Calling this book a history of the earliest states stretches the term "history" too far. The author isn't a historian and his purpose is not to present new historical research. But he is an original political thinker, as his previous book "Seeing like a state" attests, and I assume he has familiarized himself with a lot of historical research before writing this book. What he actually does is that he applies his anti-state views to the study of history by turning the table on traditional historical narratives.

The first few chapters of the book discuss how agriculture, ecology, war and slavery on the one hand facilitated early state formation, but on the other hand were so precarious that the balance could (and did) often turn to state disintegration as well. There was no linear development from hunting and gathering to agriculture and state formation, but complex back-and forth oscillation with lots of human traffic going in all directions for several millenia. These points are well taken.

The later chapters were in my opinion more interesting. The author argues that the historical record contains a state-centered bias because (p.214) "the self-documenting court center offered convenient one-stop shopping for historians and archaeologists". This bias should not lead us to think that early states offered a better life to its citizens than smaller communities, or that the "collapse" of a state necessarily had, in the long term, negative consequences. The population just dispersed, and they did not leave a written record. Our traditional power- and text-centered historical sequences of "civilization" (Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, Maya...) are quite myopic. Most of humanity lived in less powerful societies without written state records.

I think the book could have been structured a bit better, and the argument in the later chapters could have been extended in more detail almost up to modern history (as the author does very briefly at the end). But the title of this book is appropriate and I would recommend it to anyone who likes to think about human history from a different perspective.

Buitengewoon leerzame blik op het ontstaan van staten. De langzame transformatie van een wereldbevolking die vrij en in gelijkheid leeft naar een wereldbevolking verzameld, zelfs gevangen in staten, niet zelden in slavernij, in grote ongelijkheid ten gunste van een enkele of kleine kliek machtigen. Democratie is niets anders dan het terugveroveren van de vrijheid die men bezat voor de staatsvorming. En nu de staat gedemocratiseerd is, glipt de macht met zijn ongelijkheid weg naar multinationals die trachten de democratische staat te manipuleren. ( )

It's like Charles Mann's 1491 for Mesopotamia: a non-specialist summarizing the latest research for a field whose core myths are in the midst of being overthrown.

Goes well with Mann's 1491, Scott's Seeing Like A State, and basically anything by Ursula K. LeGuin. Maybe David Quinn's Ishmael, too - it's been too long since I've read that. ( )

This fascinating book reexamines the foundational understanding we’ve largely absorbed about the advent of sedentary agriculture and the earliest states (think ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, etc.). As most history explains it, if it explains it at all, early humans discovered agriculture and immediately and joyfully settled down, happily tilling their fields and thanking their lucky stars they wouldn’t have to do anymore wandering or wearisome hunting /gathering. Naturally enough this lead to more people and inevitably an organizational state arose to organize people, construct irrigation works, and basically begin civilization as we know it.

The reality however, may be far more interesting and less cut and dry. Archeological evidence suggests that the road from agriculture to permanent sedentism and then to political states was a long and winding one, full of reversions and false starts, and hardly the miraculous, overall good it’s been made out to be. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that early farmers had a vastly inferior quality of life when compared to their still hunter / gathering counterparts, poorer diet, longer, harder, work hours, epidemic disease and onerous taxes and conscription all start to make the older and more stable subsistence strategies seem much more appealing. Agriculture, and sedentary life for all its benefits had some serious downsides and was not, as it has been portrayed, a miraculous and wholly beneficial innovation that early humans couldn’t wait to take part in.

This book was deeply interesting and combined copious scholarship and footnotes with an extremely accessible and engaging writing style. It’s gotten me interested even more in the topic of early states and the rise of agriculture and I’d recommend it as a great starting point for anyone interested in the subject.
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An interesting tour d'horizon of new perspectives on the earliest civilizations of Iraq. The oldest sedentary communities in Mesopotamia were in wetlands rather than on arid riverbanks, and they preceded agriculture, irrigation and city-states. The city-states were, on this interpretation, coercive superstructures, possibly of intrusive foreign origin, intensifying surplus extraction from the pre-existing base of urban agricultural community. Long on theory, short on direct evidence, but interesting and thought-provoking. ( )