The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c7.s1.22

c7.s1.22

Let us consider now the actual boundaries of states or territorial limits of nationality in the history of European polity without being biased by the principles of Curzon's *Frontiers* or Supan's *Politische Geographie*. In terms of population and area, ancient and medieval Hindu polities present specimens and types that can well stand comparison with the contemporary western units. The Athens (including all Attica) of Pericles had only twenty five thousand "free citizens" with three hundred thousand slaves. Men, women, and children of all classes were numbered at 400,000.¹ The population of France at the time of the Revolution was under twenty five millions. At the same time England and Wales had only eight millions and a half.² And today the average of first class powers is between forty-five and fifty millions. Besides, there exist a score of lesser sovereignties, including the new "self-determined" states born out of the Russian Leviathan through drastic Bolshevik surgery and those carved out of the old Germanistic empires, which have to maintain themselves virtually as buffer-states, at least as theatres of intrigue, for powerful neighbours.