BOOK REPORT: AGAINST THE GRAIN: A DEEP HISTORY OF THE EARLIEST STATES by JAMES C. SCOTT

 

“How did Homo sapiens sapiens come, so very recently in its species’ history, to live in crowded, sedentary communities packed with domesticated livestock and a handful of cereal grains, governed by the ancestors of what we now call states? This novel ecological and social complex became the template for virtually all of our species’ recorded history.” (Against, 1)

 

JAMES SCOTT DOES A BROAD OVERVIEW OF EARLY STATE FORMATION and their antecedents, beginning from roughly 5000 BCE. He focuses on the early Sumerian civilization in what is today southern Iraq, and his survey begins in the millennia before there were settlements or towns in the region and continues up into Greek and Roman times (along the way discussing briefly other centres of emergent civilization). He concludes by examining what he interestingly calls the “golden age of barbarians” which ended, he recons, during the late sixteenth century CE. It’s quite a span of time, and Scott divides his chapters thematically as he gradually moves into the Common Era. For example, the chapter titled “Population Control: Bondage and War”, examines how establishing states coped with movements of their most precious resource (people) both from inward migrations and raiding by so-called “barbarians”, as well as the outflow of state subjects exiting the “grain core” for the frontier for a variety of reasons.¹

Two topics I found most profitable to read were those on the locations of early states—why they grew where they did, and secondly, his interesting discussion on the complex relationship between early states and their barbarian neighbours.

 

    James C. Scott

I’VE ALWAYS HAD the vague notion that civilizations like early Sumer, the Harappan culture of ancient India, and the early kingdoms and dynasties of Egypt and China, for example, came about because clever fellows and gals had the swell idea of building cities and temples, plowing up the surrounding fields, and planting crops of wheat, barley, rice, and what-have-you. Exactly how that occurred, in what order and so on, was a bit unclear. Scott’s book helps answer some of these questions. While his focus is on the rise of Sumer, the nod he gives to explaining the growth of city states in early Egypt is perhaps the clearest example. 

 

WHEN I THINK OF EGYPT, I THINK OF PYRAMIDS and great temple sites, monumental sculpture, cities, and towns rich from river trade, and fields lush with alluvial soils brought annually to basin lands by the great and storied Nile River. On maps we see the river’s vast delta region and say, here, then, is where the land of the Pharaohs began. Not so, says Scott. What we call “dynastic” Egypt began further south, upriver and beyond the rich delta lands. In such complexes of marshes and wetlands as found in the Nile delta, there was an incredible variety of food sources from “turtlebacks” and fish, mollusks, shellfish, birds, game animals and harvested reeds, that the peoples “practised little if any agriculture; they were not part of dynastic Egypt.” (128) Those who’d migrated there over the previous millennia lived what we call a “hunter-gatherer” existence. It was only further south, where the land was somewhat drier and the soils still rich from the annual flooding and deposits of alluvium from the Nile waters, that Egypt proper had its start. And that seems somewhat counter-intuitive: Why didn’t it begin in those obviously rich, delta lands? Scott’s answer is because, “wetlands abundance…could lead to incipient urbanism and commerce but did not lead to state formation without grain growing on a large scale.” [italics mine] (129) And this was not possible in an ecological region like Egypt’s estuarial wetlands. There were areas of wild grasses and grains that were utilized by the peoples of the delta, but they were treated like all resources of mobile foragers.

 

SIMILARLY, IN THE RICH DELTA LANDS OF ANCIENT SUMER formed by the blending of the two great rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, there could be no large-scale grain production (which was key to state formation), because the water-laden lands, also called “subsistence basins”, were otherwise rich in resources suitable for hunting and foraging cultures, which made the cultivation of crops like wheat and barley impractical and unnecessary, involving as they did much hard work, and were time-consuming and tedious. There was plenty to be had in the wetlands and waters, including plots of wild grains that could be foraged, along with game animals, nutrient dense nuts, berries and fruits. There was no need for fields of grain and farmers. Foragers and hunters had better things to do with time than slaving away with in fields!

SCOTT MAKES THE INTERESTING SUGGESTION that a gradually drying, cooler environment, a product of long-term climate change in the post-glacial Holocene, may have made large-scale cultivation of domesticated grasses like the wheat and barley increasingly practical, and necessary, as the delta lands became less productive for forage and game hunting. As the wetlands dried and water levels lowered, pre-existing rivers and streams between hillocks and settlements, that once had facilitated the water traffic of migrating peoples, over time became the irrigation canals of newly reclaimed agricultural lands. And it was from such agricultural systems that the irrigated croplands of towns, then the incipient city-states of Sumer that we know from history, were established. Scott’s analysis makes for a clearer understanding of the complex interactions existing between climate, landscape and the people inhabiting it, and the factors that led to the growth of states and civilizations. We are products of our environment and the lands we inhabit, as much as we may deny that's the case in these modern times.

 

HIS DISCUSSION OF THE SO-CALLED “BARBARIAN” PEOPLES—those who lived at the periphery and in the hinterlands of states—outlines an equally complex and diverse, and fluid, relationship that existed between the two.

The word "barbarian" comes from both Greek and Latin and is supposed to mimic the sounds spoken by tribes and clans living beyond the polis or state, sounds that were grating to the ears of “civilized” folk. They were barbaric sounding: “Barbarbar….” One might suppose that Greek or Latin could sound equally unpleasant or unintelligible to people living outside the boundaries of city states, in the wilderness beyond the civilized world. Which, as James Scott recons, was most of humanity up until around the end of the sixteenth century CE. So, for millennia, anyone was a ‘barbarian’ unless they had Greek or Roman citizenship, or the imprimatur from other states or kingdoms. 

 

WE OFTEN have the impression that non-state peoples were primitive and lacked the requisite skills and intelligence to develop complex cultures and societies. I think it safe to say that such a view is a mis-characterization of non-state peoples, and it begs the question of why didn’t everyone flock to join civilization or forge ahead creating their own versions of it, if it was so superior? And more importantly, why were there outflows of people from the city-states to the hinterlands. There were environmental and practical reasons why people remained aloof from neighbouring states, as well as cultural reasons for their remaining separate. FROM THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD, and from examinations of skeletons, burial patterns, written records, etc., being a farmer or living in a city wasn’t necessarily good for your health. Bones of city-dwellers often suggest muscle damage due to overwork. And their skeletons were smaller, on average, than those of contemporaneous barbarians. Illnesses due to endemic diseases and malnutrition, were commonplace in crowded towns and cities, and lifespans were on average less than those of barbarians. As well, diets of early states’ grain cultures were less diverse than those of non-state peoples who migrated through various ecological niches, foraging and hunting what was at hand.  At various times, people left, even fled, cities to start lives as a hunters and foragers, “going native,” as European settlers were pejoratively said to have done, to find better lives among the Indigenous tribes of North America. Scott notes that walls were built around early city states to keep people in as much as to keep them out. Elites could not afford to lose their agricultural work force, and so walls blocking the entrance to agricultural lands curbed potentially destabilizing relations and trade between barbarians and state citizens, as much as they helped deter raiders from the hinterlands.

 

SCOTT CONCLUDES HIS SURVEY OF BARBARIAN CULTURE by reminding us that, up until the sixteenth century, if you were to look at a map of the world, you’d find settlements of cities and states were located in specific ecological niches: coastal harbours, river valleys, flood plains, and while populations were dense in these regions, the rest of the map was blank. Except, that was were most of humanity lived. The majority of the world’s population lay in the hinterlands of civilization, and it was not until various technological achievements were made to sails and ship design, mechanization, harnessing wind and water power, the manufacture of guns and gunpowder, etc., that the hinterlands and their resources could be systematically accessed. Trade and war between state and non-state actors was ongoing, but eventually people living in the hinterlands were incorporated into neighbouring states, or else adopted to their ways, until the population of the civilized world began to outpace the rest of the world. Agricultural imperatives and sedentary lifestyles were key drivers of the civilized world's population increase; mobile lifestyles, by contrast, made child-rearing more challenging. 

 

JAMES SCOTT’S BOOK IS A FASCINATING AND ACCESSIBLE LOOK at the development of early states, but he makes clear that, while much has been gained with the rise of civilizations in our world, much also has been lost.

 

Cheers, Jake.

____________________________ 

 

 

1. By “grain core”, Scott refers to the central region of a state which contains the cultivated fields of “…early wheats—einkorn and, especially, emmer—along with barley and most of the ‘founder’ pulses—lentils, peas, chickpeas, bitter fetch, even flax—could be said to belong broadly to the ‘grain’ family, as they are self-pollinating annuals and do not readily cross with their wild progenitors (unlike rye).” (73) 

In fact, Scott says, it is grains that are foundational and necessary to the formation of large states. Factors such as visibility (they’re above ground crops and are thus more confiscable and taxable by state actors), along with other characteristics such as predictable growing/harvesting patterns, ease of transportation and storage. He adds, these are the reasons there are no “chickpea states, taro states…breadfruit states, yam states…peanut states…”, etc., (129) with their more complex growing/harvesting/transportation, etc. factors.

 

 

Scott, James, C. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2017. Print.

 

 

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