"A much more powerful nation-state, greatly increased actual means to control the lives of citizens."
It occurs to me that a non-developped state might actually be preferable to a modernized state, considering the degree of real freedom that occurs even in a totalitarian primitive state compared to a modern "democratic" state such as America or Japan. Surely the kings of ancient Confucian nations did not, after all, limit the speeds at which one could travel along the roads, the age at which a child was allowed to begin imbibing alcohol, or set national surveillance...
These are the trappings of a democratically modern society - not necessarily evil, but far more intrusive than a distant kingship claiming absolute rule would be.
Of course, none of this is to ignore the degree to which local tribal control might use shame or the threat of violence or exile to enforce specific cultural guidelines on its members, even as now communities enforce sexual, grammatical, and cultural mores which the government itself is not allowed to touch.
