The Rise and Fall of the Confucian Long Peace: A New Dataset for Analyzing Regional Conflict Management in East Asia (1598–1894)

Building on previous studies of the Long Confucian Peace, this article presents a novel dataset addressing questions about the long Confucian peace among China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam that existed from a newly defined period of 1598–1894. The dataset, referred to as the Long Confucian Peace Dataset (LCPD), fills gaps in the existing literature on this topic. It is described along with coding rules for the development of peace and conflict indexes. The dataset is used in an application that showcases various features of the peace, including the ebbs and flows of conflict and peace through four periods in the chronology. The analyses demonstrate how states with shared values navigated and managed relations across East Asia. These relations were often tenuous and grounded in shared interests rather than a spirit of communal cooperation. The article concludes with a discussion of a long-term research agenda, including analyses of similarities and differences between the LCPD and MIDs-based datasets on the democratic peace.