Uneven Development: Largest Settlements and Polities since the Late Bronze Age

• In Event: 473 - Section on Political Economy of the World-System Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Growth and Development

Abstract

This is a study of the growth of settlements and polities in five world regions over the past 3500 years. We discuss changes in the relationship between political/military power, economic power and city systems. And we compare East Asian urban and empire growth with the original heartland of cities and states in West Asia and North Africa, as well as Europe, the subcontinent of South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and the Americas. This quantitative indication of the trajectories of city and empire growth and the changing relative scale of social organization in the different world regions over time provides an overall picture of the long-term patterns of uneven development in human sociocultural evolution and has important implications for analyses of the similarities and differences between the developmental trajectories of the world regions studied.

Authors

• Christopher Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside

• Hiroko Inoue, University of California-Riverside

• Alexis Antonio Alvarez, University of California-Riverside

• Rebecca Alvarez, University of California-Riverside

• Eugene N. Anderson, University of California-Riverside

• Teresa Neal, University of California-Irvine