Balance of Power v.s. Empire

Hui contends that the states can overcome the marginal returns and rising costs of expansion (as described by Paul Kennedy et. al) by increasing their economic capability, military strength, and developing better strategy making apparatuses as they build their empire. While all states seek to do this, not all do it the same way. Some may expand, make alliances, or most damagingly, “relying on intermediate resource holders” to meet the demands of the state. The surest option is to reject these later alternatives (which are either stop-gap measures or policies that will actually weaken the state – see next paragraph) and actually increase the state’s ability to extract resources from the population and territory it controls.

In contrast to options that increase the state’s extractive capacity and control over its resources are options which mobilize resources by relying on intermediate resource holders. Hui calls such actions “self-weakening expedients.” These policies (hiring of mercenaries, tax farming, use of loans, sales of public office) are ultimately self weakening because they, “erode central authority, strain [the state’s] fiscal resources, and even damage fighting capability in the long term (33)”. Ultimately, these self-weakening expedients will undermine attempts at empire.

Hui’s thesis then, goes something like this: the reason universal empire succeeded in China but not in Europe is because the domination-seekers in China relied on self-strengthening reforms to consolidate their conquests (thus avoiding marginal returns) whilst those domination seekers in Europe relied on self-weakening expedients to consolidate their conquests (thus falling prey to marginal returns).