For most of the period under review, states remained concentric ring systems, that is, closely administered cores surrounded by provinces whose autonomy increased with distance. If Southeast Asian solar polities
represented unusually decentralized versions, this basic description applies as well to ancien regime ´ France, Muscovy, and Tokugawa Japan. The principal point is that in each polity, after postcharter consolidation resumed, we find a long-term if halting tendency for peripheral zones and autonomous enclaves to assimilate to the status of intermediate or core provinces, and for systems of extraction and coordination in the core to grow more specialized and efficient.