Bret Devereaux

And it's a vision of cultural evolution which conveniently culminates in Western-style states. I wonder why that is?

It doesn't though. Qing-period China? Clearly a state. Han period China - also clearly a state! Tokugawa-era Japan? Very clearly a state. There are indigenous American states too - lots in Mesoamerica, but I think the Iroquois also probably ought to qualify.

Of the societies thought to be 'pristine' states (states that developed in the absence of contact with other states), exactly none of them were in Europe!

'State' isn't a value judgement, it is an organizational descriptor. Steppe nomads? Super-successful, but generally not organized into states. Classical-period Sparta? Pretty clearly a state to me, but also pretty clearly a garbage society.

ofc you see assumptions that 12th century France was a state (it wasn't) or that the Zulu kingdom wasn't a state (it was) because people read their preconceptions into the definition. But that's why the definition has to be clear and uniformly appliedhttps://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1353170966738849793 …

So I disagree - there is nothing particularly 'western' or 'European' about the state. If anything, a frank investigation of the origins of states makes clear that the state emerged outside of Europe and was (at multiple points) an imported innovation, like so many other things.