oriental despotism

Traditional concept used by Montesquieu in his account of the influence of climate and physical geography on political structures (‘power should always be despotic in Asia’: The Spirit of the Laws). The idea was echoed in Marx's account of the Asiatic mode of production and revived by K. Wittfogel in his Oriental Despotism (1957). According to Wittfogel, oriental societies depended on massive irrigation which had to be centrally planned. He called the outcome ‘hydraulic society’. Students of comparative government now think that such generalizations are too broad to be useful.