Africa was not an anarchist paradise; it underwent broadly similar processes of centralisation and state formation to those found elsewhere, with regional variation.
It’s a terrible paper using 40 ‘societies’ from Murdock/SCCS to argue that states weren’t associated with pop. density, warfare, or trade. But, as you note, that snapshot sample would totally miss Somalia. And any case studies of individual states, for example, the various Tswana states show that warfare & trading opportunities led to those states.
It's amazing how they keep using the same tribal map and the same outdated 70-year-old anthropological studies to come up with new, erroneous theoretical arguments that somehow always manage to cross over to the mainstream.
If it weren't such a disservice to basic Africanist scholarship, I'd be impressed.
Very nice. Have you seen this by Robinson and his co-author from 13 years ago, arguing that Eurasian drivers of state formation aren’t present in Africa? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014759671300005X
It’s a terrible paper using 40 ‘societies’ from Murdock/SCCS to argue that states weren’t associated with pop. density, warfare, or trade. But, as you note, that snapshot sample would totally miss Somalia. And any case studies of individual states, for example, the various Tswana states show that warfare & trading opportunities led to those states.
Thanks.
It's amazing how they keep using the same tribal map and the same outdated 70-year-old anthropological studies to come up with new, erroneous theoretical arguments that somehow always manage to cross over to the mainstream.
If it weren't such a disservice to basic Africanist scholarship, I'd be impressed.
You write rigorous things that always end up with a heft I find incisive—thx 4 that