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This volume, by offering a score of new insights derived from a wide variety of recent archaeological and textual sources, bring to life an important overseas trading port in Southeast Asia: Quanzhou. During the Song and Yuan dynasties active official and unofficial engagement in trade had formative effects on the development of the maritime trade of Quanzhou and its social and economic position both regionally and supraregionally. In the first part subjects such as the impact of the Song imperial clan and the local élites on these developments, the economic importance of metals, coins, paper money, and changes in the political economy, are amply discussed. The second part concentrates on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of archaeological data and materials, the investigation of commodities from China, their origins, distribution and final destinations, the use of foreign labour, and the particular role of South Thailand in trade connections, thus supplying the hard data underlying the main argument of the book.
The present volume is a collection of papers originally presented for the concluding conference of the research project The East Asian 'Mediterranean' entitled "The East Asian 'Mediterranean' - Maritime Crossroads of Culture, Commerce and Human Migration" and held at Munich University from November 2-3, 2007. The papers in this volume have been arranged according to thematical sections, that is "Mediterranean Seas - from East Asia to East Africa", "Merchants and merchant networks", "Commodities and transport", and finally "Trade parameters and perceptions" - each section covering a different aspect of trade, diplomacy and perceptions across and within the East Asian and Asian waters. In order to show the variety and the different qualities of interaction and exchange relations we have selected case studies with a main focus lying on Sino-Japanese, Sino-Ryukyuan, and Japanese-Korean relations as well as the involvement of Muslim merchants in the Asian waters. The volume in particular tries to draw the readers' attention to the necessity and the advantages of international cooperation and interaction investigating topics of Asian history.
The present volume, composed of six contributions by different scholars, seeks to show the intensity of exchange relations and trading networks in the early modern to late imperial "East Asian 'Mediterranean'", arguing that these exchange relations and trading networks already had their roots and origins in the tenth to thirteenth centuries at the latest. In this context, the first two contributions discuss local society and socio-economic changes within local Chinese society during the Song to Ming periods - while the other four contributions concentrate on aspects of commercial exchange and administration during the Qing period. Two contributions in particular analyze the indirect and dire...
A unique volume that addresses how a thalassographic frame opens up new and important questions for the study of history
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.
Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai traces the roots of modern global East Asia by focusing on the fascinating history of its seaways. The East Asian maritime realm, from the Straits of Malacca to the Sea of Japan, has been a core region of international trade for millennia, but during the long seventeenth century (1550 to 1700), the velocity and scale of commerce increased dramatically. Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese smugglers and pirates forged autonomous networks and maritime polities; they competed and cooperated with one another and with powerful political and economic units, such as the Manchu Qing, Tokugawa Japan, the Portuguese and Spanish crowns, and the Dutch East India Company. Mar...
As a continent lying to the east of Europe, Asia has been malleable to different spatial and temporal imaginations and politics. Recent scholarship has highlighted how the seemingly self-contained regional configurations of West and Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and East Asia carved by the Area Studies paradigm reflect changing (geo)political and economic interests than historical or cultural roots. This volume advances the question as to what Asia is, and as to whether there existed one or many Asia(s). It seeks to explore Asian societies as interconnected formations through trajectories/networks of circulation of people, ideas, and objects in the longue durée. Moving beyond the divides of Area Studies scholarship and the arbitrary borders set by late colonial empires and the rise of post-colonial nation-states, this volume maps critically the configuration of contact zones in which mobile bodies, minds, and cultures interact to foster new images, identities, and imaginations of Asia.
This book explores histories of droughts and floods in the Indian Ocean World, and their connections to broader global climatic anomalies. It deploys an interdisciplinary approach rooted in the emerging field of climate history to investigate the multifaceted effects of global climatic anomalies on regions affected by the Indian Ocean Monsoon System – regularly conceived of as the macro-region’s ‘deep structure.’ Case studies explore how droughts and floods related to anomalous climatic conditions have historically affected states, societies, and ecologies across the Indian Ocean World, including in relation to food security, epidemic diseases, political (in)stability, economic change, infrastructural development, colonialism, capitalism, and scientific knowledge. Tracing longue durée patterns from the twelfth to the early twentieth centuries, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of global climatic events and their effects on the Indian Ocean World. It highlights essential historical case studies for contextualizing the potential effects of global warming on the macro-region in the present and future.
Crossroads of Cuisine offers history of food and cultural exchanges in and around Central Asia. It discusses geographical base, and offers historical and cultural overview. A photo essay binds it all together. The book offers new views of the past.
Demanding and offering tribute is a most common feature in human societies and nothing special to China. In the course of the development of Neolithic and later societies social classes have developed where persons who achieved superior positions first could demand 'presents' or tribute from neighboring societies they defeated and then, with the assistance of sturdy 'servants' from their own people. China was certainly no exception to that principle and one of the first terms for tax was thus 'gong', tribute. In China's early, 'feudatory' social system, tribute was demanded from lower political entities, and the mutual 'political' relations were already highly developed during the Zhou dynasty (1045–256 BCE). This system of 'inner Chinese' relations became a sort of matrix when China expanded and achieved contact with countries which were more or less independent, and thus the 'tribute system' evolved. The individual case studies in this volume focus on the latest manifestations of the tribute system in late Imperial China.