Author: Valerie Hansen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300060638
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Book Description
This intriguing book explores how ordinary people in traditional China used contracts to facilitate the transactions of their daily lives, as they bought, sold, rented, or borrowed land, livestock, people, or money. In the process it illuminates specific everyday concerns during China's medieval transformation. Valerie Hansen translates and analyzes surviving contracts and also draws on tales of the supernatural, rare legal sources, plays, language texts, and other anecdotal evidence to describe how contracts were actually used. She explains that the educated wrote their own contracts, whereas the illiterate paid scribes to draft them and read them aloud. The contracts reveal much about everyday life: problems with inflation that resulted from the introduction of the first paper money in the world; the persistence of women's rights to own and sell land at a time when their lives were becoming more constricted; and the litigiousness of families, which were complicated products of remarriages, adoptions, and divorces. The Chinese even armed their dead with contracts asserting ownership of their grave plots, and Hansen provides details of an underworld court system in which the dead could sue and be sued. Illustrations and maps enrich a book that will be fascinating for anyone interested in Chinese life and society.
Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China
Author: Valerie Hansen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300060638
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Book Description
This intriguing book explores how ordinary people in traditional China used contracts to facilitate the transactions of their daily lives, as they bought, sold, rented, or borrowed land, livestock, people, or money. In the process it illuminates specific everyday concerns during China's medieval transformation. Valerie Hansen translates and analyzes surviving contracts and also draws on tales of the supernatural, rare legal sources, plays, language texts, and other anecdotal evidence to describe how contracts were actually used. She explains that the educated wrote their own contracts, whereas the illiterate paid scribes to draft them and read them aloud. The contracts reveal much about everyday life: problems with inflation that resulted from the introduction of the first paper money in the world; the persistence of women's rights to own and sell land at a time when their lives were becoming more constricted; and the litigiousness of families, which were complicated products of remarriages, adoptions, and divorces. The Chinese even armed their dead with contracts asserting ownership of their grave plots, and Hansen provides details of an underworld court system in which the dead could sue and be sued. Illustrations and maps enrich a book that will be fascinating for anyone interested in Chinese life and society.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300060638
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Book Description
This intriguing book explores how ordinary people in traditional China used contracts to facilitate the transactions of their daily lives, as they bought, sold, rented, or borrowed land, livestock, people, or money. In the process it illuminates specific everyday concerns during China's medieval transformation. Valerie Hansen translates and analyzes surviving contracts and also draws on tales of the supernatural, rare legal sources, plays, language texts, and other anecdotal evidence to describe how contracts were actually used. She explains that the educated wrote their own contracts, whereas the illiterate paid scribes to draft them and read them aloud. The contracts reveal much about everyday life: problems with inflation that resulted from the introduction of the first paper money in the world; the persistence of women's rights to own and sell land at a time when their lives were becoming more constricted; and the litigiousness of families, which were complicated products of remarriages, adoptions, and divorces. The Chinese even armed their dead with contracts asserting ownership of their grave plots, and Hansen provides details of an underworld court system in which the dead could sue and be sued. Illustrations and maps enrich a book that will be fascinating for anyone interested in Chinese life and society.
Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1276
Author: Valerie Hansen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400860431
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
In her study of medieval Chinese lay practices and beliefs, Valerie Hansen argues that social and economic developments underlay religious changes in the Southern Song. Unfamiliar with the contents of Buddhist and Daoist texts, the common people hired the practitioner or prayed to the god they thought could cure the ill or bring rain. As the economy rapidly developed, the gods, like the people who worshiped them, diversified: their realm of influence expanded as some gods began to deal on the national grain market and others advised their followers on business transactions. In order to trace this evolution, the author draws information from temple inscriptions, literary notes, the administrative law code, and local histories. By contrasting differing rates of religious change in the lowland and highland regions of the lower Yangzi valley, Hansen suggests that the commercial and social developments were far less uniform than previously thought. In 1100, nearly all people in South China worshiped gods who had been local residents prior to their deaths. The increasing mobility of cultivators in the lowland, rice-growing regions resulted in the adoption of gods from other places. Cults in the isolated mountain areas showed considerably less change. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400860431
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
In her study of medieval Chinese lay practices and beliefs, Valerie Hansen argues that social and economic developments underlay religious changes in the Southern Song. Unfamiliar with the contents of Buddhist and Daoist texts, the common people hired the practitioner or prayed to the god they thought could cure the ill or bring rain. As the economy rapidly developed, the gods, like the people who worshiped them, diversified: their realm of influence expanded as some gods began to deal on the national grain market and others advised their followers on business transactions. In order to trace this evolution, the author draws information from temple inscriptions, literary notes, the administrative law code, and local histories. By contrasting differing rates of religious change in the lowland and highland regions of the lower Yangzi valley, Hansen suggests that the commercial and social developments were far less uniform than previously thought. In 1100, nearly all people in South China worshiped gods who had been local residents prior to their deaths. The increasing mobility of cultivators in the lowland, rice-growing regions resulted in the adoption of gods from other places. Cults in the isolated mountain areas showed considerably less change. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The Rule of Laws
Author: Fernanda Pirie
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541617959
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 565
Book Description
From ancient Mesopotamia to today, the epic story of how humans have used laws to forge civilizations Rulers throughout history have used laws to impose order. But laws were not simply instruments of power and social control. They also offered ordinary people a way to express their diverse visions for a better world. In The Rule of Laws, Oxford scholar Fernanda Pirie traces the rise and fall of the sophisticated legal systems underpinning ancient empires and religious traditions, while also showing how common people—tribal assemblies, merchants, farmers—called on laws to define their communities, regulate trade, and build civilizations. Although legal principles originating in Western Europe now seem to dominate the globe, the variety of the world’s laws has long been almost as great as the variety of its societies. What truly unites human beings, Pirie argues, is our very faith that laws can produce justice, combat oppression, and create order from chaos.
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541617959
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 565
Book Description
From ancient Mesopotamia to today, the epic story of how humans have used laws to forge civilizations Rulers throughout history have used laws to impose order. But laws were not simply instruments of power and social control. They also offered ordinary people a way to express their diverse visions for a better world. In The Rule of Laws, Oxford scholar Fernanda Pirie traces the rise and fall of the sophisticated legal systems underpinning ancient empires and religious traditions, while also showing how common people—tribal assemblies, merchants, farmers—called on laws to define their communities, regulate trade, and build civilizations. Although legal principles originating in Western Europe now seem to dominate the globe, the variety of the world’s laws has long been almost as great as the variety of its societies. What truly unites human beings, Pirie argues, is our very faith that laws can produce justice, combat oppression, and create order from chaos.
The Open Empire
Author: Valerie Hansen
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393973747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458
Book Description
The Open Empire presents a fresh approach to Chinese history in the premodern period, drawing on stunning evidence from recent archaeological finds and exciting currents in scholarship.
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393973747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458
Book Description
The Open Empire presents a fresh approach to Chinese history in the premodern period, drawing on stunning evidence from recent archaeological finds and exciting currents in scholarship.
The Open Empire
Author: Valerie Hansen
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393938777
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
An innovative approach to early Chinese history, now updated and expanded up to 1800.
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393938777
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
An innovative approach to early Chinese history, now updated and expanded up to 1800.
Market Ethics and Practices, c.1300–1850
Author: Simon Middleton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351343297
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
Market Ethics and Practices, c. 1300–1850 analyses the nature, development, and operation of market ethics in the context of social practices, ranging from rituals of exchange and unofficial expectations to law, institutions, and formal regulations from the late medieval through to the modern era. Divided into two parts, the first explores the principles and regulations of market ethics, such as the relations between professed norms and economic behaviour across a range of geographies and chronologies. The chapters consider key subjects such as medieval attitudes towards merchant activities across Europe, North Africa, and Asia; market regulations and the notion of the "common good"; Adam Smith’s conception of moral capitalism; and the combining of religious and capitalist ethics in Nat Turner’s "Confession." The second part provides microstudies that offer insights into topics such as household and market relations in colonial New England; the harsher side of the consumer economy experienced by a family of parasol sellers from Lyon; informal Jewish networks in the early modern Caribbean and slave trade; merchant networks and commercial litigation in eighteenth-century France; and early encounters and the informal norms of fur trading between Europeans and Native Americans. This book provides an understanding of the key pre-modern economic historiography, whilst pointing students towards new debates and the historical significance for our collective economic future. It is ideal for students and postgraduates of late medieval and early modern economic history.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351343297
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
Market Ethics and Practices, c. 1300–1850 analyses the nature, development, and operation of market ethics in the context of social practices, ranging from rituals of exchange and unofficial expectations to law, institutions, and formal regulations from the late medieval through to the modern era. Divided into two parts, the first explores the principles and regulations of market ethics, such as the relations between professed norms and economic behaviour across a range of geographies and chronologies. The chapters consider key subjects such as medieval attitudes towards merchant activities across Europe, North Africa, and Asia; market regulations and the notion of the "common good"; Adam Smith’s conception of moral capitalism; and the combining of religious and capitalist ethics in Nat Turner’s "Confession." The second part provides microstudies that offer insights into topics such as household and market relations in colonial New England; the harsher side of the consumer economy experienced by a family of parasol sellers from Lyon; informal Jewish networks in the early modern Caribbean and slave trade; merchant networks and commercial litigation in eighteenth-century France; and early encounters and the informal norms of fur trading between Europeans and Native Americans. This book provides an understanding of the key pre-modern economic historiography, whilst pointing students towards new debates and the historical significance for our collective economic future. It is ideal for students and postgraduates of late medieval and early modern economic history.
An Economic History of China
Author: Richard von Glahn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107030560
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 477
Book Description
The first comprehensive study of China's economic development across 3,000 years of history to be published in English.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107030560
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 477
Book Description
The first comprehensive study of China's economic development across 3,000 years of history to be published in English.
Comparative Entrepreneurship Initiatives
Author: C. Usui
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230314368
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
This book investigates entrepreneurial initiatives in the three largest economies of the world: China, Japan and the USA. It brings together historical, institutional, and ethnographic approaches and highlights entrepreneurial patterns that result from cultural, legal, and political forces that facilitate and constrain entrepreneurship.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230314368
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
This book investigates entrepreneurial initiatives in the three largest economies of the world: China, Japan and the USA. It brings together historical, institutional, and ethnographic approaches and highlights entrepreneurial patterns that result from cultural, legal, and political forces that facilitate and constrain entrepreneurship.
China’s Cosmopolitan Empire
Author: Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674265416
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
The Tang dynasty is often called China’s “golden age,” a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. Mark Lewis captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule, painting and ceramic arts flourished, women played a major role both as rulers and in the economy, and China produced its finest lyric poets in Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu. The Chinese engaged in extensive trade on sea and land. Merchants from Inner Asia settled in the capital, while Chinese entrepreneurs set off for the wider world, the beginning of a global diaspora. The emergence of an economically and culturally dominant south that was controlled from a northern capital set a pattern for the rest of Chinese imperial history. Poems celebrated the glories of the capital, meditated on individual loneliness in its midst, and described heroic young men and beautiful women who filled city streets and bars. Despite the romantic aura attached to the Tang, it was not a time of unending peace. In 756, General An Lushan led a revolt that shook the country to its core, weakening the government to such a degree that by the early tenth century, regional warlordism gripped many areas, heralding the decline of the Great Tang.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674265416
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
The Tang dynasty is often called China’s “golden age,” a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. Mark Lewis captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule, painting and ceramic arts flourished, women played a major role both as rulers and in the economy, and China produced its finest lyric poets in Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu. The Chinese engaged in extensive trade on sea and land. Merchants from Inner Asia settled in the capital, while Chinese entrepreneurs set off for the wider world, the beginning of a global diaspora. The emergence of an economically and culturally dominant south that was controlled from a northern capital set a pattern for the rest of Chinese imperial history. Poems celebrated the glories of the capital, meditated on individual loneliness in its midst, and described heroic young men and beautiful women who filled city streets and bars. Despite the romantic aura attached to the Tang, it was not a time of unending peace. In 756, General An Lushan led a revolt that shook the country to its core, weakening the government to such a degree that by the early tenth century, regional warlordism gripped many areas, heralding the decline of the Great Tang.
Taiwan in the 21st Century
Author: J. Megan Greene
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134125895
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351
Book Description
Throughout the twentieth century Taiwan was viewed as a model - whether in terms of a model colony, a model China or a development model. This perception was based on the notion of Taiwan undergoing an economic miracle and political developments. Yet much of Taiwan’s history is unique and may not be readily replicable elsewhere. Written by an impressive line up of contributors from the US, UK, Taiwan, France and Hong Kong, this book analyzes Taiwan’s economic and political achievements, and asks whether it is possible to identify through the experience of a single nation – Taiwan – the makings of a replicable model. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Taiwan, political economy, and Asia-Pacific regional development issues.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134125895
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351
Book Description
Throughout the twentieth century Taiwan was viewed as a model - whether in terms of a model colony, a model China or a development model. This perception was based on the notion of Taiwan undergoing an economic miracle and political developments. Yet much of Taiwan’s history is unique and may not be readily replicable elsewhere. Written by an impressive line up of contributors from the US, UK, Taiwan, France and Hong Kong, this book analyzes Taiwan’s economic and political achievements, and asks whether it is possible to identify through the experience of a single nation – Taiwan – the makings of a replicable model. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Taiwan, political economy, and Asia-Pacific regional development issues.