From Primitive Agriculture to Oriental Empires

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From Primitive Agriculture to Oriental Empires
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• First farming communities occurred where humans
  discovered that sowing seeds of wild grain
  produces an additional, regular and reliable
  source of food
• A peasants life was probably less exciting and
  more boring but more secure
• First farmer communities appeared at rain-watered
  wooden hillsides in the Fertile Crescent
• The first forms of farming implied an extensive
  use of land such that large food surpluses could
  not be produced

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From Rain-Watered Lands to Alluvial Deltas

• Farming was conducted at the level of
  family-owned farms, grouped into villages
• Farming in rain-watered lands was
  open-frontier growing populations simply
  spread to cover new lands (which limited
  population density)
• Abundant land and low population density
  increased the economic (and ethical) value of the
  human factor
• The pressure of a growing population caused
  settlers to move outward in all directions
  until they arrived in river valleys where they
  faced completely different farming conditions

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Mesopotamia

• Soon after 4,000 B.C. agricultural settlements
  appear at the lower Tigris and Euphrates
• Seed could easily sown on the soft muck left
  behind after the spring floods
• But until a way was found bringing water
  artificially to their crops, the young shoots
  could not survive the heat of the summer

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The Need for a Managerial Class

• When farmers pushed their fields farther from the
  rivers, a more complicated system of canals and
  dikes became necessary this required engineering
  management
• An indefinite reduplication of village
  communities living at a comfortable distance was
  not possible when the narrow niches gave rise to
  dense population this required conflict
  regulation and the enforcement of rules
• Limited land and dense populations degraded the
  economic (and as a consequence also the ethical)
  value of the human factor

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The Possibility of a Managerial Class

• Fertile soil plus easiness of plow agriculture
  (soft muck, free of stones) produce a large food
  surplus
• A food surplus is a conditio sine qua non for
  occupational specialization, because only
  redistributing food surpluses sets part of the
  population free from food production

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What the Managerial Class Managed

• Astronomical calculations for foreknowing the
  seasons this promoted the development of
  measurement, mathematics and scripture
• Engineering knowledge how to build dams, dikes
  and canals
• Masters of the supra-natural ceremonial
  specialists knowing how to satisfy the forces of
  nature (and the gods who guide them) through
  sacrifices

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Temple Communities

• Emergence of temple communities managed by
  priests
• Priests organized collective irrigation work, the
  redistribution of surplus and the assignment of
  the work force to soil tracts
• Peasants were not owners of a family-sized farm
  but were conscribed to collective work on a slot
  of land assigned to their team
• Craft specialization and trade benefited the
  luxury needs of the priests rather than the
  peasants

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Religious Reflection

• In contrast to the animal kingdom, human
  societies need ideologies to legitimize
  hierarchies they develop moral codes that are
  anchored in peoples emotions (feelings of shame
  and guilt) through socialization, making people
  accept inequality and privilege
• Humans were conceived as slaves to the gods, only
  created to free the gods from labour
• Regular disasters, such as floods and droughts,
  encouraged a spirit of anxiety and deference
  (very much in contrast to HGS)
• The insecurity of life helped to guarantee
  priestly power

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Forces to Form Empires in Alluvial Deltas

• Permanent threat of plunder and of destruction by
  nomad raids from the steppe
• As temple communities grow to cities, inter-city
  conflicts on limited territory became endemic
• The institution of kingship emerges temporary
  war leaders become permanent leaders as warfare
  becomes chronic
• First imperial unity of the city states by about
  2,350 B.C. under Sargon of Akkad Akkadian Empire

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Improving the Instruments of Governance

• About 2,000 B.C., edition of the Sumerian king
  list, a document pretending that Mesopotamia was
  always united under one king
• Bureaucracy and professional army by the time of
  Hammurabi (ca. 1,700 B.C.) there are royal
  judges, tax collectors and troops serving
  throughout the land
• Writing and scripture, which improves accounting
  and recording as administrative techniques
• Money and a commercial economy including
  specialized merchants and artisans

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Ingredients of Civilizations

• Economic surplus
• Territorial state
• Cities
• Occupational specialization
• Scripture
• Money

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Division of Labour to Mutual Benefit
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Other Alluvial Empires
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Egypt from 3,100 B.C. on (Menes)
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India from 2,500 B.C. on (Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa)
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China from 1,760 (Shang Dynasty)
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Oriental Despotism as the Common Denominator

• Although Oriental empires differed greatly in
  appearance and outlook, they shared fundamental
  similarities in how division of labor was
  organized
• Division of labor was rigidly hierarchical and
  exploitative, with a thin hereditary privileged
  class of tax collectors and office holders headed
  by a despotic emperor, on one hand, and troops of
  subjugated, rightless peasant laborers, on the
  other hand
• The middle classes (I.e., artisans and merchants)
  were thin and completely dependent on the demands
  of royal courts or priestly temples
• Historians have therefore characterized Oriental
  empires as cleptocracies and plundering
  machines
• Once these empires have reached the stage of
  civilization, they stagnated in a poverty
  equilibrium trap for millennia
• Impressive achievements in monumental buildings
  cannot distract from the fact that these empires
  created poor human conditions for the masses
• These empires came into existence by sheer
  necessity, not by the free choice of their
  constituents

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Summarizing the Path

• (1) civilization could not emerge from the origin
  of agriculture, rain-watered lands, as long as
  plow-agriculture was not elaborated enough to
  produce surpluses
• (2) civilization emerged at first in alluvial
  deltas where exceptional soil productivity
  created large surpluses
• (3) civilization spread in a leap-frog movement
  from one alluvial delta to the next
• (4) with the use of the iron traction plow (ca.
  2,000 B.C.) civilization could spread to
  rain-watered lands, filling the gaps between the
  large river valleys

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Civilization in Rain-Watered Lands

• In rain-watered lands, civilization took root in
  Crete, the Pelopponesian peninsula, the wooden
  hills of Anatolia and the Iranian plateau and the
  foothills of the Himalaya in Northern India
• Farming communities in rain-watered lands have
  been relatively egalitarian and peaceful
• All of these farmer communities have been
  conquered by warlike nomadic tribes and have been
  transformed from free farmer societies into
  aristocratic states
• Aristocracy could develop into tyranny or
  democracy but this bifurcation only existed in
  rain-watered agricultures, not in river valley
  civilization

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A Pool of Civilizations

• Eurasian belt of civilizations, from East to West
• Including the Great Four Mediterranean Europe,
  Middle East, India, China
• By 500 B.C., in the Axial Age, each of these
  civilizations came to its typical formulation
  under Aristotle, (Mohammed), Buddha, and
  Confucius
• Complicated interaction between nomads of the
  steppe belt and the civilization belt until 1500
• From 500 B.C. to 1500 A.D., there is a balance
  between these civilizations
• From 1500 A.D. on, Europe begins to set off the
  millennial balance