¹ See Honey, David, Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology, American Oriental Series 86 (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 2001), 44–166Google Scholar. See also Wilson, Ming and Cayley, John, eds., Europe Studies China: Papers from an International Conference on the History of European Sinology (London: Han-Shan Tang Books, 1995), 45–54Google Scholar, 339–67. See also the articles in the special issue of the Journal of Chinese History 7.2 (2023) on Traditions of Sinology.

² The legal history of early China is probably an exception, due particularly to the discovery in 1975 of the Qin legal statutes from Shuihudi 睡虎地 in Hubei, which have raised prolonged Western interest. See Hulsewé, A.F.P., Remnants of Ch'in law: An Annotated Translation of the Ch'in Legal and Administrative Rules of the 3rd Century B.C. Discovered in Yün-meng Prefecture, Hu-pei Province, in 1975 (Leiden: Brill, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a summary of Western scholarship on early Chinese legal history, see Yongping, Liu, Origins of Chinese Law: Penal and Administrative Law in Its Early Development (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4–6Google Scholar, 201–51.

³ The “primitivism–modernism” (aka “substantivist–formalist”) debate represents two opposing positions on the ancient economy. In the words of Walter Scheidel, “Put in a highly simplified manner, formalist positions stress similarities between ancient and modern economies by emphasizing the putative significance of price-setting markets, comparative advantage, and capitalist ventures, whereas substantivists emphasize discontinuities by focusing on how status concerns mediated economic behavior and generated specific dynamics that reflected elite preference for rent-taking and landownership and disdain for commercial enterprise that reinforced the fusion of political and economic power and marginalized independent merchants.” See Walter Scheidel, “Approaching the Roman Economy,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, edited by Walter Scheidel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 7–8. For the early use of the conceptual dichotomy of “primitivism–modernism,” see Harry W. Pearson, “The Secular Debate on Economic Primitivism,” in Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory, edited by Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg, and Harry W. Pearson (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1957), 6–11. Polanyi himself used the term “substantive view” in contrast to “formal view” of economy in his analysis of the ancient economy, giving rise to the “substantivist” vs. “formalist” dichotomy; see Karl Polanyi, “The Economy as Instituted Process” and “Sociology and the Substantive View of the Economy,” in Trade and Market in the Early Empires, 243–306. For a quick introduction to the study of the ancient economy in the Mediterranean, see Ian Morris, “Forward,” in M.I. Finley, The Ancient Economy, updated edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), ix–xxxiv; Jean Andeau, “Twenty Years After Moses I. Finley's The Ancient Economy,” in The Ancient Economy, edited by Walter Scheidel and Sitta von Reden (New York: Routledge, 2002), 33–49.

⁴ See, for instance, Marc Van de Mieroop, “Economic History,” in Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History (London: Routledge, 1999), 106–23; and, more recently, J.G. Manning, The Open Sea: The Economic Life of the Ancient Mediterranean World from the Iron Age to the Rise of Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), xiii–xxiii.

⁵ Walter Scheidel is a welcome exception to the mainstream ignorance of China by historians of the Classical West. He has championed the comparative study of the Qin-Han period China with the Roman Empire, most manifestly in two projects: Walter Scheidel, ed., Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), and Walter Scheidel, ed., State Power in Ancient China and Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). The first focuses on economy and the second on the political system and culture. Two other scholars interested in bringing early China into conversation with the Classical West are Anne Kolb and Michael A. Speidel; see Kolb and Speidel, “Imperial Rome and China: Communication and Information Transmission,” in China's Development from a Global Perspective, edited by María Dolores Elizalde and Wang Jianlang (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 28–56.

⁶ See Ian Morris, “Forward,” in Finley, Ancient Economy, xxi–xxiii.

⁷ See Li Feng, “The Technology of Government and Institutions: Comparative Perspectives on the Development of Royal and Imperial Administrations in Early China,” in Bloomsbury Cultural History of Technology, edited by Ann Koloski-Ostrow and Rabun M. Taylor (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, forthcoming).

⁸ The “domain state” describes the condition of a state whose economic powerhouses including the royal house lived on incomes from their respective estates before the rise of the so-called “tax state”; see E. Ladewig Petersen, “From Domain State to Tax State,” Scandinavian Economic History Review 23.2 (1975), 116–48. For a recent discussion of the “domain state,” see Andrew Monson and Walter Scheidel, “Studying Fiscal Regimes,” in Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States, edited by Andrew Monson and Walter Scheidel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 7–8.

⁹ They expressed this view by citing Jurij L. Kroll's work on the Yantie lun 鹽鐵論 which they much applaud.

¹⁰ The “boom and bust cycle” is well known among the economists who see alternating phases of economic growth and decline as an essential feature of the modern capitalist economies.

¹¹ These include methods to entice the rise and fall of prices of certain commodities to enable the ruler to accumulate wealth.

¹² A note must be inserted here about the title of the key text, the Shangjun shu 商君書. Since Pines previously published his edited and translated text under the title, The Book of Lord Shang, following an old English translation that goes back to at latest 1920s, one would expect that he uses the same translation here. See Yuri Pines, ed. and trans., The Book of Lord Shang: Apologetics of State Power in Early China (New York: Columbia University, 2019); see also, J.J.-L. Duyvendak, The Book of Lord Shang (London: Éditions Arthur Probsthain, 1928). However, because Shang 商 was a placename, not an honorable title, the correct English translation should now be The Book of the Lord of Shang. In the present volume, The Book of Lord Shang is adopted in many chapters (by Goldin, Meyer, Korolkov, Yates, and Sabattini), and only one chapter (by Van Ess) uses the correct translation, The Book of the Lord of Shang. There are also chapters in which both translations are used, one as book title, the other, “Lord of Shang,” translating Shangjun 商君. Such confusion must be avoided in the future in favor of the correct translations, The Book of the Lord of Shang for the book, and the “Lord of Shang” for the historical person.

¹³ Some of the general discussions of economic growth are Walter Scheidel, “In Search of Roman Economic Growth,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 22 (2009), 46–70; Ian Morris, “Economic Growth in Ancient Greece,” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) (Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft) 160.4 (2004), 709–74; Richard Saller, “Human Capital and Economic Growth,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, edited by Walter Scheidel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 71–86.

¹⁴ Interestingly, lineage land ownership in the Western Zhou was typically composed of two types of possession: regulated agricultural fields of standard size (zhentian 畛田), and wetlands (shitian 濕田). The “wasteland” of the Book of the Lord of Shang, if it is discussing land situation in the Wei River valley (which is inevitable), might actually refer to the wetlands previously held by the traditional lineages in the difficult-to-cultivate river valleys of central Shaanxi. This may also help explain another problem in the chapter: the lack of mention of “opening new lands.” Since by the late Western Zhou, the possibility of opening new land in central Shaanxi was already exhausted as the lineages were engaged in fierce competition over land in the same region, it was certainly difficult for the Qin to do so. On the last point, see Li Feng, Bureaucracy and the State in Early China: Governing the Western Zhou (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 154–59. See also Li Feng, “A New Look at the Sanshi Pan 散氏盤 and Its Implications for Economic History,” paper presented at the conference, “Making Economy: Production and Distribution of Goods in the Western Zhou Dynasty,” organized by Sun Yan and Dongming Wu, Columbia University, New York, April 1–3, 2022, 1–15.

¹⁵ The date of the Lunyu was never clearly discussed in the chapter, but it is implied when Meyer refers to as “later” texts including Mengzi that offer economic agendas sharply contrasting that which is exhibited in the Lunyu.

¹⁶ The “JC” numbers were systematically assigned to bronze inscriptions in Zhongguo shehui kexue yuan kaogu yanjiusuo 中國社會科學院考古研究所, Yin Zhou jinwen jicheng 殷周金文集成, 18 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1984–94); the same system was adopted in the “Digital Achieves of Bronze Images and Inscriptions,” Academia Sinica (Taiwan): https://bronze.asdc.sinica.edu.tw/qry_bronze.php.

¹⁷ This is, if we go by Meyer's reading of the Mai fangzun, the distinction between market-exchange and the exchange based on the mechanism of reciprocity, famously known in Karl Polanyi's economic theory; see Polanyi, “The Economy as Institutional Process,” in Trade and Market in the Early Empires, 251–52.

¹⁸ Li Feng, Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou, 1045–771 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 122, and Bureaucracy and the State in Early China: Governing the Western Zhou (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 191.

¹⁹ The phrase 用鄉(饗)王逆(造), or slightly modified, appears in about ten Western Zhou inscriptions, meaning “to use (the bronze) to fest the king and welcome his visit.” The term ge (格), though read by some as “to contribute” (xian 獻), means “approach” or “enter,” as in the Mai he 麥盉 (JC: 9451), obviously synonymous to ge （格）in the Geng Ying you 庚贏卣 (JC: 5426). So, the line in the Mai fangzun should mean: “to use (the bronze) to approach (fest) the ruler (of Xing) and to welcome his visit.” See Li Feng, “The Development of Literacy in Early China: With the Nature and Uses of Bronze Inscriptions in Context, and More,” in Literacy in Ancient Everyday Life, edited by Anne Kolb (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 30; For the reading of ge and the Mai bronzes, see Li Feng, “‘Offices’ in Bronze Inscriptions and Western Zhou Government Administration,” Early China 26–27 (2001–2002), 6.

²⁰ Bresson suggests that the Greeks usually took loans from their deme, phratry, or other organized social groups; they could also take a loan from some sanctuary. These loans all carry interest unless one is taking a friendly loan from a relative. See Alain Bresson, The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy: Institutions, Markets, and Growth in the City-States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 278–85. The Roman government seems to have had a bigger role than the Greek city-states in interfering in the practice of private creditors by issuing debt relief or limiting interest rates, usually with serious social consequences; see Charles T. Barlow, “The Roman Government and the Roman Economy, 92–80 B.C.,” The American Journal of Philology 101.2 (1980), 202–17. This contrast also explains why the Qin loans were in principle interest-free, because loan security was guaranteed by the state.

²¹ It should be noted that Maxim Korolkov identifies jiaoquan as a specific “Verification Tally” that the lending county sent to the debtor's present county to transfer the responsibility to collect the repayment (182).

²² For early exploitation of copper mines in southern Anhui, see recently published archaeological report: Anhui sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 安徽省文物考古研究所, Tongling Shigudun: Xia Shang Zhou yizhi kaogu fajue yu yanjiu 銅陵師姑墩 : 夏商周遺址考古發掘與研究 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2020), 24–34, 682–744, esp. 743–44, Table 2: 1–2.

²³ See also Yohei Kakinuma, “The Emergence and Spread of Coins in China from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period,” in Explaining Monetary and Financial Innovation: A Historical Analysis, ed. Peter Bernholz and Roland Vaubel (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2014): 79–126; Kakinuma Yohei 柿沼陽平, Chūgoku kodai kahei keizaishi kenkyū 中国古代貨幣經濟史研究 [Historical Studies of the Monetary Economy in Ancient China] (Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin, 2011).

²⁴ See Yang Jun, “The Underground Luxury of a Western Han Marquis: Major Discoveries from the Tomb of the Marquis of Haihun in Nanchang,” Asian Archaeology 2.2 (2019): 65–102; Zhang Zhongli, “The Archaeology of the Cemetery of Liu He, the Marquis of Haihun: Some Thoughts on Mortuary Institutions,” Asian Archaeology 2 (2019): 103–19.

²⁵ See Tamin, Peter, “Market in the Roman Empire,” in The Roman Market Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 95–189Google Scholar. This point is already embedded in Anthony Babieri-Low's long paragraph that the two editors quote to support their view, where it is pointed out that a fully fanged commercial economy in early imperial China might have been the product of the state's effort to establish a strong agrarian economy through the suppression of commerce. See Sabattini and Schwermann's “Introduction,” to the volume under review here, 2–3; Barbieri-Low, Anthony J., Artisans in Early Imperial China (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2007), 26–28Google Scholar.

²⁶ Bang, Peter Fibiger, “Predation,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, edited by Walter Scheidel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 203–10Google Scholar.

²⁷ See Feng, Li, Early China: A Social and Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 183–206Google Scholar.

²⁸ Finley was of the view that the need to push exploitation outside the citizen community and the preference for political solution might have given the Graeco-Roman society a powerful motive for war and imperialism, taking these as natural ways to acquire wealth. The concept of citizenship was unknown in early China. See Morris, “Forward,” in Ancient Economy, xxiii.

²⁹ A confirmation of this point comes from Garnsey and Seller's discussion of grain to feed the population of Rome that rent-grain from public or imperial estates was much less significant, as exaction (through taxation or requestion) was the prominent way to satisfy Rome's food needs. See Garnsey, Peter and Saller, Richard, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture, second edition (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014), 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ On the “domain state,” see Petersen, “From Domain State to Tax State,” 116–48; Monson and Scheidel, “Studying Fiscal Regimes,” 7–8.

³¹ See Li Feng, Bureaucracy and the State in Early China, 151–59.

³² Although they adopted the terms of “Command” and “Market” in the book title, they indeed disagree with the concept of “Command Economy.”

³³ Maxim Korolkov, “Empire-Building and Market-Making at the Qin Frontier: Imperial Expansion and Economic Change, 221–207 BCE” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2020), 556–614.

³⁴ Leaving aside for the moment the position of the market that was largely revised by post-substantivist economic historians. See Korolkov, “Between Command and Market” in the volume under review here, 165–67.

³⁵ See Hopkins, Keith, “Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire (200 B.C.–A.D. 400),” The Journal of Roman Studies 70 (1980), 101–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ See Bresson, The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy, 225–50, 291.

³⁷ For instance, Zhouyong, Sun, Craft Production in the Western Zhou Dynasty 1046–771 BC, Bar International Series 1777 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2008)Google Scholar; Campbell, Roderick, “Consumption, Exchange and Production at the Great Settlement Shang: Bone-Working at Tiesanlu, Anyang,” Antiquity 85.330 (2011), 1279–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other studies of economy by archaeologists, see Dongming Wu, “The Bronze Economy and the Making of the Southern Borderlands under the Zhou Dynasty (1045–256 BCE)” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2022). See also two papers by Falkenhausen, Lothar von, “An Archaeological Perspective on the Chu Economy,” in Chu wenhua yu Changjiang zhongyou zaoqi kaifa guoji xueshu yantao hui lunwen ji 楚文化與長江中游早期開發國際學術研討會論文集, edited by Xu Shaohua 徐少華, et al (Wuhan: Wuhan daxue chubanshe, 2021), 116–38Google Scholar; “The Economy of Qin: An Archaeological Assessment” (Unpublished paper posted at Academia.edu). For two papers that analyze inscriptional evidence, see Constance Cook, A.. “Wealth and the Western Zhou,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 60.2 (1997), 253–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Li Feng, “A New Look at the Sanshi Pan 散氏盤,” 1–10.

³⁸ See von Glahn, Richard, The Economic History of China: From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 11–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.