States and Wars: China’s Long March Towards Unity and its Consequences, 221 BC – 1911 AD
Abstract
Based on the compilation of a large geocoded annual data series of political regimes and incidences of warfare between 221 BC and 1911 AD, we provide both qualitative and quantitative evidences to show that the mythical historical Chinese rests in a tripartite synthesis of China’s unique geography (of environmental circumscription), ideology (of a single unified ruler for all) and institution (of direct administrative rule). 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 – as fought between and within the two regimes, our econometric exercise shows that the unity is forged through nomadicagrarian warfare which leads to a reduction in the number of agrarian regimes but an increase in their territorial size. Our paper also provides the first direct quantification of ideology based on the application of the latest textual analytical tool of Python to the Classical Chinese primary sources.
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Distinguished Professor of Economics at Fudan University
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