French Literature Reviews - 2026
W. Scheidel, Une histoire des inégalités. De l'âge de pierre au XXIe siècle
History, Politics and Society
Walter Scheidel
Une histoire des inégalités. De l'âge de pierre au XXIe siècle
Actes Sud
ISBN: 978-2-330-14077-9
768 p.
28.00 €
OVERVIEW
Walter Scheidel unfolds a striking fresco before our eyes: spanning thousands of years and diverse societies, he examines pivotal moments in human history when the rising curve of economic inequality was reversed. Against all expectations, we discover that inequality is an intrinsic feature of advanced civilizations, and that its reduction is far less likely in times of peace and abundance than in periods of destabilization and chaos—where it is often rolled back at the cost of deadly violence, only to inevitably emerge anew.
Tracing this historical deep dive back to the Neolithic era, Scheidel identifies four key drivers or mechanisms that dismantle extreme inequality and foster greater equality—warfare, revolution, state collapse, and pandemics—while carefully avoiding any form of determinism.
Navigating through the ages, the author resurrects the sufferings of bygone eras and reconstructs patterns of inequality drawing on an encyclopedic command of existing scholarship and a systematic compilation of material remains and traces—ceramic shards, town plans, living surfaces, age at death, skeletal heights, obscure inscriptions, and ancient poems. He maps out the webs of human dependency as well as the sites of power and accumulation, transporting us from Hirohito's Japan to Pericles' Athens, from the lowland Maya to contemporary Somalia, from imperial China to ancient Babylon, from the Roman Republic to the Hittite Empire, from Mycenaean civilization to Mamluk Egypt, and from the communist USSR and China to the United States and the major nations of modern and contemporary Europe. Everywhere, he probes the nature of these crises and their capacity to mobilize, devastate, and transform humanity.
Scheidel's analysis thus sheds fresh light on the persistence of inequality, masterfully demonstrating the destructive and regenerative cycle of which global capitalism is the latest manifestation. He reminds us of the urgent need to mount a political response to an unequal globalization whose accumulated vulnerabilities could trigger a worldwide collapse.
A renowned historian, Walter Scheidel teaches at Stanford University, where he holds the Dickason Professorship in the Humanities, is Professor of Classics and History, and is a member of the Kennedy-Grossman Program in Human Biology. He has authored or edited some twenty books, focusing in particular on the economic and social history of the premodern period, demography, and comparative history. A leading authority in his field—the history of ancient European civilizations—Scheidel has pioneered a novel approach to the ancient world, applying socio-economic arguments typically reserved for our own era to illuminate our distant past.
Long-term studies of economic disparity and societal development belong to a well-established tradition within economic history and macro-history, intersecting with comparative sociology and historical demography. Scholars in these fields frequently examine how material conditions, institutional structures, and demographic shifts interact across millennia. By drawing on archaeological data, textual remains, and quantitative records, researchers attempt to map the distribution of wealth and power in past and present societies. Within this broader academic landscape, examinations of large-scale historical trajectories often seek to understand the structural mechanisms that drive wealth accumulation and its subsequent redistribution.
Readers interested in long-term historical analyses of socio-economic structures and global developments may find this work relevant. The text addresses the recurring presence of economic inequality across diverse civilizations and historical epochs, tracing its persistence from antiquity through the modern era. It examines specific historical mechanisms associated with the reduction of extreme disparities, while considering the broader implications for contemporary globalization and political organization. The study situates current economic conditions within a vast chronological framework spanning thousands of years of human history.