Formation of Large Agrarian Empires
* Article: A theory for the formation of large agrarian empires. Peter Turchin.
URL = http://thesciencenetwork.org/docs/BB3/Turchin_AgrarianEmpires.pdf
Abstract
"Before the Industrial Revolution the greater part of the inhabitable world was occupied by small-scale societies and large territorial states were, comparatively speaking, a rarity. Nevertheless, between 3000 BCE and 1800 CE there were at least 60 agrarian “mega-empires” that controlled at the peak an area equal to or greater than one million of squared kilometers. What were the social forces that kept together such huge agrarian states? A clue is provided by the empirical observation that over 90 percent of megaempires originated at steppe frontiers — zones of interaction between nomadic pastoralists and settled agriculturalists. I propose a model for one route to mega-empire. The model is motivated by the imperial dynamics in East Asia (more specifically, the interface between the settled farmers of East Asia and the nomads of Central Asia). It attempts to synthesize recent developments from theories of cultural evolution with insights from previous work by anthropologists on nomad/farmer interactions."
Discussion
Peter Turchin:
"Understanding the rise and fall of empires (large territorial states) is one of the most important research directions in world history. Beginning with Gibbon (1932), most theoretical efforts have been directed to the second part—the causes of imperial disintegration and fragmentation (Tainter 1988). The first part of the question, however, is theoretically more challenging. Large territorial empires are a comparative rarity in the historical record. Before the Industrial Revolution the greater part of the inhabitable world was occupied by small-scale societies, and even regions where empires repeatedly rose and fell were, as often as not, in the fragmented state. Thus, the really difficult question is not why large agrarian states kept disintegrating, but how they arose in the first place. What were the social forces that kept together huge states controlling populations of millions or tens of millions spread over millions of squared kilometers? What were the preconditions for the rise of such “megaempires,” defined here as territorial states that controlled at the peak an area equal to or greater than one megameter squared (one million of squared kilometers)? Despite some promising approaches, reviewed, for example, by Michael Mann (1986), these questions remain essentially unanswered. In this article I propose a model for one route to megaempire. The model is motivated by the imperial dynamics in a particular world region, East Asia (more specifically, the interface between the settled farmers of East Asia and the nomads of Central Asia). It attempts to synthesize recent developments from theories of cultural evolution with insights from previous work by anthropologists on nomad/farmer interactions. The main focus of the paper is not on the origin of the state, but rather on the processes explaining how small states scale up to megaempires. "
(http://thesciencenetwork.org/docs/BB3/Turchin_AgrarianEmpires.pdf)