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Karl August Wittfogel. Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. New Haven, USA: Yale University Press. 1957 (Reprinted 1981). 550 pages. USD 119 (Paperback).
Karl A. Wittfogel, famously known for his hydraulic thesis, was a German historian and sinologist. In his book, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power, he has given a comprehensible account of social, political, and economic history of Asian societies. The book offers a study of the development of totalitarian rule in hydraulic societies. He refers to the Asian societies as hydraulic societies, as they control the population by maintaining control over supply of water and irrigation system. The book focuses on different factors that invited totalitarian rule in these societies. Influenced by the classical economists, Wittfogel argues that large irrigation systems tend to win large lands and an expansion and acquirement of large areas is the development of managerial form of administration.
Wittfogel argues that the natural setting is a major determinant of the economies of oriental societies. In Asian societies, highly developed irrigation systems provided basis for the hydraulic agriculture and it eventually preserved the patterns of despotic government. In the first chapter, he shows how natural resources have played a remarkable role in highly developed irrigation systems. In the second chapter, he describes the process of division of labour and how it is, along with cooperation, the key to modern industries. Wittfogel claims that highly developed irrigation systems of Asian societies were the basis of the political economy of these economies. While establishing this as the basic argument of the book, in the next four chapters, he describes the rise of strong state, strong despotic power, total terror, and total submission of society to highly concentrated power. In chapter seven he provides institutional analysis not only in the context of agro-managerial apparatus but also its proprietary development. He examines the pattern of private property, which emerged under the agro-managerial despotism. In chapter eight, he analyses societal orders, viewing the position of state as the one practicing maximum control. After presenting an historical context, in chapter nine, he describes the Asiatic mode of production from a socialist 's, an economist 's, and an historian 's points of view. In chapter ten, he elaborates some key aspects of...