How Historical Collective Memories Shape State Behavior In Great Power Competition

Why does China, despite possessing growing military capabilities and global interests, maintain only one overseas military base while the United States operates approximately 800 bases worldwide? This puzzling divergence challenges dominant realist theories that predict uniform patterns of military expansion as states accumulate power. Through comparative historical analysis, this paper argues that institutionalization of collective historical memories, fundamentally shape state preferences in ways that material factors alone cannot explain. China's "Century of Humiliation" (1839-1949), marked by foreign military occupation and territorial violations, created deep institutional preferences for sovereignty and non-interference, crystallized in the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. In contrast, America's experiences as British colonial successor and Cold War victor institutionalized preferences for global military presence as natural expressions of security. These divergent memories became embedded in state institutions, fostering path dependencies that persist despite changing material conditions. The analysis reveals that traumatic versus triumphant historical experiences generate different strategic cultures; and that what scholarship presents as universal patterns of great power behavior actually reflects culturally specific experiences inappropriately generalized. This framework offers crucial insights for understanding contemporary great power competition and the possibilities for international orders that accommodate diverse historical experiences rather than assuming convergence toward a single model.