Escape From Rome

by Walter Scheidel

  145. Zhao 2015a: 369–70.

  146. Brandt, Ma, and Rawski 2014: 61–80 on China’s political economy, see 64–66.

  147. Ibid., 66–75 (quote: 75).

  148. Ibid., 75–76.

  149. Ibid., 76–80 for this summary and quotes.

  150. Wong 1997: 281–83 (quotes). See also Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 212–13.

  151. Baechler 1975: 82. See also Ringmar 2007: 269–73 and, if very superficially, Hui 2015: 20–22.

  152. See chapters 7 and 12 in this volume. Desirability: Fu 1996: 39–40. For economic development in this period, see von Glahn 2016: 44–83.

  153. Von Glahn 2016: 85, 96, 118.

  154. S. Liu 2001; von Glahn 2016: 160, 227 (quote), 232.

  155. W. Liu 2015b: 51; von Glahn 2016: 214.

  156. G. Wang 1990: 402–3; Clark 2009: 177–78, 191–93.

  157. Von Glahn 2016: 229. For the concept of a state system and its applicability to China, see chapter 7 in this volume. The counterfactual developed by Yates 2006, which supposes further Song advances after victory over the Xi Xia in the 1080s, runs counter to the logic of competitive pressures: greater military successes might well have reduced the incentive for further development. Hoffman 2015: 175 raises a similar objection.

  158. W. Liu 2015b: 53–57. For the late Tang/Song economic transition in general, see von Glahn 2016: 208–554.

  159. W. Liu 2015b: 67–72 (quote: 73, on the mid-eighth through mid-tenth centuries).

  160. See chapter 8 in this volume.

  161. Arrighi 2007: 314–21; Hoffman 2015: 70, 74–75, and in general 69–81 on the differences between Chinese and European styles of war.

  162. Qing martial culture: Waley-Cohen 2006. See Perdue 2005 for their subjugation of the steppe, noting (549) that the end of expansion in the mid-eighteenth century “meant that both the incentives for innovation and the means of control slackened.” Andrade 2016 makes a similar case. See also Lorge 2005: 158–74 for the Qing victories between 1684 and 1795. Military participation decreased as a share of population: Lorge 2005: 183. Shift after 1368: I. Morris 2014: 176. Retardation: Hoffman 2015: 71, 79–81.

  163. Von Glahn 2016: 285–93.

  164. See von Glahn 2016: 293–94 for this contrast (quote: 293).

  165. W. Liu 2015a: chs. 3, 5, and 6.

  166. W. Liu 2015a: 106–13, 119, 195, 199–200; von Glahn 2016: 286.

  167. Von Glahn 2016: 289 (quote).

  168. W. Liu 2015a: 134 finds that by the late nineteenth century, real per capita income was lower (in terms of rice) than it had been 800 years earlier, and about the same in silver terms. By contrast, Broadberry, Guan, and Li 2017 doubt a Song peak but observe a decline after 1700. See von Glahn 2016: 354–58 for critical discussion.

  169. See chapter 11 in this volume.

  170. Elvin 1973: 217–18.

  171. Levathes 1994: 174–75; Elvin 1973: 218, 224–25. Japan was able to pursue similar policies because it did not face any serious international security threats.

  172. Elvin 1973: 219, 222 (quote), 224; Deng 1997: 88–93; Mielants 2007: 66; Vries 2015: 354.

  173. Elvin 1973: 292.

  174. So 2000: 227–52 on formal constraints (quote: 251), and 253–79 on informal constraints.

  175. Lack of support: Deng 1999: 210 (also for the term “state-pulled”). Empires: Mielants 2007: 111–12.

  176. Pomeranz 2000: 173 (quote); Vries 2002: 87; 2015: 349–51, 356–57.

  177. X. Zhang 2010 (Ming); Zhao 2015a: 368 (Qing).

  178. For the First Emperor of Qin, see Petersen 1995, who defends the historicity of the tradition (11–12). Proscription: Bodde 1991: 187, and 186–90 for the difference in intensity of persecution in East and West and its putative causes.

  179. Vries 2015: 353 (quote), and earlier Vries 2002: 111.

  180. On Wang Mang, see Thomsen 1988, esp. 117–40 for his economic reforms.

  181. Von Glahn 2016: 236–42; also Bol 1993; Pines 2012: 92.

  182. J. Hall 1985: 53; Wong 1997: 144; Vries 2002: 113–14; 2015: 347–48.

  183. Analects 16.1, quoted from T. Zhang 2017: 267. For revolts, see chapter 8 in this volume.

  184. Deng 1999: 122–24 for the model (quote: 122), 128–47 for its origin, 299–324 (Song anomaly).

  185. Van Zanden 2009a: 288 contrasts the European path of accelerating commercial development in a fragmented state system with the laissez-faire approach of large empires. Capstone state: J. Hall 1985: 33–57 and 1996: 35–44 on China; also Vries 2015: 414. Cf. in general Crone 2003: 35–80, esp. 56–57. Learning: Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 23: “The history of China before 1350 (from the Qin through the Mongols) can in fact be seen as a long apprenticeship in the strategies of internal rule.” Similarly, Pines 2012: 105–33, for the long process of trying out different strategies—from excessive centralization to tolerance of overly powerful aristocracies—from the Qin to the Tang before more stable arrangements emerged in the second millennium.

  186. Benign neglect: Ringmar 2007: 286–87; see also Parthasarathi 2011: 170–71 on iron production. Rights: Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 96.

  187. Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 151–63 (also 165: “traditional empires do not borrow”); Wong 2012: 365; Vries 2015: 212–13, 233–40.

  188. Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 163–65.

  189. Levels: Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 173–82, 195. The Qing spent maybe 50 percent of state revenues on war, compared to 70–90 percent in some European states (181–82), and even less as a share of GDP. See also Vries 2015: 183–90. Qing: W. Liu 2015a: 266, table F-4; von Glahn 2016: 314–16 (declining tax rates); Hoffman 2015: 50–51; Vries 2015: 102–3, 121–22; and Ko, Koyama, and Sng 2018: 307 (comparative tax rates); Sng 2014: 108–9; Vries 2015: 138–45 (inefficiencies in collection), 151–58 (corruption).

  190. Pines 2012: 131: “The perennial cycle of the government’s aggravating impoverishment under any lengthy dynasty clearly related to the elite’s ability to shield its wealth by minimizing transfers to the state’s coffers.” Exceptions: Sng 2014: 123; Deng 2015.

  191. Von Glahn 2016: 10, 320 (quotes). Welfare schemes: Parthasarathi 2011: 173–74 thinks that the combination of low tax revenue and massive commitment to a vast and costly granary system left the Qing state unable to intervene in other sectors of the economy.

  192. Q. Chen 2012: 46–49. E. Jones 2003: 208 sardonically likens the Chinese elite system to being “allocated hunting-licences subject only to a bag limit and a fee,” entitling officials to make money off their charges.

  193. Q. Chen 2012: 51–58; and also Ni and Van 2006: 318–23; Karayalcin 2008: 990–91 for high corruption income.

  194. Q. Chen 2012: 57–60. See Ni and Van 2006: 323–34 for a model of corruption with detrimental consequences for the economy (also 317n3, 335).

  195. Thus Ni and Van 2006: 322–23; Q. Chen 2012: 57. For low state capacity in Qing China, see the recent literature survey by Johnson and Koyama 2017: 6–7.

  196. Governmental intent—with regard to economic development—was irrelevant to these outcomes: Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 199–200.

  197. Osborne 2004; Zelin 2009.

  198. Greif and Tabellini 2017; T. Zhang 2017. Trusts: Zelin 2004: 32–33; and see chapter 12 in this volume.

  199. T. Zhang 2017: 196–219 analyzes competing explanations; see esp. 206–10, 212, 218. Greif and Tabellini 2017 likewise acknowledge the centrality of the Song period (14–15), although their own explanation (lower state power coupled with migration: 19) does not mesh well with conditions in this particular period: by Chinese standards, state capacity was unusually high.

  200. Von Glahn 2016: 295–347 is the most recent, and insistently optimistic, account. Comparisons: Shiue and Keller 2007, esp. 1205; von Glahn 2016: 346–47.

  201. The question of real wages has generated a lot of discussion, but the overall trends are now pretty clear: Broadberry and Gupta 2006, esp. 19; Allen 2009a: 546–49; Allen et al. 2011, esp. 27–28; Li and van Zanden 2012; Broadberry, Gu
an, and Li 2017, esp. 49. Deng and O’Brien 2016 voice methodological concerns. Capitalistic features: Vries 2002: 117–20; 2013: 340. Integration: von Glahn 2016: 334.

  202. Thus Brenner and Isett 2002, in their detailed critique of Pomeranz 2000.

  203. Von Glahn 2016: 336–37, 343–45.

  204. Zhao 2015a: 353–55.

  205. Based on the catalog in Deng 1999: 363–76, the respective intervals were 218 years for the Western Han, 159 years for the Eastern Han, 245 years for the Tang, 159 years for the Northern Song, 80 years for the Yuan (perhaps sped up by foreign rule), 273 years for the Ming, for a mean of 201 years excluding the Yuan (and less with them). The Qing intervals were 151 years (White Lotus) and 207 years (Taiping). For the frequency and pattern of popular revolts, see chapter 8 in this volume. See very briefly J. Hall 1996: 36–38 for the underlying cyclical dynamics.

  206. Von Glahn 2016: 347 (quote), also 361: “No new institutions, public or private, were developed to mitigate these pressures.” For Britain, see chapter 12 in this volume.

  207. See Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 208–27 for an argument that China since 1500 was more geared toward fostering (Smithian) economic growth while Europe benefited from “unanticipated positive conditions for economic change” rooted in the chronic threat of war (esp. 209, 230 [quote]).

  208. Pines 2012: 132–33; von Glahn 2016: 385 (quote), 397. The contrast to Japan is striking. For Japan’s modernization, see Vries 2020.

  209. Quote: Vries 2015: 364.

  210. Divergence: Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 9 (quote). Wong 1997: 279–80, 149 (quotes: 280, 149). See also Hall 1985: 56–57; Deng 1999: 3, 15; Vries 2015: 432. Political economy: Wong 1997: 142–49; Brandt, Ma, and Rawski 2014: 61–80.

  211. Size: Elvin 1973: 18–20. Quote: J. Hall 1988: 33.

  212. Constraints: Vries 2002: 110 (quote); O’Brien 2012a: 451–53. Even in Europe, diverse polities fared less well: O’Brien 2012b: 547. Zones: Lieberman 2009: 110–13.

  213. Elvin 1973: 313–14; Vries 2002: 112; Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 99; Vries 2013: 351–54. See also chapter 12 in this volume.

  214. R. Huang 1974: 2 (Ming); Wong 1997: 148; Vries 2015: 400, 405–7.

  215. For a good survey, see Vries 2002. I disagree with Rosenthal and Wong’s (2011) narrow definition of empires as “polities … where a central ruler exercised effective authority over a large fraction of a contiguous region,” which by their own reckoning excludes not only modern colonial empires but even that of the Ottomans (13). See the Glossary. Shared feature: see, e.g., E. Jones 2003: 161, 171, 228–29. Their earlier history scarcely matters here: any ancient societies, whether in those regions or elsewhere, were a priori unlikely to spawn modern economies.

  216. Goldstone 2009: 100–101 badly misses this crucial point when he deems it “a misleading oversimplification to say that from 1500 onward Europe had a system of competing states whereas Asia had empires without competition” and “wrong to see the major empires as always dominating their neighbors and being free of military competition.” This is a straw-man argument that elides fundamental differences between empires at war and an enduring state system.

  217. See chapter 8 in this volume.

  218. By contrast, the Manchu in China integrated more readily into existing bureaucratic structures: Rosenthal and Wong 2011: 213. This fostered static continuity.

  219. Blaydes and Chaney 2013: 16 (quote), 23–24; Crone 1980: 91 (quote), drawing on Ibn Khaldun’s vision of the Islamic (conquest) polity as tribal. Crone 1980: 82–91 brilliantly captures the underlying dynamics. See also Fukuyama 2011: 189–213. Durand-Guédy 2010 provides a detailed case study of the relations between Turkic rulers and the local elite of Isfahan in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. While elite wealth and their fiscal capacities mattered greatly, their local politics were repeatedly checked by Turkic intervention. Then the Mongol sack of the city produced a major rupture. All these elements—local elite power, intervention by a military conquest elite, and sporadic exposure to catastrophic violence—were typical of this environment and converged in stymieing inclusive and sustainable institutional development.

  220. Crone 2004: 145, 263–64, 276, 395. The Greek libertarian heritage had been lost: democracy was portrayed as abhorrent and the virtuous polity as autocratic (279–81).

  221. Vries 2002: 100–104; Hoffman 2015: 147–51; and specifically for the Ottomans, see Karaman and Pamuk 2010, esp. 625 (reform). Parthasarathi’s observation (2011: 53–55) that the Mughal state (just as the states of the Ottomans and Qing) did not enjoy extreme power concentration and ruled with the “consent” of multiple powerholders is not nearly as novel as he makes it out to be, flogging as he does the dead horse of Orientalism. It is also untrue that the state systems thesis (as represented in this book) “rests upon an inflated sense of the centralization and administrative and coercive capabilities of imperial states in Asia” (56), even though—as noted earlier—such arguments were admittedly sometimes made in the past: conversely, it focuses on the logic of empire and the developmental benefits of a state system. Parthasarathi’s own observation (56–57) that the more the Mughal empire came under pressure in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the greater the impetus for developmental change was, is consistent with these premises. For the intellectual dimension, see chapter 12 in this volume. Studer 2015 discusses lower levels of market integration in India compared to Europe.

  222. Compromise: Gupta, Ma, and Roy 2016. Finance: that is the conclusion of O’Brien 2012b, a grand survey of the fiscal systems of Europe, the Mughals, Ottomans, and Ming/Qing (quote: 546).

  223. Vries 2002: 88–89, 115; Parthasarathi 2011: 115 (quote), 131–33, 137.

  224. See Ko, Koyama, and Sng 2018: 308–9 for the notion of massive demographic contractions in China when empires fell, which is, however, based on arbitrary adjustments of even more dramatic swings suggested by the population registers (308n33): for this problem, see chapter 7 in this volume.

  225. Ko, Koyama, and Sng 2018: 310. The argument that Europe’s better protection from invasions was beneficial to its economic development is a popular one: see, e.g., Chirot 1985: 182; J. Hall 1985: 112; P. Kennedy 1987: 17; E. Jones 2003: 36, 227, 233; Landes 2003: 33–34; Findlay and O’Rourke 2007: 360; Mielants 2007: 159. South Asia: Bayly 2004: 61; Mielants 2007: 114–16.

  226. Kuran 2011, esp. 110–15, 282–83; but cf. van Bavel, Buringh, and Dijkman 2018: 50. See also Kuran 2011: 281, 291–92 on the limitations of commercial partnerships, and 43–166 on organizational stagnation overall. Not all of these features were meaningfully rooted in imperial rule: see Kuran 2018 for a survey of scholarship on the negative effects of Islam on economic development.

  227. Rubin 2017, esp. 12–13, 49–54, 75–118, 203–13; and see chapter 12 in this volume.

  228. See the epilogue in this volume.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1. Wallerstein 1974, 1980, 1989, 2011. For convenience, see the brief summary in Daly 2015: 79–87.

  2. See, e.g., Frank 1998: 134, 277.

  3. Wallerstein 1989: 131–37; Marks 2002: 156; Goldstone 2009: 58. Scale: Vries 2013: 252n802 (contra, e.g., Marks 2002: 80). Dependence: Inikori 2002: 479. Baltic: O’Brien and Prados de la Escosura 1998: 56.

  4. Mediterranean: Inikori 2002: 479. Growth: Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2005.

  5. Allen 2009b: 106–31, esp. 125–28; Palma 2016: 140, 144. See also chapter 12 in this volume.

  6. De Vries 2008; Allen and Weisdorf 2011.

  7. Inikori 2002: 479–81.

  8. Cuenca Esteban 2004: 62–64 (contributions); Inikori 2002: 265–313 (shipping), 314–61 (financial institutions), 362–404 (raw materials and industrial production).

  9. Cuenca Esteban 2004: 58 (stimuli), 60 (extra output exported); Inikori 2002: 405–72 (British manufacturing), 477–79 (summary); Findlay and O’Rourke 2007: 345.

  10. Inikori 2002: 156–214 (slave-based commodity production), 215–64 (British slave trade), 481 (summary). See also Parthasarath
i 2011: 134–35 for West African demand for cotton cloth—in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, about half of British exports went there in exchange for slaves—that spurred technological innovation in the British textile industry: see chapter 10 in this volume.

  11. Pomeranz 2000: 264–97.

  12. Pomeranz 2000: 275–76; Vries 2013: 296. Total acreage: Overton 1996: 76. Coal: Cuenca Esteban 2004: 55, against the estimate by Pomeranz 2000: 276, that by 1815, coal substitution for timber was worth an extra 6 million–8.5 million hectares. For coal (whose contribution was vital not just for heating but for providing steam power), see chapter 12 in this volume. See also E. Jones 2003: 83–84 for the importance of ghost acreages more generally.