Generally speaking, the word province is
essentially a “relative marker,” pointing to a major division of any domain.
For example, the earthly realm and a certain area of knowledge can both be said
to be provinces. In political discourse, the word has traditionally been used
to signify a political territory being relative to a bigger one that includes
it as one of its sub-units. A provincia in the Roman sense, which the
Oxford English Dictionary refers to as a “civil province,” can be distinguished
from what the dictionary calls “a province of a modern country or state.”[i] While
this distinction may seem prima facie to refer to the political
development between the ancient Roman Empire and modern countries, I argue that
the term province refers to two distinct scales or clusters of political
territory—a distinction that involves qualitative differences. A “civil province,” or provincia, is otherwise
known as a dependency, or occupied kingdom. Therefore, we can say that provincia is normatively or by default on the kingdom scale. I argue most modern countries, or
nation-states, that are not themselves composed of modern-country-scale states,
correspond to the scale. The vast majority of such states are on the scale of
the early-modern consolidated kingdoms such as Great Britain, France, and
Italy. These states and kingdoms consist
in turn of regions or provinces (which I refer to as “province” below as
distinct from provincia). It follows that political territories referred
to as provinces are not necessarily comparable. Complicating a definitive
description of the two clusters, the extent of territory to which each refers
has shifted over time, even with respect to the same territory. For example,
many ancient and medieval European kingdoms were consolidated into the early
modern kingdoms. The amount of territory
generally understood to be sufficient for kingdom status essentially shifted
such that what had been a kingdom was only a province (e.g., a duchy) in a
larger kingdom.
The full chapter is at British Colonies Forge an American Empire.
The full chapter is at British Colonies Forge an American Empire.
