--War is generally accepted to have played a decisive role
in the rise of the state
--War is a necessary condition for the rise of the state,
but not a sufficient one, since wars have been fought in parts of the world
where states never arose.
Environmental circumscription
- A proposal is that circumscribed agricultural land, limiting the amount of arable land and access to it, promoted fighting over land – fighting was promoted by a need to acquire land. This is called environmental circumscription.
- A losing group, instead of fleeing, might be allowed to stay on its land only at the cost of political subjugation by the winners. A tribute or tax could be paid only by the losers producing more than they had before.
- Subordination often involved incorporation into the political unit dominated by the victor. Political entities integrated territorial units, transcending villages in size and decree of organization à the emergence of chiefdoms.
- At this point, warfare became more acute, and through the conquest of chiefdom by chiefdom, the size of political units could increase at a progressively faster rate.
- As autonomous political units increased in size, they decreased in number, with the result that an overarching state could control an entire region with a centralized authority: the emergence of the state.
Political evolution
- Individuals who distinguish themselves in way were, historically, often appointed to political office, and assigned the task of carrying out the administration. This helped to weld an assorted collection of petty states into a single integrated and centralized unit.
- Via the ruler and his kinsmen emerged the nucleus of an upper class.
- A lower class in turn emerged from the prisoners taken in way and employed as servants and slaves.
- War thus contributed to the rise of social classes.
- Each autonomous village has an untapped margin of food productivity, and this margin is squeezed out only when the village is subjugated and compelled to pay taxes in kind. The surplus food then goes to support the rule, this army, and administrators. Thus does the upper class become divorced from food production.
Variations on environmental circumscription
- Resource concentration: if resources are concentrated in a region, forming a distinctly better area, then this becomes much more desirable, and states or at least chiefdoms can emerge, as they did along the Amazon.
- Social circumscription. This idea is attributed to Napoleon Chagnon. In this case there is a high density of population in an area, which can produce effects on people living near the center that are similar to effects of environmental circumscription.
- In the center of Yanomamo territory, villages are larger than at the periphery, and headmen are stronger. Also, offensive and defensive alliances are more common.
- While the Yanomamo retain autonomous village structure, social circumscription could act in concert with environmental effects to prod a population toward a state. This is given as a possible/partial explanation for the Mayan state.
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