Page 170 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

agricultural societies 55

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent
on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else
in the universe to do. • Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)

irrigation, and the first forms of writing. It took the form large-scale enterprises under direct elite control, usually
of a hereditary military aristocracy and an at least par- operated with unfree labor. The pattern persisted when
tially hereditary priesthood, each of whom had specific the Asian empires were absorbed into European colonial
governmental powers, and large estates set aside to sup- systems. Before then, however, there was a development
port those powers. Sumerian records describe large-scale that was to have fundamental long-term implications for
“grain grinding households” and “weaving households,” the way the different imperial systems evolved and inter-
associated with the “patrimonial sovereign” and the tem- acted: the development of democratic constitutions at the
ple, producing textiles and foodstuffs (Gregoire 1992, city level.
225). They used corvee labor drawn from the peasants, The central aim of the Roman idea of a republic was
and the accounts show that it was the responsibility of to find a way to balance the interests of the peasant agri-
the temple and palace to provide for their maintenance culture of the plebes with the elite agriculture of the gentes
while they were working. The Iliad describes Agamem- in a single political system that guaranteed security for all.
non as maintaining a similar establishment, but using the The solution was carried to the many Roman colonies in
labor of slaves taken in war. Conflicts between city-states the territories that the republic conquered. It persisted in
led to ever fewer and ever larger alliances, and by 600 the form of their civic constitutions after the empire col-
BCE this process ended with the transition to imperial sys- lapsed and evolved as these Roman enclaves evolved into
tems, in which the conquering power no longer sought towns of the various European nationalities we recognize
the destruction of the opposed city-states but rather today. But in the course of this evolution there was a rad-
sought to subordinate them in a larger hierarchy of com- ical realignment of interests. Where the original Roman
mand and privilege. senatorial fortunes were based on elite agriculture utiliz-
The South Asian chronology was similar. The Indus ing land taken in war, Renaissance fortunes were based
Valley Civilization, beginning around 2300 BCE,was a on commerce. Their interests, therefore, no longer sup-
uniform and well-organized peasant society in which ported imperial power and opposed independent peasant
communities cooperated as part of a single system. It col- farmers but the reverse.
lapsed in about 1790 BCE, however, after an earthquake Outside of what had been Roman Europe—in Russia,
diverted one of the two main rivers it was built on upon. South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, and Japan—towns
The population apparently dispersed into surrounding remained under the control of the imperial authorities, a
areas, particularly the Ganges plain, retaining agricultural situation that supported elite agriculture. The conse-
continuity but loosing social cohesiveness. In the Ganges quence was that the peasantry often had no way to
valley, there were no fewer than sixteen walled cities by avoid serfdom, and there was no one to serve as the kind
600 BCE, engaging in mutual conflict comparable to that of independent engine of technological innovation that
of the Mesopotamian city-states. By 321 BCE, this conflict led Europe first to expand trade, then to destroy feudal-
had led to the establishments of the Mauryan empire. ism, and finally to industrialize.
In China, walled cities appeared with China’s first Although programs for land reform that began in the
dynasty, the Xia, and continued into the succeeding late eighteenth century were aimed at freeing peasant
Shang (1766–1045 BCE). Beneath the Shang monarch as agriculture from accumulated elite impositions, these
a general hereditary overlord were large numbers of were not notably successful outside the West.The Com-
local rulers holding hereditary title, the first form of the munist revolutions in Russia and China replaced what-
Chinese distinction between the peasantry and the priv- ever autonomous peasant organization remained in their
ileged gentry. respective areas with collectivization as a new form of
All of the imperial systems involved some mixture of elite control, at significant cost in lives and productivity.
elite extraction from peasant production side by side with Since World War II, however, colonial empires and the