ABSTRACT
The political structure seems to have changed with a loss of royal prestige in the later eighteenth century and a gain in the nineteenth, but the gain had been lost by 1880. But the kingdom was so uncentralized that the greater or lesser influence of its centre, the king, on the regions was of little impact compared to the autonomy of the regions at any time. The commercial sector is the 'hot' structure reacting most to events and trends, whereas the political structure occupied a middle ground between the neighbourhood structures which it incorporated and the much wider commercial sector. It is certain that Tio society by 1880 had undergone many changes and belies the title 'traditional society' which might be bestowed on it. It was a society both very old and relatively young, a society in flux. The only documented but perhaps the strongest continual input which maintained this flux was the commercial economy.
