| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Victoria Tin-bor Hui. War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 294. Cloth $70.00, paper $24.99.

All good books start out with a clear statement of the problem, and this excellent comparative study of war and state formation in China and Europe is no exception: "why is it that political scientists and Europeanists take for granted checks and balances in European politics, while Chinese and sinologists take for granted a coercive universal empire in China?" (p. 1). Victoria Tin-bor Hui argues that the assumption needs to be reexamined. She begins her case by rightly noting that China during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (656–221 b.c.) was composed of states often in conflict with each other in ways that were remarkably similar to the European experience in the early modern period (a.d. 1495–1815). The question is why China ended up becoming a unified empire for so long, and why Europe did not. Her answer is to suggest a much more dynamic and fluid process of interaction than historians have hitherto been willing to acknowledge—so fluid, in fact, that at several points China could conceivably have gone in a direction more analogous to that of Europe, and Europe, by the same token, could conceivably have gone in a direction more analogous to that of China.

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