ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates structural features of early state economics. It provides an ethnographic description of one specific early state: aboriginal Hawaii. On account of the dense population and the very limited agricultural area, the intensification of agriculture had reached a high level. In a chiefdom there is little difference between the population, the food producers, and the consumers of the surplus, the elite. In Samoa there was almost no form of agricultural intensification; on the contrary, much cultivatable land was not brought into cultivation. The first and foremost feature concerns the division of society in clearly distinguished parts in an early state: the people, the producers of the food, and the consumers of the surplus, the elite. Economic practice was in accordance with this practice of the political system. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the essential features of the political economy in an Early State.
