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The Eurocentric conventional wisdom holds that the West is unique in having a multi-state system in international relations and liberal democracy in state-society relations. At the same time, the Sinocentric perspective believes that China is destined to have authoritarian rule under a unified empire. In fact, China in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (656–221 BC) was once a system of sovereign territorial states similar to Europe in the early modern period. Both cases witnessed the prevalence of war, formation of alliances, development of the centralized bureaucracy, emergence of citizenship rights, and expansion of international trade. This book, first published in 2005, examines why China and Europe shared similar processes but experienced opposite outcomes. This historical comparison of China and Europe challenges the presumption that Europe was destined to enjoy checks and balances while China was preordained to suffer under a coercive universal status.
Scholars have long argued over whether the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended more than a century of religious conflict arising from the Protestant Reformations, inaugurated the modern sovereign-state system. But they largely ignore a more fundamental question: why did the emergence of new forms of religious heterodoxy during the Reformations spark such violent upheaval and nearly topple the old political order? In this book, Daniel Nexon demonstrates that the answer lies in understanding how the mobilization of transnational religious movements intersects with--and can destabilize--imperial forms of rule. Taking a fresh look at the pivotal events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--including the Schmalkaldic War, the Dutch Revolt, and the Thirty Years' War--Nexon argues that early modern "composite" political communities had more in common with empires than with modern states, and introduces a theory of imperial dynamics that explains how religious movements altered Europe's balance of power. He shows how the Reformations gave rise to crosscutting religious networks that undermined the ability of early modern European rulers to divide and contain local resistance to their authority. In doing so, the Reformations produced a series of crises in the European order and crippled the Habsburg bid for hegemony. Nexon's account of these processes provides a theoretical and analytic framework that not only challenges the way international relations scholars think about state formation and international change, but enables us to better understand global politics today.
There is a common belief that the system of sovereign territorial states and the roots of liberal democracy are unique to European civilization and alien to non-Western cultures. The view has generated popular cynicism about democracy promotion in general and China's prospect for democratization in particular. This book demonstrates that China in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (656-221 BC) consisted of a system of sovereign territorial states similar to Europe in the early modern period. It examines why China and Europe shared similar processes but experienced opposite outcomes.
Failed or weak states, miscarried democratizations, and economic underdevelopment characterize a large part of the world we live in. Much work has been done on these subjects over the latest decades but most of this research ignores the deep historical processes that produced the modern state, modern democracy and the modern market economy in the first place. This book elucidates the roots of these developments. The book discusses why China was surpassed by Europeans in spite of its early development of advanced economic markets and a meritocratic state. It also hones in on the relationship between geopolitical pressure and state formation and on the European conditions that – from the Middle Ages onwards – facilitated the development of the modern state, modern democracy, and the modern market economy. Finally, the book discusses why some countries have been able to follow the European lead in the latest generations whereas other countries have not. State Formation, Regime Change and Economic Development will be of key interest to students and researchers within political science and history as well as to Comparative Politics, Political Economy and the Politics of Developing Areas.
The Confucian-Legalist State proposes a new theory of social change and, in doing so, analyzes the patterns of Chinese history, such as the rise and persistence of a unified empire, the continuous domination of Confucianism, and China's inability to develop industrial capitalism without Western imperialism.
This engaging volume scrutinises the causal relationship between warfare and state formation, using Charles Tilly's work as a foundation.
This book, first published in 2005, explores why China and Europe's development of state systems began similarly but experienced opposite outcomes.
The 16th and 17th centuries saw many ambitious European rulers develop permanent armies and navies. Jan Glete examines this military change as a central part of the political, social and economic transformation of early modern Europe.
The history of China is a history of warfare. Rarely in its 3,000-year existence has the country not been beset by war, rebellion, or raids. Warfare was a primary source of innovation, social evolution, and material progress in the Legendary Era, Hsia dynasty, and Shang dynasty -- indeed, war was the force that formed the first cohesive Chinese empire, setting China on a trajectory of state building and aggressive activity that continues to this day. In Ancient Chinese Warfare, a preeminent expert on Chinese military history uses recently recovered documents and archaeological findings to construct a comprehensive guide to the developing technologies, strategies, and logistics of ancient Chinese militarism. The result is a definitive look at the tools and methods that won wars and shaped culture in ancient China.
Established in 221 BCE, the Chinese empire lasted for 2,132 years before being replaced by the Republic of China in 1912. During its two millennia, the empire endured internal wars, foreign incursions, alien occupations, and devastating rebellions--yet fundamental institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural features of the empire remained intact. The Everlasting Empire traces the roots of the Chinese empire's exceptional longevity and unparalleled political durability, and shows how lessons from the imperial past are relevant for China today. Yuri Pines demonstrates that the empire survived and adjusted to a variety of domestic and external challenges through a peculiar combination of rigid ideological premises and their flexible implementation. The empire's major political actors and neighbors shared its fundamental ideological principles, such as unity under a single monarch--hence, even the empire's strongest domestic and foreign foes adopted the system of imperial rule. Yet details of this rule were constantly negotiated and adjusted. Pines shows how deep tensions between political actors including the emperor, the literati, local elites, and rebellious commoners actually enabled the empire's basic institutional framework to remain critically vital and adaptable to ever-changing sociopolitical circumstances. As contemporary China moves toward a new period of prosperity and power in the twenty-first century, Pines argues that the legacy of the empire may become an increasingly important force in shaping the nation's future trajectory.