Download or read book The Making of a New Rural Order in South China Volume 1 Village Land and Lineage in Huizhou 900 1600 written by Joseph P. McDermott and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-28 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the large caches of private documents discovered and collected in China, few rival the Huizhou sources for the insight they provide into Chinese local society and economy over the past millennium. Having spent decades researching these exceptionally rich sources, Joseph P. McDermott presents in two volumes his findings about the major social and economic changes in this important prefecture of south China from around 900 to 1700. In this first volume, we learn about village settlement, competition among village religious institutions, premodern agricultural production, the management of land and lineage, the rise of the lineage as the dominant institution, and its members' application of commercial practices to local forestry operations. This landmark study of religious life and economic activity, of lineage and land, and of rural residents and urban commercial practices provides a compelling new framework for understanding a distinctive path of economic and social development for premodern China and beyond.

Download or read book The Making of a New Rural Order in South China Volume 2 Merchants Markets and Lineages 1500 1700 written by Joseph P. McDermott and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-02 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is written for anyone who has wondered about the growth of Chinese businesses and their relation to Chinese family and government institutions. Making full use of its partner volume's findings on village institutions in the southern prefecture of Huizhou, this volume explains how late imperial China's key regional group of merchants emerged from this prefecture's village lineages. It identifies the strategies they deployed to overcome the serious obstacles to their domination of major financial transactions and commodity markets throughout much of China from 1500 to 1700. At the same time it describes how the commercial success enjoyed by these 'house firms' undermined their lineages' social stability, making them vulnerable to competition from popular religious cults back home. In recounting how rural and urban institutions interacted through state and economic development, McDermott provides a powerful new framework for understanding late imperial China's distinctive trajectory to social and economic transformation.

Download or read book The Making of a New Rural Order in South China written by Joseph P. McDermott and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-28 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark study of the long-term dynamics of Chinese village history proposing a new framework for understanding pre-modern economies in Asia.

Download or read book Huizhou written by Prof. Qitao Guo and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Huizhou studies the construction of local identity through kinship in the prefecture of Huizhou, the most prominent merchant stronghold of Ming China. Employing an array of untapped genealogies and other sources, Qitao Guo explores how developments in the sociocultural, religious, and gender realms from the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries intertwined to shape Huizhou identity as a land of "prominent lineages." This gentrified self-image both sheltered and guided the development of mercantile lineages, which were further bolstered by the gender regime and the local religious order. As Guo demonstrates, the discrepancy between representation and practice helps explain Huizhou's triumphs. The more active the economy became, the more those central to its commercialization embraced conservative sociocultural norms. Home lineages embraced neo-Confucian orthodoxy even as they provided the financial and logistical support to assure the success of Huizhou merchants. The end result was not "capitalism" but a gentrified mercantile lineage culture with Chinese—or Huizhou—characteristics.

Download or read book Genealogical Manuscripts in Cross Cultural Perspective written by Markus Friedrich, Jörg B. Quenzer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-12-16 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Cambridge Economic History of China Volume 1 To 1800 written by Debin Ma and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 749 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China's rise as the world's second-largest economy surely is the most dramatic development in the global economy since the year 2000. But China's prominence in the global economy is hardly new. Since 500 BCE, a dynamic market economy and the establishment of an enduring imperial state fostered precocious economic growth. Yet Chinese society and government featured distinctive institutions that generated unique patterns of economic development. The six chapters of Part I of this volume trace the forms of livelihood, organization of production and exchange, the role of the state in economic development, the evolution of market institutions, and the emergence of trans-Eurasian trade from antiquity to 1000 CE. Part II, in twelve thematic chapters, spans the late imperial period from 1000 to 1800 and surveys diverse fields of economic history, including environment, demography, rural and urban development, factor markets, law, money, finance, philosophy, political economy, foreign trade, human capital, and living standards.

Download or read book Elusive Capital written by Gipouloux, François and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-09 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a fresh analysis of late imperial China, this cutting-edge book revisits the roles played by merchant networks, economic institutions, and business practices in the divergence between Europe and China during the trade revolution.

Download or read book Chinese Diasporas written by Steven B. Miles and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise and compelling survey of Chinese migration in global history centered on Chinese migrants and their families.

Download or read book Chinese Environmental Ethics written by Mayfair Yang and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interdisciplinary collection in the new field of environmental humanities, this volume brings together Chinese environmental ethics, religious ontology, and religious practice to explore how traditional Chinese religio-environmental ethics are actually put into social practice both in China’s past and present. It also examines how Chinese religious teachings offer a wealth of resources to the environmental project of forging new ontologies for humans co-existing with other living beings. Different chapters examine how: Buddhist ontology avoids anthropocentrism, fengshui (Chinese geomancy) can help protect the landscape from economic development, popular religion organizes tree-planting, ancient dream interpretation practices avoided constructing the possessive individual subjectivity of modern consumerism, Buddhist rituals and ethics promoted compassion for animals and modern recycling, Confucian ancestor rituals and tombs have deterred industrial expansion, and also how Daoism’s potential role to deter desertification in northern China was stymied by state operations in contemporary China. A significant advance in the field of Chinese environmental anthropology, the outstanding scholars in this volume provide a unique and much needed contribution to the scholarship on China and the environment.

Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Imperial China written by Yuhua Wang and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How social networks shaped the imperial Chinese state China was the world’s leading superpower for almost two millennia, falling behind only in the last two centuries and now rising to dominance again. What factors led to imperial China’s decline? The Rise and Fall of Imperial China offers a systematic look at the Chinese state from the seventh century through to the twentieth. Focusing on how short-lived emperors often ruled a strong state while long-lasting emperors governed a weak one, Yuhua Wang shows why lessons from China’s history can help us better understand state building. Wang argues that Chinese rulers faced a fundamental trade-off that he calls the sovereign’s dilemma: a coherent elite that could collectively strengthen the state could also overthrow the ruler. This dilemma emerged because strengthening state capacity and keeping rulers in power for longer required different social networks in which central elites were embedded. Wang examines how these social networks shaped the Chinese state, and vice versa, and he looks at how the ruler’s pursuit of power by fragmenting the elites became the final culprit for China’s fall. Drawing on more than a thousand years of Chinese history, The Rise and Fall of Imperial China highlights the role of elite social relations in influencing the trajectories of state development.

Download or read book Social Order through Contracts written by Jian Qu and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first Western-language monograph on the study of the Qingshui River manuscripts. By examining over 3,000 contracts and other manuscripts, this book offers constructive insights into the long-standing question of how and why a society in late imperial China could maintain a well-functioning social system with few laws but many contracts, i.e., Hobbesian “words without sword.” Three interrelated questions, what contracts were, how and why they worked, are explained successively. Thus, this book presents a non-stereotypical “contract society” in southwest China, arguing that the social order which provides predictability and regularity for economic prosperity could be formed and maintained through contracts even under the condition of relatively weak influence of governmental and legal authorities. This book benefits readers who are interested in law, society, and history. While presenting the socio-legal landscape of a frontier area in late imperial China for historians, this book provides a novel and empirical interpretation of the supposedly well-known contract device for legal researchers, thereby proposing materials for an integrated theoretical explanatory framework of contracts in general. By employing the innovative theory of blockchain in its key argumentation, the book offers a creative interpretation of historical and social phenomena.

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 Modern Chinese Religion I 2 vols written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-12-04 with total page 1713 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A follow-up to Early Chinese Religion (Brill, 2009-10), Modern Chinese Religion focuses on the third period of paradigm shift in Chinese cultural and religious history, from the Song to the Yuan (960-1368 AD). As in the earlier periods, political division gave urgency to the invention of new models that would then remain dominant for six centuries. Defining religion as “value systems in practice”, this multi-disciplinary work shows the processes of rationalization and interiorization at work in the rituals, self-cultivation practices, thought, and iconography of elite forms of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, as well as in medicine. At the same time, lay Buddhism, Daoist exorcism, and medium-based local religion contributed each in its own way to the creation of modern popular religion. With contributions by Juhn Ahn, Bai Bin, Chen Shuguo, Patricia Ebrey, Michael Fuller, Mark Halperin, Susan Huang, Dieter Kuhn, Nap-yin Lau, Fu-shih Lin, Pierre Marsone, Matsumoto Kôichi, Joseph McDermott, Tracy Miller, Julia Murray, Ong Chang Woei, Fabien Simonis, Dan Stevenson, Curie Virag, Michael Walsh, Linda Walton, Yokote Yutaka, Zhang Zong

Download or read book Laws of the Land written by Tristan G. Brown and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking history of fengshui’s roles in public life and law during China’s last imperial dynasty Today the term fengshui, which literally means “wind and water,” is recognized around the world. Yet few know exactly what it means, let alone its fascinating history. In Laws of the Land, Tristan Brown tells the story of the important roles—especially legal ones—played by fengshui in Chinese society during China’s last imperial dynasty, the Manchu Qing (1644–1912). Employing archives from Mainland China and Taiwan that have only recently become available, this is the first book to document fengshui’s invocations in Chinese law during the Qing dynasty. Facing a growing population, dwindling natural resources, and an overburdened rural government, judicial administrators across China grappled with disputes and petitions about fengshui in their efforts to sustain forestry, farming, mining, and city planning. Laws of the Land offers a radically new interpretation of these legal arrangements: they worked. An intelligent, considered, and sustained engagement with fengshui on the ground helped the imperial state keep the peace and maintain its legitimacy, especially during the increasingly turbulent decades of the nineteenth century. As the century came to an end, contentious debates over industrialization swept across the bureaucracy, with fengshui invoked by officials and scholars opposed to the establishment of railways, telegraphs, and foreign-owned mines. Demonstrating that the only way to understand those debates and their profound stakes is to grasp fengshui’s longstanding roles in Chinese public life, Laws of the Land rethinks key issues in the history of Chinese law, politics, science, religion, and economics.

Download or read book An Economic History of China written by Richard von Glahn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-10 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive study of China's economic development across 3,000 years of history to be published in English.

Download or read book In the Wake of the Mongols written by Jinping Wang and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Mongol conquest of north China between 1211 and 1234 inflicted terrible wartime destruction, wiping out more than one-third of the population and dismantling the existing social order. In the Wake of the Mongols recounts the riveting story of how northern Chinese men and women adapted to these trying circumstances and interacted with their alien Mongol conquerors to create a drastically new social order. To construct this story, the book uses a previously unknown source of inscriptions recorded on stone tablets. Jinping Wang explores a north China where Mongol patrons, Daoist priests, Buddhist monks, and sometimes single women—rather than Confucian gentry—exercised power and shaped events, a portrait that upends the conventional view of imperial Chinese society. Setting the stage by portraying the late Jin and closing by tracing the Mongol period’s legacy during the Ming dynasty, she delineates the changing social dynamics over four centuries in the northern province of Shanxi, still a poorly understood region."

Download or read book A Ming Confucian s World written by Lu Rong and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2022-04-25 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A forgotten century marks the years between the Ming dynasty's (1368–1644) turbulent founding and its sixteenth-century age of exploration and economic transformation. In this period of social stability, retired scholar-official Lu Rong chronicled his observations of Chinese society in Miscellaneous Records from the Bean Garden (Shuyuan zaji). Openly expressing his admirations and frustrations, Lu provides a window into the quotidian that sets Bean Garden apart from other works of the biji genre of "informal notes." Mark Halperin organizes a translated selection of Lu's accounts from Miscellaneous Records from the Bean Garden to create a panorama of Ming life. A man of unusual curiosity, Lu describes multiple social classes, ethnicities, and locales in his accounts of political intrigues, farming techniques, religious practices, etiquette, crime, and family life. Centuries after their composition, Lu's words continue to provide a richly textured portrait of China on the cusp of the early modern era.