ABSTRACT
The first great agrarian empires and civilizations, the Mesopotamian empires of Sumer starting with Uruk, the Egyptian empires of the Nile Valley and the Indus Valley city-states, originated in the fourth millennium BCE. Frontier-making was crucial for the development of agrarian empires. In general terms, agrarian empires consisted of five social classes: ruling elites, intellectual elites, legally free persons, dependent workers and slaves. Most agrarian empires were built on vast peasantries. These peasantries settled in villages, exhibiting considerable variation in kinship organization, family residence arrangements, inheritance practices and the roles and status of women. In different world regions, a multitude of peasant regimes, forms of social organization and power relations originated. This chapter focuses on Ancient Egypt, over the wet-rice economies in South and East Asia and the grain economies in Europe, to the Islamic States, Middle and South America, Africa and last but not least, the lands of the nomadic pastoralists.
