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State making, political sustainability, and critical crisis: a historical and theoretical perspective from Qing China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2023

Wensheng Wang Open the ORCID record for Wensheng Wang [Opens in a new window]
Wensheng Wang*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822-2217, USA
*
Author for correspondence: Wensheng Wang, E-mail: wensheng@hawaii.edu
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Abstract

This article aims to strengthen the link between history and theory by contributing to the scholarly conversation on “an integrated historical social science.” By examining the case of Qing China, it introduces a historically oriented and theoretically informed research agenda and toolkit for studying state making through the interactive lens of political sustainability and critical crisis. Using two historical upheavals as a prism, this article shows how destructive crises can have the unintended consequence of facilitating empire building and fostering political sustainability. Furthermore, it draws on theoretical insights from political science and sociology to construct a general framework for measuring the sustainability of political development and explaining the complex role of great crisis. This interdisciplinary model not only sheds new lights on the causative role of event, conjuncture, and structure but also enriches existing approaches to comparative historical analysis in general and state making in particular.

Keywords

Conjuncturecrisishistorical causalitypolitical sustainabilitystate makingstate–society relationship
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , July 2023 , pp. 793 - 811
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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