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Over the years, many writers have claimed that the State has some kind of noble mission. Few have seen things with such clarity as the German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer. The State, Oppenheimer persuasively argues, is always born in the conquest of one group by another. The conquerors then set themselves up as the government and extract tribute in the form of taxes from the conquered. _x000B_ Furthermore, he argues, the State can have originated in no other way and to advance his argument, he draws on vast historical knowledge with dramatic examples of the beginnings of the State from prehistoric to primitive, from huntsmen to herders, from the Vikings to modern day._x000B_