 Millet, Rice, and Isolation: Origins and Persistence of the World’s Most Enduring Mega-StateJames Kai-sing Kung, Ömer Özal, Louis Putterman and Shuang Shi No 2022-003, Working Papers from Brown University, Department of Economics Abstract: We propose and test empirically a theory describing the endogenous formation and persistence of mega-states, using China as an example. We suggest that the relative timing of the emergence of agricultural societies, and their distance from each other, set off a race between their autochthonous state-building projects, which determines their extent and persistence. Using a novel dataset describing the historical presence of Chinese states, prehistoric development, the diffusion of agriculture, and migratory distance across 1 x 1 grid cells in eastern Asia, we find that cells that adopted agriculture earlier and were close to Erlitou ─ the earliest political center in eastern Asia ─ remained under Chinese control for longer and continue to be a part of China today. By contrast, cells that adopted agriculture early and were located further from Erlitou developed into independent states, as agriculture provided the fertile ground for state-formation, while isolation provided time for them to develop and confront the expanding Chinese empire. Our study sheds important light on why eastern Asia kept reproducing a mega-state in the area that became China and on the determinants of its borders with other states. Date: 2022 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bro:econwp:2022-003 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from Brown University, Department of Economics Department of Economics, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912. |
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