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War, Disunity, and State Building In China, 1912–1949

Abstract:Xavier Paulès and David Serfass—in their introduction to this special issue—call for greater recognition of the many agents involved in multicentered state-building processes during China's Republican era (1912–1949). This article addresses their intriguing idea by linking it to the theoretical paradigm associated with Charles Tilly (1929–2008), in which states are formed and strengthened through war. The article briefly reviews how Tilly's paradigm has figured in research on China's early twentieth-century era of conflict among regional strongmen and struggle against Japanese invasions. Recounting trends construed as unifying processes, it then reconsiders the idea that the unity of the People's Republic of China (PRC) grew out of regional and central state-building efforts of the Republican period. With an eye to the potential for further analytical exploration of conflicts born of political disunity in China, the article concludes by proposing greater precision in the conceptualization of centralization and continuity in Chinese state-building processes.