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This monumental work provides a new perspective on the historical significance of famines in China over the past three hundred years. It examines the relationship between the interventionist state policies of the eighteenth-century Qing emperors (“the golden age of famine relief”), the environmental and political crises of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (when China was called “the Land of Famine”), and the ambitions of the Mao era (which tragically led to the greatest famine in human history). In addition to a wide array of documentary sources, the book employs quantitative analysis to measure the economic impact of natural crises, state policies, and markets. In this way, the theories of Qing statesmen that have received much attention in recent scholarship are linked to actual practices and outcomes. Using the Zhili-Hebei region as its focus, the book also reveals the unusual role played by the institutions and policies designed to ensure food security for the capital, Beijing.
This volume marks a turning point in the study of Chinese economic history. It arose from a realization that the economic history of China—as opposed to the history of the Chinese economy—had yet to be written. Most histories of the Chinese economy, whether by Western or Chinese scholars, tend to view the economy in institutional or social terms. In contrast, the studies in this volume break new ground by systematically applying economic theory and methods to the study of China. While demonstrating to historians the advantages of an economic perspective, the contributors, comprising both historians and economists, offer important new insights concerning issues of long-standing interest t...
Named a Must-Read by TIME, Buzzfeed, The Wall Street Journal, Star Tribune, Fast Company, The Village Voice, Toronto Star, Fortune Magazine, InStyle, and O, The Oprah Magazine "A joy to read—I couldn't get enough." —Buzzfeed "This novel practically thumps with heartache and sharp humor." —Chang-rae Lee, New York Times bestselling author of Native Speaker An exuberant and wise multigenerational debut novel about the complicated lives and loves of people working in everyone’s favorite Chinese restaurant. The Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland, is not only a beloved go-to setting for hunger pangs and celebrations; it is its own world, inhabited by waiters and kitchen staff who ha...
House of Koi is about identity and learning that, sometimes, your future is waiting for you in your past. The story follows Mila as she strives to reconcile the person she became in an effort to fit into her American international school with the young girl she was; the girl who spoke Mandarin and Malay with ease. Is it too late to embrace both parts of herself? When Mila is sent to the top of the mountain to live with her grandmother for a year when her parents go away for business, she cannot avoid her native tongue, even if she does try. To make matters worse, Mila must now attend a local private school, and navigate a world she seems to barely understand. Everyone keeps telling her that she should not forget her heritage, but this only takes her deeper inside herself. That is until she meets the "Fish Boy" from the bottom of the mountain. Together, they teach one another what the other is best at. However, every time Mila asks about the past, he refuses to answer. She resolves to find out what happened that caused her to be unable to look her grandmother squarely in the eye.
Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- The Technology of Silk -- The State and Traditional Enterprise -- The Silk Export Trade -- Foreign Trade and Domestic Growth -- Foreign Trade and the Rural Economy -- Foreign Trade and Modern Enterprise -- Conclusion -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Glossary I -- Glossary II -- Index -- Harvard East Asian Monographs.
China's extraordinary rise as an economic powerhouse in the past two decades poses a challenge to many long-held assumptions about the relationship between political institutions and economic development. Economic prosperity also was vitally important to the longevity of the Chinese Empire throughout the preindustrial era. Before the eighteenth century, China's economy shared some of the features, such as highly productive agriculture and sophisticated markets, found in the most advanced regions of Europe. But in many respects, from the central importance of irrigated rice farming to family structure, property rights, the status of merchants, the monetary system, and the imperial state's fiscal and economic policies, China's preindustrial economy diverged from the Western path of development. In this comprehensive but accessible study, Richard von Glahn examines the institutional foundations, continuities and discontinuities in China's economic development over three millennia, from the Bronze Age to the early twentieth century.
"The first systematic economic analysis of China's prewar railway development ... provides significant contributions to the study of railroad economics ... includes a substantial case study in the field of 'imperialism' in which the effects of foreign investment in Chinese railroads are described and evaluated in great detail." Huenemann addresses the political and diplomatic climate in which China's railroads were built, probes the economics of those railroads, and assesses the impact of outsiders and the gains and losses China experienced.
Unearths the forgotten history of a catastrophic flood, examining its profound impact upon the environment and society of modern China.
Famine Relief in Warlord China is a reexamination of disaster responses during the greatest ecological crisis of the pre-Nationalist Chinese republic. In 1920–1921, drought and ensuing famine devastated more than 300 counties in five northern provinces, leading to some 500,000 deaths. Long credited to international intervention, the relief effort, Pierre Fuller shows, actually began from within Chinese social circles. Indigenous action from the household to the national level, modeled after Qing-era relief protocol, sustained the lives of millions of the destitute in Beijing, in the surrounding districts of Zhili (Hebei) Province, and along the migrant and refugee trail in Manchuria, all b...
Jardine, Matheson & Co. was founded in Canton in 1832, and built up to become an international trading house with business interests throughout the world. The Thistle & The Jade assembles contributions from both leading historians, such as Professor John King Fairbank and Professor K.C. Lui, and old Jardine hands, including Alan Reid and Sir John Keswick, to tell the story of how this happened. The result is a fascinating miscellany of scholarship and anecdote that tells an exciting tale of merchant adventure, of how wealth and influence were accumulated in the early days of trading, and of the special relationship forged by 'the Princely Hong' with China and her people.