. Diamond (1997) famously argued that “fractured land” was responsible for China's tendency toward political unification and … Europe's protracted political fragmentation. We build a dynamic model with granular geographical information in terms of … state formation in Eurasia. We find that either topography or productive land alone is sufficient to account for China …

argued that “fractured land” was responsible for China’s tendency toward political unification and Europe’s protracted … find that topography alone is sufficient, but not necessary, to explain polycentrism in Europe and unification in China …. Differences in land productivity, in particular the existence of a core region of high land productivity in northern China, also …