A Theory for the Formation of Large Agrarian Empires

Peter Turchin

08-05-024

Before the Industrial Revolution the greater part of the inhabitable world was occupied by small-scale societies and large territorial states were, comparatively speaking, a rarity. Nevertheless, between 3000 BCE and 1800 CE there were at least 60 agrarian “megaempires” that controlled at the peak an area equal to or greater than one million of squared kilometers. What were the social forces that kept together such huge agrarian states? A clue is provided by the empirical observation that over 90 percent of megaempires originated at steppe frontiers—zones of interaction between nomadic pastorialists and settled agriculturalists. I propose a model for one route to megaempire. The model is motivated by the imperial dynamics in East Asia (more specifically, the interface between the settled farmers of East Asia and the nomads of Central Asia). It attempts to synthesize recent developments from theories of cultural evolution with insights from previous work by anthropologists on nomad/farmer interactions.