Food and Money in Ancient China, the Earliest Economic History of China to A. D. 25 Han Shu 24, with Related Texts, Han Shu 91 and Shih-Chi 129

Food and Money in Ancient China, the Earliest Economic History of China to A. D. 25 Han Shu 24, with Related Texts, Han Shu 91 and Shih-Chi 129 PDF Author: Ku Pan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780598941183
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 573

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Food and Money in Ancient China

Food and Money in Ancient China PDF Author: Gu Ban
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781614274957
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 588

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Book Description
2013 Reprint of 1950 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. There are four ancient histories of China. The second oldest is the Han Shu, the "Book of Han," which is divided into the Former Han and Later Han dynastic histories. Chapter 24 of the Former Han Shu, dealing with food and money, comprises the bulk of this scholarly work. The value of the "Book of Han" lies in the fact that it was written shortly after the period which it describes (the Former Han Dynasty covers the period from 206 B.C. to A.D. 19). The historian had access to materials which have since been lost and, what is more, was in a position to reproduce faithfully the spirit of the era. The shortcomings are, from an economist's point of view, the lack of systematic specific in- formation on prices and on forms of economic activity. Nevertheless, Han Shu 24 makes interesting reading. The author(s) recorded the then prevalent belief that agriculture is the basis of all endeavor and that trade is a somewhat superfluous, and often wicked, enterprise. Another idea preserved for posterity is that the forces of the market have to be contained. During the Han period a number of emperors instituted complicated price-equalization programs for agricultural commodities, and one of the early Han rulers unequivocally recognized that the demand for agricultural commodities was highly inelastic. The orientation of this probably definitive translation is toward the Chinese language scholar and, in a lesser way, toward the historian. The additional commentaries, of which there are a number in the book, are slanted the same way.

The Economic History of China

The Economic History of China PDF Author: Richard von Glahn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316538850
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
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 Cambridge Economic History of China: Volume 1, To 1800

The Cambridge Economic History of China: Volume 1, To 1800 PDF Author: Debin Ma
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108554792
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 749

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Book Description
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.

The Cambridge History of Ancient China

The Cambridge History of Ancient China PDF Author: Michael Loewe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521470308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1192

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Book Description
The Cambridge History of Ancient China provides a survey of the institutional and cultural history of pre-imperial China.

The Ancient Highlands of Southwest China

The Ancient Highlands of Southwest China PDF Author: Alice Yao
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190493798
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Although long considered to be a barren region on the periphery of ancient Chinese civilization, the southwest massif was once the political heartland of numerous Bronze Age polities. Their distinctive material tradition--intricately cast bronze kettle drums and cowrie shell containers--has given archaeologists and historians a glimpse of the extraordinary wealth, artistry, and power exercised by highland leaders over the course of the first millennium BC. In the first century BC, Han imperial conquest reduced local power and began a process of cultural assimilation. Instead of a clash between center and periphery or barbarism and civilization, this book examines the classic study of imperial rule as a confrontation between different political temporalities. The author provides an archaeological account of the southwest where Bronze Age landscape formations and funerary traditions bring to light a history of competing warrior cultures and kingly genealogies. In particular, the book illustrates how mourners used funerals and cemetery mounds to transmit social biographies and tribal affiliations across successive generations. Han incorporation thus entangled the orders of state time with the generational cycles of local factions, foregrounding the role of time in the production of power relations in imperial frontiers. The book extends approaches to empires to show how prehistoric time frames continue to shape the futures of frontier subjects despite imperial efforts to unify space and histories.

China in Central Asia: the early stage

China in Central Asia: the early stage PDF Author: A.F.P. Hulsewé
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004482873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Monographs in Tang Official Historiography

Monographs in Tang Official Historiography PDF Author: Daniel Patrick Morgan
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030180387
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
This book examines the role of medieval authors in writing the history of ancient science. It features essays that explore the content, structure, and ideas behind technical writings on medieval Chinese state history. In particular, it looks at the Ten Treatises of the current History of Sui, which provide insights into the writing on the history of such fields as astronomy, astrology, omenology, economics, law, geography, metrology, and library science. Three treatises are known to have been written by Li Chunfeng, one of the most important mathematicians, astronomers, and astrologers in Chinese history. The book not only opens a new window on the figure of Li Chunfeng by exploring what his writings as a historian of science tell us about him as a scientist and vice versa, it also discusses how and on what basis the individual treatises were written. The essays address such themes as (1) the recycling of sources and the question of reliability and objectivity in premodern history-writing; (2) the tug of war between conservatism and innovation; (3) the imposition of the author’s voice, worldview, and personal and professional history in writing a history of a field of technical expertise in a state history; (4) the degree to which modern historians are compelled to speak to their own milieu and ideological beliefs.

Material Culture, Power, and Identity in Ancient China

Material Culture, Power, and Identity in Ancient China PDF Author: Xiaolong Wu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107134021
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
This book is a comprehensive and in-depth study of a mysterious state of China's Warring States Period (476-221 BCE): the Zhongshan.

Perspectives On A Changing China

Perspectives On A Changing China PDF Author: Joshua Fogel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000301036
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This collection of essays represents current research in modern (post-1800) Chinese history. All contributors are former students of Professor C. Martin Wilbur, one of the great names in the China field over the past forty years, who recently retired from a long tenure as modern Chinese historian at Columbia University. While diverse in their subje