Waves of Conflict and Changes in the Power Configuration in the East Asian World-System, 1800 Ce-1830 Ce.

Hiroko Inoue, University of California, Riverside
Chris Chase-Dunn, University of California, Riverside

It has been recognized that the population sizes of settlements and the territorial sizes of polities have both increased over time and have gone through cyclical growth and decline phases. We consider that there are temporal relationships between the growth and decline of cities and empires and changes in the distribution of power among states, the amount of interstate warfare and internal rebellions in five whole interstate systems (world-systems) since 2700 BCE. Having the political-military interaction network as the main unit of analysis, this study examines the relationships between urban and polity swings and changes in the power configuration of the systems. To this end, we utilize the data of centralization-decentralization of polities, urban areas, polity size, and interpolity and within-polity conflict data that we have been developing, and we test the causal relationship among city growth, polity size expansion, centralization of the regional system, and inter-conflict.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 197. Movements and Conflicts in World-Historical Perspectives