ABSTRACT
The fortunes o f human civilisation have been determined largely by war and conquest. For most o f the past eleven thousand years conquest has been the dominant dynamic strategy o f leading societies. Only since the Industrial Revolution has it been displaced by the techno logical strategy. The working out o f the conquest strategy in human society has had a characteristic impact not only on the nature o f economic outcomes but also on its insti tutional structure. In the pre-modern world it led to the eternal recurrence reflected in the rise andfa ll o f mighty civilisations. The objective here is to show how this defining longrun strategy has shaped the institutions and organisations o f pre-modern civilisation in both the Old and New Worlds. To do so we must be selective both because there are few ancient societies f o r which comprehensive information is available, and because, none the less, this subject alone could f i l l a series o f books. Our focu s in this section is on the Roman and A sfec societies.
