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Documents the rise and fall of a market economy in China from 10001500. Since the economic liberalization of the 1980s, the Chinese economy has boomed and is poised to become the worlds largest market economy, a position traditional China held a millennium ago. William Guanglin Lius bold and fascinating book is the first to rely on quantitative methods to investigate the early market economy that existed in China, making use of rare market and population data produced by the Song dynasty in the eleventh century. A counterexample comes from the century around 1400 when the early Ming court deliberately turned agrarian society into a command economy system. This radical change not only shrank markets, but also caused a sharp decline in the living standards of common people. Lius landmark study of the rise and fall of a market economy highlights important issues for contemporary China at both the empirical and theoretical levels.
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.
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.
This remarkable, expansive text, explores the impact and ramifications this domineering economic phenomenon has had over our personal and social liberties. In this epoch of capitalist globalisation, Peter Nolan argues that capitalist freedom is a two-edged sword, and its contradictions have intensified, threatening the natural environment, and intensifying global inequality.
This book is centered on the history of the girl from the medieval period through to the early twenty-first century. Authored by an international team of scholars, the volume explores the transition from adolescent girlhood to young womanhood, the formation and education of girls in the home and in school, and paid work undertaken by girls in different parts of the world and at different times. It highlights the value of a comparative approach to the history of the girl, as the contributors point to shared attitudes to girlhood and the similarity of the experiences of girls in workplaces across the world. Contributions to the volume also emphasise the central role of girls in the global economy, from their participation in the textile industry in the eighteenth century, through to the migration of girls to urban centres in twentieth-century Africa and China.
The first comprehensive study of China's economic development across 3,000 years of history to be published in English.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Smart Grid and Innovative Frontiers in Telecommunications, SmartGIFT 2020, held in Chicago, USA, in December 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the conference was held virtually. The 13 full papers were selected from 28 submissions and focus on the development of digital technology and smart grid which enables the smooth integration of centralised or distributed power generation, energy storage, and distribution. The papers are grouped thematically into: Communications, Networks and Services; Security and Stable Control; Internet of Power Things and Big Data.
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.
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.
Houses and homes are dynamic spaces within which people work to organize and secure their lives, livelihoods and relationships. Written by a team of renowned historians and anthropologists, and and accompanied by original photography by Maurice Weiss, To Be at Home: House,Work, and Self in the Modern World compares the ways people in different societies and historical periods strive to make and keep houses and homes under conditions of change, upheaval, displacement, impoverishment and violence. These conditions speak to the challenges of life in our modern world. The contributors of this volume position the home as a new nodal point between work, the self and the world to explore people’s creativity, agency and labour. Houses and homes prove complex and powerful concepts – if also often elusive – invoking places, persons, objects, emotions, values, attachments and fantasies. This book demonstrates how the relations between houses, work and the self have transformed dramatically and unpredictably under conditions of capitalism and modernity – and continue to change today.