Scott’s expertise is the history of the people living in the hills of Southeast Asia. This people have been in contact with the largest state-building project in history (China) for thousands of years. They have arranged their societies to be anti-legible: to make it as hard as possible for the state or any large institution to establish itself.
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.
