The Egalitarian Peasant Society and Long-Run Paths of Development in East Asia

Wonik Kim, Louisiana State University

What accounts for East Asia’s path of development? What are the similarities and differences between East Asia and Western Europe in terms of a long historical trajectory of capitalist growth? Taking the issue of the inequality-growth relationship in general, this paper focuses on the land distribution in China (the Qing dynasty), Korea (the Choson dynasty), and Japan (the Tokugawa shogunate) in the early modern era and examines whether inequality had a long-lasting effect on economic development. Based on historical evidence of the sociopolitical structure and statistical analysis, the paper finds that East Asian peasant society was relatively egalitarian, which, in turn, greatly shaped its long-run development trajectory. Compared to early modern Europe, the East Asian societies were less hierarchical in their elite recruitment, so the power of the wealthy was weaker. This sociopolitical arrangement could facilitate the formation of strong nationalism later in the modern period, which was also associated with subsequent high growth in the region. The paper suggests a theoretical conjecture about how wealth is translated into political power to block any possibility of societal change.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 210. Why Some Rise and Others Don't: Inequality, Geography, and the Long Arc of State Formation