ABSTRACTThis study examines how stone-grinding technology accelerated the growth of complex societies in Neolithic China (8000–2000 BCE) primarily through the war channel rather than the productivity channel. Utilizing data from the China Archaeological Database (CADB), where large settlements (≥10 hectares) indicate complex societies and stone weapon grave goods proxy stone grinding’s battlefield applications, we find […]

DESCRIPTION In this Quantitative History Webinar, Patrick Fitzsimmons of the University of Pennsylvania will present a theory of how lowering the cost of doing violence around 1200 BCE contributed to political fragmentation across the Eastern Mediterranean. He points out that bronze’s reliance on scarce tin concentrated the means of violence among elites, supporting large, centralized empires, while the […]

ABSTRACT In the post-2020 era, South America has become a key arena for Chinese global enterprise, with Chinese goods and services achieving unprecedented popularity. This presentation argues that the groundwork for this contemporary success was not only laid by recent state-led initiatives, but also by a much earlier, understudied phenomenon: the rise of the first-generation […]

BRIEF INTRODUCTION Though he died 35 years ago, the Harvard historian John Fairbank remains alive through the influence of his ideas, students and image as a major figure in US-China relations.  The workshop will survey the current state of interest in Fairbank in mainland China. Which of his ideas have resonance in contemporary scholarship? What […]