Events

States And Wars: China’s Long March Towards Unity And Its Consequences, 221 BC – 1911 AD

Debin Ma from Hitotsubashi University (formerly with LSE) and his co-author 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 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, they find that nomadic-agrarian warfare and internal rebellion strengthens unification but agrarian/agrarian warfare entrenches fragmentation. Their 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. In this Quantitative History Webinar, Debin will present his paper titled States And Wars: China’s Long March Towards Unity And Its Consequences, 221 BC – 1911 AD, and further discuss the long-run implications of Chinese unity on economic performance in a global context.

國家與戰爭：中國通向大一統的歷史（公元前221年至1911)

本次量化歷史網上講座將由著名經濟史學者馬德斌教授主講，他於不久前由倫敦政治經濟學院正式轉任一橋大學。馬教授和他的合著者陳碩在既有的地理座標基礎上，整合公元前221年至公元1911年之間政權和戰爭發生率的年度大數據序列，從而研究在單一政權下長期形成的國家模式和猶如神話般的「中國大一統」。他們先將數據分為「農耕」和「游牧」兩類政權，以及「農牧衝突」、「農耕戰爭」 和「內亂」三種戰爭類型，並應用自回歸分佈滯後模型 [Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model] 作出分析。研究發現「農牧衝突」和「內亂」對國家統一有正面影響，而「農耕戰爭」則鞏固了其分裂。促進中國最終統一的原因何在？ 這項研究強調其推動力乃結合「早熟的大一統意識形態」、「歐亞大陸最東端的封閉邊界」及「持續農牧衝突」三大元素。在本次講座中，馬德斌教授的報告基於其論文《國家與戰爭：中國通向大一統的歷史（公元前221年至1911)》(原文題目： States And Wars: China’s Long March Towards Unity And Its Consequences, 221 BC – 1911 AD) 。他會進一步討論在全球背景下，中國統一對經濟表現的長期影響。

Live on Zoom on December 10, 2020 (To be conducted in Mandarin 講座以普通話進行)

16:00 Hong Kong/Beijing/Singapore
08:00 London | 17:00 Tokyo | 19:00 Sydney
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The Quantitative History Webinar Series, convened by Professor Zhiwu Chen and Dr. Chicheng Ma of The University of Hong Kong (HKU), aims to provide researchers, teachers and students with an online intellectual platform to keep up to date with the latest research in the field, promoting the dissemination of research findings and interdisciplinary use of quantitative methods in historical research. The Series is co-organized by the International Society for Quantitative History, HKU Business School, and the Asia Global Institute (AGI).

Conveners:
Professor Zhiwu Chen
Dr. Chicheng Ma