as in popular imagination, kings are figures of fascination and intrigue, heroes or tyrants in ways presidents and prime ministers can never be. This collection of essays by two of the world’s most distinguished anthropologists—David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins—explores what kingship actually is, historically and anthropologically. As they show, kings are symbols for more than just sovereignty: indeed, the study of kingship offers a unique window into fundamental dilemmas concerning the very nature of power, meaning, and the human condition.
Reflecting on issues such as temporality, alterity, piracy, and utopia—not to mention the divine, the strange, the numinous, and the bestial—Graeber and Sahlins explore the role of kings as they have existed around the world, from the BaKongo to the Aztec to the Shilluk to the eighteenth-century pirate kings of Madagascar and beyond. Richly delivered with the wit and sharp analysis characteristic of Graeber and Sahlins, this book opens up new avenues for the anthropological study of this fascinating and ubiquitous political figure.
Reflecting on issues such as temporality, alterity, piracy, and utopia—not to mention the divine, the strange, the numinous, and the bestial—Graeber and Sahlins explore the role of kings as they have existed around the world, from the BaKongo to the Aztec to the Shilluk to the eighteenth-century pirate kings of Madagascar and beyond. Richly delivered with the wit and sharp analysis characteristic of Graeber and Sahlins, this book opens up new avenues for the anthropological study of this fascinating and ubiquitous political figure.
536 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2016
64 people are currently reading
2253 people want to read
About the author
David Graeber
107 books5,106 followersDavid Rolfe Graeber was an American anthropologist and anarchist.
On June 15, 2007, Graeber accepted the offer of a lectureship in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he held the title of Reader in Social Anthropology.
Prior to that position, he was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him, and his term there ended in June 2007.
Graeber had a history of social and political activism, including his role in protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City (2002) and membership in the labor union Industrial Workers of the World. He was an core participant in the Occupy Movement.
He passed away in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
On June 15, 2007, Graeber accepted the offer of a lectureship in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he held the title of Reader in Social Anthropology.
Prior to that position, he was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him, and his term there ended in June 2007.
Graeber had a history of social and political activism, including his role in protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City (2002) and membership in the labor union Industrial Workers of the World. He was an core participant in the Occupy Movement.
He passed away in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
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September 9, 2019open access pdf https://haubooks.org/on-kings/
January 31, 2020
Probably the most interesting thing I've ever read in my entire life.
February 20, 2018
On Kings is a fantastic collection of essays by Marshall Sahlins and David Graeber, essentially a poignant conversation between teacher and student of related strands of thought. In this form they do not follow a logical order but are complementary essays which bridge themes of interest surrounding the nature of Kingship. The book is filled with witty and sharp analysis on classical themes of anthropological concern, where Graeber and Sahlins explore hierarchies and state-like entities as always present in terms of the spirit world and conversely, the spirit world as ever-present within the realm of Kingship. Here the crucial question is why we give the power of a god to one man? Is there a universal human cosmic polity which allows kinship and kingship to meet? Here kinship stretches beyond the human, and allows us to muse on why kingship continues into the present day… Why are kings so “remarkably difficult to get rid of”. This question is answered through the existence of hierarchies which transcend the ‘earthly’, humans with ‘meta-human’ powers or “kingly beings in heaven even when there are no chiefs on earth” (2). “Kings are thus imitations of gods rather then gods of kings” (Sahlins) and therefore divinity becomes a reflexive practice which extends beyond the human. Overall a clear and exceptionally eloquent work, touching on history and extending it’s relevance to many areas of anthropological theory. A truly magisterial comparative work showing the relevance of anthropology to understanding both the past and the future and the nature of human life.
March 13, 2021
Being a collection of essays between 2 writers doesn't help with the order or the flow of the book, nonetheless it doesn't take away from how interesting the book is. I may actually recommend to read the conclusion first, then proceed from the beginning.
March 10, 2023
بهترین کتابی که در دو-سه سال اخیر مطالعه کردم و بهشدت الهامبخش.
December 10, 2021
An interesting but frustrating book. It's a collection of essays that don't quite cohere, by Graeber and his former dissertation advisor, Marshall Sahlins. The introduction and last chapter have most of the ideas; the rest is supporting example
Some insights I got from it:
- There are peoples who lack any real government or central authority, but very much have a concept of law and government: for many peoples, the line between humans and deities, spirits, ancestors etc is porous - so there can be law without human lawgivers. Sahlins I think leans too hard on this, since there are some pretty decisive differences between human authorities and spirits invisible.
- Kingship in many cultures has far more in the way of ritual and theological significance than merely political. Early kings are often God-kings or priest-kings. (The authors don't mention it, but it seems highly relevant that this connection is visible in Athens and Rome; the archon basileus was a religious office; the priests meet in the Regia, Caesar is Pontifex Maximus.)
- There is a half-submerged conflict between the ruler and the ruled, internal to every state. Both sides occasionally resort to force and there is usually not a declaration of war or peace to initiate it. Making the king sacred is a move in this war -- if the king is too holy to see or speak to the public, that limits his power. A harem is a common cage for kings.
- Lots of communities have a notion that the king is a foreigner -- "stranger king" is apparently the term of art. Sometimes this might reflect real historic conquest, but the rationale for keeping the notion has to be separate from the history. The kings don't assimilate even over several generations. Romulus was pointedly not from here, and interestingly, neither was Numa Pompilius. The Mughal rulers of India were not altogether assimilated; the Hellenistic rulers in Alexander's wake don't fully assimilate to Persia, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. A probably related fact is that for much of the period from Peter I to Nicholas II, the Russian elite spoke French, not Russian. They consciously foreignized themselves.
Many good things in the book, but I'm not sure they are, strictly speaking, true. One of the central claims is that monarchy has ritual, not political, roots. But what are we to make of North Korea and Syria, where we can _see_ the hereditary principle in a country that officially denies it? Or the Julio-Claudian dynasty? Or hereditary feudal lordships? A king might be mystical, but earls and barons aren't. Florence was a republic that became a hereditary Medici possession, with no sacralized stage. If Florence can be this, why can't any other place?
Much food for thought and I do recommend reading the book. I just don't recommend believing it.
You can get a copy online gratis from: https://haubooks.org/on-kings/
Some insights I got from it:
- There are peoples who lack any real government or central authority, but very much have a concept of law and government: for many peoples, the line between humans and deities, spirits, ancestors etc is porous - so there can be law without human lawgivers. Sahlins I think leans too hard on this, since there are some pretty decisive differences between human authorities and spirits invisible.
- Kingship in many cultures has far more in the way of ritual and theological significance than merely political. Early kings are often God-kings or priest-kings. (The authors don't mention it, but it seems highly relevant that this connection is visible in Athens and Rome; the archon basileus was a religious office; the priests meet in the Regia, Caesar is Pontifex Maximus.)
- There is a half-submerged conflict between the ruler and the ruled, internal to every state. Both sides occasionally resort to force and there is usually not a declaration of war or peace to initiate it. Making the king sacred is a move in this war -- if the king is too holy to see or speak to the public, that limits his power. A harem is a common cage for kings.
- Lots of communities have a notion that the king is a foreigner -- "stranger king" is apparently the term of art. Sometimes this might reflect real historic conquest, but the rationale for keeping the notion has to be separate from the history. The kings don't assimilate even over several generations. Romulus was pointedly not from here, and interestingly, neither was Numa Pompilius. The Mughal rulers of India were not altogether assimilated; the Hellenistic rulers in Alexander's wake don't fully assimilate to Persia, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. A probably related fact is that for much of the period from Peter I to Nicholas II, the Russian elite spoke French, not Russian. They consciously foreignized themselves.
Many good things in the book, but I'm not sure they are, strictly speaking, true. One of the central claims is that monarchy has ritual, not political, roots. But what are we to make of North Korea and Syria, where we can _see_ the hereditary principle in a country that officially denies it? Or the Julio-Claudian dynasty? Or hereditary feudal lordships? A king might be mystical, but earls and barons aren't. Florence was a republic that became a hereditary Medici possession, with no sacralized stage. If Florence can be this, why can't any other place?
Much food for thought and I do recommend reading the book. I just don't recommend believing it.
You can get a copy online gratis from: https://haubooks.org/on-kings/
February 28, 2018
What defines sovereignity? How did culture evolve to stablish a rule of just one person over a country? Through lavish comparison of different ethnography perspectives, Sahlins and Graeber stablish a new effort to dig up the secret codes and culture identifications of “the ruler”. This book comprises 7 chapters with a broad sense of ethnographic theory, discussing from the old Kongo kingdom, the Mexica, central Madagascar and others. Dignitas non Morritur was a condition of kingship stablished by the west, but we see that in other cultures different conditions prevailed. The relation between the ruler and the ruled range from divine right, ruler as a father figure to its people, the people as nursemaids to the ruler and others. This book helps in the understanding of concepts of statehood between different cultures/civilizations and help to add a new non-eurocentric look in this matter.
September 27, 2025
This book comprises a series of academic papers by Marshall Sahlins and David Graeber (both sadly now deceased) on the origins and nature of kingship, which, as they point out, has historically been the most common form of government across the world. The language of the book is very academic, and often quite dense for someone like me. Although I found some sections a struggle, I was happy to keep reading as the book contains some extremely interesting ideas. I know David Graeber became a popular author before his death, but in this particular book I tended to prefer the articles written by Marshall Sahlins.
In my enthusiastic amateur reading of history books, I’ve been struck by how many societies had ruling dynasties who were a different ethnicity from the people they ruled. I don’t mean extraterritorial rulers, such as when Queen Victoria and her four successors styled themselves Empress/Emperor of India, but rulers of foreign origin living in the same territory. Examples might be the various Mongol or Manchu rulers of China, the Mughal Emperors of India, or the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt. We could also look at the medieval kings of England (who continued to use French as their mother tongue for more than 300 years after the Norman Conquest) or more recently at James Brooke and his successors as Rajah of Sarawak.
With the exception of Brooke, the above examples all arose from conquest, but in this volume, Marshall Sahlins sets out his quite fascinating “stranger-king” hypothesis, in which “Stranger-kingdoms are the dominant form of premodern state the world around, perhaps the original form. The kings who rule them are foreign by ancestry and identity.” The majority of examples quoted in this book are from Africa, with others from SE Asia, the Pacific, and pre-Columbian America, and the stranger-kingdoms were accepted voluntarily by the subject peoples. The authors tentatively suggest that these traditions may even have facilitated the early period of European colonialism.
Anthropologists and historians often refer to pre-state societies as “egalitarian” in nature, but the authors argue that such societies were ruled as ruthless despotisms. It’s just that the rulers were what Sahlins calls “metahuman persons”, i.e. what are generally referred to today as “spirits”. All such societies were dominated by myriad rules about what could be done, by who, and when. Enforcement of the rules was not carried out by humans but by whichever of the spirits had been offended by a breach. The book contains a quote from a 1930s Inuit man who said “we don’t believe, we fear”. It is these societies that contained the seeds of the kingship model, with the monarch acting as a go-between between the human and spirit worlds.
So why this pattern of accepting stranger-kings? In the first place we should be careful about imposing our modern ideas around “identity politics” on ancient societies. Sahlins is clear that there have never been societies that are sui generis, and that human societies the world over have always been interdependent with other societies. There are also some advantages in accepting a “foreign” ruler in terms of conflict resolution. Where a member of the native nobility seizes the crown, it may be expected that he will favour his kinfolk and their allies, and persecute his enemies. By contrast, a stranger-king has no such baggage and would be seen as impartial.
Most ancient stranger-kingdoms have their origins, legendary or not, in a “wandering hero” figure, usually a prince of some sort, who arrives in a new land and demonstrates his power (and thereby the favour of the gods/spirits) by some remarkable feat. The position of the monarch as an intermediary with the spirit world is significant here, since the sacred is always something, or someone, set apart from the norm.
Really the above is just the briefest summary of the ideas put forward by the authors. I often say in my non-fiction reviews that I have a weakness for books that introduce me to new concepts, and this book definitely meets that criterion!
In my enthusiastic amateur reading of history books, I’ve been struck by how many societies had ruling dynasties who were a different ethnicity from the people they ruled. I don’t mean extraterritorial rulers, such as when Queen Victoria and her four successors styled themselves Empress/Emperor of India, but rulers of foreign origin living in the same territory. Examples might be the various Mongol or Manchu rulers of China, the Mughal Emperors of India, or the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt. We could also look at the medieval kings of England (who continued to use French as their mother tongue for more than 300 years after the Norman Conquest) or more recently at James Brooke and his successors as Rajah of Sarawak.
With the exception of Brooke, the above examples all arose from conquest, but in this volume, Marshall Sahlins sets out his quite fascinating “stranger-king” hypothesis, in which “Stranger-kingdoms are the dominant form of premodern state the world around, perhaps the original form. The kings who rule them are foreign by ancestry and identity.” The majority of examples quoted in this book are from Africa, with others from SE Asia, the Pacific, and pre-Columbian America, and the stranger-kingdoms were accepted voluntarily by the subject peoples. The authors tentatively suggest that these traditions may even have facilitated the early period of European colonialism.
Anthropologists and historians often refer to pre-state societies as “egalitarian” in nature, but the authors argue that such societies were ruled as ruthless despotisms. It’s just that the rulers were what Sahlins calls “metahuman persons”, i.e. what are generally referred to today as “spirits”. All such societies were dominated by myriad rules about what could be done, by who, and when. Enforcement of the rules was not carried out by humans but by whichever of the spirits had been offended by a breach. The book contains a quote from a 1930s Inuit man who said “we don’t believe, we fear”. It is these societies that contained the seeds of the kingship model, with the monarch acting as a go-between between the human and spirit worlds.
So why this pattern of accepting stranger-kings? In the first place we should be careful about imposing our modern ideas around “identity politics” on ancient societies. Sahlins is clear that there have never been societies that are sui generis, and that human societies the world over have always been interdependent with other societies. There are also some advantages in accepting a “foreign” ruler in terms of conflict resolution. Where a member of the native nobility seizes the crown, it may be expected that he will favour his kinfolk and their allies, and persecute his enemies. By contrast, a stranger-king has no such baggage and would be seen as impartial.
Most ancient stranger-kingdoms have their origins, legendary or not, in a “wandering hero” figure, usually a prince of some sort, who arrives in a new land and demonstrates his power (and thereby the favour of the gods/spirits) by some remarkable feat. The position of the monarch as an intermediary with the spirit world is significant here, since the sacred is always something, or someone, set apart from the norm.
Really the above is just the briefest summary of the ideas put forward by the authors. I often say in my non-fiction reviews that I have a weakness for books that introduce me to new concepts, and this book definitely meets that criterion!
November 17, 2018
Interesting but at times quite dense. One way to boil it down would be on the battle between rulers and subjects and either expanding or containing their power. (A related idea that caught my attention that isn't central to the book but gets mentioned towards the end is that 'sovereignty of the people' is an oxymoron. Sovereignty is something you do to the people) The other two ideas that come to mind are stranger kings and galactic kingdoms. Stranger kings being the origins of rulers always starting outside the polity, (whether descendents of gods or foreign rulers or whatever) and the ensuing saga to civilize them/tie them to the land. Galactic kingdoms are the spheres of influence that extend beyond the actual control of the king, (think Mongols-China or Gaul-Rome for a few familiar examples) but are shaped by the central polity. The point Graeber and Sahlins seem to be pushing themselves is that the current idea that societies spring up and shape themselves is wrong, it's the interplay between polities that shapes them.
January 9, 2025
It is a a very thought-provoking collection of essays that feels like a profound dialogue between a legendary teacher and his equally brilliant student. This book is a a real treasure for anyone curious about the enduring mysteries of kingship, hierarchy, and the interplay between the spiritual and the political.
The essays don’t follow a rigid structure, but that’s part of their charm. Sahlins and Graeber masterfully explore the question: why do we invest one individual with the power of a god? Is there a universal human "cosmic polity" where kinship and kingship converge?
The writing is witty, sharp, and packed with intellectual rigor. Sahlins and Graeber dive into classical anthropological concerns, yet their insights resonate far beyond academia. They grapple with the question of why kingship persists to this day—why, as they put it, kings are “remarkably difficult to get rid of.” Their analysis spans history, mythology, and anthropology, connecting the dots in a way that feels as relevant to understanding the present as it does to unpacking the past.
The essays don’t follow a rigid structure, but that’s part of their charm. Sahlins and Graeber masterfully explore the question: why do we invest one individual with the power of a god? Is there a universal human "cosmic polity" where kinship and kingship converge?
The writing is witty, sharp, and packed with intellectual rigor. Sahlins and Graeber dive into classical anthropological concerns, yet their insights resonate far beyond academia. They grapple with the question of why kingship persists to this day—why, as they put it, kings are “remarkably difficult to get rid of.” Their analysis spans history, mythology, and anthropology, connecting the dots in a way that feels as relevant to understanding the present as it does to unpacking the past.
March 11, 2021
Fascinating anthropological analyses of “stranger-kingdoms“ primarily in Africa and Latin America, presented as 7 different essays alternately authored by David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins. Parts were dense (Graeber’s essays were typically a little less dense at the cost of being longer) and at times I found it hard to keep track of the nuances of each culture’s kingdom (in part because I read it over the course of several months) but I learned a lot and will think about some of it for a long time.
July 3, 2025
Lots of very interesting parts but sorely in need of editing down for rambling. I don't think it ends up doing the title justice, poorly argued as a whole. Mostly just a loose collection of anthropological speculations which usually I love but they somehow manage to make it truly frustrating.
August 15, 2022
En sevdiğim kitap oldu. Baya etkileyici idi.
January 1, 2024
I'll send you the pdf
May 31, 2025
Way too niche
Way too academic
DNF
Way too academic
DNF
July 19, 2025
Hell yea
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews