The larger question, the one I address in Chapter 5, is important because it bears on the role of coercion in establishing and maintaining the ancient state. Though it is a subject of heated debate, the question goes directly to the heart of the traditional narrative of civilizational progress. If the formation of the earliest states were shown to be largely a coercive enterprise, the vision of the state, one dear to the heart of such social-contract theorists as Hobbes and Locke, as a magnet of civil peace, social order, and freedom from fear, drawing people in by its charisma, would have to
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