GLC - James C. Scott Presents - Population Control: Bondage and War

Professor Scott will discuss a chapter titled “Population Control: Bondage and War.” While enslavement was widely practiced among non state peoples, he argues, the early state elaborated the institution of slavery as a means to maximize the population capable of producing a surplus of grain and other resources. Each of the earliest states–from the Mesopotamian polities to classical Athens, Sparta, and Rome–maintained a balance between expanding the state surplus and provoking the mass flight of subjects. Institutionalized slavery, Scott suggests, was a state project designed to domesticate classes of human laborers in order to control a surplus monopolized by the political elite. “No slavery, no state,” one is tempted to assert