Details

Subject(s)

• World politics [Browse]
• State, The [Browse]
• War [Browse]
• China—Politics and government—To 221 B.C. [Browse]
• Europe—Politics and government [Browse]

Summary note

• "The Eurocentric conventional wisdom holds that the West is unique in having a multistate system in international relations and liberal democracy in state-society relations. At the same time, the Sinocentric perspective maintains that China is destined to have authoritarian rule with a unified empire. In fact, China in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (656-221 B.C.) was a system of sovereign territorial states similar to Europe in the early modern period. In both cases this formative period witnessed the prevalence of war, formation of alliances, development of centralized bureaucracy, emergence of citizenship rights, and expansion of international trade. This book 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 empire."--Jacket.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-283) and index.

Contents

• 1. A dynamic theory of world politics
• 2. The dynamics of international politics in ancient China
• 3. Rethinking the dynamics of international politics in early modern Europe
• 4. The dynamics of state formation and transformation
• 5. Conclusion and implications
• App. I. List of wars involving great powers in early modern Europe (1495-1815)
• App. II. List of wars involving great powers in ancient China (656-221 B.C.)
• App. III. Operational criteria for the lists of wars involving great powers
• App. IV. Chronology of periods of unification and division in Chinese history.

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ISBN

• 9780521819725 ((hbk.))
• 0521819725 ((hbk.))
• 9780521525763 ((pbk.))
• 0521525764 ((pbk.))

LCCN

2004024989

OCLC

56876657

International Article Number

• 9780521525763
• 9780521819725

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