ts they formed were tribal unions, not national states.

Such a union or federation can be conceived of, structurally, as a cone.
At the top point of the cone there was the person of the ruler of the
federation. He was a member of the leading family or clan of the leading
tribe (the two top layers of the cone). If we speak of the Toba as of
Turkish stock, we mean that according to our present knowledge, this
leading tribe (_a_) spoke a language belonging to the Turkish language
family and (_b_) exhibited a pattern of culture which belonged to the
type called above in Chapter One as "North-western Culture". The next
layer of the cone represented the "inner circle of tribes", i.e. such
tribes as had joined with the leading tribe at an early moment. The
leading family of the leading tribe often took their wives from the
leading families of the "inner tribes", and these leaders served as
advisors and councillors to the leader of the federation. The next lower
layer consisted of the "outer tribes", i.e. tribes which had joined the
federation only later, often under strong pressure; their number was
always much larger than the number of the "inner tribes", but their
political influence was much weaker. Every layer below that of the
"outer tribes" was regarded as inferior and more or less "unfree". There
was many a tribe which, as a tribe, had to serve a free tribe; and there
were others who, as tribes, had to serve the whole federation. In
addition, there were individuals who had quit or had been forced to quit
their tribe or their home and had joined the federation leader as his
personal "bondsmen"; further, there were individual slaves and, finally,
there were the large masses of agriculturists who had been conquered by
the federation. When such a federation was dissolved, by defeat or inner
dissent, individual tribes or groups of tribes could join a new
federation or could resume independent life.

Typically, such federations exhibited two tendencies. In the case of the
Hsiung-nu we indicated already previously that the leader of the
federation repeatedly attempted to build up a kind of bureaucratic
system, using his bondsmen as a nucleus. A second tendency was to
replace the original tribal leaders by members of the family of the
federation leader. If this initial step, usually first taken when "outer
tribes" were incorporated, was successful, a reorganization was
attempted: instead of using tribal units in war, military