Pre-modern Societies Research Articles

Introduction: communities, courts and Scottish towns

ABSTRACTThis short essay sets the context for the special section on communities, courts and Scottish towns. Scottish burgh records generally, and Aberdeen's UNESCO recognized collection in particular, are considered in light of their legal character. The changing features of pre-modern political society between the fifteenth century and the early nineteenth century are introduced as a shared problem for investigation, and an ancien régime framework is examined as a comparative tool in this field. A vital concern of these articles is with the construction and sometimes contested use of vocabularies of law and authority, privileges and liberties, and ideas of urban ‘community’. Courts at the municipal level, and in the world beyond the burgh, are appreciated as legal and governmental fora. The ambition of this special section is to prompt European comparisons, and encourage greater dialogue with and consideration of Scottish urban records in future research.

The Origins and Long-Run Consequences of the Division of Labor

This research explores the historical roots and persistent effects of the division of labor in pre-modern societies. Exploiting a novel ethnic-level dataset, which combines geocoded ethnographic, linguistic and genetic data, it advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that population diversity had a positive effect on the division of labor, which translated into persistent differences in economic development. Specifically, it establishes that pre-modern economic specialization was conducive to pre-modern statehood, urbanization and social hierarchy. Moreover, it demonstrates that higher levels of pre-modern economic specialization are associated with greater skill-biased occupational heterogeneity, economic complexity and economic development in the contemporary era.

‘Intelectuales’ en el mundo antiguo. Notas sobre un concepto histórico

The use of the term ‘intellectual’ for the pre-modern societies can be misleading and often anachronistic. Therefore, in this paper I propose to critically evaluate the concept to establish valid criteria for the ancient world.

An Age Old Problem? Estimating the Impact of Dementia on Past Human Populations.

To model the impact of dementia on past societies. We consider multiple lines of evidence indicating elderly individuals to have been more common throughout the past than is frequently accepted. We then apply known dementia incidence/prevalence rates to plausible assumptions of past population structures to suggest prevalence in the past. Dementia prevalence in premodern societies is likely to have been around 5% of the rate seen in modern, developed countries but with a total past incidence running into billions. Dementia is often seen as a "modern" challenge that humans have not had to contend with before. We argue that this condition has had considerably greater effects than previously envisaged and is a challenge that humans have already withstood successfully, on one hand at a lower incidence but on the other without the considerable clinical, technological, and social advances that have been made in recent times.

Transcending the limitations of physical form: a case study of the Cang Lang Pavilion in Suzhou, China

This paper attempts to explore the legibility and meanings of traditional Chinese architecture through a specific case study of the Cang Lang Pavilion. The process of architectural creation in pre-modern Chinese society consisted of both physical and literary methods, undertaken by the builders and the literati respectively. The meaning of architecture thus can be formulated independently in text and narrative, thereby instructing daily life. From comparing the social meanings of hall and pavilion, these two structures seem have represented two opposite social dispositions: conformity and dissent. To some extent, the political system, together with social, cultural and intellectual traditions in pre-modern China downplayed the role of architecture in evoking social awareness and promoting various ideologies. However, the literary creation of architecture transcended the limitations of physical form. The legibility of architecture is largely acquired from reading the life and meanings inherent in and beyond physical form.

IRRIGATION AND AUTOCRACY

Irrigated agriculture makes societies more likely to be ruled by authoritarian regimes. Ancient societies have long been thought to follow this pattern. We empirically show that irrigation affects political regimes even in the present. To avoid endogeneity, we use geographical and climatic variation to identify irrigation dependent societies. We find that countries whose agriculture depended on irrigation are about six points less democratic on the 21-point polity2 scale than countries where agriculture has been rainfed. We find qualitatively similar results across regions within countries. We argue that the effect has historical origins: irrigation allowed landed elites in arid areas to monopolize water and arable land. This made elites more powerful and better able to oppose democratization. Consistent with this conjecture, we show that irrigation dependence predicts land inequality both at the country level, and in premodern societies surveyed by ethnographers.

Population Diversity, Division of Labor and Comparative Development

This research explores the emergence and prevalence of economic specialization and trade in pre-modern societies. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically that population diversity had a positive causal effect on economic specialization and trade. Based on a novel ethnic level dataset combining geocoded ethnographic, linguistic and genetic data, this research exploits the exogenous variation in population diversity generated by the ``Out-of-Africa'' migration of anatomically modern humans to causally establish that higher levels of population diversity were conducive to economic specialization and the emergence of trade-related institutions that, in turn, translated into pre-modern era differences in comparative development. Additionally, this research provides suggestive evidence that regions historically inhabited by pre-modern societies with high levels of economic specialization have higher levels of contemporary occupational heterogeneity, economic complexity and development.

근대시기 일본이 바라보는 한국에 대한 시선 -일본사회의 담론과 교과서의 한국관련 콘텐츠를 중심으로-

이 글은 근대시기 일본의 한국인식을 당대의 한국 담론과 교과서 콘텐츠를 중심으로 살펴보았다. 이를 위해 민족성, 역사인식, 한국의 사회상으로 주제를 설정하고 교육 잡지를 중심으로 각 주제에 관해 형성되었던 담론과 이들 담론들이 투영된 교과서 교사용 지도서의 서술내용들을 살펴보았다. 민족성에 관해서는 나태 무기력 미개라는 단어로 대표되는 부정적 측면에서 인식하는 성향이 강하게 나타났다. 그리고 한국 역사를 수동적, 타율적 성격으로 규정하고 무능한 국가운영으로 인해 부정적 민족성이 형성되었다고 보고 있다. 그리고 더 나아가서는 독립을 유지할 능력이 없는 한국은 일본과 동양의 평화를 위협하는 존재이며 결국은 한일강제병합에 이르렀다는 것이 한국 역사에 대한 인식이다. 또한, 일본이 한국사회를 평가하는 척도는 서구식 문명화였으며 한국사회의 모습을 문명 문화의 정도가 낮은 전근대적 사회로 규정하고 있었다. 근대시기 일본에서 형성된 한국에 대한 담론에는 근대국가로 탈바꿈한 일본의 자신감과 제국주의의 길을 걷게 된 일본의 지배이데올로기가 강하게 반영되어 있었고 이와 같은 담론은 교과서와 지도서를 통해서 학생들에게 확산되고 있었다. This study looked into Japan's recognition of Korea in early modern era with particular focuses on discourse on Korea and contents in textbooks in those days. In doing so, the topics of nationality, historical recognition, and social aspects in Korea were established and discourse on these topics in educational journals and the contents of textbooks and teaching manuals projected with such discourse were investigated. As for nationality, a strong propensity to negative recognition was clearly observed, represented by the words lazy, enervate, and uncivilized. They defined Korea's history of passive, other-directed nature and described such incompetent national management resulted in negative nationality. Their recognition of Korean history went further away, stating Korea was incapable of maintaining its independence and was a threat to peace of Japan and Asia, hence the forced merger by Japan. The criteria for Japan to assess Korean society were Western civilization and they defined Korean society as a pre-modern society with lower levels of civilization and culture. Discourse in Japan over Korea in early modern era were strongly influenced by Japan's pride as a modern state and its dominating ideology of imperialism and such discussions were spread among students through textbooks and teaching manuals.

The Re-Genesis of Dionysian Revelry: Where Art Is the Ecstatic Effulgence of the Body’s Mystical Quintessence

Norman O. Brown cites the following as a function of his separation from the invidious manacles of neurological ratiocination: “And to be not conformed to this world…but be transformed [metamorphose yourselves] by a renewing of your mind” (Brown, 1991). Shane 2015 writes that ecstatic liberation is engendered when the mind is extricated from the central nervous system’s tyranny (Shane, n.d.). Hamlet remarks “with thoughts beyond the reaches of the souls” (Shakespeare, 1982). Patricia Easterling states that Dionysian theater was a freedom from the immurement of self-consciousness or an artistry of the mystical mystique (Eastering, 1997). Dionysian theater, tantric ritualism, ecstatic shamanistic rites, and atavistic rapturous ceremonialism have been executed in most pre-modern societies (Shane, 2014). Norman O. Brown explicates this ubiquitous meta-phenomena in his work entitled Love’s Body (Brown, 1971). Social evolution or the pathogenesis of the modern phenotype depicts the desecration of the etheric body’s predilection towards ascendant apotheosis or Dionysian ritualism (Shane, 2012). Plato’s The Ion represents how the paramount powers of diminutive ratiocination denigrate the numinous body’s puissance towards Dionysian exhilaration (Adams, 1971). The mind delimiting manacles of peevish abstraction abnegates the numinous body’s proclivity for mystical revelry. Aristotle’s poetics represents this fragrant dismissal and annihilation of the body’s primordial exaltation (Adams, 1971, pp.48-67).

Modernization: Is it Pathway to Achieving Sustainable Economic Growth and Investments

Generally, modernization scholars argue that industrialization process is considered to be the main stem in the process of economic growth and economic development. Modernization is a study of the social, political, and cultural consequences of economic growth and the conditions that are important for industrialization and economic growth to occur (Eisentadt 1966; Hountondji 1996). Ideally, a degree of circularity often characterizes discussions of social and economic change involved in modernization processes because of the notion, embedded in most modernization theories, of the functional compatibility of component parts. Modernization theory has been one of the major perspectives in the sociology of national development and underdevelopment since the 1950s. Primary attention has focused on ways in which past and present pre-modern societies become modernized (i.e., Westernized) through the processes of economic growth and change in social, political, and cultural structures (Eisentadt 1966; Hountondji 1996).It is strongly contested that development should translate into positive change in the standard of living of the people. In reality, development should not merely be of things but that of things through by which the livelihood of the people can be better transformed. There is a realization among the developing countries that Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) has taken a centre stage in development discourse especially in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) countries. While most of SSA countries were, in the 1950s motivated by the advancements of the Western capitalist countries and sought to westernize as well, their peculiar circumstances made it difficult to achieve the modernization agenda. This plunged most of developing countries into national economy constraints and passing down the benefits of Independence which most of them had recently attained became difficult (Frank 1989; Rostow 1971). Although some countries recorded some economic progress but this was short lived as most of economies faced serious challenges. Over time this led to state borrowing and implementation of liberalized markets with the hope of resuscitating the dwindling economies despite the increase in the flow of the FDI as a way to sustain economic growth and economic development. Unfortunately, FDI did not resolve the magnitude of problems developing countries were facing. Many development experts have argued that the process of modernization entails changes not only in the physical environment but also many other aspects of the well-being of the people (Allan 1990; Burrow 1966).

All we are is dust in the wind: The social causes of a “subculture of coping” in the late medieval coversand belt

Abstract Natural hazards posed major challenges to almost every pre-modern society. Even in the moderate climate zone of Europe, natural hazards such as floods, storm surges and sand drifts threatened entire societies and could decimate occupation and land exploitation in a region. Some societies, however, were able to prevent hazards from turning into disasters, while others repeatedly suffered from nature-induced catastrophes. The question therefore remains, how were some societies able to cope and create subcultures of coping, while others were not? By combining archaeological data, OSL studies and archival material I will advance that we have to alter the current paradigm that the Campine area was predominantly struck by disastrous sand drifts from the later Middle Ages onwards. We should focus on specific combinations of the distribution of power between smallholders and elites and the level of short-termism of the social interest groups to explain why the late medieval Campine area was able to desig...

China's Green Religion: Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future by James Miller

Reviewed by: China's Green Religion: Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future by James Miller Hal Swindall (bio) James Miller. China's Green Religion: Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. xxiii, 200 pp. Hardcover $60.00, isbn 978-0-231-175586. This is the third volume on Chinese religion and ecology by James Miller, who is a well-established scholar of Daoism. Indeed, Miller is about the only sinologist anywhere who analyzes Chinese religion from an ecological viewpoint and vice-versa, making this theoretical application of an ancient philosophy to modern problems even more unique. Other readers of Laozi, including me, have perceived ecological implications in his lines, but Miller [End Page 84] outdoes them all in his updating the Daoist vision of nature. Like most environmental thinkers, he links his interpretation of Daoism to contemporary socio-political issues, especially equality and ways communities can balance their needs with nature. Overall, this book is a critique of neoliberalism that suggests ways in which both humanity and the planet can prosper together; Miller calls nature's capacity to support human flourishing its "subjectivity," which he connects to human subjective being in the world. Miller's premise about Daoism in his introduction is that "rather than being a tradition of social harmony and quietism (which is perhaps the quintessential conventional Confucian and Western interpretation), [it] has largely functioned as an argumentative, polemical, and countercultural tradition" (p. xx). The rest of the book uses this definition to advocate a radically different idea of humanity's relationship with nature, which Miller envisions as mutually supportive rather than one-sidedly exploitive. Thus, his first chapter departs from the traditional Western understanding of religion as focused on the transcendent to focus on the applicability of religion to earthly realities; likewise, he rejects the Western concept of the "buffered," self-directed individual as separate from nature and other individuals for the "porous" conception of the body and nature that existed in most premodern societies, including China (pp. 2-3 and 8). He argues that the traditional academic disciplines and their divisions of knowledge derive from the modern view of self in society: "the world of inner, mental subjectivity; the world of nature and the environment; and the world of theology and the supernatural" laid the foundations for today's academic disciplines and modern institutions (p. 10). The Daoist tradition, in contrast to the Western one, does not conceive of any dichotomy between human and divine; rather, they both permeate each other (pp. 13-14). Miller further argues that "cultural views of nature are entwined with views of ethics and, ultimately, religion," ergo "one cannot truly understand how we think about nature without understanding how we think about religion" (pp. 15-16). Most contemporary Westerners and East Asians would disagree with this, or at least university-educated ones would, so the fact that Miller is a Western academic makes his reasoning all the more arresting. However, he outdoes himself by maintaining that traditional Daoist philosophy is "pragmatically better" than modern society's for three reasons: it fits more with evolutionary and ecological science, its spirituality is more creative, and its ethical framework is more suited to "a flourishing world" (p. 18). To illustrate his point, Miller cites the 2015 Nobel prize for medicine winner Tu Youyou, who credited the medieval Daoist theologian Ge Hong's pharmacology as a direct inspiration for her work. From her example, he concludes, "humans [must] paradoxically recognize their dependence on the environment in order [End Page 85] to transcend it" (p. 25). Such a transformation of the ancient to the modern and the human to the natural as Tu's is Miller's whole argument in a nutshell. Miller introduces a kind of extended metaphor that runs through the rest of the book in chapter 3, entitled "Liquid Ecology." He starts with the Daoist idea of qi, the vital breath or energy that is the basis of all life and nature. Defining qi "as a kind of liquid vitality" because it flows through everything, including the landscape and all life forms, he identifies this property as the reason why qi is so tied...

Attitude of premodern romanian society to „the marginalized”. Perspectives of observation and interpretation

This paper gathered a series of manifestations of Romanian society regarding to its interpersonal relationship who has development during Premodern centuries. Our observations present the relationships that determined different attitudes of the „majority” of people towards those incapable to realize physical activity or to pray. These social categories were positioned to outskirts of society, becoming the „marginalized” (for example, the mentally ill, beggar, incurably ills cripple, mutilated physically, deformed etc.). Towards those „social marginalizes”, Romanian society was called to showing the “Christian pity”. Its attitudes were encouraged by the religious and legal norms.In order to highlight these relations, we used a various types of documents, as representative of the problem analyzed.By nature of the topic, the work was formulated some assumptions that could become landmarks reliable in the future scientific research.

Stalinism as Traditional Political Culture

J. Arch Getty, Practicing Stalinism: Bolsheviks, Boyars, and the Persistence of Tradition. 359 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. ISBN-13 978-0300169294. $45.00. J. Arch Getty has played a major role in defining our understanding of Soviet history. His 1985 book on purges was an important study within the so-called revisionist school. (1) There he advanced a new understanding of political violence in the Soviet Union that was different from the then-dominant paradigm of a violence conceived, ordered, and carried out carefully from above through an efficient chain of command. His new book represents both continuity and rupture with his earlier works. Just as he did 30 years ago, Getty tries to understand the origins of the political violence that peaked in 1937-38. In this respect, Practicing Stalinism echoes his earlier book and in a certain sense represents a completion of 30-years' research, bringing in archival sources that were unavailable at the beginning of the 1980s. As in his earlier work, in his new book Getty is interested in conflicts, tensions, groups, and rivalry. But many of his interpretations are new: most noticeably, the role of Iosif Stalin is conceptualized in a different way, and the dictator occupies a far more central place in Getty's new book. Practicing Stalinism combines two layers of argumentation. core chapters of the book (chaps. 3-8) focus on political conflicts in Stalin's USSR that are mostly interpreted in terms of struggle between clans and groups, and as center-periphery tensions. In this part of the book, Getty studies the personal and political conflicts of the 1920s and 1930s, discussing the actors, development, and resolution. But in the first chapters of the book--and this is new--the author attempts to situate these struggles within the broader context of the modernization/tradition debate. (2) Arch Getty opens his book by drawing continuities among Ivan IV's Muscovy, Stalins USSR, and Vladimir Putin's Russia. He also underscores these continuities in the epilogue. It is through this persistence of Russian traditionalism that Getty seeks to explain many of the phenomena he is discussing. Getty follows in the footsteps of several other scholars of Soviet history by uncovering signs of archaism in interwar Soviet political practices. (3) In the first two chapters of the book, he discusses some of these archaic practices from a long-term perspective. For the pre-Soviet period of Russian history, Getty mostly relies on secondary sources; he reveals numerous practices the first appearances of which may be found as early as in 16th-century Russia but can be seen again in the Soviet Union. These practices include restricted access of foreigners to Russia, denunciatory letters written to the authorities, the existence of an aristocracy with a particular status, and collective responsibility. This assertion of the persistence of tradition, which features even in the subtitle of the book, is almost always pervasive. For example, Getty twice mentions, The famous 'anointing' photographs of Stalin alongside Lenin recall those of Nicholas II alongside his son Aleksei and preview those for sale today in Moscow of Putin skiing and chatting with Medvedev (4, 89). He also speaks on numerous occasions of boyars and king's men in the Stalin period. Getty's main point is that these practices represent something totally and specifically Russian. In his opinion, they were neither Soviet nor Stalinist but Russian. Getty explains: Because we find this understanding of politics and government from Riurik to Putin, at all levels of the hierarchies at all times and places, it was inescapable. This was the deep structure by which Russia had always been governed (95). Getty's interpretation of the persistence of archaic practices differs markedly from the neotraditional model earlier proposed by Terry Martin. (4) In his seminal article Martin claimed: Neo-traditional societies, rather, represent an alternative form of modernization, one that includes the most characteristic processes of market-driven modernization (industrialization, urbanization, secularization, universal education, and literacy), but one which likewise produces a variety of practices that bear a striking resemblance to characteristic features of traditional pre-modern societies. …

Marriage and Power (Images of Authority)

This article is devoted to the question concerning the conceptualization of power and its religious basis in pre-modern societies, carried out through a study of the inauguration rituals – especially the marriage – that mark not only the instigation of the power of the ruler but also suggests its religious basis, conceptualization and justification. It is grounded on source material from Byzantium and its legacy in the countries of South-Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. The analysis has shown the woman as legitimating power in the case of royalty in connection with its correspondence to marriage. The legitimation and confirmation of the kingship in some pagan cultures passed through a hierogamy, conceived as a unity with the universal harmony in the image of a chthonic goddess. From the Christian point of view the relations between the royal bride and the bridegroom was under the archetypal model of the relation of Jesus Christ to His Church. He (Christ and the christian ruler) became a priest and king of the order of Melchisedek. That is why the rite of passage to Kingship corresponds to that of marriage, instituted by Lord Jesus Christ under the model of His own relation to the Church.

Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies

List of Figures vii Notes on Contributors xi Series Editor's Preface xvii 1 Introduction 1 Richard J. A. Talbert and Kurt A. Raaflaub 2 Where the Black Antelope Roam: Dharma and Human Geography in India 9 Christopher Minkowski 3 Humans, Demons, Gods and Their Worlds: The Sacred and Scientific Cosmologies of India 32 Kim Plofker 4 Structured Perceptions of Real and Imagined Landscapes in Early China 43 Hsin-Mei Agnes Hsu 5 Nonary Cosmography in Ancient China 64 John B. Henderson 6 Knowledge of Other Cultures in China's Early Empires 74 Michael Loewe 7 The Mississippian Peoples' Worldview 89 Kathleen DuVal 8 Aztec Geography and Spatial Imagination 108 Barbara E. Mundy 9 Inca Worldview 128 Catherine Julien 10 Masters of the Four Corners of the Heavens: Views of the Universe in Early Mesopotamian Writings 147 Piotr Michalowski 11 The World and the Geography of Otherness in Pharaonic Egypt 169 Gerald Moers 12 On Earth as in Heaven: The Apocalyptic Vision of World Geography from Urzeit to Endzeit according to the Book of Jubilees 182 James M. Scott 13 'I Know the Number of the Sand and the Measure of the Sea': Geography and Difference in the Early Greek World 197 Susan Guettel Cole 14 Continents, Climates, and Cultures: Greek Theories of Global Structure 215 James Romm 15 The Geographical Narrative of Strabo of Amasia 236 Daniela Dueck 16 The Roman Worldview: Beyond Recovery? 252 Richard J. A. Talbert 17 The Medieval Islamic Worldview: Arabic Geography in Its Historical Context 273 Adam J. Silverstein 18 The Book of Curiosities: An Eleventh-Century Egyptian View of the Lands of the Infidels 291 Emilie Savage-Smith 19 Geography and Ethnography in Medieval Europe: Classical Traditions and Contemporary Concerns 311 Natalia Lozovsky 20 Europeans Plot the Wider World, 1500--1750 330 David Buisseret Index 344

Abstract 18333: Left Ventricular Systolic and Diastolic Dysfunction is an Uncommon Finding in a Pre-modern Society With High Inflammation and Low Atherosclerotic Risk Factors

Introduction: Ischemic cardiomyopathy from coronary atherosclerosis is the leading cause of mortality in developed nations. However, the natural history of cardiovascular disease in contemporary pre-industrial man is not well described. The Tsimane of Bolivia are a forager-horticulturalist population in the western Amazonian basin with high levels of inflammation and a low prevalence of atherosclerosis risk factors. We sought to define the cardiovascular health of a contemporary pre-industrial population with high inflammation and low atherosclerotic risk factors. Methods: Two-Dimensional echocardiograms with Color and Doppler were obtained on 934 Tsimane over age 40. Echocardiograms were reviewed by 2 cardiologists following the American Society of Echocardiography guidelines for interpretation. Patients had baseline clinical evaluations including age, height, weight, blood pressure, and gender. Blood was obtained for serology for inflammatory markers. Results: The average age was 53 years (SD +/- 11; range 40-90 years). 455 (48.7%) were male. The prevalences of hypertension, diabetes, and smoking were 4.8%, 0.5%, and 1.3%, respectively. Mean LVEF was 66% (SD +/- 6.1). There were 4 males with LVEF less than 52% and 11 females with LVEF less than 54%. There was no measured LVEF less than 44%. Complete diastolic data was available in 910. Normal diastolic parameters were observed in 741 (81.4%). Mild diastolic dysfunction was found in 167 (18.3%) and moderate dysfunction in 2 (0.2%). No echocardiograms showed severe diastolic dysfunction. Serologic data showed elevated CRP, ESR, and IL-6 with low high density lipoprotein (HDL) and low density lipoprotein (LDL) Conclusions: In a pre-modern population with high inflammation and low atherosclerotic risk factors, cardiovascular systolic and diastolic dysfunction was a rare finding.

Examining Fuel Use in Antiquity: Archaeobotanical and Anthracological Approaches in Southwest Asia

This article considers the study of wood and dung fuel use in antiquity across Southwest Asia by anthracologists and archaeobotanists. In recent years, the socially conditioned nature of fuel use has been highlighted and many scholars are stressing the central importance of fuel to pre-modern societies as on par with subsistence and tool use. By elevating and unifying the study of ancient fuel through anthracological, archaeobotanical, geochemical, and micromorphological studies, detailed insights into cultural practices, decision making, and resource use in the past can be gained. We provide a brief review of studies examining ancient fuel use and reflect on the integration of wood and seed data where seed assemblages are indicative of dung fuel use.

Population Diversity, Division of Labor and the Emergence of Trade and State

This research explores the emergence and prevalence of economic specialization and trade in pre-modern societies. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically that population diversity had a positive causal effect on economic specialization and trade. Based on a novel ethnic level dataset combining geocoded ethnographic and genetic data, this research exploits the exogenous variation in population diversity generated by the Out-of-Africa'' migration of anatomically modern humans to causally establish the positive effect of population diversity on economic specialization and the emergence of trade-related institutions, which, in turn, facilitated the historical formation of states. Additionally, it provides suggestive evidence that regions historically inhabited by pre-modern societies with high levels of economic specialization have a larger occupational heterogeneity and are more developed today.

Hierarchy, status and international society: China and the steppe nomads

While pre-modern China’s relations with her Sinic neighbours have been described as a distinctive variant of the English School’s international society based on a shared Confucian culture and a China-centred tributary system, her relations with her nomadic neighbours, including the Hsiung-nu, Turks, Uighurs and Mongols, have often been characterized as purely power-political, Hobbesian and lacking any societal foundation. This article argues that China and the nomads formed an international society for much of their history, one based not on a common Confucian heritage or China’s immutable centrality, but on the principle of an adaptable hierarchy based on common diplomatic norms and practices that allowed its members to affirm and contest their status within this hierarchy. The case of China and the nomads extends and enriches the concept of international society in three ways. First, it is a historical example of a non-European international society not composed of sovereign states or based on the principle of sovereign equality, but based on the principle of adaptable hierarchy and the ranking of powers. Second, it shows that international society can exist and develop between units as culturally and politically dissimilar as China and the nomads. Finally, it provides us with a unique model of how pre-modern international society in East Asia was stratified, which markedly differs from how modern international society is stratified. This last point has contemporary relevance in relation to China’s rise as a great power, and its frustration at what it feels is the unfair denial of a status commensurate with its growing power and influence by the US and the West.