HL INTRO Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States James C. Scott

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

James C. Scott

Last annotated on Sunday September 24, 2017

183 Highlight(s) | 149 Note(s)

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Introduction: A Narrative in Tatters: What I Didn’t Know
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OW did Homo sapiens sapiens come, so very recently in its species history, to live in crowded, sedentary communities packed with domesticated livestock and a handful of cereal grains, governed by the ancestors of what we now call states?
Note:COME È EMERSO LO STATO?

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this template prevailed for more than six millennia
Note:SEIMILA

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agrarian, ecological complex.
Note:LO STATO... ENTITÀ AGRICOLA

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The narrative of this process has typically been told as one of progress,
Note:PROGRESSO?

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this narrative is wrong

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The founding of the earliest agrarian societies and states in Mesopotamia occurred in the latest five percent of our history
Note:5%

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fossil fuel era, beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, represents merely the last quarter of a percent
Note:0.25%

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“Anthropocene,”

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activities of humans became decisive in affecting the world’s ecosystems and atmosphere.
Note:ANTROPOCENE PAUL CRUTZEN

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when it became decisive is in dispute.

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the first nuclear tests,
Note:PROPOSTA INIZIO ANTROPOCENE

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Industrial Revolution and the massive use of fossil fuels.
Note:SECONDA PROPOSTA

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tools—for example, dynamite, bulldozers, reinforced concrete (especially for dams)—to radically alter the landscape.
Note:TERZA PROPOSTA

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Anthropocene began only a few minutes ago.
Note:SECONDO LE TRE PROP

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I suggest that we begin with the use of fire, the first great hominid tool
Note:FUOCO... PROPOSTA DEL LIBRO

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is dated at least 400,000 years ago

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long predating the appearance of Homo sapiens.

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agriculture, and pastoralism, appearing about 12,000 years ago, mark a further leap
Note:DATARE L AGRI

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AGRI... QUINTA PROP

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The other decisive premodern invention was institutional: the state. The first states in the Mesopotamian
Note:SESTA PROP.. STATO

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earlier than about 6,000 years ago,

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how we came to be sedentary, cereal-growing, livestock-rearing subjects governed
Note:COME È PERCHÈ

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the call by an earlier generation of French historians of the Annales School for a history of long-run processes (la longue durée)
Note:ANNALES

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PARADOXES OF STATE AND CIVILIZATION NARRATIVES
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unprecedented concentrations of domesticated plants, animals, and people
Note:CONCENTRAZIONE

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the state form is anything but natural or given.
Note:STATO NATURALE? NO

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Homo sapiens appeared as a subspecies about 200,000
Note:CRONOLOGIA...

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outside of Africa and the Levant no more than 60,000 years ago.

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cccccc

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sedentary communities appears roughly 12,000 years ago.
Note:SEDENTARI

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we lived in small, mobile, dispersed, relatively egalitarian, hunting-and-gathering bands.
Note:IL 95% DELLA NS STORIA

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tax-collecting, walled states pop up in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley only around 3,100
Note:TASSA... INVENZIONE RECENTISSIMA

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four millennia after the first crop domestications and sedentism.
Note:cccccc

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a problem for those theorists who would naturalize the state
Note:IL PROBLEMA DEGLI STATALISTI

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mesmerized by the narrative of progress

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Agriculture, it held, replaced the savage, wild, primitive, lawless, and violent world
Note:NARRATIVA

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the superiority of farming was underwritten by an elaborate mythology
Note:MITOLOGIA

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the sacred grain

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sedentary life itself is superior
Note:L ALTRO ASSUNTO

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fish don’t talk about water!

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massive evidence of determined resistance by mobile peoples everywhere to permanent settlement,
Note:RESISTENZA

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fought against permanent settlement, associating it, often correctly, with disease and state control.
Note:GUERRA AL CAMPO GUERRA ALLO STATO

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Native American peoples

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Sioux and Comanche becoming horseback hunters, traders, and raiders, and the Navajo becoming sheep-based pastoralists.
Note:MOBILITÀ AUMENTATA NN DIMINUITA

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From Thomas Hobbes to John Locke to Giambattista Vico to Lewis Henry Morgan to Friedrich Engels to Herbert Spencer to Oswald Spengler to social Darwinist
Note:IL MITO DEL PROGRESSO

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from households to kindreds to tribes to peoples to the state
Note:SI MIGLIORA

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Rome was the apex, with the Celts and then the Germans ranged behind.
Note:ROMA E I CELTI

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standard narrative has had to be abandoned once confronted with accumulating archaeological evidence.
Note:ARCHEOLOGIA IMBARAZZANTE

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hunters and gatherers—even today in the marginal refugia they inhabit—are nothing like the famished, one-day-away-from-starvation desperados of folklore.
Note:NOMADI E FELICI

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never looked so good—in terms of their diet, their health, and their leisure.
Note:DIETA SALUTE PIACERE

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shift from hunting and foraging to agriculture—a shift that was slow, halting, reversible, and sometimes incomplete—carried at least as many costs as benefits.
Note:COSTI E BENEFICI

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reflected in the biblical story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Note:VERITÀ EDENICA

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it has been assumed that fixed residence—sedentism—was a consequence of crop-field agriculture.
Note:FALSO ASSUNRO

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sedentism is actually quite common in ecologically rich and varied, preagricultural settings—
Note:cccccccf

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crop planting associated with mobility and dispersal except for a brief harvest period.
Note:VERO ANCHE L OPPOSTO

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There are, even today, large stands of wild wheat in Anatolia
Note:GRANO SELVATICO...I BENEFICI DELLE PIANTE NN SONO ESTRANEI AI NOMADI

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Long before the deliberate planting of seeds in ploughed fields, foragers had developed all the harvest tools,
Note:ATTREZZI

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For the layman, dropping seeds in a prepared trench or hole seems decisive.
Note:SEMINA E RACCOLTO... NON DECISIVI

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What had appeared previously to be unambiguous skeletal evidence of fully domesticated sheep and goats has also been called into question.
Note:DUBBI SULLA DOMESTICAZIONE

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identification of a single domestication event both arbitrary and pointless.
Note:NN BASTA UN EVENTO X CONVINCERE

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not entirely wild and yet not fully domesticated either.
Note:VIA DI MEZZO

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multiple, scattered domestications of most major crops (wheat, barley, rice, chick peas, lentils).
Note:FULLER SULLA PRIMA AGRICOLTURA.. PRticata dalle bande

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one can perhaps see this early period as part of a long process, still continuing, in which we humans have intervened to gain more control
Note:OBIEZIONE ALLA CONTRONARRATIVA

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Guillermo Algaze

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“Early Near Eastern villages domesticated plants and animals. Uruk urban institutions, in turn, domesticated humans.”
Note:LA VIA X ADDOMESTICARE L UOMO

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PUTTING THE STATE IN ITS PLACE
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For us—that is to say Homo sapiens—accustomed to thinking in units of one or a few lifetimes, the permanence of the state and its administered space seems an inescapable constant
Note:L ILLUSIONE DELLA PRESENZA STATUALE

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Compounding this institutional bias is the archaeological tradition,
Note:ILLUSIONE ARCHEOLOGICA

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if you built, monumentally, in stone
Note:COSTRUZIONI

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If, on the other hand, you built with wood, bamboo,

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Once written documents—say, hieroglyphics or cuneiform—appear in the historical record, the bias becomes even more pronounced. These are invariably state-centric texts:
Note:SCRITTI.. ANCHE I NOMADI SCRIVEVANO... MA SU MATERIALE DEPERIBILE

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tribute lists, royal genealogies,

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no contending voices,

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state archives left behind,

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And yet the very first states to appear in the alluvial and wind-blown silt in southern Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Yellow River were minuscule affairs both demographically and geographically.
Note:AFFARI MINUSCOLI

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tiny nodes of power surrounded by a vast landscape inhabited by nonstate peoples—aka “barbarians.”
Note:CAGATINE

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On a generous reading, until the past four hundred years, one-third of the globe was still occupied by hunter-gatherers,

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400 ANNI

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Much of the world’s population might never have met that hallmark of the state: a tax collector.
Note:MONDO SENZA TASSE

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we risk missing the key fact that in much of the world there was no state at all until quite recently.
Note:RISCHIO

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Southeast Asia
Note:STATI DEL

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Those of the New World,

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The states in question were only rarely and then quite briefly the formidable Leviathans that a description of their most powerful reign tends to convey. In most cases, interregna, fragmentation, and “dark ages” were more common
Note:LEVIATANI... MA NN TROPPO

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mesmerized by the records of a dynasty’s

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Greece’s four-century-long “Dark Age,” when literacy was apparently lost, is nearly a blank page compared with the vast literature on the plays and philosophy of the Classical Age.
Note:ESEMPIO CLASSICO

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fragility of state forms.

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recognize that for thousands of years after its first appearance, it was not a constant but a variable,
Note:UNA VARIABILE

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This is a nonstate history
Note:LA STORIA DELL UOMO

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flight from the early state domains to the periphery was quite common,
Note:PERIFERIA

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it contradicts the narrative of the state as a civilizing benefactor
Note:CONTRADDIZIONE

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disease was a major factor in the fragility of the early states.
Note:MALATTIE...DIFFICILI DA DOCUMENT

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slavery, bondage, and forced resettlement
Note:DIFFICILI DA DOCUMENTARE

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THUMBNAIL ITINERARY
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domestication of fire, plants, and animals
Note:PRIMO CAP...ADDOM

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be gathered—

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Fire,

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allowing us to resculpt the landscape
Note:FUOCO E CONCENTRAZIONE

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fire rendered a host of previously indigestible plants both palatable and more nutritious.
Note:FUOCO E DIETA

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The domestication of grains—especially wheat and barley, in this case—and legumes furthers the process of concentration.
Note:GRANO E CONCENTRAZ

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domestication of plants and animals was, as I have noted, not strictly necessary to sedentism, but it did create the conditions
Note:ADDOM E SEDENTARI

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resettlement camp involved a lot more drudgery than hunting and gathering and was not at all good for your health.
Note:PIÙ FATICA E PIÚ MALATTIE

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Why anyone not impelled by hunger, danger, or coercion would willingly give up hunting and foraging or pastoralism for full-time agriculture is hard to fathom.
Note:ENIGMA?####

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It is not so clear, for example, to what degree we domesticated the dog or the dog domesticated us.
Note:IL SENSO DELL ADDOM

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It is almost a metaphysical question who is the servant of whom—
Note:IL SERVO

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effort of Homo sapiens to shape the entire environment
Note:ADDOM IN SENSO LATO

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The assemblage of plants, animals, and humans in agricultural settlements created a new and largely artificial environment
Note:AMBIENTE

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make the case that the life of farming is comparatively far narrower experientially and, in both a cultural and a ritual sense, more impoverished.
Note:IMPOVERITA

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The burdens of life for nonelites
Note:VITA DURA

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farming was far more onerous than hunting and gathering.
Note:LA TERRA L È BASSA

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no reason why a forager in most environments would shift to agriculture unless forced
Note:CAMBIO FORZATO

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epidemiological effect of concentration—
Note:MALATTIE DA CONCENTRAZIONE

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measles, mumps, diphtheria, and other community acquired infections—
Note:ELENCO

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Antonine plague and the plague of Justinian in the first millennium CE or the Black Death of the fourteenth century in Europe.
Note:EPIDEMIE

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the state plague of taxes in the form of grain, labor, and conscription
Note:ALTRA PIAGA

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state formation was possible only in settings where the population was hemmed in by desert, mountains, or a hostile periphery.
Note:CARNEIRO E STATO

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the grain hypothesis.

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all classical states were based on grain,
Note:STATO E GRANO

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no cassava states, no sago, yam, taro, plantain, breadfruit, or sweet potato states.
Note:ccccccc

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only grains are best suited to concentrated production, tax assessment, appropriation, cadastral surveys, storage, and rationing.
Note:GRANO E CONCENTRAZIONE

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state formation becomes possible only when there are few alternatives to a diet dominated by domesticated grains.
Note:DIETA E STATO

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the state did not invent irrigation
Note:IRRIGAZIONE

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crop domestication;
Note:ANIMALI

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both were the achievements of prestate peoples.

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maintain, amplify, and expand the agro-ecological setting
Note:NN INVENTA MA MOLTIPLICA

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The early state strives to create a legible, measured, and fairly uniform landscape of taxable grain crops and to hold on this land a large population available for corvée labor,
Note:IL MODELLO COSTANTE

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what is a state anyway?
Note:LA DOMANDA

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Mesopotamia
Note:ES

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is an institutional continuum,

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specialized administrative staff,

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monumental center,

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tax collection

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the last centuries of the fourth millennium BCE
Note:INIZIO

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the southern Mesopotamian alluvium
Note:LA CULLA

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fixed settlements and domesticated grains can be found earlier elsewhere (for example, in Jericho,
Note:COLTIVAZIONI E GRANO VENGONO PRIMA

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Egypt,
Note:ALTRI STATI SUCCESSIVI

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northern Mesopotamia,

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Indus Valley.

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north China, Crete, Greece, Rome, and Maya.
Note:ccccccccc

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What is required is wealth in the form of an appropriable, measurable, dominant grain crop and a population growing it that can be easily administered and mobilized.
Note:COSA SERVE

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wetlands,
Note:LA VARIETÁ NN SI ADDICE ALLO STATO

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the role of coercion in establishing and maintaining the ancient state.
Note:LA QUESTIONE PIÙ DIBATTUTO

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If the formation of the earliest states were shown to be largely a coercive enterprise,
Note:HOBBES CONFUTATO SE...

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social-contract theorists as Hobbes and Locke,

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The early state, in fact, as we shall see, often failed to hold its population;
Note:FALLIMENTI

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prone to collapse or fragmentation.

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Evidence for the extensive use of unfree labor—war captives,
Note:SCHIAVITÙ E GUERRE

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Unfree labor was particularly important in building city walls and roads,
Note:BENI PUBBLICI

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Formal slavery in the ancient world reaches its apotheosis in classical Greece and early imperial Rome,
Note:APOTEOSI DELLA SCHIAVITÙ

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other forms of unfree labor, such as the thousands of women in large workshops in Ur
Note:MESOPOTAMIA... NN SCHIAVI MA FORZATI

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That a good share of the population in Greece and Roman Italy was being held against its will is testified to by slave rebellions
Note:RIBELLIONI

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fleeing and absconding populations in Mesopotamia.
Note:FUGA E OCCULTAMENTO

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Owen Lattimore’s admonition that the great walls of China were built as much to keep Chinese taxpayers in as to keep the barbarians out.
Note:LE MURA CINESI

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the Mayan “collapse,”
Note:PERCHÈ FALLISCE UNO STATO? SE CI FA STARE TUTTI BENE?

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Egyptian “First Intermediate Period,”

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Greece’s “Dark Age.”

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causes are typically multiple,
Note:RISPOSTA DIFFICILE

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As with a patient suffering many underlying illnesses, it is difficult to specify the cause of death.
Note:TANTE MALATTIE CAUSE MISTERIOSE

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the disease effects of the unprecedented concentrations of crops, people, and livestock
Note:PRIMA CAUSA

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ecological effects of urbanism and intensive irrigated agriculture. The former resulted in steady deforestation
Note:DEFORESTAZIONE EALLUVIONI

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subsequent siltation and floods.
Note:ccccc

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salinization of the soil, lower yields, and eventual abandonment of arable land.
Note:SALE

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“Ba-ba” was meant to be a parody of the sound of non-Greek speech.
Note:BARBARO... I 4/5 DEL MONDO

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those outside the state.
Note:cccccccccc

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I want to argue that the era of the earliest and fragile states was a time when it was good to be a barbarian.
Note:VIVEVANO MEGLIO

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a zone of hunting, slash-and-burn cultivation, shellfish collection, foraging, pastoralism, roots and tubers, and few if any standing grain crops. It is a zone of physical mobility,
Note:TERRITORIO BARBARO

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in a word, “illegible” production.
Note:TROPPA DIVERSITÀ VARIAZIONE COMPLESSITÁ

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diversity and complexity,

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Barbarians are not essentially a cultural category; they are a political category
Note:LA CATEGORIA DEI BARBARI

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taxes and grain end.

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those whose households had been registered
Note:LA REGISTRAZIONE... IL NERO

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entered the map.”
Note:FUORI MAPPA

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Why should one go to the trouble of growing a crop when, like the state (!), one can simply confiscate it from the granary.
Note:ASSURDO COLTIVARE

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Raiding is our agriculture.”
Note:PROVERBIO BERBERO

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the tame European cow was easier to “hunt”
Note:I PELLEROSSA SE NE ACCORSERO

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it invested heavily in defenses against raiding and/or it paid tribute—protection money
Note:RISPOSTA... DIFESA E TASSE

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only the barbarians could supply the necessities without which the early state could not long survive: metal ores, timber, hides, obsidian, honey, medicinals, and aromatics.
Note:RAPINA MA ANCHE MOLTO COMMERCIO

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The result of this symbiosis was a cultural hybridity far greater than the typical “civilized-barbarian” dichotomy
Note:ESITO DEI COMMERCI

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the early state or empire was usually shadowed by a “barbarian twin,”
Note:IL GEMELLO BBARBARO... THOMAS BARFIELD

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Celtic trading oppida at the fringe of the Roman Empire

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the long era of relatively weak agrarian states and numerous, mounted, nonstate peoples
Note:L ETÀ DELL ORO DEI BARBARI

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the main commodity traded to the early states was the slave—
Note:LA MERCE PRINCIPALE

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In addition, it was a rare early state that did not engage barbarian mercenaries
Note:SECONDA MERCE PER IMPORTANZA... IL MERCENARIO@@@@@@@

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CHAPTER FIVE Population Control: Bondage and War
Note:5@@@@@@@@@

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In the multitude of people is the king’s honor, but in the want of people is the destruction of the prince.
Note:SERVE LA MASSA MA NON LA SUA VOLONTÀ

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concern over the acquisition and control of population was at the very center of early statecraft.
CONTROLLO