Origin and history of statecraft

Old English cræft (West Saxon, Northumbrian), -creft (Kentish), "power, physical strength, might," from Proto-Germanic *krab-/*kraf- (source also of Old Frisian kreft, Old High German chraft, German Kraft "strength, skill;" Old Norse kraptr "strength, virtue"). The ultimate etymology is uncertain.

The sense expanded in Old English to include "skill, dexterity; art, science, talent" (via a notion of "mental power"), which led by late Old English to the meaning "trade, handicraft, employment requiring special skill or dexterity," also "something built or made." The word still was used for "might, power" in Middle English.

The meaning "small boat" is recorded by 1670s, probably from a phrase similar to vessels of small craft and referring either to the trade they did or the seamanship they required, or perhaps it preserves the word in its original sense of "power."

"political organization of a country; supreme civil power, the government; the whole people considered as a body politic," 1530s, from special use of state (n.1); this sense grew out of the meaning "condition of a country" with regard to government, prosperity, etc. (late 13c.), from Latin phrases such as status rei publicæ "condition (or existence) of the republic."

The sense of "a semi-independent political entity under a federal authority, one of the bodies politic which together make up a federal republic" is from 1774. The British North American colonies occasionally were called states as far back as 1630s.

State rights in U.S. political sense is attested from 1798 (the form states rights is recorded by 1824): the doctrine that states retain all rights and privileges not delegated to the federal government in the Constitution, in its extreme form including the power and right of sovereignty.

Often contrasted with ecclesiastical power in phrase church and state (1580s). State socialism attested from 1850 as "a scheme of government favoring enlargement of state functions as the directest way to achieve socialist goals."