Crash Course World History: Re-evaluating Civilization and Stateless Societies

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts, historical figures, books, and terminology from the Crash Course World History lecture on civilization, state control, and Zomia.

Food Surplus

An excess of agricultural production beyond immediate survival needs, enabling population concentration, job specialization, and the emergence of states.

Father Sangermano

A Portuguese friar who noted around 1800 that local populations fled to the hills with their families to escape heavy oppressions and continual levies of men and money.

Sir Stamford Raffles

The founder of British Singapore who advocated for despotism in colonial Indonesia to concentrate wandering tribes into organized societies under authority.

Pierre Clastres

An anthropologist and author of Society Against the State who argued that South American Amerindian societies abandoned agriculture and fixed villages to escape conquest, rather than failing to invent them.