War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe

Abstract

Victoria Tin-bor Hui is Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Notre Dame. She is author of "War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge, 2005), winner of the Mershon Center's Edgar S. Furniss Book Award for an author whose first book makes an exceptional contribution to the study of national and international security. Hui will deliver a lecture based on her book, which demonstrates that from 656-221 B.C., China's government consisted of a system of sovereign territorial states similar to those in early modern Europe. This finding runs counter to the common belief that the roots of liberal democracy are unique to European civilization and alien to non-Western cultures.