Unity vs Disunity Civilizational Pattern
Discussion
By By Peng Lu, Zhuo Zhang, et al. :
"Civilization patterns in human history:
The origin of civilization has commonalities. According to the circumscription theory (Carneiro, 1970) and hydraulic hypothesis (Eberhard, 1958), we can find similar social characteristics from the origins of global civilizations. The hypothesis of the Axial Age (Eisenstadt & Wittrock, 2005) also illustrates the similar historical and cultural features between ancient Chinese and Western civilizations. After the chaos and disunity of the Axial Age, the Qin state first unified ancient China (the Great Unity). After some turmoil and chaos, Chinese civilization still inherits this unity pattern. By contrast, after the brief unity of the Roman Empire, western civilization (Europe) had inevitably moved toward continuous disunity since then. Global civilization falls into two patterns: (a) Unity pattern of civilization can be well represented by China. The unity pattern refers to the continuity of civilization’s development (Blakeley & Chang, 2010). Under the unity pattern, the identity of people has been expressed by civilization instead of a sense of nationhood (Ikenberry, 2009). The cohesive and more homogenous culture, endogenous growth economy, and compactness of geographical vicinity also promote the historical process of unity civilization (Xia, 2014). In the life cycle of civilization, social development has a centripetal force, which stems from the centralized political structure and becomes a common characteristic (Ehsan & Wang, 2018). (b) Europe represents the disunity pattern. The disunity pattern is the opposite, and it refers to the discreteness of civilizations. Under centrifugal force, civilization manifests as a political co-ownership power structure (Chang, 2018), different economic currencies, and cultural separation (Scheidel, 2007). Therefore, civilization is segregated into unity and disunity according to different evolutionary patterns.
China is a unity civilization with a long history (Loewe & Shaughnessy, 1999). As shown in Table 1, although there were some chaotic periods (1252 years), the unity (about 2293 years) is still mainstream. Meanwhile, Europe has been in a state of diversity, discord, and conflict since the breakup of the Roman Empire in 395 AD (Ko et al., 2018; Nearing (2004)). As the shifting period, the Warring States period played a critical role in exploring the origin and mechanism of differentiation civilization patterns. China’s politics, economy, and culture then experienced significant changes and developments (Lewis, 1999). The large-scale reforms in politics, the establishment of household farming in the economy, and the hundred schools of social thought jointly laid a solid foundation for the unity of the Qin Dynasty (Li & Zhang, 1985). They shaped this grand unity empire during the Warring States period, crucial for civilizational differentiation. Many factors influenced this process, such as geography, demography, the previous ruling styles, successor regimes, ideological power, and the possibility of unity (Carneiro, 1970; Doyle, 1986; Scheidel, 2008). Most historians generally agree that wars determine the evolutional process for the states (Downing, 1992; Edgar & April, 2001; Ertman, 1997; Tilly, 2017)."