Any organized political entity, including (but not limited to) a city-state, a kingdom, an empire, or a nation-state. Power within a polity can be organized in many different ways (e.g. a king or emperor, elected officials, a council of leading merchants). A polity does not necessarily have total control over a fixed territory, but it is able to access resources in the form of wealth and/or labor. We use this broad term because other terms (e.g. empire, state, kingdom) have connotations or features that don’t fully fit East Asia during this period.