(^28) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
tradicted the ultimate responsibility of the higher authorities in this do
main, especially in conscripting and assigning labor for the larger tasks:
the big dikes, dams, and canals, flood control, repair and relief. Such
interventions went far beyond local possibilities. The stakes were huge.
For one thing, the more daring the alteration of nature, the greater the
scope and cost of failure or catastrophe.^16 For another, it was food sur
pluses that sustained the machinery of government.
This was the reality. As one team of scholars put it, repudiating Witt
fogel the while, "There must be irrigable land available, adequate so
cial hegemony and state control, and so on."^17 Yes indeed.
nora
(Nora)
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