Famine, revolt, and the dynastic cycle

Abstract

"Historians have long noticed that population declines in ancient China often coincided with dynasty changes, and that most of these declines were the result of internecine wars which, in turn, were often initiated by famine or density pressure. Since the interactions between density pressure, internecine wars, and dynasty changes cannot be explained by the traditional age-specific density-dependent population structure, we propose to use a bandit/peasant/ruler occupation-specific population model to interpret the dynamic socio-economic transitions of ancient Chinese population, and provide econometric support to our model. We also highlight the rich dynamics of the composition of human population, a factor which was often neglected in previous research on general populations."

Historical dynamics of the Chinese dynasties

“…The model is specified by 14 equations, but no numerical values are specified for the parameters, nor is any solution to the equations compared with real data. Later work ( Chu and Lee, 1994 ) formalizes a similar narrative into several utility-maximizing, econometric models with different assumptions on how population changes. The predictions of the models are compared with historical data on population growth ( Zhao and Xie, 1988 ), and one model performs notably well.…”

“…The work in (Usher, 1989;Chu and Lee, 1994;Feichtinger and Novak, 1994;Chan and Laffargue, 2016) relies on the assumption of utility maximization by the individuals in the population, which has faced criticism on general grounds (Rubinstein, 1998;Urbina and Ruiz-Villaverde, 2019), and in the particular case of modelling the dynastic cycle where "a sociologically more sophisticated approach is needed that would build upon collectively held norms and collectively made decisions" (Turchin, 2018, p. 138). Later contributions (Feichtinger et al, 1996;Saeed and Pavlov, 2008) focus on developing dynamical models using a more heuristic approach, but limit themselves to a theoretical analysis (e.g., analyzing attractor states) and do not attempt a comparison with historical data for empirical validation.…”

Climate change and Chinese history: a review of trends, topics, and methods

“…84,100 Most of the work on Chinese historical climatology conforms to the step-like causality relationship mapped out by Robert Kates, which is supported by some economic research. 101,102 Temperature and precipitation anomalies create extreme events (including floods, droughts, and windstorms) and a succession of biophysical (lower yield and lesser nutrition value), economic (price of food, animal feed, and fire-wood), and demographic and social (malnutrition, decrease in births, rise in death-rate, social disruption, and food resource migration) impacts. By nature, the scholarship tends toward climatic determinism.…”

On the mathematical lifetime mechanism of Chinese dynasties

“…If there is shortage of food, farmers turned into bandits, then there are wars against the rulers (Yu-Ch'uan (1936), Skinner (1985)). The population model is extended by adding economic assumption of utility maximization, see, Chu and Lee (1994) and Chan and Laffargue (2016).…”