By Karl A. Wittfogel
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Extra info for Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power
Example text
It can nevertheless be much more conveniently managed. Unhampered by the cohesiveness of solid matter and following the law of gravity, water flows auto matically to the lowest accessible point in its environment. Within a given agricultural landscape, \vater is the natural variable par excellence. And this is not all. Flowing automatically, water appears unevenly in the landscape, gathering either below the surface as ground water, or above the surface in separate cavities (holes, ponds, lakes), or continuous beds (streams, rivers).
I quote particularly from a study by Palerm which provides a wealth of historical data on irrigation in both pre-Spanish and early Spanish Meso America: 4. The majority of the irrigation systems seem to have been only of local importance and did not require large hydraulic undertakings. Nevertheless, im portant works were undertaken in the Valley of Mexico, and irrigation appears in concentrated form in the headwaters of the rivers Tula, Lerma and Atlixco, and in the contiguous area of Colima-Jalisco.
Assumes that in these areas nomadic conquerors developed the hydraulic works after establishing conquest em pires (Riistow, OG, I: 306). Patterns of leadership and discipline traditional to conquering groups could be, and probably were, invoked in establishing certain hydraulic governments; but Pueblo. Chagga. and Hawaiian society show that such formative patterns could also be en dogenous. In any case, the ethnographic and historical facts point to a multiple rather than a single origin for hydraulic societies.