… since Fortune changes and men stand fixed in their old ways, they are prosperous so long as there is congruity between them, and the reverse when there is not.
MACHIAVELLI (1994 [1514]:82)
In Chapter 1, I have presented a scenario on the emergence of rulers. My goal throughout this book has been to address a key question—how do a few people get others to contribute labor and goods without compensating them equally? To appreciate how political leaders emerge, it is first critical to understand—in addition to social and historical circumstances—material issues, namely, the amount and distribution of agricultural land, seasonal water issues, and where people live and work across the landscape. Together they influence the amount of available surplus in any given area. Uniting political power and the material world is ritual. As long as there is a balance among these features, all is well (politically anyway). When conditions change, so do political fortunes, for better or worse. And as I have attempted to demonstrate in this work, these processes occur cross-culturally. Surplus and ritual both are vital for political survival.
The replication and the expansion of familiar traditional rites allow rulers to bring people together to demonstrate their abilities in propitiating and communicating with ancestors and gods. The ultimate practical goal is to provide protection and capital, water, and food when necessary in exchange for surplus labor and goods. Subjects thus benefit materially (e.g., Service 1975:8); rulers’ ability to fulfill material obligations only highlights their closer ties to supernatural entities. People also have options; they can contribute to another leader or in some cases leave political realms altogether and live in marginal areas unsuitable for surplus extraction. People participate in redefining their rights and obligations because rulers demonstrate their success in the material and spiritual realms.
The fact that rituals alone do not support political leaders goes a long way in explaining the different types of political systems as well as demonstrating the relatively limited number of responses to varied material and social conditions. Community organizations have several leaders (e.g., lineage heads, village chiefs, or elite Maya lineage heads) who cannot demand tribute but who use their wealth to distinguish themselves materially and to sponsor local integrative events. Farmers are extensive and/or intensive agriculturalists who rely on seasonal rainfall but do not rely on water/agricultural systems. Consequently, people are better able to deal with changing conditions and thus have long and relatively stable histories. Further, plentiful resources available year-round are not conducive to expanding the political economy. Household and public rites take place to honor ancestors, not the living.
The main differences between community organizations and local polities are that the latter include denser settlements, a greater reliance on water/agricultural systems, and the presence of one major institutionalized leader (e.g., a paramount chief or secondary Maya king). Political leaders acquire surplus labor and goods from people in return for what they provide in services—centripetal events such as feasts and ceremonies (e.g., Maya kings) and/or food during famine or capital to repair small-scale water/agricultural systems damaged during the rainy season (e.g., Hawaiian paramount chiefs). Political power often is linked to external ties (e.g., trade, esoteric information, and the elite/royal interaction sphere), whose duration is quite varied, while the subsistence economy largely is stable. In cases where external ties are not as significant (e.g., Hawaii), other factors (e.g., island setting and population size) can limit extent and affect duration. The greater importance of leaders in the lives of all is expressed in public rites that include thanking chiefly or royal ancestors. People perform rites in the home to honor their own ancestors.
The height of political power is achieved in centralized polities, where there is little doubt that royal intercession with supernatural entities is critical, because densely settled people rely on seasonal rainfall, intensive agriculture, and/or large-scale water or agricultural systems (e.g., Maya river regional centers, Egypt, and Mesopotamian city-states). Royal success—for example, in ensuring adequate river flooding for agriculture (e.g., Egypt and China)—is publicized in large-scale ceremonies with roots in traditional rites. Everyone worships ancestors and gods in the home and community as well. As long as surplus is stable, so are political systems (though the political system may change hands, as it did several times in Egypt). In integrative polities, the primary ruler has a similar role. The distinguishing feature is that key resources and settlement are more dispersed, which adds an additional challenge for rulers to reach people, not to mention their surplus (e.g., Maya nonriver regional centers and precolonial Balinese kingdoms). Rulers reach people, and their surplus, through sponsoring frequent ceremonies, feasts, and other integrative events and displays. Kings also play a large role in providing water through funding the building of large reservoirs and performing water rites. Seasonal fluctuations are always a concern in centralized and integrative polities, so long-term seasonal changes can and do bring down royal dynasties temporarily (e.g., precolonial Bali and Egypt) or permanently (e.g., southern Maya lowlands and southern Mesopotamia).
Another crucial issue that I have attempted to address is the types of changes that can cause rulers to lose their right to exact tribute. Seasonal vagaries are challenges enough to deal with—providing water during annual drought, allocating water, repairing water/agricultural systems damaged by flooding, and supplying food in times of scarcity. Climate change lasting more than a few seasons is another matter entirely. In Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations, Brian Fagan (1999) details how climate change has affected political histories throughout the world. For example, in the Moche case in Peru (pp. 119–138), he notes that an inflexible government and subsistence technology (“elaborate irrigations systems”; p. 138) lessened farmers’ ability to survive long-term droughts and torrential rains and destructive floods caused by El Niño events. A series of several El Niño events damaged the large-scale irrigation systems repeatedly in the late AD 600s, eventually resulting in the demise of Moche political power. He presents several other instances where climate change had a dramatic impact on social, political, and economic institutions (e.g., Egypt and Europe and the “Little Ice Age”). While he does not discuss ritual, it is obvious that royal ceremonies failed. Fagan concludes his book by highlighting recent instances where the lack of foresight and articulation of institutions, resources, and changing rainfall patterns have had devastating results, as witnessed at present in parched east Africa.
Crumley (see Chapter 1) provides a more in-depth account of one particular area, western Europe, showing how certain climate regimes suited Roman expansion; centuries of success resulted in tried-and-true subsistence and political institutions that eventually were unable to cope with long-term climate change. Fagan (2004) further details the effects of climate change on societies in The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization. In this work, he highlights how short-term or immediate responses (e.g., spending more resources to propitiate the gods) to changing climate can make societies more vulnerable in the long run—a lesson we are increasingly learning at present.
The point is that not being able to respond efficiently to climate change eventually can have drastic and unforeseen consequences, especially in situations where political and subsistence systems are not flexible enough to adjust to changing conditions. Short-term responses—including, for example, the elaboration of rituals in a last-ditch effort to appease the gods or using up stores of food and grain without taking into consideration future needs such as continuing famine and the need of seeds for planting—have long-lasting impacts, not usually beneficial (e.g., Hosler et al. 1977). More often than not, the response was to reorganize or adapt. The Roman Empire, for example, broke apart; “emperors” began relying on new rituals and gods, since the old ones had failed them. Many of the traditional Roman deities concerned crops and fertility (e.g., Juno and Diana), “weather and elements,” and war (Minerva and Jupiter) (Crumley 2001). Roman emperors were closely tied to ritual and ceremony involving these deities, as was everyone else. Climate change changed all this and
…challenged sacred imperial authority. To account for widespread economic failures, Roman emperors were forced to reinterpret traditional religion or to embrace the mystical religious traditions of the eastern Mediterranean. Beginning with Aurelian (AD 215–275), who imported Persian worship of the Unconquered Sun, the search culminated with Constantine’s (AD 285–337) conversion to Christianity. (Crumley 2001:31)
If responses are inadequate, people are more susceptible to foreign invasions, for example, or at least a new regime. Political institutions can also fragment into their constituent autonomous parts and later regenerate (e.g., Egypt, China, and Mesopotamia) (Cowgill 1988). Rarely does everyone abandon an area altogether;1 people leave the only life they know when they have no other choice. If people previously have been willing to contribute to political coffers rather than leave, whatever makes them abandon their rulers, homes, and land must be extreme.
In the Maya area, kings rose and fell in areas with plentiful farming land and noticeable seasonal vagaries. Replicating and expanding traditional rituals brought people together and provided the arena for rulers to show off their various powers. Audience members had a say in their success, because kings knew that people could choose to whom to gift their tribute. In some cases farmers left kingdoms and settled in marginal areas where surplus was inadequate for political purposes. In many cases, however, this option was not available because of farmers’ need for capital, water, or food in times of need. The average Maya commoner in the Classic period thus had little choice but to acquiesce to tribute demands but likely could choose which ruler to pay, as reflected in the prevalent and public monumental architecture that served as a backdrop for rulers to attract and entertain supporters and collect tribute.
The Maya political system worked for nearly a millennium, an amazing feat. It would take something drastic to bring it down. And something drastic indeed happened. Long-term climate change played a large part in bringing an end to Classic Maya royal life. Maya kings attempted to prevent the inevitable and used strategies that had worked for centuries. Rituals that once highlighted their successes now only emphasized their failures, since they could not bring forth enough water for daily needs and agricultural fields. Commoners responded by abandoning rulers and centers. Some permanently remained in the hinterlands or noncenter areas, where they could subsist in small family groups and communities; others fled the southern lowlands in all four directions. The situation was extreme enough to prevent the replacement of Maya kingship with a comparable political system.
The Maya reoccupied some centers, but in small numbers. And none of their members became kings. Rulers were gone forever in the southern Maya lowlands, not to mention much of their “great tradition” (the northern Maya lowlands are another story). Elites and commoners remained and continued to perform the daily social, religious, and economic tasks that they had always performed before and during the time of rulership.
Concluding Remarks
The goal of this book has been to explain the emergence and demise of political leadership in terms of the same two factors—water and ritual. While these topics are often discussed on their own, there can be little doubt that they are inextricably and dialectically linked. It is their articulation that plays a key role in the creation and dissolution of political power. Plentiful rain at the right time, which results in bountiful crops that feed everyone, is the direct result of kings’ successful propitiation of gods and ancestors through traditional rituals writ large. Water and surplus sustain the body and rituals; rituals sustain the mind and spirit. Water and surplus provide the means to fund political systems, and rituals the arena to promote solidarity and political agendas. Participants or audience members have a voice in who becomes a leader and who does not. People also express disapproval when rulers fail in providing material necessities and vote with their feet and pocketbooks. Rulers cannot curtail the loss of tribute-payers in the face of their rituals failing.
Simply stated, water and ritual are crucial in the development and demise of political power.