Empire Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Circumscription theory=== {{Main|Circumscription theory}} According to the circumscription theory of [[Robert Carneiro]], "the more sharply circumscribed area, the more rapidly it will become politically unified."<ref>Robert Carneiro, "The Circumscription Theory: Challenge and Response", ''American Behavioral Scientist'', 31/4, (1988): p 499.</ref> The Empires of Egypt,<ref>O'Connor, D. B. & Silverman, D. P., ''Ancient Egyptian Kingship'', (Leiden & New York: E. J. Brill, 1995), p XXI.</ref><ref>Amelie Kuhrt, ''The Ancient Near East circa 3000–330 BC'', (London & New York: Routledge, 1995), vol. I, pp. 123–124.</ref> China<ref>Yuri Pines, ''Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era'', (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), pp. 8–9.</ref> and [[Yamato Dynasty|Japan]] are named the most durable political structures in human history. Correspondingly, these are the three most circumscribed civilizations in human history. The Empires of Egypt (established by [[Narmer]] c. 3000 BC) and China (established by [[Qin Shi Huang|Cheng]] in 221 BC) endured for over two millennia. German Sociologist Friedrich Tenbruck, criticizing the Western idea of progress, emphasized that China and Egypt remained at one particular stage of development for millennia. This stage was universal empire. The development of Egypt and China came to a halt once their empires "reached the limits of their natural habitat".{{Sfn|Tenbruck|1994|pages=84, 86–87}} [[Sinology]] does not recognize the Eurocentric view of the "inevitable" imperial fall;<ref>Yuri Pines, ''Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era'', (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009).</ref><ref>Yuri Pines, The ''Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy'', (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2012).</ref> Egyptology<ref>D. B. O'Connor & D. P. Silverman, ''Ancient Egyptian Kingship'', (Leiden & New York: E. J. Brill, 1995).</ref><ref>Aidan Dodson, ''Monarchs of the Nile'', (London: The Rubicon Press, 1995).</ref> and [[Yamato Dynasty|Japanology]] pose equal challenges. Carneiro explored the Bronze Age civilizations. Stuart J. Kaufman, Richard Little and [[William Wohlforth]] researched the next three millennia, comparing eight civilizations. They conclude: The "rigidity of the borders" contributed importantly to hegemony in every concerned case.<ref>Kaufman & Little & Wohlforth, ''The Balance of Power in World History'', (London: Palgrave, 2007), p. 237.</ref> Hence, "when the system's borders are rigid, the probability of hegemony is high".<ref>Kaufman & Little & Wohlforth, "Testing Balance-of-Power Theory in World History", ''European Journal of International Relations'', 13/2, (2007): p. 178.</ref> The circumscription theory was stressed in the [[Comparative studies of the Roman and Han empires|comparative studies of the Roman and Chinese Empires]]. The circumscribed Chinese Empire recovered from all falls, while the fall of Rome, by contrast, was fatal. "What counteracted this [imperial] tendency in Europe ... was a countervailing tendency for the geographical boundaries of the system to expand." If "Europe had been a closed system, some great power would eventually have succeeded in establishing absolute supremacy over the other states in the region".<ref>Stuart J. Kaufman & William C. Wohlforth & Richard Little, ''The Balance of Power in World History'', (London: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 45–46.</ref> {{Blockquote| The ancient Chinese system was relatively enclosed, whereas the European system began to expand its reach to the rest of the world from the onset of system formation... In addition, overseas provided outlet for territorial competition, thereby allowing international competition on the European continent to ... trump the ongoing pressure toward convergence.<ref>Victoria Tin-bor Hui, ''War and State Formation in China and Early Modern Europe'', Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 141.</ref>}} In the 1945 book, ''The Precarious Balance'', on four centuries of the European power struggle, [[Ludwig Dehio]] explained the durability of the European states system by its overseas expansion: "Overseas expansion and the system of states were born at the same time; the vitality that burst the bounds of the Western world also destroyed its unity."<ref>(tr. Fullman, Charles, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), pp. 50, 90, 279.</ref> In a [[The Anatomy of Peace|more famous 1945 book]], Reves similarly argued that the era of outward expansion is forever closed and the historic trend of expansion will result in direct collision between the remaining powers.<ref name="auto1">Reves 1945: pp 267-268.</ref> [[E. H. Carr|Edward Carr]] causally linked the end of the overseas outlet for imperial expansion and World Wars. In the nineteenth century, he wrote during the Second World War, imperialist wars were waged against "primitive" peoples. "It was silly for European countries to fight against one another when they could still ... maintain social cohesion by continuous expansion in Asia and Africa. Since 1900, however, this has no longer been possible: "the situation has radically changed". Now wars are between "imperial powers."<ref>''Conditions of Peace'', (London: Macmillan, 1943), p 113-114.</ref> [[Hans Morgenthau]] wrote that the very imperial expansion into relatively empty geographical spaces in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, in Africa, Eurasia, and western North America, deflected great power politics into the periphery of the earth, thereby reducing conflict. For example, the more attention Russia, France and the United States paid to expanding into far-flung territories in imperial fashion, the less attention they paid to one another, and the more peaceful, in a sense, the world was. But by the late nineteenth century, the consolidation of the great nation-states and empires of the West was consummated, and territorial gains could only be made at the expense of one another.<ref>''Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace'', 1948, (New York: McGraw Hill, revised 2006 edition), p 354–357.</ref> [[John H. Herz]] outlined one "chief function" of the overseas expansion and the impact of its end: {{Blockquote| [A] European balance of power could be maintained or adjusted because it was relatively easy to divert European conflicts into overseas directions and adjust them there. Thus the openness of the world contributed to the consolidation of the territorial system. The end of the 'world frontier' and the resulting closedness of an interdependent world inevitably affected the system's effectiveness.<ref>[[John H. Herz]], "Rise and Demise of the Territorial State", ''World Politics'', 9, (1957): p. 482.</ref>}} Some later commentators{{Who|date=January 2019}} drew similar conclusions: {{Blockquote| For some commentators, the passing of the Nineteenth century seemed destined to mark the end of this long era of European empire building. The unexplored and unclaimed "blank" spaces on the world map were rapidly diminishing ... and the sense of "global closure" prompted an anxious [[Fin de siècle|fin-de-siècle]] debate about the future of the great empires ... The "closure" of the global imperial system implied ... the beginning of a new era of intensifying inter-imperial struggle along borders that now straddled the globe.<ref>Michael Heffernan, "The Politics of the Map in the Early Twentieth Century", ''Cartography and Geographic Information Science'', 29/3, (2002): p. 207.</ref>}} The opportunity for any system to expand in size seems almost a necessary condition for it to remain balanced, at least over the long haul. Far from being impossible or exceedingly improbable, systemic hegemony is likely under two conditions: "when the boundaries of the international system remain stable and no new major powers emerge from outside the system."<ref>Kaufman & Little & Wohlforth, ''The Balance of Power in World History'', (London: Palgrave, 2007), p 229, 237; Idem., "Testing Balance-of-Power Theory in World History", ''European Journal of International Relations'', 13/2, (2007): p 159.</ref> With the system becoming global, further expansion is precluded. The geopolitical condition of "global closure"<ref>Gerry Kearns, "''Fin de Siècle Geopolitics'': Mackinder, Hobson and Theories of Global Closure", ''Political Geography of the Twentieth Century: A Global Analysis'', (ed. Peter J. Taylor, London: Belhaven Press, 1993).</ref> will remain to the end of history. Since "the contemporary international system is global, we can rule out the possibility that geographic expansion of the system will contribute to the emergence of a new balance of power, as it did so many times in the past."<ref>Kaufman & Little & Wohlforth, ''The Balance of Power in World History'', p 21.</ref> As [[Quincy Wright]] had put it, "this process can no longer continue without interplanetary wars."<ref>Quincy Wright, ''A Study of War'', (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1964), p 92-93.</ref> One of leading experts on [[world-system theory]], [[Christopher Chase-Dunn]], noted that the circumscription theory is applicable for the global system, since the global system is circumscribed.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows1.txt| title = "World State Formation: Historical Processes and Emergent Necessity", ''Political Geography Quarterly'', 9/2, (1990) |pages=108–130}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osoLn_xoBvQ| title = Robert Carneiro, "Are We Circumscribed Now?" 2012| website = [[YouTube]]}}</ref> In fact, within less than a century of its circumscribed existence the global system overcame the centuries-old [[balance of power (international relations)|balance of power]] and reached the [[unipolarity]]. Given "constant spatial parameters" of the global system, its unipolar structure is neither historically unusual nor theoretically surprising.<ref>Kaufman & Little & Wohlforth, "Testing Balance-of-Power Theory in World History", ''European Journal of International Relations'', 13/2, (2007): p. 179.</ref> [[Randall Schweller]] theorized that a "closed international system", such as the global became a century ago, would reach "[[entropy]]" in a kind of [[Second law of thermodynamics|thermodynamic law]]. Once the state of entropy is reached, there is no going back. The initial conditions are lost forever. Stressing the curiosity of the fact, Schweller writes that since the moment the modern world became a closed system, the process has worked in only one direction: from many poles to two poles to one pole. Thus unipolarity might represent the entropy—stable and permanent loss of variation—in the global system.<ref>Randall L. Schweller, "Entropy and the Trajectory of World Politics: Why Polarity Has Become Less Meaningful", ''Cambridge Review of International Affairs'', 23/1, (2010): pp. 149–151.</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page