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For centuries the Yangzi delta has acted as the locomotive of China's economic growth. This book examines the surprising phenomenon of a long period of economic growth from 1620 to 1850 in the traditional agriculture of this extremely densely populated area, when no new land was available and no major technological breakthroughs occurred. Intensification of farming and rationalizations of resources saw an optimum model of peasant family economy become the norm. The contrast with western patterns of development improves our understanding of China's economic performance, past and present.
What can the history of technology contribute to our understanding of late imperial China? Most stories about technology in pre-modern China follow a well-worn plot: in about 1400 after an early ferment of creativity that made it the most technologically sophisticated civilisation in the world, China entered an era of technical lethargy and decline. But how are we to reconcile this tale, which portrays China in the Ming and Qing dynasties as a dying giant that had outgrown its own strength, with the wealth of counterevidence affirming that the country remained rich, vigorous and powerful at least until the end of the eighteenth century? Does this seeming contradiction mean that the stagnation story is simply wrong, or perhaps that technology was irrelevant to how imperial society worked? Or does it imply that historians of technology should ask better questions about what technology was, what it did and what it meant in pre-modern societies like late imperial China? In this book, Francesca Bray explores subjects such as technology and ethics, technology and gendered subjectivities (both female and male), and technology and statecraft to illuminate how material settings and practices shaped topographies of everyday experience and ideologies of government, techniques of the self and technologies of the subject. Examining technologies ranging from ploughing and weaving to drawing pictures, building a house, prescribing medicine or composing a text, this book offers a rich insight into the interplay between the micro- and macro-politics of everyday life and the workings of governmentality in late imperial China, showing that gender principles were woven into the very fabric of empire, from cosmology and ideologies of rule to the material foundations of the state and the everyday practices of the domestic sphere. This authoritative text will be welcomed by students and scholars of Chinese history, as well as those working on global history and the histories of gender, technology and agriculture. Furthermore, it will be of great use to those interested in social and cultural anthropology and material culture.
In this innovative and ambitious global history, distinguished economic historian Amiya Kumar Bagchi traces the global history of human change and survival under the sway of capitalism since the voyages of Columbus. Writing with extraordinary range and depth, he offers a critical analysis of the history and human costs and consequences of development in Europe and North America, and in major regions such as India, China, Japan, and Africa. Bagchi critically characterizes the emergence and operation of capitalism as a system driven by wars over resources and markets rather than one that genuinely operates on the principle of free markets. His unflinching examination of the human toll—in the periphery as well in the core nations—includes not only economic processes and issues of inequality within and among nations, but also the intertwining of economics and war-making on a world scale. Bagchi's compelling vision will change the ways in which we think about many of the largest issues in the world history and development over the past 500 years.
This collection of essays examines the history of cotton textiles at a global level over the period 1200-1850. It provides new answers to two questions: what is it about cotton that made it the paradigmatic first global commodity? And second, why did cotton industries in different parts of the world follow different paths of development?
This book explores aspects of this vibrant market economy in late imperial China, and by presenting a reconstructed narrative of economic development in the early modern Jiangnan, provides new perspectives on established theories of Chinese economic development. Further, by examining economic values alongside social structures, this book produces a historically comprehensive account of the contemporary Chinese economy which engenders a deeper and broader understanding of China's current economic success.
During the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), the government invited merchants to deliver grain in return for salt certificates with which merchants drew salt as reward. The salt certificate therefore represented a national debt, denominated in salt, the government thereby owed merchants. A speculative market of salt certificates was created in Yangzhou and brought into being powerful financiers in the early 17th century. The government, financially hard pressed, abolished the speculative market of salt certificates by franchising these financiers in return for their hereditary obligation to pay salt certificate surcharge. China was therefore deprived of a possibility to develop a public debt market. This story is a testimony to Fernand Braudel’s argument of the "nondevelopment" of Capitalism in China.
This book examines the evolution of Chinese governmental governance and its long-lasting impact on Chinese economic development, firstly by examining the formation of Chinese style governance, the core contents of this governance and its vitality compared to other governance patterns in Chinese history. Secondly, this book discusses the effectiveness of this governance in supporting economic development before the Song dynasty and its failure in serving economic development during the past three to five centuries. Ultimately, Hongjun Zhao predicts the direction Chinese governance will take in the next 20 years.
This open access book considers a pivotal era in Chinese history from a global perspective. This book’s insight into Chinese and international history offers timely and challenging perspectives on initiatives like “Chinese characteristics”, “The New Silk Road” and “One Belt, One Road” in broad historical context. Global History with Chinese Characteristics analyses the feeble state capacity of Qing China questioning the so-called “High Qing” (shèng qīng 盛清) era’s economic prosperity as the political system was set into a “power paradox” or “supremacy dilemma”. This is a new thesis introduced by the author demonstrating that interventionist states entail weak governance. Macao and Marseille as a new case study aims to compare Mediterranean and South China markets to provide new insights into both modern eras’ rising trade networks, non-official institutions and interventionist impulses of autocratic states such as China’s Qing and Spain’s Bourbon empires.
Godfrey Yeung investigates the causes and socio-economic effects of foreign direct investment in the Dongguan municipality of southern China during the 1990s. As the first comprehensive research based on primary quantitative and qualitative data undertaken in Dongguan, it illustrates that the inflow of foreign capital has both 'desirable' and undesirable' socio-economic effects. Yeung proposes a new 'dynamic symbiosis' paradigm of foreign direct investment in order the illuminate the complex political and socio-economic relationships of the area.
This book is a historiographical study of the economic history of the Qing dynasty that systematically examines the research paradigms underlying the range of historical studies conducted over the past century. In reviewing historical studies of the economic history of the Qing dynasty from an epistemological and methodological perspective, the book explores how this research area emerged and developed and explores the three major paradigms that dominate the field: the revolutionary historical paradigm based on productive relations; the modernization paradigm centring on productivity and the Chinese-centric approach that seeks to understand the internal momentum of economic development. It is shown that shifts in paradigms derive not only from the linear derivation of academic ideas but are also closely related to wider changes in society and social discourse. Hence, the author proposes an approach that studies economic and social history with an emphasis on social practice, shedding light on a better understanding of the direction of China’s economic history. The title will benefit scholars and students interested in economic history and modern Chinese history.