kenyatta:

Traditional definitions of the state and its authority hinged on the right to raise taxes, and on its legal monopoly on coercing its people, from punishing and imprisoning them to waging formal war.

But as James Scott points out, roughly between 8000 BC and 4000 BC we find settled agricultural communities with developing craft skills – yet no evidence of anything much by way of state authority.

This also poses a key question, one which resonates in the 21st century, about whether there is a necessary link between state power and community life.

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Early state development around the world has another defining feature, a staple diet of cereals. By contrast, agricultures based on tubers or pulses have no fixed harvest period and create no stockpiles. As Scott remarks, there are no early states founded on manioc, yam or sweet potato.

But the annual grain harvest creates two problems: storage, which requires protection; and vulnerability to thieving supervisors or outside raiders. It also ties producers to their store in time and space – no wandering off with a bow and arrow.

It seems likely, says Scott, that at first there was a voluntary approach to collective labour in fields, and to grain being pooled for safekeeping and even redistribution to the needy. But this created all the technical and organisational know-how for an increasingly coercive state. Constrained to a relatively small area, people were dependent on central grain stores, and grew used to supervision of both food distribution and their labour – things that feature almost obsessively in early writing.

By 3000 BC, we have the first definitive evidence of city states, with kings, bureaucracies, compulsory labour, taxation and punishment for non-compliance. These early states were also very fragile, prone to epidemics, soil degradation and political collapse.