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Subtitle: A Deep History of the Earliest
States, Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 2017, 312 pgs., index, bibliography,
notes, illustrations, paperback
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Reviewer comments:
This is a very polemical work written in a highly defensive style as the author
attempts to promote his theories about the development of the first cities in
southern Mesopotamia. He provides much useful information, but draws his own
very dubious conclusions (to say the least). The prose is very combative in
style and vocabulary but it is difficult to determine exactly what he opposes
the most: despotic government (which he calls 'state') - or sedentary versus
nomadic living - or grain consumption versus meat and berries of the
'hunter-gatherer'. He devotes so many pages and attention to disparaging grain
consumption versus meat that I wonder if he is part of the current 'paleo' diet
fad.
He frequently uses technical "scientific' vocabulary to impress the
reader. One finds the term 'domus' frequently. the large Webster dictionary
does not contain the term so the reader has to guess at his meaning. But
'domus' was a Latin term for the relatively extensive home of the wealthy elite
Romans - so perhaps Dr. Scott is using it to mean the typical palace of the
'lugal - ruler' in these cities. More likely, he is simply trying to be
pretentious. In his prose he frequently does state that a conclusion is his
opinion - conjecture, presumption, assumption, supposition. This or that might
have happened, or may be extrapolated from analogy.
First: He insists on terming these cities with their surrounding territories as
'states'. He has repeated his term beyond count throughout the book. They were
NOT states. The 'state' is a very specific term - a modern western European
abstract concept that originated in the Renaissance era to take the place of
the discarded 'great chain of being' as the concept for legitimizing the
actions of rulers by assigning responsibility to one or more GODS. The 'state'
exists only in the minds of people who believe in it as their justification for
rule and act accordingly. He defines his idea of 'state' purely in secondary
physical (mostly archeological) terms. Despite the ready availability of
documents, he does not 'ask' the actual inhabitants of Mesopotamia what they
thought about the societies in which they lived. They recognized implicitly the
necessity of every social group to have a leader (ruler) to prevent internal
(in society) chaos and one or more gods to ward off external chaos and to which
the rulers continually sought to justify their actions. Dr. Scott does not even
mention the role of religion and religious belief in these societies.
He apparently is a materialist who cannot imagine that anyone would consider
transendental reality.
Second he claims that the essential defining factor on which all this
developing civilization depended was grain. But grain was first cultivated not
in southern Mesopotamia but in the northern foothills and plateaus. What was
the defining factor characteristic of agricultural civilization in southern
Mesopotamia (and also Egypt and China, which he includes) was irrigation rather
than rainfall agriculture. This was well described by Karl Whitfogel years ago
in his study Oriental Despotism Yes,
these societies had highly bureaucratic and nearly despotic central government
command structures in which the rulers shared authority and economic power with
the local priesthoods. They had to have central government command in order to
create and maintain elaborate irrigation systems.
He explicitly claims that without 'grain' there could be no 'states' (meaning
cities). but there were such cities in the foothills and plateaus north of the
river delta. Of course there could be no villages even, let alone cities,
without significant grain production surplus to the consumption of the farmers
themselves, otherwise the whole economy based on specialization of labor with
many artisans and government functionaries who consume food without having
produced it could not develop. But the agricultural surplus did not need to be
created by the city population itself. It could be and frequently was obtained
by trade. The late medieval European 'agricultural revolution' also enabled the
development of cities that were able to trade local surplus for imported goods
and services.
Third, there are other exaggerations stemming from these two basic mistakes.
For instance, the matter of taxation. Tax is another term for tribute and it
certainly was a characteristic of these societies as it has been ever since
(and before). But the author places great stress on the fact that the records
indicate that people 'fled' from one place to another to escape taxation. Of
course people do that but not only from taxation, don't forget military service
(or corvee labor) or slavery. Now, in America. people are fleeing from one
state (different meaning) to another to escape high taxation.
Another idea the author presents is that the 'states' conducted offensives to
capture slaves due to population shortages and they needed more people to
produce their grain. But according to the actual inscriptions of the greatest
of the conquerors, such as Sargon, they were indeed seeking to expand their
territorial dominion, not necessarily acquire people. In reverse to his idea,
population increases required more agricultural land. In Mesopotamia local
inhabitants frequently became slaves due to owing debt and the rulers
periodically issued decrees freeing them from debt. Rulers did NOT encourage
slavery. BTW, this debt was not due to failure to repay a loan, it was due to
failure to deliver the required amount of grain.
The author digresses to Ancient Greece and Rome - real slave societies - but
both coped with population increases (not decreases initially) by founding
colonies to which they sent surplus people. And the Romans especially would
confiscate land to provide it to their military supporters.
The boastful inscriptions of Mesopotamian rulers stressed that they had added
land to the society, not so much that they had added population. And they did
so by order of their 'GOD' and prided themselves with the construction of
Temples. The secular rulers even performed annual liturgies showing their
continued obiesence to the city GOD.
What the author does show us is that rulers of the earliest cities practiced
domination just as they do today. They expropriated a significant fraction of
the production of the common people for their own consumption just as they do
today. Actually it was mostly the reverse - they and their people believed that
it was the GOD who owned everything, including the means of production, and the
temple and palace officials were rationing a share to the workers. They
practiced the same kind of authority as some economists today term 'public
choice'. Their inscriptions frequently expressed the same justifications for
their actions as those today - statements boasting that everything they
accomplished was for the betterment of the people. Some rulers (including both
the palace and the temple authorities) claimed that they were agents of the GOD
as owners of the land, hence the farmers and others worked for them so
delivered to the temple grain storage each year's harvest and then they were
paid daily rations. Remember that a grain harvest comes once (or sometimes
twice) a year and must be stored centrally, but consuption is daily.
When the society grew too large and the agricultural and other production and
distribution became to complex for a few officials to supervise, then some
rulers (either palace or -most often - temple officials) gave or assigned land
by lease to friends or subordinates and then charged rent (in form of taxes and
corvee labor). At that it soon became a political struggle between the rulers
and the appointed local collectors who attempted to take increasingly large
cuts out of the taxation. One method of domination was for the rulers to
establish the official relative value of labor and production, (wage and price
controls) initially recording this using money as a standard of value. Money is
the metric by which the relative values of different things (including labor)
can be quantified. Early money was actually simply notations on clay tablets
showing assets and liabilities - from the relative values of production and
consumption of goods and services.
If the reader can ignore the use of the term 'state' and consider irrigation
rather than grain as the basis for the agricultural community, the author
provides a 'valuable' support for libertarian politics today.
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Preface
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Introduction - A Narrative in Tatters: What I
Didn't Know
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Chapter One - The Domestication of Fire,
Plants Animals, and ... Us
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Chapter Two - Landscaping the World: The
Domus Complex
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Chapter Three - Zoonoses: A Perfect
Epidemiological Storm
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Chapter Four - Agro-ecology of the Early
State
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Chapter Five - Population Control: Bondage
and War
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Chapter Six - Fragility of the Early State:
Collapse as Disassembly
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Chapter Seven - The Golden Age of the
Barbarians
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Here are some alternative views of
Mesopotamia and especially aspects that Dr. Scott ignores such as ideas,
beliefs, religion, motivations.
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Podany, Amanda - Ancient Mesopotamia: Life
in the Cradle of Civilization
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Podany, Amanda - Brotherhood of Kings: How
International Relations Shaped The Ancient near East
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Podany, Amanda- Weavers, Scribes, and
Kings: A New History of he Ancient Near East
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Whittfogel, Karl - Oriental Despotism
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Landes, David & Joel Mokyr & William
Baumol - The Invention of Enterprise
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Wilson, Andrew R - Understanding Imperial
China: Dynasties, Life, and Culture
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Roaf, Michael -Cultural atlas of the World
- Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East
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Bates, John & Jaromir Malek -Cultural
Atlas of the World- Ancient Egypt
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Hitti, Philip K. -The Near East in
History; A 5000 Year Story
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Saggs, H. W. F. The Greatness that was
Babylon: A sketch of the ancient civilization of the Tigris-Euphrates
valley
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