Edith Leung
Professor Barbieri-Low
History 2A: World History
03 December 2014
The Mystery of State Level Formation: An Analysis of the Origin of the State and Ancient Society
Most people today are represented by a government that makes decisions on their behalf. Their political representatives enact laws, collect taxes, and decide how to allocate the money it receives among other responsibilities. How humankind shifted from living a nomadic lifestyle to being part of state level society with a centralized government is curious. It happens throughout the world at various times and independently of each other. Those concerned with history seek to describe why it happened but have always failed to conceive an explanation that properly satisfies
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People enclosed by environmental circumscription—mountains, bodies of water, deserts, and forests respectively—inevitably engaged in battle for prime land. Carneiro’s influences can easily be drawn back to Social Darwinist Herbert Spencer and German socialist Franz Oppenheimer. Carneiro did not pioneer any fresh ideas on the formation of the state. Prior to A Theory of the Origin of the State, both Herbert Spencer and Franz Oppenheimer argued that state-level societies developed because of “competition and conflict” and that the continuation of conflict would lead to centralization. Oppenheimer, like Spencer, also argued that the strong would then subjugate the weak. While Carneiro agrees that warfare is a prime mover, he argues that there must be conditions set forth to properly explain why certain nomadic groups did not eventually settle into a state. The people who lost could easily settle somewhere new which Carneiro describes as fissioning.9 However, in areas with environmental circumscription, they were cornered and conquered. This pattern also occurred in alternative situations where villages were unable to escape elsewhere. Environmental circumscription was not the only instance that engaged people in battle. They could be circumscribed by other people, or there could be a scarcity of resources that confined people to settle …show more content…
"Course Intro." History 2A. University of California, Santa Barbara. Isla Vista Theater, Isla Vista. 3 Oct 2014. Lecture.
Barbieri-Low, Anthony. "Theories for the Rise of State Level Societies." History 2A. University of California, Santa Barbara. Isla Vista Theater, Isla Vista. 13 Oct 2014. Lecture.
Barbieri-Low, Anthony. "Warfare and State Formation." History 2A. University of California, Santa Barbara. Isla Vista Theater, Isla Vista. 15 Oct 2014.
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Conquests--- the art of obtaining power and authority through means of military forces--- have been adopted and practiced throughout the history of America for centuries. Similar to how two art paintings have resemblances and differences when replicated by different artists, the conquests of Sundiata and Cortés both share commonalities as well as a fair share of respective distinctions. In Djibril Tamsir Niane’s Sundiata: Epic of Old Mali and Bernal Díaz’s The Conquest of New Spain, the narrator’s arguments within each account display a ray of more similarities in regards to the conquests’ successes of Sundiata and Cortés compared to that of their differences.
Rosales, F. Arturo. Lecture 2/14 Film The US-Mexican War Prelude. Weber, David J. - "The 'Path of the World'" Foreigners in Their Native Land: The Historical Roots of Mexican Americans.
Qianlong’s education started at a very young age and was said to have been a child prodigy that by the age of six had learned Chinese characters, and commence his study under a tutor at the age of seven and studied all the Chinese classics with Hanlin scholars. As well as legendary rulers of the Chinese antiquity, Qianlong’s models were those of highly educated, usually referred to literati. Literati were scholars with high intelligence that aimed for ‘ya’, which meant elegance of thought, strong sense of character with the goal of living a simple life . Dressed in tradition Ming style clothing and headwear, Qianlong is portrayed as what he fantasies himself to be, a scholarly literati with an identical portrait of him in the background,
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In both societies, each city-state had their own political systems, economy, social and cultural digressions from city-state to city-state. Similar problems arose within both societies regarding city-states. In Mesopotamian society, the city-states lasted from 3000-2340B.C.E., during the Early Dynastic Age. As the number of Sumerian city-states grew and the states expanded, new conflicts arose as city-state fought city-state for control of land and water (Spielvogel 9). In the new world of the Greek city-states, war became an integral part of the Greek way of life (Spielvogel 61).
The system of government we have today was starting to developed centuries ago by the Athenians and Romans. Both governments were established with the intent to give power to the people, even though it did not always play out that way in society. The Athenian democracy and the Roman republic were two very different governments in practice, but also maintained similar characteristics in both systems of government.
In order to answer the question concerning the formation of states, it is necessary to clarify what constitutes a state; the Oxford English Dictionary defines a state as ‘a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government’. There are a number of ways and processes in which to analyse what state formation is, why they have formed and the way in which this has occurred. State emergence can be traced back to the creation of territorial boundaries in medieval Europe, such as the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and its transition to a modern state can be attributed to the introduction of gunpowder in war (Hague & Harrop, 2010: 64). The formations of states have also been influenced by the growth of bureaucracy, administration and organisations. There are different theories as to the reason why states form, a certain few of which can be divided into the categories of rationalist, culturalist and structuralist perspectives. In this essay, these perspectives shall enter the debate in trying to justify the reason for state formation and the way in which it occurs. The most prominent feature in the formation of states appears to be the prevention and engagement of a state in war and its following consequences.