History of citizenship describes the changing relation between an individual and the state, known as citizenship. Citizenship is generally identified not as an aspect of Eastern civilization but of Western civilization. There is a general view that citizenship in ancient times was a simpler relation than modern forms of citizenship, although this view has been challenged.
While there is disagreement about when the relation of citizenship began, many thinkers point to the early city-states of ancient Greece, possibly as a reaction to the fear of slavery, although others see it as primarily a modern phenomenon dating back only a few hundred years. In Roman times, citizenship began to take on more of the character of a relationship based on law, with less political participation than in ancient Greece but a widening sphere of who was considered to be a citizen. In the Middle Ages in Europe, citizenship was primarily identified with commercial and secular life in the growing cities, and it came to be seen as membership in emerging nation-states. In modern democracies, citizenship has contrasting senses, including a liberal-individualist view emphasizing needs and entitlements and legal protections for essentially passive political beings, and a civic-republican view emphasizing political participation and seeing citizenship as an active relation with specific privileges and obligations.
While citizenship has varied considerably throughout history, there are some common elements of citizenship over time. Citizenship bonds extend beyond basic kinship ties to unite people of different genetic backgrounds, that is, citizenship is more than a clan or extended kinship network. It generally describes the relation between a person and an overall political entity such as a city-state or nation and signifies membership in that body. It is often based on, or a function of, some form of military service or expectation of future military service. It is generally characterized by some form of political participation, although the extent of such participation can vary considerably from minimal duties such as voting to active service in government. And citizenship, throughout history, has often been seen as an ideal state, closely allied with freedom, an important status with legal aspects including rights, and it has sometimes been seen as a bundle of rights or a right to have rights. Last, citizenship almost always has had an element of exclusion, in the sense that citizenship derives meaning, in part, by excluding non-citizens from basic rights and privileges.
Overview While a general definition of citizenship is membership in a political society or group, citizenship as a concept is difficult to define. Thinkers as far back as Aristotle realized that there was no agreed-upon definition of citizenship. And modern thinkers, as well, agree that the history of citizenship is complex with no single definition predominating. It is hard to isolate what citizenship means without reference to other terms such as nationalism, civil society, and democracy. According to one view, citizenship as a subject of study is undergoing transformation, with increased interest while the meaning of the term continues to shift. There is agreement citizenship is culture-specific: it is a function of each political culture. Further, how citizenship is seen and understood depends on the viewpoint of the person making the determination, such that a person from an upper class background will have a different notion of citizenship than a person from the lower class. The relation of citizenship has not been a fixed or static relation, but constantly changes within each society, and that according to one view, citizenship might "really have worked" only at select periods during certain times, such as when the Athenian politician Solon made reforms in the early Athenian state. The history of citizenship has sometimes been presented as a stark contrast between ancient citizenship and post-medieval times. One view is that citizenship should be studied as a long and direct progression throughout Western civilization, beginning from Ancient Greece or perhaps earlier, extending to the present; for example, thinker Feliks Gross examined citizenship as the "history of the continuation of a single institution." Other views question whether citizenship can be examined as a linear process, growing over time, usually for the better, and see the linear progression approach as an oversimplification possibly leading to incorrect conclusions. According to this view, citizenship should not be considered as a "progressive realisation of the core meanings that are definitionally built into citizenship." Another caveat, offered by some thinkers, is to avoid judging citizenship from one era in terms of the standards of another era; according to this view, citizenship should be understood by examining it within the context of a city-state or nation, and trying to understand it as people from these societies understood it. The rise of citizenship has been studied as an aspect of the development of law.
Table Contrasting senses of citizenship from ancient times to the present day, according to Peter Zarrow:
Ancient Modern Severely restricted Almost universal Embraced legal and communitarian strains Most societies offer most privileges of citizenship, such as legal protections and social services Rights matches status No relation between rights Citizens met face-to-face Anonymous members of vast economic and political organisations Public life valued for its own sake
Ancient conceptions
Jewish people in the ancient world
One view is that the beginning of citizenship dates back to the ancient Israelites. These people developed an understanding of themselves as a distinct and unique people—different from the Egyptians or Babylonians. They had a written history, common language and one-deity-only religion sometimes described as ethical monotheism. While most peoples developed a loose identity tied to a specific geographic location, the Jewish people kept their common identity despite being physically moved to different lands, such as when they were held captive as slaves in ancient Egypt or Babylon. The Jewish Covenant has been described as a binding agreement not just with a few people or tribal leaders, but between the whole nation of Israel, including men, women and children, with the Jewish deity Yahweh. Jews, similar to other tribal groups, did not see themselves as citizens per se but they formed a strong attachment to their own group, such that people of different ethnicities were considered as part of an "outgroup". This is in contrast to the modern understanding of citizenship as a way to accept people of different races and ethnicities under the umbrella of being citizens of a nation.
This said, there are several connected issues to be mentioned. First, ideologically the Israelites were very much against monarchy. Samuel very much tried to dissuade the people from having a king by pointing out the tyrannical nature of monarchy – in 1Sam 8:10–18 he indicates that the king has the right to take men for military service; women for domestic service; and land and a tenth part of the harvest, flocks, and herds for the support of the monarchy, and to require state service by both the people and their animals.1. Sweeney, Marvin A. "The Rights and Duties of Kings in Ancient Israel". Second, kings play almost no role in the five books of Moses. In all four books of Moses that precede Deuteronomy, there is no reference to the role of the king of Israel, not even where we would most expect to find it.Goodman, Micah (2023). The Last Words of Moses. Maggid Books An imprint of Koren Publishers Jerusalem Ltd.. See in also how the kingdom may be established to understand that the king has no role in the nation's establishment. Third, in Deut. 17, 16–17 the king is prevented from acquiring many wives, horses and amass a fortune. This has consequences on the powers of the king: wives – he cannot engage in diplomatic marriages, horses – he can't have large armies, fortune – obviously he lacks the economic power to pursue exaggerated kingly interests. "When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall write a copy of this Torah on a scroll before the Levitical priests." (Deut. 17:18) is almost the sole activity permitted to him. The Bible also encourages strong citizenship as shown in the examples of Abraham vs. God in the planned destruction of Sodom and the story of Gideon. We may conclude that while democracy arose in Athens it was not liberal democracy. Some of the liberal part of "liberal democracy" (limited government) arose in Jerusalem and its one of the many contributions of the Jews to the world. It would be difficult to exaggerate its contribution to the development of liberal democracy.
Ancient Greece
Polis citizenship
There is more widespread agreement that the first real instances of citizenship began in ancient Greece. And while there were precursors of the relation in societies before then, it emerged in readily discernible form in the Greek city-states which began to dot the shores of the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea, the Adriatic Sea, and elsewhere around the Mediterranean perhaps around the 8th century BCE. The modern day distinction sometimes termed consent versus descent distinction—that is, citizenship by choice versus birthright citizenship, has been traced back to ancient Greece. And thinkers such as J.G.A. Pocock have suggested that the modern-day ideal of citizenship was first articulated by the ancient Athenians and Romans, although he suggested that the "transmission" of the sense of citizenship over two millennia was essentially a myth enshrouding western civilization. One writer suggests that despite the long history of China, there never was a political entity within China similar to the Greek polis.
To the ancients, citizenship was a bond between a person and the city-state. Before Greek times, a person was generally connected to a tribe or kin-group such as an extended family, but citizenship added a layer to these ties—a non-kinship bond between the person and the state. Historian Geoffrey Hosking in his 2005 Modern Scholar lecture course suggested that citizenship in ancient Greece arose from an appreciation for the importance of freedom. Hosking explained:
The Greek sense of the polis, in which citizenship and the rule of law prevailed, was an important strategic advantage for the Greeks during their wars with Persia.Robert L. Dise, Jr., The Great Courses, Ancient Empires before Alexander, The Teaching Company, 2009, Part 3 of 3, see p. 33 in the guide book, Accessed Nov. 6, 2013,
Greeks could see the benefits of having slaves, since their labor permitted slaveowners to have substantial free time, enabling participation in public life. While Greeks were spread out in many separate city-states, they had many things in common in addition to shared ideas about citizenship: the Mediterranean trading world, kinship ties, the common Greek language, a shared hostility to the so-called non-Greek-speaking or barbarian peoples, belief in the prescience of the oracle at Delphi, and later on the early Olympic Games which involved generally peaceful athletic competitions between city-states. City-states often feuded with each other; one view was that regular wars were necessary to perpetuate citizenship, since the seized goods and slaves helped make the city-state rich, and that a long peaceful period meant ruin for citizenship.