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Instead, railroad routes began to shape where one state ended and another began. The construction of the Erie Canal also influenced the shapes of states in the regions it traversed . The issue of slavery also helped to mold the shapes of the states in the territory included in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
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- Overview
- First read: preview and skimming for gist
- Second read: key ideas and understanding content
- Third read: evaluating and corroborating
- First States
- Introduction
- What is a state?
- Characteristics of early states
- Why did humans create states?
Countries, also known as states, are everywhere. How and why they formed is a fundamental topic in world history. But does that necessarily make them fundamental to humanity?
The article below uses “Three Close Reads”. If you want to learn more about this strategy, click here.
Before you read the article, you should skim it first. The skim should be very quick and give you the gist (general idea) of what the article is about. You should be looking at the title, author, headings, pictures, and opening sentences of paragraphs for the gist.
Now that you’ve skimmed the article, you should preview the questions you will be answering. These questions will help you get a better understanding of the concepts and arguments that are presented in the article. Keep in mind that when you read the article, it is a good idea to write down any vocab you see in the article that is unfamiliar to you.
By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:
1.What is a state, according to this author?
2.How do some anthropologists define a state?
3.What is Yuval Harari’s argument about the state, according to this article?
4.What are some characteristics of most urban states, according to this article?
Finally, here are some questions that will help you focus on why this article matters and how it connects to other content you’ve studied.
At the end of the third read, you should be able to respond to these questions:
1.Based on all the evidence you have so far, do you agree more with the “coercion” or “voluntary” theory of state formation?
2.There are lots of different definitions of what makes a state. This article has at least four different definitions. Which do you find most convincing?
By Trevor Getz
Countries, also known as states, are everywhere. How and why they formed is a fundamental topic in world history. But does that necessarily make them fundamental to humanity?
Historians talk an awful lot about states and the people who live in them. It's a broad term, since states may be kingdoms or sultanates, republics or confederations, tiny city-states or massive empires. Their people may be citizens with many rights, or subjects with few rights at all. But they all live in states. Of course, this may give us a distorted view of history. Lots of people in the past didn't lived in states—they just lived wherever they were, escaping the notice of most historians. With the territory of today's world almost entirely divided into states, and almost every human a citizen of one, our view of the world's many communities is largely framed by states.
So it's useful to look at the emergence of the world's very first states. Individual examples with plenty of detail will come later in the course. For now, let's explore some descriptions of what a state is, as well as theories about how the first states came into being.
State is the formal term we use to describe a country. The state is usually defined as an organized community living under a unified political system. So states are about government – an organization of people who make decisions, organize society, and enforce rules. And of course there's the land. States usually claim to control a certain territory, with boundaries or borders, although there are some examples in history of mobile states that can move around. The people running a state also claim authority over a group of people. The state makes laws and dispenses justice often using some sort of military or police force. States also collect resources and re-distribute them, often unequally.
All of these things have to do with governing a society. Of course, people who don't have states still have ways of making decisions. Usually, though, the ways they make decisions are less formal and the decisions themselves less permanent. In fact, some scholars argue that a state is defined by having a formal and complex system of government. Some anthropologists, for example, suggest that we can only call something a state if it has at least four levels of government: 1) the people who run the whole country, 2) people running cities beneath them, 3) people running neighborhoods and towns beneath them, and, 4) people running small villages or extended families beneath them.
Today, most of us think of states as the reason we have rights as citizens to elect and shape our government. Early in human history, however, people imagined themselves belonging to a state where the government had authority over them. Few people believed they had the right to actually participate in government or to select it. Early states were probably quite different. Historians and other scholars have suggested a list of characteristics that most early states shared. They use these to help define when states emerged first in one region or another.
Here are six characteristics frequently included in these lists:
•Urban – Most early states had cities. However, some historians argue that there are exceptions, where states were built by nomadic or rural people, especially in Central Asia.
•Agricultural – Almost all states seem to have been built on farming societies. However, there are examples of states where pastoralists1 played a key role, for example in the mountainous areas of East Africa.
•Occupational specialization – States seem to arise where there are some people in a society who are not farmers, but still need to eat. Some historians even argue that the state emerged largely to make sure food got to people who did important work that wasn't about food. These were artisans like leather-workers, metal- workers, and cloth-makers. (Notice the photo below of a work area from the ancient state of Harappa.)
•Complex economy – States largely seem to be created when a community's economy becomes large and complicated. They need a way to govern how goods are produced and distributed.
States are important now, but as far as we can tell modern humans existed without them for about 245,000 years. So, why did humans, in various places and at various times, create states? In general, there are two broad explanations for the rise of states. Now here's where it gets tricky. These explanations – which are theories that can be applied in both general and specific ways – contradict each other even though they may both be right.
The first explanation is called the "coercive theory". Historians like James C. Scott and Ibn Khaldun, argue that states arise because a group of people want to control others and force them to do certain things. In some versions of the coercive theory, a small group wants more wealth, or less work. They create laws and recruit an army to force others around them to do all the farming and any other work. The coercers become the government. Coercive theory also argues that, on a larger scale, different communities compete for resources. In this version, one community conquers the others in order to gain control of those resources.
The second explanation, put forward by philosopher Karl Wittfogel and anthropologist Elman Service, among others, suggests that people come together voluntarily to create states. Volunteering is pretty much the opposite of being coerced. This explanation, often called "voluntary theory", also has several versions. One version suggests that humans found they needed to do work that required lots of cooperation, like building huge irrigation projects to grow crops. So they devised the state to get people to work together. Another variant suggests that communities found they needed rules. To make sure trading was done fairly, reduce violence, or enforce agreements, people wanted the kind of law and order only a state could provide.
In order to test these theories, historians look at specific examples of states, especially the earliest states in a region, and try to apply the evidence to see whether the models fit. These early states include ones we know well, and some that are less familiar.
Table 1 Early states, regions, and eras
The state is as important to human history as oxygen is to life, so of course we focus on it. But, just as there are some important organisms that can live without oxygen, not everyone in history lived in states. As historians we have to wonder whether concentrating on the state makes us miss out on the important experiences and contributions of people who did not live in them. Also, are we crediting states as engines of human development without considering the problems that states have caused? Are states even a step forward, or would we have been better off without them?
Nov 21, 2023 · The state morphology is the shape and form of the state boundaries which present advantages and disadvantages to the state. The bigger the size of the state, the more neighboring states it has ...
Nov 21, 2023 · There are many types of states. The one most Americans are likely familiar with is the federated state. This is a state that is organized under the federal system of states. It is a union of ...
Henry Agnew (UC Davis) 4.3: Physical States of Matter is shared under a license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts. Three states of matter exist - solid, liquid, and gas. Solids have a definite shape and volume. Liquids have a definite volume, but take the shape of the container.
Oct 20, 2016 · Abstract. This chapter explores the dynamics of change in states. States exemplify the challenges of complexity. The interactions, alliances, and disputes between politicians and civil servants; between one ministry and another; or between different tiers of government; and how each of them in turn respond to citizen demand and other external pressures, provide the political landscape upon ...
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Oct 26, 2022 · This vapor is still H 2 O, just in gas form. Solid (the ice), liquid (the water) and gas (the vapor) are the three most common states of matter — at least on Earth. In ancient Greece, one philosopher recognized how water could change form and reasoned that everything must be made of water. However, water isn’t the only type of matter that ...
