180 Early Agriculture
The efforts required to build all these great highways have attracted much less
attention than the finished products. But what evidence we have indicates that like
most other major government enterprises, they were mainly executed through the
cooperative effort of state-levied corvée labourers. Under the Inca empire supervi-
sory officials marked off the land and informed the local inhabitants ‘that they
should make these roads’. And this was done with little cost to the government.
The commandeered men ‘come with their food and tools to make them’.^83
The highways of imperial China required an enormous labour force for their
construction and a very sizable one for their maintenance. A Han inscription notes
that the construction of a certain highway in the years AD 63–66 occupied 766,800
men. Of this great number only 2690 were convicts.^84
c. Palaces, capital cities and tombs
A governmental apparatus capable of executing all these hydraulic and nonhydrau-
lic works could easily be used in building palaces and pleasure grounds for the ruler
and his court, palace-like government edifices for his aides, and monuments and
tombs for the distinguished dead. It could be used wherever the equalitarian con-
ditions of a primitive tribal society yielded to tribal or no-longer tribal forms of
autocracy.
The head chief of a Pueblo community had his fields worked for him by the
villagers. But apparently his dwelling did not differ from the houses of other tribes-
men, except perhaps that it was better and more securely located. The Chagga
chieftains had veritable palaces erected for their personal use; and the corvée labour
involved in their construction was substantial.^85
The colossal palaces of the rulers of ancient Peru were erected by the integrated
manpower of many labourers. In pre-Columbian Mexico, Nezahualcoyotzin, the
king of Tezcuco, the second largest country in the Aztec Federation, is said to have
employed more than 200,000 workers each day for the building of his magnificent
palace and park.^86
Unlimited control over the labour power of their subjects enabled the rulers of
Sumer, Babylon and Egypt to build their spectacular palaces, gardens and tombs.
The same work pattern prevailed in the many smaller states that shaped their gov-
ernment on the Mesopotamian or Egyptian model. According to the biblical
records, King Solomon built his beautiful temple with labour teams that, like
those of Babylonia, were kept at work for four months of the year.^87
The great edifices of Mogul India have been frequently described. Less known
but equally worthy of mention are the constructions of the earlier periods. The
third ruler of the Tughluq, Fīrūs Shāh (ca. 1308–1388), dug several important
irrigation canals, the famous ‘Old Jumna Canal’ among them. He built forts, pal-
aces, and palace-cities, mosques and tombs. The palace-fort of Kotla Fīrūs Shāh,
which rose in his new capital of Fīrūsābād (Delhi), faithfully preserved the grand
style of pre-Islamic Indian and Eastern architecture.^88
The Chinese variant of the general agromanagerial building trend is revealed
in many elaborate works. The First Emperor of China, Ch’in Shih Huang-ti, began