For the political concept, see Oriental despotism.
Oriental Despotism
Author
Karl August Wittfogel
Country
United States
Publisher
Yale University Press
Publication date
1957
Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power is a book of political theory and comparative history by Karl August Wittfogel (1896–1988) published by Yale University Press in 1957. The book offers an explanation for the despotic governments in "Oriental" societies, where control of water was necessary for irrigation and flood-control. Managing these projects required large-scale bureaucracies, which dominated the economy, society, and religious life. This despotism differed from the Western experience, where power was distributed among contending groups. The book argues that this form of "hydraulic despotism" characterized ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Hellenistic Greece and imperial Rome, the Abbasid Caliphate, imperial China, the Moghul empire, and Incan Peru. Wittfogel further argues that 20th century Marxist-Leninist regimes, such as the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China, though they were not themselves hydraulic societies, did not break away from their historical condition and remained systems of "total power" and "total terror".
The book was both welcomed as an historically grounded analysis of despotism that warned the West against the expansion of Communist totalitarianism and criticized as a Cold War polemic. The materialist and ecological theories in Oriental Despotism influenced ecological anthropologists and global economic historians even though some of them found fault with its methodology and empirical basis or questioned Wittfogel's political motives.[1]
^Robbins (2010), pp. 56-57.
and 24 Related for: Oriental Despotism information
Orientaldespotism refers to the Western view of Asian societies as politically or morally more suspectible to despotic rule, and therefore different from...
OrientalDespotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power is a book of political theory and comparative history by Karl August Wittfogel (1896–1988) published...
local chieftains, kings, and emperors. The concept of despotism, and especially orientaldespotism, entered European political thought with Montesquieu's...
German-American historian Karl August Wittfogel (1896–1988), in his book OrientalDespotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (1957). Wittfogel asserted that...
Maoism, 1960? Class Structure and Total Power in OrientalDespotism, 1960 A Stronger OrientalDespotism 1960 The Russian and Chinese Revolutions: A Socio-Historical...
included Rome and the Incan Empire in his study of what he called OrientalDespotism, demonstrating the term still carries a meaning in Western thought...
suggested in his 1957 book, OrientalDespotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power, that his concept of Orientaldespotism showed that this was because...
narrowness of village economies and the state's role in production. Orientaldespotism was generally regarded in Europe as a major factor in the relative...
Wittfogel, Karl August (2010-09-07). OrientalDespotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. OrientalDespotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. United...
portray the degraded Turkish court, using "the harem, the Sultan court, orientaldespotism, luxury, gems and spices, carpets, and silk cushions" as an unfavorable...
undermining local religion and cultures. Chinweizu borrows ideas of orientaldespotism in his perspective on North African and Middle East Arabs as secondary...
previously dominated Ottoman economic history, above all the notion of an "Orientaldespotism" which supposedly inhibited economic development, and instead to examine...
such systems made bureaucratic despotism inevitable in Oriental lands. When Wittfogel published his OrientalDespotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power...
and Russian Policy, Trafford Publishing, 2004. Abrahamian Ervand, "OrientalDespotism:The Case of Qajar Iran" International Journal of Middle East Studies...
Curtis, Michael (2009). Orientalism and Islam: European Thinkers on OrientalDespotism in the Middle East and India. New York City: Cambridge University...
Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world Opposition to immigration OrientalismOrientalDespotism Potential superpowers Protracted social conflict Religious pluralism...
Asiatic mode of production Aron refers to Karl August Wittfogel's work OrientalDespotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. Marx enumerated various modes...
and Continuity in an African Society is published. Karl Wittfogel's OrientalDespotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power is published. Michael Young's...
violence and armed power. — Michael Curtis, Orientalism and Islam: European Thinkers on OrientalDespotism in the Middle East and India (2009), p. 31,...
as Spain and France. The 'hydraulic thesis' in Karl A. Wittfogel's OrientalDespotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power, in which despots would control...
House, New Delhi, 1979, pp. 205–14. "The Social Economic Bases of 'OrientalDespotism' in Early India", Essays in Honour of Dr. Gyanchand, ed., S.K. Bose...
subversion of parliamentary government in favour of some simulacrum of the orientaldespotism its creator was alleged to admire. Smith notes that there was indeed...
complex societies in two distinct forms: orientaldespotism and the classical polis. In orientaldespotism, the despot personifies society – all property...
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