Development of States

Introduction

The initial complete civilization appeared around 3500 BC in the Middle East Tigris-Euphrates valley. Subsequently, society grew in Egypt alongside the Nile, and afterward extended to other regions. Both of the societies were shaped near main rivers (due to their agricultural nature) - the Nile in northeastern Africa and the Euphrates & Tigris in Mesopotamia. Until 200 years before, all societies were primarily agricultural. Most of the persons did not reside in cities in early agriculture-based societies. People started moving to urban civilizations after the Industrial revolution. Urban civilizations produced more detailed political and trade arrangements than primary agricultural civilizations had administered. This paper discusses why there is a close correlation between the development of states and the domestication of agriculture and of urban civilizations.

Discussion

A state is an aggregation of citizens who share some important phenomena in common, including several or all of the following: language, history, culture, a sense of destiny, a shared religion and ethnicity, and, most importantly, a definable geographic area. Such a state is considered sovereign in that its government has complete authority within its borders under international law and is not dependent on any external or higher law or governance structure. (Gellner, 93)

States are existing political entity of contemporary social history. Although it is a fairly recent historical occurrence, it remained, at the commencement of the third millennium, the principal unit of international relations. Before the 16th century most people were congregated into either large empires—the Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire give example—large religious entities—Christendom, for example—smaller entities, such as city-states (ancient Athens, Venice in the early modern period, Singapore in more recent times), or in ethnically based tribal entities (in the Americas, Africa, and in other localities). The state developed in Europe from the 16th to the 19th centuries, first after the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, and then, particularly with regard to Germany and Italy, in response to romantic notions of "national" solidarity. (Hobsbawm, 25-30)

Cohen's proposed a typology regarding the relation between the domestication of urban civilizations & agriculture and the development of states. The three adjusting approaches derived from food production in agricultural societies are pastoralism, agriculture, and horticulture. Just as they do in Canada and the USA, people in nonindustrial societies carry out a variety of economic activities. Each adaptive strategy refers to the main economic activity. Pastoralists (herders), for example, consume butter, milk, meat, ...