BY JEB SMITH

Politics in the Shire Traditionalism vs. Modernity

Of all the fantastic realms and peoples imagined by Middle-earth creator Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, none more accurately portrayed who he was, nor are more beloved by his audience, than the Hobbits of the Shire. From movie watchers to book readers, modern audiences are enthralled by the peacefulness, quiet simplicity and charm of these characters and their lives, free from modern annoyances and obligations.

Tolkien incorporated his worldview into every aspect of his mythology. Thus, the free peoples generally were examples of what he believed to be just and how things ought to be, while forces under the Shadow lived out what Tolkien thought was evil. Many believe that, more than any other of his creations, the Shire represented what Tolkien thought was ideal in all modes of life, politics included. After all, Tolkien described himself as a hobbit in all but size.

We will examine the Shire’s political system and discover that it closely follows the Professor’s beloved area of study, Anglo-Saxon England, mixed in with the Victorian and Edwardian England of his childhood. Meanwhile, the Scouring of the Shire represented modernity’s introduction into politics and the replacement of a king with a self-seeking politician.

Concerning Hobbits

The Shire seems to be Tolkien’s “local level” preference in governance, while his form of kingship represents his more distant, realm-wide preferred form, each an aspect of the same decentralized anarcho-monarchism Tolkien was known for, closely resembling that of Anglo-Saxon England and the Catholic feudal kingship realms of Christendom (700-1300) that existed during the “early” and “high” Middle Ages.

The Shire’s culture was much like the Victorian era rural West Midlands where he lived as a child, mixed in with Anglo-Saxon Mercia. Hobbits even dressed in bright colors as the medieval peasants did. Some have misunderstood the Shire as a democracy, but  this was not so. It was more a rural aristocracy under a feudal monarchy, as we will see.

They have no written laws, no police [except a sheriff or two] nor any civil officers except for the mayor…this last little corner of unspoiled life within Middle-earth…they enjoy  a virtually Edenic existence…the life of the Shire constitutes, in fact, Tolkien’s vision of life as it  is supposed to be.

– Ralph C. Wood, The Gospel According to Tolkien [Westminster John Knox Press, 2003]

The Shire was a libertarian’s Disneyland. We read that it had “hardly any government.” The only police force were volunteer shirriffs (sheriffs) who carried no weapons and wore regular clothes. They did not harass, fine, or imprison hobbits but guarded the borders and returned stray animals. The sheriff, Robin Smallburrow,  summed up his duties as “walking around the country and seeing  folk and hearing the news and knowing where the good beer was.”

A very tribal and hereditary society, like those of the early Medieval Ages, hobbit families passed down their ancestral lands through the generations, and families governed their own matters. Tolkien tells us that, in the Shire, “Families, for the most part, managed their own affairs” where “many generations of relatives lived in (comparative) peace together in one ancestral and many tunneled mansion. All hobbits were, in any case, clannish.” In The Hobbit, we read that “the Bagginses have lived in the neighborhood of the Hill for time out of mind.”.

Extraordinarily decentralized, the Shire was divided into four farthings, east, west, north and  south, to which had been added Buckland and later the Westmarch, and then into even smaller folklands, “which still bore the names of  some of the old leading families.” This is reminiscent of Tolkien’s beloved Anglo-Saxon England, which operated with a mix of smaller autonomous clans under a monarchy. The Anglo Saxon’s “hundreds” were the divisions of families within each Shire (county).

For the hobbits, as in medieval society, family name and tradition mattered, Tolkien informs us that “In dealing with hobbits, it is important to remember who is related to whom, and in what degree.”[1] When Frodo, Sam, and Pippin met high elves in the Woody End of the Shire, the first thing Frodo asked was, “Who are you, and who is your lord?” The response was “I am… Gildor Inglorion of the House of Finrod.” The first and most important thing to know about a person was who their lord was (what customs they follow) and their heritage.

The mayor of the largest town in the Shire, Michel Delving was the only elected position in the Shire, and this, I think, had misled some to conclude the Shire was a democracy. But even for this one elected position, the election was aristocratically conducted. As Robert Foster informs us the electorate “seems to have been chosen from among popular and responsible members of the working class.” Further, in Anglo-Saxon England, each Shire (county), like Tolkien’s Shire, usually had a mayor, council, assembly (Anglo-Saxon moot), and chief sheriff elected by the elders. These counties had complete or near-complete autonomy from the crown or any outside forces.

The mayor’s most important duty was to deliver the mail. Hobbiton and Bywater’s post office were so small they needed volunteers to help deliver Bilbo’s birthday party invitations. The post office and the police “were the only Shire-services, and the messengers were the most numerous, and much busier of the two.” In other words, the government was basically the post office.

As in the feudal system, there was no state or regulatory body in the Shire, governance was truly conservative in that the law did not change. Instead, Tolkien tells us, the Shire was governed by ancient law (not yet written down in the Shire as in many areas during the Middle Ages) and traditions that were just. In what could also be an excellent summary of medieval politics, Tolkien wrote of the Shire’s laws.

There remained, of course, the ancient tradition concerning the high king at Fornost…they attributed to the king of old all their essential laws; and usually kept the laws of free will, because they were the rules [as they said] both ancient and just.

– J. R. R. Tolkien, “Of the Ordering of the Shire” in The Lord of the Rings [Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2012]

Thanes and Kings

The hobbits of the Shire had initially been within the realm of the high king in Fornost, Argeleb the Second. Like a feudal lord, Argeleb gave the lands of the Shire to the hobbits in exchange for their allegiance, and to maintain the great bridge within their sphere to facilitate the dispatch of the king’s messengers. Hobbits later sent some volunteer bowmen to help the high king in the last battle against the Witch-King of Angmar. Otherwise, hobbits were given full autonomy and self-rule, free from any centralized government, the same as many enjoyed under Medieval Kingship. Tolkien explained, “While there was still a King, they were in name his subjects, but they were, in fact, ruled by their own chieftains and meddled not at  all with events in the world outside.”

The hobbits’ obligation to maintain the bridge for the king’s messengers, to send volunteer bowmen in war, and take the king as their lord were the primary requirements of Anglos-Saxon Thanes. In Anglo-Saxon England, a thane was granted lands from a king and ruled until the king returned.

After the northern kingdom fell, hobbits “chose from their own chiefs a Thain to hold the authority of the king, that was gone.”The thain was the master of the Shire moot (also derived from Anglo-Saxon customs) and the hobbitry at arms. But a muster and moot were rare. At the time of the War of the Ring, “the Thainship had ceased to be more than a nominal dignity.”

The thainship was passed hereditarily down the Took family line to the chief Took. Hobbits held the Took family in high respect because of this hereditary position and their wealth. Bilbo himself was a very well-to-do hobbit, and Bag End, his hobbit-hole, was the establishment of an upper class gentlehobbitt. In the Shire, the hobbits admired the wealthy and aristocrats.[2]

When Aragorn was crowned king of Gondor, the Shire again fell under the jurisdiction of the realm of Arnor and, therefore, under Aragorn’s authority. King Aragorn gave the hobbits full autonomy once again.

Daily Life

Most hobbits were self-sufficient farmers, but various family and small privately owned trades such as Millers, Smiths, Ropers, and Cartwrights flourished. In an agricultural area like the Shire, where individuals produce for their own benefit, hobbits had freedom in their choice of work. They took pride in their work, working with their hands, crafting what they desired. Using their creative abilities, they did not engage in mindless repetitive industrial work for a large, impersonal corporation.

There was also liberty to do as you pleased, when you pleased. There was no splitting up of families or dumping your children off at government funded daycares (public education) or  “going to work” (a modern industrialist concept). When Gandalf and the dwarves came through with fireworks for Bilbo’s long expected birthday party, crowds of all ages gathered, rumors started, and  chatting ensued. Old Gaffer Gamgee didn’t even pretend to be working. Hobbits could up and leave what they were doing when they wanted to since they were their own masters, either as craftsmen or farmers.

The hobbits of the Shire enjoyed true liberty, free from any authoritarian governmental control. There were no politicians seeking election so as to regulate and redistribute wealth, setting one hobbit against another; there were no banks or bankers, stock markets, bureaucrats, regulations, or industry to manipulate the economy. It was a libertarian’s dream system of an agrarian society led by moral families and aristocratic gentle hobbits.

No department of un-motorized vehicles, no internal revenue service, no government officials telling people who may and may not have laying hens in their backyards, no government schools lining up hobbit children in geometric rows to teach regimental behavior and groupthink, no government-controlled currency, and no political institution even capable of collecting tariffs or foreign goods.

-Jonathan Witt and Jay W. Richards, The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom That Tolkien Got and the West Forgot [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014]

Buckland

Across the Brandywine River was the small hobbit colony of Buckland.[3] Two of The Lord of the Rings’ main characters were from Buckland—Merry Brandybuck and Frodo Baggins. Frodo grew up in Buckland before he was adopted by Bilbo and moved to Hobbiton. Buckland operated as a small independent country with full autonomy led by the master of the Hall, whose position was inherited hereditarily as the Brandybuck family’s head. Merry would later become master of Buckland.

The Scouring of the Shire

Perhaps unfamiliar to those who have only watched the movies, when the hero Hobbits return to The Shire, they find it has been transformed, flipped upside down. Their paradise, no, Tolkien’s paradise, has been corrupted by the infusion of modernity and needs rescuing. Perhaps in all of this, Tolkien is also telling the modern reader that our society also needs rescuing. The solution? To return to the ways things were before modernity tore them asunder, to go forward by looking backwards.

The Scouring of the Shire bears a striking resemblance to the state of the English homeland in Tolkien’s time. The hobbits left the Shire to keep the power of the One Ring from falling into the hands of Sauron. Sam and Frodo destroyed the ring and Merry and Pippin fought in battles in a war that encompassed all of Middle-earth. These endeavors decided the fate of the whole of Middle-earth and were undertaken to defend homelands like the Shire against tyrants like Sauron and Saruman. In a similar way, Tolkien left his home and fought in World War I, a war engaged in to keep England free. However, when upon returning, the hobbits (and Tolkien) found their homeland under the control of a socialistic, capitalist, industrial, totalitarian government overseen by ruffians and ruled by a mysterious entity called “Sharky”. The returning hobbits leap into action, organize and lead a rebellion against these tyrants, and overthrow “Sharky” and his gatherers and sharers. And we find out that the mysterious “Sharky” is none other than Saruman, totally fallen, and come to the Shire with his broken slave Wormtongue, to wreak petty vengeance.

As recorded in Democracy: The God That Failed by Hans Hermann Hoppe, WWI marked the death of monarchies. The world turned toward democracies and tyranny overcame the west.[4] This was all too personal to Tolkien, who had known the agrarian and libertarian days of “old England.” As a child, he saw what industrialization did to his beloved countryside, and he then saw the horrors of mechanized war and the demise of the old monarchical system of Europe.

The world was changing as democracies replaced the old order, and ever-increasing government regulation, standardization, centralization, taxation, socialism, capitalism, conformity, secularism, and overall governmental interference skyrocketed to unheard-of levels. Tolkien scholar Bradley Birzer wrote, “Evil does not always come in the form of war or totalitarian terror. Tolkien saw in the impersonal, machine-driven capitalism of the twentieth century, and especially in its handmaiden, the democratic bureaucracies of the western world a soft form of tyranny almost as oppressive as fascism and Communism.”

Likewise, when the hobbits returned, they found their libertarian paradise in ruins. The tyrant Saruman had taken over the Shire and instituted a totalitarian, socialist, capitalist, industrialized government. The ancient feudal laws and customs that had been unaltered through generations, based on the arrangement between the hobbits’ ancestors and the ancient king, had been trampled on by those who had placed themselves in authority. Liberty had been replaced with tyranny. There were now a multitude of rules in the Shire. Similarly, in Tolkien’s day, the entire west succumbed to politicians who continually increased rules yet trampled on, ignored, reinterpreted, or abandoned existing “outdated” laws.

Most government intrusions start with something small and keep growing until the people can no longer control it. In the Shire, it all started with beer. The hobbit Robin Smallburrow recounted, “The chief doesn’t hold with beer. Leastways, that is how it started.” Once the government took some, it began to take all. First, it targeted individual businesses like the Green Dragon and the Floating Log. Eventually, the Inns of the Shire were closed. Over time, laws were passed that regulated food and housing, and the Shire’s number one export, pipeweed. Both pipeweed and beer were confiscated.

Criticizing those in power was outlawed as Frodo and the hobbits found out on their return when they spoke out against some of the new oppressive laws. They were informed that “talk of that sort isn’t allowed.” There was a significant enlargement of the police state as hundreds of sheriffs were now needed to enforce the new rules, and any hobbit that resisted was thrown in jail.

Bureaucracy and socialism were instituted in the Shire. There were groups of “gatherers and sharers…going around counting and measuring and taking off to storage, supposedly for ‘fair distribution.’” Yet it just ended with, as one hobbit said, “Them getting more, and we get less.” The hobbit Hob said to Merry, “They do more gathering than sharing, and we never see most of the stuff again.” Farmer Cotton and his daughter, Rosie (and future wife  of Sam Gamgee), both referred to the government’s gathering and sharing as thieving.

The self-sufficient organic farming community was decimated as the gatherers and sharers confiscated the food, pipeweed, and beer. The Shire was transformed into a industrial, publicly owned economy. With their production stolen by the “gatherers and sharers for fair redistribution,” the small organic farms were forced out and replaced by government-owned factories where hobbits now worked as hardworking laborers. When Sam saw the ruination of the Shire in Galadriel’s mirror in Lothlórien, and saw “lots of folks were busy at work,” he stated, “There is some devilry at work in the Shire.”Factories poured out filth that polluted the water, and cutting down trees was also rampant. One hobbit cried, “They cut down trees and let ’em lie.”

Money production and progress were all that the new government desired. When hobbits maintained private property and kept what they produced, they took care of the land, but that was all gone due to the gatherers and sharers. As a result, factories poisoned the  waterways and spewed black smoke. Trees were cut down for production, and natural beauty was sacrificed for progress. Now that land was government owned and not loved and cared for by individual hobbits and their families, only production mattered. Gardens were not kept. Trees were cut down. Well kept hobbit holes were abandoned and replaced with ugly houses. Hospitality and fellowship had disappeared as most everyone now stayed indoors. The change in government affected the hobbits’ culture, environment, and happiness.

Farmer Cotton said it started with the greedy capitalist hobbit Lotho Sackville-Baggins, aka “Pimple.” Although he had become wealthy through trade with Isengard sending tobacco south, “he wanted to own everything himself, and then order other folk about…he already did own a sight more than was good for him; and he was always grabbing more.” As his wealth grew, so did his ambitions and he began to purchase land, farms, tobacco plantations, and mills in the Shire. He brought in the ruffians, imprisoned the mayor of Michel Delving, and took over the government to help his own business and power, becoming the chief sheriff.

As in our modern world, the rich and powerful on the Right, capitalists, merged with power on the Left, socialists, to oppress the people for their advantage. They forced heavy taxes on the hobbits and pushed them off the land into factories to work as slave-wage earners. Mills were turned into factories “full o wheels and outlandish contraptions” because “Pimple’s idea was to grind more and faster.”

Previously hobbits had farmed in a leisurely fashion while also focused on singing, enjoying a mug of ale, eating eggs and bacon, nurturing friendship, working in the garden, talking, smoking a pipe, or having a cup of tea. Thinking, going on hikes, fishing, and similar pursuits took up much of their time. But now, they were busy laborers forced to work for the new totalitarian government to increase its wealth through taxation. Modernity had replaced the old order. The merging of capitalists and socialist totalitarians placed efficiency and profit above the hobbits’ well-being, and was bought  at the expense of the environment, leisure, beauty, freedom of mind, and happiness.

What occurred in the Shire perfectly fit the entire west’s transformation in Tolkien’s lifetime as it accepted modernity, and these radical changes heavily influenced Tolkien. In a speech about our modern world in 1958, Tolkien said, “I do not see Sauron, but I see that Saruman has many descendants.” The white wizard was the one who instituted the crony capitalist industrial, socialist government in the Shire. It was not just far away in Nazi Germany or elsewhere in Europe where tyranny ruled; it was in his beloved England. I think Samwise spoke for Tolkien when after his long journey across Middle-earth, he arrived back home and saw his homeland changed. “This is much worse than Mordor,” said Sam, “much worse in a way. It comes home to you, as they say, because it is home, and you remember it before it was ruined.” I also think Tolkien was disappointed to find so many in England willing to accept coercion. Robin Smallburrow of the Shire said, “Even in the Shire, there are some as like minding others folks business.”

This tyranny, this evil that intruded into the Shire was overthrown by the hobbits, and peace, and happiness were restored by restoring the ancient customs, culture, and laws of the Shire. It was a victory for the reactionary hobbit heroes like Sam, Merry, Pip, and Frodo.

Footnotes

[1] Like many of the tribes in the early Middle Ages hobbits believed  knowledge of their ancestors was vital. These peasants could recite ancestors back for generations, Historian Frederic Seebohm writes, “Even the common people keep their genealogies, and can not only readily recount the names of  their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, but even refer back to the sixth or  seventh generation, or beyond them.” 508 (Tolkien 1993) 509 (Foster 1978)

[2] Some interpret Bilbo as a type of aristocratic manor lord who receives rent from the Gamgees and other tenants around Bag End. In The Hobbit, Bilbo is revealed  as a wealthy landowner with a luxurious hobbit hole, the best in the surrounding area. Bilbo also carried the title of “Esquire.” The British commonly gave this identification to prominent landowning and respected community members. Like Bilbo, these upper-class British landowners did not have to work and  instead lived off the rent tenants paid on their lands; many such manor lords received their obligations in rents under feudalism. In Anglo-Saxon England, the peasants rented from the Thegns, who were also wealthy landowners. Like lords in the Middle Ages, this enabled them, like Bilbo, to pursue other vocations such as writing, knighthood, or going on adventures. Thus some believe the local holes around Bag End were rented from Bilbo. One of these hobbit holes is owned by the Gaffer Gamgee, and Sam refers to Frodo as “master,” which also implies some similar established order.

[3] When the Black Riders were seen in Buckland, The Horn-cry of Buckland alerted the hobbits to the danger, and they quickly armed themselves. During the Middle Ages, certain villages required peasants to be armed to act as emergency musters for invasion or even criminal activity. Absent the police force; the citizens were the police force. Like in Buckland, someone would sound out an alarm, and the entire town was quickly armed and ready to search and find the criminal. This method avoids paying upkeep for full-time police and is more effective because you have a wider area searching at once rather than a few police responding.

[4] See my book Missing Monarchy: Correcting Misconceptions About The Middle Ages, Medieval Kingship, Democracy, And Liberty.