Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

by James C. Scott

But why is there not a chickpea or lentil state? After all, these are nutritious crops that can be grown intensively, and their harvest consists of small seeds that can be dried, keep well, and can as easily be divided and measured out in small quantities as rations as the cereal grains. Here the decisive advantage of the cereal grains is their determinate growth and hence virtually simultaneous ripening. The problem with most of the legumes, from a tax collector’s perspective, is that they produce fruit continuously over an extended period. They can be, and are, picked right along as they ripen—like beans or peas. If the tax collector arrives early, much of the crop will not yet have ripened, and if he arrives late, the taxpayer will probably have eaten, hidden, or sold much of the yield. One-stop shopping on the part of the tax collector works best for determinate-ripening crops. The cereal crops of the Old World were, in this sense, preadapted for state making. The New World—save for the mixed case of maize, which can be picked right along or left to mature and dry in the field—has few if any determinate, whole-field, simultaneously ripening crops, hence none of the harvest festival tradition that so dominates the Old World agricultural calendar.