ABSTRACT
From the perspective of a student of international relations an underappreciated part of the “European Miracle” puzzle concerns the very different evolutionary patterns of long-term economic growth patterns, “interstate” politics in east Asia and western Europe, and their interaction.1 This is not an oblique reference to the oft-mentioned acephalous multipolarity in the west as opposed to the Middle Kingdom’s allegedly stultifying unipolarity as one of the critical factors affecting growth probabilities. In fact, both regions tended to cycle in and out of more centralized states of affairs and at various critical times the east Asian region was just as multipolar and acephalous as the western region. Rather, a combination of different ecologies, different centralization patterns-or at least, different rhythms in the capability concentration patterns, and different prevailing grand strategies led to very different outcomesone of which was the eventual supremacy of the western region over the eastern region. Yet it was never simply a matter of one region asserting dominance over another region by brute force. Both regions were changing or evolving over the 1500-2000 years in which we are most interested. Their evolutionary paths were not completely independent but they certainly were not parallel either. As they coevolved along different tracks, the conjunction of situational factors and choices made in the east and in the west rendered the western supremacy the more probable development.
