| Description |
1 online resource (x, 322 pages) : illustrations, maps |
| Contents |
The people -- Government, war, and refuge -- Houses and crafts -- Farming and fishing -- Gods and temples -- Makahiki, trails, and exchange -- State societies -- The ancient Hawaiian state -- Polynesian comparisons -- Tikopia -- The Marquesas Islands : Nuku Hiva and ʻUa Pou -- The Society Islands : Tahiti and Porapora -- The ancient Tongan state -- The model : introduction and chronology construction -- The Hawaii state emergence model |
| Summary |
The endogenous rise of primary states constituted a major organizational revolution, for through emulation or coercion these states served as prototypes for all subsequent large-scale, politically organized societies that have replaced and encompassed all small-scale societies. Primary states emerged before sophisticated writing systems in six generally recognized regions: Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, Mesoamerica, and Andean South America. This book identifies Polynesia as the seventh such region by tracing the emergence of primary states in Hawaìi that, along with the Tongan state, were the only ones described by fully literate eyewitnesses. The Hawaiian state emergence model, constructed here from archaeological and historical evidence, employs comparisons with Tonga and five Polynesian nonstate societies to propose that the Hawaiian state emergence entailed a profound sociopolitical transformation in which leadership of each large Hawaiian island shifted from a relatively powerless symbolic chief to a warrior-king who exercised legitimate political power as head of a centralized government. The key management innovation was the ruler's ability to assert control indirectly by delegating power among multiple tiers of a hierarchical bureaucracy. Modeled modifications of the old order also included the funding of government operations with taxes diverted from the goods once collected for distribution among commoners, the invention of conquest warfare, and the shift from dual ownership to chiefs' assertion of property rights superior to those of commoners. According to the hard times hypothesis, a major impetus for the escalation of power politics may have been unrest among chiefs and commoners triggered by faltering agricultural productivity |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
HISTORY -- Oceania.
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Antiquities
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Civilization
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Politics and government
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| SUBJECT |
Hawaii -- Civilization
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Hawaii -- Antiquities.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh86007889
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Hawaii -- Politics and government -- To 1893.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85059358
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| Subject |
Hawaii
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Hawaii
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| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9780199916139 |
|
0199916136 |
|
9780199332823 |
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0199332827 |
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