The birth pains of the first states in all their brutishness and oppression
Review of Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott
Scott sets out to demolish the myths that surround the founding of the state, i.e. that it represented progress and longed-for stability, was a natural outgrowth of agriculture, and improved the living standards of its subjects as in a contract with power. Though I am not surprised that the establishment of the first states was a rough process, Scott provides a very interesting overview and interpretation of the available evidence. He covers a huge range of issues.
First, the adoption of agriculture – at the expense of hunter-gatherers and pastoralism – was a long and continuous process over thousands of years, from the collection of seeds from wild fruit to the most sophisticated breeding techniques to create harvestable varieties. There was no decisive tipping point, but an accumulation of innovation, including rejection and re-adoption of proven methods.
Second, even once the method was developed and accepted (by about 8000 BCE), it took more than 4000 years for the "state" to emerge, here defined as an organized polity with a hierarchical elite, the construction of walls to separate it from the lands outside, tax collection, and eventually a writing system to keep accounts. There are, Scott argues, many reasons for the long delay, in particular that it principally benefited elites and forced lower classes into unhealthy, repetitive labor that did not compare at all well with the hunter-gatherer-like style. Indeed, he believes, the raison d'être for the agricultural state was to enable this elite to live off the surplus fruits of the labor of others.
Third, to make the establishment of the first states possible, a number of conditions had to come together that were both stringent and tenuous. They needed: 1) an alluvial replenishment of fertile soil, such as the well known yearly Nile flood plains. 2) This provided the means by which to grow, process, and store grains. Grains were used because the harvest times were known, they were easy to transport and store – hence 3) were taxable – and could not be hidden from tax collectors as easily as, say, tubers. 4) Populations could not be mobile, but had to be bound to the land – the walls were thus designed to keep them in, perhaps as slaves, as much as for external security. If the population fled or died, the state would collapse. 5) The initial environmental conditions tended to degrade over time, due to soil exhaustion, deforestation and erosion, siltation and the like.
Fourth, once established, the state was a hotbed of disease, vulnerable to "barbarians" seeking pillage as well as to political exploitation that would undermine its legitimacy and degenerate into civil war – it was not some unshakeable bastion of stability and higher civilization, but a polity based on coercion. Indeed, the earliest states in Mesopotamia had disappeared by the end of the 3rd millenium BCE, centuries before the mysterious general collapse of the Bronze Age Empires, with Egypt being a notable exception.
Fifth, the "barbarians", a term that Scott uses ironically, flourished alongside the new states, at once as trader-dependents and adversaries all too willing to steal the grain stores and luxury manufactures. They often had to be bought off with bribes to avoid violence, but were also the providers of slaves they had captured from competing groups. This is a pattern that explains the constant attacks of barbarians against the Roman Empire: it was a highly organized society with surpluses for the picking and the wealth to bribe them to stop for a time.
This is a very enjoyful review of concepts, but I can't say that any of it was completely new or surprising to me. It clarified the timing of certain events, but that is about all, at least for me, as an amateur historian. There is much speculation, relying on examples of other empires as quasi-sociological evidence. The writing is clear, if a bit repetitious and academic, at the level of high undergraduate.
For an overview of these issues, my review: