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How do the world's societies differ from each other? What were the reasons for change in the past, and do they help us in predicting change in the future? This stimulating text encourages students to ask these and other questions.

Daniel Chirot explains how states and agriculture combined to create the world's classic civilizations. He shows how the UK, a marginal agrarian civilization on the edge of Europe, produced through the last two sections delineate the chronic unsolved problems of the modern era, develop a simplified model of how societies work and how the study of social change can contribute to the resolution of societies' most important problems.

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CONTENTS
About the Author = ⅸ
Foreword = xiii
Preface = xv
1 Evolution and Early Human Societies = 1
 Physical and Cultural Evolution: Differences and Similarities = 1
 Causes of Change in Early Societies = 7
 From Collecting, Hunting, and Fishing to Agriculture = 9
2 Agrarian Societies = 14
 The Invention of the State = 15
 Class, Status, and Force: Increasing Inequality and Making It Hereditary = 19
 Nomads, Migrants, and Other Raiders = 22
 Great Cultures: The Moral Basis of Agrarian Civilizations = 25
 The Problem of Administration and the Cycle of Political Decay and Reconstruction = 30
 The Conservatism of Village Life = 37
 The Demographic Cycle in Agrarian Societies = 39
 The Potential for Rapid Innovation: The Importance of Peripheries = 43
 The Limits of Analogy: Societies Are Not Species, and Cultural Evolution Is Not Biological Evolution = 50
3 The Rise of the West = 57
 Europe's Ecological Advantages = 59
 Religious Discordance and Political Stalemate: The Basis for Western Rationalization = 62
 Science, Knowledge, and Exploration in China and Western Europe = 65
 The Growth of European Empires and the Transformation of the Economy = 68
 Overcoming the Agrarian Population Cycle = 70
 The Invention of Nationalism and Its Consequences = 71
 The Legitimation of Commerce: The Ideological Basis of the Industrial Revolution = 74
4 The Modern Era = 79
 Industrial Cycles = 82
 Internal and International Social Consequences of Modernization and Industrial Cycles = 88
 Class, Status, and Power in Modern Societies = 92
 Political Ideologies and Protests: Two Centuries of Revolutions = 100
 War, Tyranny, and the Success of Western Enlightenment Values = 108
 Ecological Pressures Persist = 111
5 Toward a Theory of Social Change = 117
 Why Change Occurs = 121
 The New or the Old? The Paradox of Institutional Resistance to Change = 125
 Freedom or Control? The Dilemma of the Modern Era = 128
Bibliography = 135
Index = 139