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Patterns of political unification and fragmentation have important implications for economic development. Diamond (1997a) famously argued that fractured land was responsible for China’s tendency towards political unification and Europe’s persistent political fragmentation. We build a model to explore the effects of geography on political fragmentation in Eurasia. We find that topography, or fractured land, is necessary but not sufficient to account for China’s early political centralization and Europe’s persistent political fragmentation. The existence, or lack thereof, of a dominant core region of high land productivity also plays a critical role in explaining the political divergence at the two ends of Eurasia.
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