No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
What The Cambridge Economic History of China Teaches Us about China and Tells Us About Economic History
Review products
The Cambridge Economic History of China, Vol. 1: To 1800. Edited by Debin Ma and Richard von Glahn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 732 pp. Hardback $155.00. ISBN: 978-1-108-42557-5.
The Cambridge Economic History of China, Vol. 2: 1800 to the Present. Edited by Debin Ma and Richard von Glahn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 864 pp. Hardback $155.00. ISBN: 978-1-108-42553-7.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2024
Abstract
Considering the 1500+ pages making up the 39 chapters of this work on Chinese economic history from ancient times to the present, this review essay suggests ways The Cambridge Economic History of China contributes new perspectives on economic history more generally and on plausible connections between the pathways of Chinese economic change that begin in the distant past and point toward the future. The essay addresses specifically Chinese elements in its economic history and identifies the ways in which nineteenth- and twentieth-century engagement with Westerners contributed to the Chinese economy’s future development but in no comprehensive manner explain how modern Chinese economic change took place. Among the highlighted features of Chinese economic history that chapters of this work make visible are the persistent presence of state efforts to manage and shape economic activity forming a distinct tradition of political economy and the long-standing awareness of many of the relationships between population, agriculture, and the natural environment.
- Type
- Review Essay
- Information
- Copyright
- © 2024 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
References
1 Steve J. Dowrick and Bradford DeLong, “Globalization and Convergence,” in Globalization in Historical Perspective, ed. Michael D. Bordo, Alan M. Taylor, and Jeffrey G. Williamson (Chicago, 2003).
2 Hisayuki Miyakawa, “An Outline of the Naito Hypothesis and Its Effects on Japanese Studies of China,” The Far Eastern Quarterly 14, no. 4 (Aug. 1955): 533–552; Joshua A. Fogel, Politics and Sinology: The Case of Naitō Konan (1866–1934) (Cambridge, MA, 1984).
3 Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley, 1987).
4 Hans van de Ven, Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China (New York, 2014), 133–171.
5 Oliver E. Williamson, “The Theory of the First as Governance Structure: From Choice to Contract,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 16, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 171–195.
6 Loubna El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation (Princeton, 2016), 10.
7 El Amine, 80.
8 Jean-Laurent Rosenthal and R. Bin Wong, Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2011); Mark Dincecco and Massimiliano Gaetano Onorato, From Warfare to Wealth: The Military Origins of Urban Prosperity in Europe (Cambridge, UK, 2017).
9 John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (Cambridge, MA, 1989), 56.
10 Ruth Mostern, The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History (New Haven, 2021), 121–238.
11 Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (Redwood City, 1973), 113–201.
12 Philip T. Hoffman, Why did Europe Conquer the World? (Princeton, 2015), 161–163.
13 R. Bin Wong, “Divergence Displaced: Patterns of Economic and Political Change in Early Modern and Modern Global History,” Comparativ: Zietschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 26, no. 3 (2016): 65–94.
14 Jan De Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge, UK, 2012).
15 Robert C. Allen, “Why the industrial revolution as British: commerce, induced innovation, and the scientific revolution,” Economic History Review 64, no. 2 (2011): 357–384.
16 Sugihara, Kaoru and R. Bin Wong, “Industrious revolutions in early modern world history,” Bentley, Subrahmanyam and Wiesner-Hanks, eds. Cambridge World History Vol. 6 Part 2 The Construction of a Global World, 1400-1800 CE: Patterns of Change (Cambridge, 2015), 283-309.
17 R. Bin Wong, “China’s Emerging State in Historical Perspective,” in Emerging States and Economies: Their Origins, Drivers, and Challenges Ahead, ed. Takashi Shiraishi and Tetsushi Sonobe (2019), 119–138, accessed 7 March 2024, –https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-13-2634–9.
18 Stuart R. Schram, “A Review Article: Mao Tse-tung: A Self-portrait,” The China Quarterly, 57 (Mar. 1974): 156–165.
19 Y. Y. Kueh, “Mao and Agriculture in China’s Industrialization: Three Antitheses in a 50-Year Perspective,” China Quarterly 187 (2006): 700–723.
20 Pierre-Etienne Will and R. Bin Wong, with James Lee, Nourish the People: The State Civilian Granary System in China, 1650-1850 (Ann Arbor, 1991); Pierre-Etienne Will, trans. Elborg Forster Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth-Century China (Redwood City, 1990).
21 Kaoru Sugihara, “The Second Noel Butlin Lecture: Labour-Intensive Industrialisation in Global History,” Australian Economic History Review 47, no. 2 (2007): 121–154.
22 Isabella M. Weber, “China’s ancient principles of price regulation through market participation: The Guanzi from a comparative perspective,” in European and Chinese Histories of Economic Thought: Theories and Images of Good Governance, ed. Iwo Amelung and Bertram Schefold (London and New York 2022), 254.
23 R. Bin Wong, “Taxation and good governance in China, 1500-1914,” in The Rise of Fiscal States: A Global History, 1500-1914 ed. Bartolomé Yun-Casaililla and Patrick O’Brien (Cambridge, UK, 2012); R. Bin Wong, “Coping with Poverty and Famine: Material Welfare, Public Goods, and Chinese Approaches to Governance,” in Public Goods Provision in the Early Modern Economy: Comparative Perspectives from Japan, China, and Europe, ed. Masayuki Tanimoto and R. Bin Wong (Berkeley, 2019).
24 Margherita Zanasi, Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c. 1500-1937 (Cambridge, UK, 2020), 197.
25 R. Bin Wong, “People’s livelihoods and good governance in the past and for the future,” in European and Chinese Histories of Economic Thought: Theories and Images of Good Governance, ed. Iwo Amelung and Bertram Schefold (London and New York, 2022).
26 Mao Zedong, ed. Stuart Schram, Chairman Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters: 1956-1971 (New York, 1974), 65.
27 Deng Xiaoping, “Records of Comrad Deng Xiaoping’s Shenzhen Tour,” Peoples Daily Online, accessed 28 Feb. 2024, http://en.people.cn/200201/18/eng20020118_88932.shtml.
28 Gregory C. Chow, “China’s economic transformation,” in China’s 40 Years of Reform and Development: 1978-2018, ed. Ross Garnaut, Ligang Song, and Cai Fang (Acton, Australia 2020).
29 Björn Gustafsson, Terry Sicular, and Yang Xiuna, “Catching Up with the West: Chinese Pathways to the Global Middle Class,” The China Journal 84 (2020), 124.
30 Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Redwood City, 1982).
31 Wong, “China’s Emerging State.”