Free Stranger Than We Can Imagine by John Higgs

in similar huts or dwellings.
    There is considerably more scope for discord when tribes of hundreds grow into chiefdoms which number thousands of people. This was no longer a situation where individuals knew most of the people they saw daily. As the anthropologist Jared Diamond has noted, ‘With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them.’
    In groups of this size there was increased specialisation in work and less equality in wealth. There was now need for a ‘chief’, a formal role distinct from the rest of the group. The chief would dress differently, live in a more luxurious manner and, on a symbolic level, represent the chiefdom itself. They would make decisions on behalf of the group, and they would frequently be privy to information, such as the ambitions of a nearby tribe, that the rest of the group did not share. The chief ruled with the consent of their group and could usually be replaced at any point, in a similar way to a seventeenth-century pirate captain or a modern-day leader of a gang of bikers.
    As populations increased, forms of currency and trade emerged, and the chief’s power of decision-making allowed them to become rich. Once power became associated with wealth and privilege, many were willing to take the burden of responsibility from their chief’s shoulders. If a leader was to survive, it was necessary to generate popular support for their rule. Cultural and religiousstructures were a great help here, as were hereditary principles and heavily armed bodyguards. But what really mattered was the principle of protection. The people would support a leader who protected their interests from both internal and external threats. To do this, the chief (who would by now be going by a more grandiose title, such as lord, king or sultan) needed to offer law.
    This was the bargain between the ruler and the ruled, which the French called
noblesse oblige
. It was the understanding that with privilege came responsibility. Should a lord provide stability, safety and just and equal law, then the people would pledge him their loyalty in return. This loyalty created legitimacy, which allowed rulers to pursue the wealth, power and prestige they craved. What kings really liked were wars that allowed them to subdue other kings. When kings had other kings under their protection, it allowed them to use an even more impressive title, such as emperor, kaiser or tsar.
    Empires were not always popular, especially expensive and unjust ones, but they had some benefits. The single lord ruling over a large territory made all the usual local quarrels and power struggles irrelevant, and the result could be periods of stability and growth. As the revolutionary group the People’s Front of Judea ask in the Monty Python movie
Life of Brian
, ‘What have the Romans ever done for us? … Apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order?’
    The big problem with empires was that people were not regarded as individuals. They were instead defined by their role in the great imperial hierarchy. They were expected to ‘know their place.’ If you happened to find yourself in the role of a serf or a peasant rather than a lord or a master, there really was very little you could do about it. This became increasingly problematic following the rise of Enlightenment thought in the late seventeenth century, and the growing acceptance of both rationality and the rights of man.
    The flaw in the system became apparent when rulers failed in their duty to provide law, stability and justice. When that occurred in a small chiefdom it took a particularly formidable bodyguardto keep that chief on the throne. Or indeed, to keep that chief’s head on top of his body. Yet when that ruler was an emperor with whole armies at his