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States and Wars: China's Long March towards Unity and its Consequences, 221 BC - 1911AD
We examine the long-term pattern of state formation and the mythical historical Chinese unity under one single political regime based on the compilation of a large geocoded annual data series of political regimes and incidences of warfare between 221 BC and 1911 AD. By classifying our data sets into two types of regimes – agrarian and nomadic – and three types of warfare – agrarian/nomadic, agrarian/agrarian and internal rebellions – and applying an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, we find that nomadic-agrarian warfare and internal rebellion strengthens unification but agrarian/agrarian warfare entrenches fragmentation. Our research highlights the combination of China’s precocious ideology of a single unified ruler, environmental circumscription on the easternmost end of Eurasia and persistent agrarian-nomadic warfare as the driving force behind China’s eventual unity. We further discuss the long-run implications of Chinese unity on economic performance in a global context.
Date:
19 January 2021, 17:00
Venue:
Held on Zoom
Speaker:
Debin Ma (Hitotsubashi University)
Organising department:
Department of Economics
Part of:
Economic and Social History Seminar
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Melis Clark
