IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/stechp/978-981-96-8272-0_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

War and Demand for Technology: How Unification Disincentivized Innovations in Historical China

In: Quantitative History of China

Author

Listed:
  • Zhiwu Chen

    (The University of Hong Kong)

  • Senhao Hu

    (The University of Hong Kong)

  • Zhan Lin

    (Renmin University of China)

Abstract

By applying the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) to measure the degree of unification during each of China’s historical periods, we find that since 770 BCE, periods of higher unification are associated with lower frequencies of external war and fewer military technological innovations per 10 million population per 100 years, suggesting that unification stifled the demand for new technology through the reduced threat of foreign wars. Internal conflicts, however, created a negative impact on military technological innovations, possibly because domestic rebellions could be better addressed through governance reforms rather than hardware innovations. To provide specific macro evidence, we focus on where bronze technology was initially applied after its introduction to China in the early second millennium BCE. Our archaeological data shows that from 1700 to 221 BCE, bronze grave objects first appeared in regions with frequent wars; furthermore, from 770 to 221 BCE, these regions had significantly higher ratios of military to all bronze grave objects, exhibiting higher demand for bronze, and the new technology of the time.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhiwu Chen & Senhao Hu & Zhan Lin, 2026. "War and Demand for Technology: How Unification Disincentivized Innovations in Historical China," Studies in Economic History, in: Zhiwu Chen & Cameron Campbell & Debin Ma (ed.), Quantitative History of China, chapter 0, pages 19-41, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:stechp:978-981-96-8272-0_2
    DOI: 10.1007/978-981-96-8272-0_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:stechp:978-981-96-8272-0_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.