Grains – wheat, barley, millet, rice, and corn – are the dominant food in all of the earliest states because they are the easiest to collect taxes on, not because they are the best for the people who farmed them.
Spruyt’s previous book detailed the development of the sovereign state system in medieval Europe. In The World Imagined, Spruyt looks at how the sovereign state system spread across the world during the Early Modern Era. He contrasts it with other international systems: the Chinese tributary system, the Islamic Cultural Community, and the Galactic Empires of Southeast Asia.
1491 is a summary of recent changes in (scholarly) understanding of the peoples in the Americas immediately before Columbus. Part I argues that there were many more people here than you think. Part II argues that they got here much earlier than you think. Part III argues that they had a much larger impact on the environment than you think. The new understanding of the Americas is really cool. I just wish that the book had been written by one of the scientists, instead of a professional popular science writer. It is obvious to me, from reading it, that the author is not and never has been a scientist.
Piketty has written a data-driven book on economic history, which is accessible to a broad audience. The book is full of graphs (even more so than this review) and involves calculations and equations in its arguments. In my opinion, this makes it a better work of scholarship than most other books about history. As with most (all?) books on economics, there is a political bias. What bias? Well, this is a book with the word ‘Capital’ written in big red letters across the cover. It has been politically influential. Piketty convinced Elizabeth Warren to advocate for a wealth tax. The power of capital, relative to income, fell dramatically during the World Wars and Great Depression. Since then, capital has been making a comeback. Piketty expects this trend to continue. The growth of capital is inherently faster than the growth of income in a capitalist society, except during major crises like World Wars. To counteract this, Piketty proposes a global tax on wealth.
