A very common arrangement in the past was to have a somewhat independent kingdom paying tribute to an empire. I judge these arrangements based upon the actual power relationships. For example, Wallachia paid tribute to the Ottoman Empire from 1420’s on, but there were frequent refusals of tribute and wars with the Ottomans until the…

Sometimes different polities exert control over the same territory, both viewing each other as legitimate. Federations are a common form of government today. The United States, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, India, Germany & the United Kingdom are all federations of a sort. (Notably, the Russian Federation is a unitary state, not a federation). In all these…

In a hegemonic relationship, two polities have an unequal relationship with each other. Should the client state be considered a part of the hegemonic state. There are number of tests I use to determine whether client state is considered indepedent or part of the hegemon. These tests are problematic in practice (you don’t know if…

I am following Geacron by starting in 3000 BCE and using control on January 1. This means that many historical events are not reflected until after the year where the occur. The data goes to 2022. For more recent data search for the World Economic Outlook database.

The definition I use for a state is “a polity, controlled by a single leader or group, that has primary access to the military and fiscal resources of a geographical area.” This is quite distinct from sovereignty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty I am concerned with the actual practice of power military and fiscal power, not the current framework…

I enjoy looking at maps and watching the rise and fall of nations. This dataset will allow that to be done graphically. In addition, I play board & computer wargames, which require tha production values and the like be assigned. The data here is useful for that.

The second dataset (State-Year) I am creating will have the annual GDP and population information by state. which I define as a polity, controlled by a single leader or group, that has primary access to the military and fiscal resources of a geographical area. This will involve tracking control of geography. For each country defined…

The population numbers in Country-Year data came from the HYDE project, with data interpolated for the missing years. The GDP numbers came by interpolating the GDP/capita data from the Maddison database and multiplying it out. All numbers were normalized against the world totals. Numbers from before the first entry for each country were extrapolated backwards…

The World Historical Economic Database is a dataset I am developing showing GDP and population as a proportion of the world total. There are two distinct datasets. The first dataset uses today’s boundaries (mostly). It can be found in the downloads section. The second dataset uses the boundaries in effect at the time. It is…

I have reactivated my dormant website and will use it primarily to present information on my World Historical Economic Database project.