Historical transportation systems and economic geography in China across seven millennia

The evolution of transportation networks and their relationship with urban development is critical to understanding the rise of civilizations. This thesis investigates this dynamic through three interconnected studies, focusing on China’s historical context. First, I reconstruct the transportation network of late imperial China using a GIS-based approach, estimating historical transportation speeds and costs, and compare it with England. Second, I analyze how natural endowments influenced the spatial distribution of ancient settlements and historical cities, revealing patterns of human interaction with their environment over time. Third, I explore how institutional contexts shaped the value of natural endowments for city locations across dynastic cycles. In paper two and paper three, my findings demonstrate that economic activities were initially concentrated in areas with convenient road access, but this relationship weakened approximately 4,500 years ago during a major global climatic event (Holocene Event 3). This disruption, likely driven by a climate shock triggering a Malthusian trap, persisted for nearly a millennium before being resolved through the formation of China’s first territorial state, aligning with the circumscription hypothesis. Following China’s unification, the relationship between city locations and natural endowments fluctuated with dynastic cycles, driven by governance strategies and taxation structures. This research contributes to three key areas of scholarship. First, it offers new insights into the Great Divergence by demonstrating that transportation conditions in late imperial Yangtze China were comparable to those in England until 1700, when England experienced a transformative transportation revolution that did not occur in China. Second, it advances economic geography by providing novel empirical evidence on how institutional settings mediate the value of natural endowments for city locations. Finally, it uncovers a previously undocumented historical pattern linking ancient settlement locations to road accessibility, informed by a newly developed terrain based road suitability index based on Digital Elevation Model data and data from the China Archaeological Database (CADB) Project.