Review Article: A Comparative Model of War and State Formation

Abstract

idea that in ancient China a system of 'international relations' operated that is broadly comparable with the one in existence among the early modern European nation states is not new, although the argument has never before been developed as extensively and systematically.1 Victoria Tin-Bor Hui has piled enough information on both pans of her scales to instruct and intrigue even the most broadly educated readers, only a few of whom are likely to be equally conversant with the history of ancient China and early modern Europe. The chapters on the 'Dynamics of International Politics in Ancient China' (ch. 2) and on 'Rethinking the Dynamics of International Politics in Early Modern Europe' (ch. 3) chart in detail the evolution of Chinese politics and interstate relations in the preimperial period roughly from the seventh to the third century bc and contrast them with the relations among the major European powers (France, the Habsburg empire, and England/Great Britain) from 1495 to the Napoleonic Wars. These chapters are followed by one that illustrates strategies of state formation, and emphasizes approaches to 'self-strengthening' and 'self-weakening' as paramount factors that led to the prevalence of a logic of either domination (in the Chinese case) or balance of power (in the European case). The book's overarching thesis is that, by studying processes that are postulated as structurally similar at the start but diametrically opposed at the finish, it is possible to formulate a theory of state formation that is not vitiated by 'unilinear' thinking. Hui thus presents a critique of teleological views that, in Chinese history, would regard the fundamental and long-lasting unity of the empire as the natural result of political competition among states, while international politics in early