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Modeling City and State Formation since Bronze Age: Rise, Fall, and Upward Sweeps

This research project focuses on modeling the formation of cities and states throughout history, with a particular emphasis on upward sweeps where larger states and cities emerge. The study examines various regions such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, East Asia, South Asia, and Mesoamerica. It also explores the rise and fall of powerful polities and the causes of city and state growth. The project aims to estimate population sizes, measure empire sizes, and analyze international political integration and world state formation.

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Modeling City and State Formation since Bronze Age: Rise, Fall, and Upward Sweeps

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  1. rise, fall and upward sweeps: modeling city and state formation inworld regions since the Bronze Age Upward sweeps of empire size Christopher Chase-Dunn, Peter Turchin and E.N. Anderson NSF-HSD supported project

  2. [upward sweeps= those cases in which much larger states (empires) and cities emerge than have existed previously within a region.] • Empirical tasks: • Estimating the population sizes of largest cities, states and empires • Measuring Empire Sizes • Coding Core/Periphery positions • Modeling approaches and substantive processes • Modeling agrarian states, rise and fall in interstate systems (including non-state peoples) and upward sweeps in which states emerge that are much larger than any in adjacent regions • Modeling trading states and network dynamics • Modeling international political integration and world state formation

  3. Spatial and temporal framework of the research: • the central system (political-military network or system of states) (from 2500 BCE or as soon as the size of the major states can be estimated) Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Aegean, Western Asia , the Eastern Med and then expanding to the west, east , north and south as delineated by David Wilkinson. • the East Asian region from the bronze age to now. • South Asia after the rise of states in the Ganges Valley (not Indus because not enough information) • and Mesoamerica, possibly the Mayan region, Oaxaca and Central Mexico – wherever it is possible to estimate the sizes of states and cities.

  4. Rise and Fall of large powerful polities with intermittent upsweeps

  5. Rise of the Central System (Wilkinson)

  6. Iterative Causes of City and State Growth

  7. Measuring empire sizes and identifying upward sweeps • Upward sweeps of polity and city growth • City growth: chandler’s estimates at http://irows.ucr.edu/research/citemp/data/citypopsizes.xls • Measuring polity growth: Taagepera’s methods: (“Size and duration of empires: systematics of size”1978:113) • Planimeter: tracing the outline of a shape to estimate the area. • Rules: the earliest date of uninterrupted tributary status; the date of territory loss is when reassertion of ever increasing autonomy first becomes noticeable. Spheres of influence are neglected. Average consensus of historical atlases is accepted. When there is great disagreement average as well as extreme estimates are reported. Give the benefit of the doubt to the larger or more durable entity. • Taagepera’s data at: http://irows.ucr.edu/research/citemp/data/empsizes.xls

  8. Upward sweeps of empire size in the Central System:(Taagepera’s data on territorial sizes of states and empires) British Mongol Umayyads and Abbassids Neo-Assyrian, Persian, Hellenic Rome akkadian

  9. Modeling international political integration and world state formation • Core-Wide Empire vs. Modern Hegemony (slide) • Interstate system and diplomacy • International law • Colonization and decolonization (slide) Hegemonic Rise and Fall Political globalization: Concert of Europe International organizations League of Nations United Nations IMF, World Bank UN Reform The imperial detour vs. a democratic and collectively rational global commonwealth

  10. Core-Wide Empire vs. Modern Hegemony

  11. Resistance and global polity formation Waves of Colonization and Decolonization since the 16th century David P. Henige, Colonial Governors

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