Chapter 11-14: Savage Nations

Savage nations are dispersed in clans which cannot be joined in a body.

  • The savages are generally hunters

Barbarous nations are commonly small nations, capable of being united.

  • The barbarians are herdsmen and shepherds.

This appears plain in the North of Asia.

  • The people of Siberia cannot live in bodies, because they are unable to find subsistence.
  • The Tartars may live in bodies for some time, because their herds and flocks may, for a time, be re-assembled.
    • All the clans may then be re-united.
    • This happens when one chief has subdued many others.
      • Afterwards, they may do two things:
        • separate, or
        • set out with a design to make a great conquest in some southern empire.

Chapter 12: Laws among People who do not cultivate the Earth

AS these people do not live in circumscribed territories, many causes of strife arise between them;

  • They quarrel about waste land as we about inheritances.
  • Thus they find frequent occasions for war, in disputes relative either to their hunting, their fishing, [366] the pasture for their cattle, or the violent seizing of their slaves.
  • They are not possessed of landed property.
  • They have many things to regulate by the law of nations, and but few to decide by the civil law.

 

Chapter 13: The civil Law of Nations who do not cultivate the Earth

THE division of lands is what principally increases the civil code.

  • Amongst nations where they have not made this division there are very few civil laws.
  • The institutions of these people may be called manners rather than laws.

Amongst such nations as these, the old men, who remember things past, have great authority:

  • They cannot there be distinguished by wealth, but by wisdom and valour.

These people wander and disperse themselves in pasture grounds or in forests.

  • Marriage cannot there have the security which it has amongst us, where it is fixed by the habitation, and where the wife continues in one house:
  • They may, then, more easily change their wives, possess many, and sometimes mix indifferently, like brutes.

Nations of herdsmen and shepherds cannot leave their cattle, which are their subsistence.

They cannot separate themselves from their wives, who look after them.

All this should go together, especially in a flat open country, where there are few places of considerable strength.

  • Their wives, children, flocks, might become the prey of their enemies.

Their laws regulate the division of plunder.

  • They have a particular attention to theft like our Salique laws

Chapter 14: The political State of People who do not cultivate the Land

THESE people enjoy great liberty.

  • They do not cultivate the earth.
  • They are not fixed.
  • They are wanderers and vagabonds.
  • If a chief should deprive them of their liberty, they would immediately go and seek it under another, or retire into the woods, and there live with their families.
  • The liberty of the man is so great, among these people, that it necessarily draws after it that of the citizen.