Robert H. Bates’ book “Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development” takes an in-depth look at how the two factors of either prosperity or violence work hand in hand in the development of the modern world. The different political structures of today have all come about because of prosperity and violence in different phases of each nation’s development taking it from the near egalitarian agricultural societies of the ancient world to the more modern nation-states that fill the earth on every coast. Bates does an excellent job of thoroughly covering the subject and frames his argument in a way that it is easy to read and understand his points. However one aspect that is not addressed at all is the almost inevitable transition
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When a community manages to invent a way to grow and store more food than they themselves need, it opens the door to rapid innovation and development that these communities could never have experienced otherwise. Subsistence farming is a very time consuming and labor intensive way of life and it doesn’t give many people much time to do anything other than farm. When one individual or family finds a way to grow enough food to feed the entire town, than not as many people are required to simply survive every day. This allows for two new ideas that were not prominent in any of the simple agrarian or egalitarian societies, namely specialization of labor and employees. As less people are needed to run the farm it gives other the opportunity to do something other than farm. People begin to specialize in different things that they had never had a chance to focus on in the past. This lead to rapid advances in technology and also started the embers of capitalism in competition and supply and demand. Also as the farm grew in size, one family was not sufficient enough to operate all the parts of the farm, which lead to either sharecroppers or hiring other people to come and work the land …show more content…
Two such examples are seen in some of the more isolated areas of the world, namely Hawai’i and the Inca. Hawai’i was settled from around 700-1300 CE before being left in isolation until James Cook found them in 1778. Although they were heavily influenced by their Tahitian ancestry and the Pacific culture, these were founded only after thousands of years of being separated from the mainland. Austronesian people, who had lived there for around 7000 years already began to explore and settle the rest the Pacific and into Polynesia and Micronesia around 1000 BCE. The Lapita culture, as they would come to be called, developed into the Kingdoms of Tahiti and Hawai’i that would be discovered and aided by the arrival of western explorers in the 18th Century. The most isolated place in the world developed the same way that the rest of the world did, even after thousands of years of having no contact with people from the
When a community manages to invent a way to grow and store more food than they themselves need, it opens the door to rapid innovation and development that these communities could never have experienced otherwise. Subsistence farming is a very time consuming and labor intensive way of life and it doesn’t give many people much time to do anything other than farm. When one individual or family finds a way to grow enough food to feed the entire town, than not as many people are required to simply survive every day. This allows for two new ideas that were not prominent in any of the simple agrarian or egalitarian societies, namely specialization of labor and employees. As less people are needed to run the farm it gives other the opportunity to do something other than farm. People begin to specialize in different things that they had never had a chance to focus on in the past. This lead to rapid advances in technology and also started the embers of capitalism in competition and supply and demand. Also as the farm grew in size, one family was not sufficient enough to operate all the parts of the farm, which lead to either sharecroppers or hiring other people to come and work the land …show more content…
Two such examples are seen in some of the more isolated areas of the world, namely Hawai’i and the Inca. Hawai’i was settled from around 700-1300 CE before being left in isolation until James Cook found them in 1778. Although they were heavily influenced by their Tahitian ancestry and the Pacific culture, these were founded only after thousands of years of being separated from the mainland. Austronesian people, who had lived there for around 7000 years already began to explore and settle the rest the Pacific and into Polynesia and Micronesia around 1000 BCE. The Lapita culture, as they would come to be called, developed into the Kingdoms of Tahiti and Hawai’i that would be discovered and aided by the arrival of western explorers in the 18th Century. The most isolated place in the world developed the same way that the rest of the world did, even after thousands of years of having no contact with people from the