Karl Wittfogel

["Ricardo Duchesne" <rduchesn@xxxxxxxx>]

S.K Sanderson (1995) also notes how anthropologists
misappropriated Wittofogel's idea of Oriental Despotism as if it
were  a general theory of the *rise of the state*, when he was in
fact examining a specific type of state - Hydraulic -  which he
claimed emerged in such regions as ancient China and India as
well as Egypt and Mesopotamia. Perhaps because he included
ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, where state-civilizations did *first*
arise, but no longer existed in the eighteenth century, scholars
thought he was advancing a general theory of the origins of  the
state, although he was really trying to understand the internal logic
of large-scale irrigation states. This is not to say his theory cannot
be used as a theory of the origins of the state to argue that large
scale irrigated works functionally required an elaborate bureaucratic
centre to finance, oversee, and expand such works.