Download or read book State Economy and the Great Divergence written by Peer Vries and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: State, Economy and the Great Divergence provides a new analysis of what has become the central debate in global economic history: the 'great divergence' between European and Asian growth. Focusing on early modern China and Western Europe, in particular Great Britain, this book offers a new level of detail on comparative state formation that has wide-reaching implications for European, Eurasian and global history. Beginning with an overview of the historiography, Peer Vries goes on to extend and develop the debate, critically engaging with the huge volume of literature published on the topic to date. Incorporating recent insights, he offers a compelling alternative to the claims to East-West equivalence, or Asian superiority, which have come to dominate discourse surrounding this issue. This is a vital update to a key issue in global economic history and, as such, is essential reading for students and scholars interested in keeping up to speed with the on-going debates.

Download or read book The Economy of Lower Yangzi Delta in Late Imperial China written by Billy K. L. So and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historically, the Lower Yangzi Delta (or Jiangnan), has played a key role in China’s economic development. Indeed, as the prime example of a traditional Chinese market economy, the region serves as the core case study when making comparisons between the Chinese and Western economies in the early modern period. 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. With a broad range of empirical case studies which incorporate a range of social science and cultural theories, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese history, as well as Chinese economics and business.

Download or read book A Court on Horseback written by Michael G Chang and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Between 1751 and 1784, the Qianlong emperor embarked upon six southern tours, traveling from Beijing to Jiangnan and back. These tours were exercises in political theater that took the Manchu emperor through one of the Qing empire’s most prosperous regions.This study elucidates the tensions and the constant negotiations characterizing the relationship between the imperial center and Jiangnan, which straddled the two key provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Politically, economically, and culturally, Jiangnan was the undisputed center of the Han Chinese world; it also remained a bastion of Ming loyalism and anti-Manchu sentiment. How did the Qing court constitute its authority and legitimate its domination over this pivotal region? What were the precise terms and historical dynamics of Qing rule over China proper during the long eighteenth century?In the course of addressing such questions, this study also explores the political culture within and through which High Qing rule was constituted and contested by a range of actors, all of whom operated within socially and historically structured contexts. The author argues that the southern tours occupied a central place in the historical formation of Qing rule during a period of momentous change affecting all strata of the eighteenth-century polity."

Download or read book Imperial Twilight written by Stephen R. Platt and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War. As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China even as China’s imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage. The book paints an enduring portrait of an immensely profitable—and mostly peaceful—meeting of civilizations that was destined to be shattered by one of the most shockingly unjust wars in the annals of imperial history. Brimming with a fascinating cast of British, Chinese, and American characters, this riveting narrative of relations between China and the West has important implications for today’s uncertain and ever-changing political climate.

Download or read book The Cambridge World History of Slavery Volume 3 AD 1420 AD 1804 written by David Eltis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-25 with total page 777 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The various manifestations of coerced labour between the opening up of the Atlantic world and the formal creation of Haiti.

Download or read book General History Of China s Foreign Trade A Volume 1 written by Yuqin Sun and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2024-02-08 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China boasts a long history of foreign trade. As early as the pre-Qin period, residents of the country began to ship silk and other merchandise on outbound voyages. From the 2nd century BCE on, China has been connected to the rest of the world via the Overland Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road initiated in the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty.Trade relations between China and other regions in the world have been developing gradually and continuously. Trade has contributed to deepening economic and cultural exchanges between China and other countries. While benefiting the whole of humankind, Chinese civilization has also absorbed the achievements of other civilizations, allowing China and other countries to experience mutual benefits and advance together.This is the first volume in a series of books retelling the arduous development of China's foreign trade. It covers ancient times, recording China's foreign trade from the pre-Qin period to the early period of the Qing Dynasty.

Download or read book Copper in the Early Modern Sino Japanese Trade written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume sheds light on the important role of copper in early modern Sino-Japanese trade. By examining the demand for copper and the policy on copper procurement in Japan and China as well as the role of Osaka merchant houses, this volume provides a new slant on the “life” of Japanese copper – from production and distribution to consumption. In addition, papers on other significant traded products such as sugar, seafood, and books give us a better understanding of Sino-Japanese trade overall. The latest discussions on this field, which were mostly published in Japanese, have been brought together in this book and made accessible to an English-speaking audience. Contributors include: IMAI Noriko, IWASAKI Yoshinori, LIU Shiuh-Feng, MATSUURA Akira, and Keiko NAGASE-REIMER.

Download or read book Luxurious Networks written by Yulian Wu and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-04 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From precious jade articles to monumental stone arches, Huizhou salt merchants in Jiangnan lived surrounded by objects in eighteenth-century China. How and why did these businessmen devote themselves to these items? What can we learn about eighteenth-century China by examining the relationship between merchants and objects? Luxurious Networks examines Huizhou salt merchants in the material world of High Qing China to reveal a dynamic interaction between people and objects. The Qianlong emperor purposely used objects to expand his influence in economic and cultural fields. Thanks to their broad networks, outstanding managerial skills, and abundant financial resources, these salt merchants were ideal agents for selecting and producing objects for imperial use. In contrast to the typical caricature of merchants as mimics of the literati, these wealthy businessmen became respected individuals who played a crucial role in the political, economic, social, and cultural world of eighteenth-century China. Their life experiences illustrate the dynamic relationship between the Manchu and Han, central and local, and humans and objects in Chinese history.

Download or read book China Exchange News written by and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Life under Pressure written by Tommy Bengtsson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-01-23 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering work in comparative history and social science that compares population behavior in response to adversity in Europe and Asia. This highly original book—the first in a series analyzing historical population behavior in Europe and Asia—pioneers a new approach to the comparative analysis of societies in the past. Using techniques of event history analysis, the authors examine 100,000 life histories in 100 rural communities in Western Europe and Asia to analyze the demographic response to social and economic pressures. In doing so they challenge the accepted Eurocentric Malthusian view of population processes and demonstrate that population behavior has not been as uniform as previously thought—that it has often been determined by human agency, particularly social structure and cultural practice. The authors examine the complex relationship between human behavior and social and economic environment, analyzing age, gender, family, kinship, social class and social organization, climate, food prices, and real wages to compare mortality responses to adversity. Their research at the individual, household, and community levels challenges the previously accepted characterizations of social and economic behavior in Europe and Asia in the past. The originality of the analysis as well as the geographic breadth and historical depth of the data make Life Under Pressure a significant advance in the field of historical demography. Its findings will be of interest to scholars in economics, environmental studies, demography, history, and sociology as well as the general reader interested in these subjects.

Download or read book Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States written by Andrew Monson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the new fiscal history, this book represents the first global survey of taxation in the premodern world. What emerges is a rich variety of institutions, including experiments with sophisticated instruments such as sovereign debt and fiduciary money, challenging the notion of a typical premodern stage of fiscal development. The studies also reveal patterns and correlations across widely dispersed societies that shed light on the basic factors driving the intensification, abatement, and innovation of fiscal regimes. Twenty scholars have contributed perspectives from a wide range of fields besides history, including anthropology, economics, political science and sociology. The volume's coverage extends beyond Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East to East Asia and the Americas, thereby transcending the Eurocentric approach of most scholarship on fiscal history.

Download or read book Borderland Capitalism written by Kwangmin Kim and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-19 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars have long been puzzled by why Muslim landowners in Central Asia, called begs, stayed loyal to the Qing empire when its political legitimacy and military power were routinely challenged. Borderland Capitalism argues that converging interests held them together: the local Qing administration needed the Turkic begs to develop resources and raise military revenue while the begs needed access to the Chinese market. Drawing upon multilingual sources and archival material, Kwangmin Kim shows how the begs aligned themselves with the Qing to strengthen their own plantation-like economic system. As controllers of food supplies, commercial goods, and human resources, the begs had the political power to dictate the fortunes of governments in the region. Their political choice to cooperate with the Qing promoted an expansion of the Qing's emerging international trade at the same time that Europe was developing global capitalism and imperialism. Borderland Capitalism shows the Qing empire as a quintessentially early modern empire and points the way toward a new understanding of the rise of a global economy.

Download or read book Juanqinzhai in the Qianlong Garden The Forbidden City Beijing written by Nancy Berliner and published by Scala Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the five most important interiors to survive China's imperial past, Juanqinzhai (Lodge of Retirement), situated in the exquisitely designed Qianlong Garden, was all but abandoned when the last emperor left the Forbidden City in 1924. Built in 1771

Download or read book The Cambridge Economic History of China Volume 1 To 1800 written by Debin Ma and published by . This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 749 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive survey of Chinese economic history from the pre-imperial era to 1800 from an international team of leading experts.

Download or read book Orphan Warriors written by Pamela Kyle Crossley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1600s, Manchu bannermen spearheaded the military force that conquered China and founded the Qing Empire, which endured until 1912. By the end of the Taiping War in 1864, however, the descendants of these conquering people were coming to terms with a loss of legal definition, an ever-steeper decline in living standards, and a sense of abandonment by the Qing court. Focusing on three generations of a Manchu family (from 1750 to the 1930s), Orphan Warriors is the first attempt to understand the social and cultural life of the bannermen within the context of the decay of the Qing regime. The book reveals that the Manchus were not "sinicized," but that they were growing in consciousness of their separate ethnicity in response to changes in their own position and in Chinese attitudes toward them. Pamela Kyle Crossley's treatment of the Suwan Guwalgiya family of Hangzhou is hinged upon Jinliang (1878-1962), who was viewed at various times as a progressive reformer, a promising scholar, a bureaucratic hack, a traitor, and a relic. The author sees reflected in the ambiguities of his persona much of the plight of other Manchus as they were transformed from a conquering caste to an ethnic minority. Throughout Crossley explores the relationships between cultural decline and cultural survival, polity and identity, ethnicity and the disintegration of empires, all of which frame much of our understanding of the origins of the modern world.

Download or read book The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet written by Yingcong Dai and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illuminating the complicated history of the struggle between the Zunghar Mongols and China over Tibet and the rise of Sichuan's importance as a key strategic area during China's last dynasty, Yingcong Dai explores the intersections of political and social history.--Yingcong Dai is associate professor of history at William Paterson University in New Jersey.

Download or read book Gardens of a Chinese Emperor written by Victoria M. Siu and published by Lehigh University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-12 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Garden of Perfect Brightness (Yuanming Yuan) in the western suburbs of the Quing capital, Beijing, was begun by the great Kangxi (r. 1661-1722) and expanded by his son, Yongzheng (r. 1722-1736) and brought to its greatest glory by his grandson, Qianlong (r. 1736-1796). A lover of literature and art, Qinglong sought an earthly reflection of his greatness in his Yuanming Yuan. For many years he designed and directed an elaborate program of garden arrangements. Representing two generations of painstaking research, this book follows the emperor as he ruled his empire from within his garden. In a landscape of lush plants, artificial mountains and lakes, and colorful buildings, he sought to represent his wealth and power to his diverse subjects and to the world at large. Having been looted and burned in the mid-nineteenth century by western forces, it now lies mostly in ruins, but it was the world’s most elaborate garden in the eighteenth century. The garden suggested a whole set of concepts—religious, philosophical, political, artistic, and popular—represented in landscape and architecture. Just as bonsai portrays a garden in miniature, the imperial Yuanming Yuan at the height of its splendor represented the Qing Empire in microcosm. Includes 62 color plates and 35 black & white photographs.