Against the Grain – A Deep History of the Earliest States - Softcover

Scott, James C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 030024021X ISBN 13: 9780300240214

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2018

Synopsis

An account of all the new and surprising evidence now available that contradicts the standard narrative for the beginnings of the earliest civilizations
 
An Economist Best History Book 2017
 
“Scott is one of those rare academics whose writing is a thing of beauty.”―Rana Dasgupta, The Week
 
“Scott hits the nail squarely on the head by exposing the staggering price our ancestors paid for civilization and political order.”―Walter Scheidel, Financial Times
 
Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today’s states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family―all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction.
 
Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the “barbarians” who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.

About this title

About the Author

James C. Scott (1936–2024) was Sterling Professor of Political Science and codirector of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University. His previous books include Domination and the Arts of Resistance, Seeing Like a State, and The Art of Not Being Governed.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 030024021X
• ISBN 13: 9780300240214
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336