on 2008-10-25 23:53 Paul Cockshott wrote:
> Or if the policies of the Chinese empire had not changed in the
> early 15th century, Chinese.
>
My knowledge of Chinese history is poor. What was the change of policies
then?
My understanding is that the Chinese dynasties sought to control a
centralized land mass rather than colonies overseas, but I may be wrong.
It could be related to Karl Wittfogel's theory that agriculture in China
was highly dependent on large-scale irrigation in contrast to the
rainfall dependent Europe or Japan, and that therefore the former
developed a much more centralized and despotic state bureaucracy.
//Dave Z
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Received on Sun Oct 26 07:05:18 2008
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