ABSTRACT
Within this volatile inter-imperial field, co-forming state and merchant-state relations have
driven investment in infrastructure building, which in turn has fostered further systemic inter-
connections. Over millennia, these relations have impelled states toward the engineering of
dams, canals, roads, and bridges, for trade and war as well as for agriculture (itself linked to
trade, for again, contrary to assumptions, in the first millennium CE there was a diverse, profit-
able trade in staples as well as luxury commodities). At the same time, also since before the so-
called modern period, these states constructed buildings for their academies, vast libraries, and
state records, and for state administrators, translators, artisans, and scholars. That is, they
accrued cultural capital.
