‘CANNOT BE FED ON WHEN STARVING’: AN ANALYSIS OF THE ECONOMIC THOUGHT SURROUNDING CHINA’S EARLIER USE OF PAPER MONEY

2013 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-395
Author(s):  
NIV HORESH
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Private Institutions ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Paper Money ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
The Stability

This article argues that Western impressions of the Chinese pre-modern monetary experience might have been excessively colored by Marco Polo’s favorable commentary on the stability of the Mongol polity and its dissemination of paper money. Experiments with unconvertible paper money had ultimately been no more successful in late-imperial China than they were in the early-modern West. By 1430, in fact, the Ming dynasty was forced to abandon the issuance of paper money altogether. The genesis of paper money both in China and it the West had originally emanated from private institutions. However, royally chartered banks of issue were conspicuously absent from the Chinese setting until the late nineteenth century.

Russian-Chinese Cultural Exchanges in the Early Modern Period

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolay Samoylov
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Cultural Information ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Imperial China

This chapter investigates the development of Sino-Russian exchanges from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. The author emphasizes the role of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Beijing for transmitting social-cultural information between the two neighboring empires. Through their writings on late imperial China, missionaries like Archimandrite Iakinf (Bichurin) played a key role in the burgeoning of Russian Sinology and created an idealistic image of China in political, legal, and educational terms. The author further ponders at the diverse and even conflicting perceptions of China among Russian missionaries and intellectuals. They did not represent China as it was but as what they expected it to be—a symbolic mirror image for them to reflect upon the reality in Russia.

Cross-Jurisdictional Trade and Contract Enforcement in Qing China

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maura Dykstra
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
Contract Enforcement ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
History Of ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Enforcement Mechanisms

AbstractThis article argues that claims about the different economic trajectories of early modern Europe and late imperial China have incorrectly focused on the importance of formal contract enforcement mechanisms. As a first step toward more productive conversations about the history of economic development across world regions, this article provides a look at the factors in the development of the late imperial Chinese economy that led to the emergence of contract enforcement mechanisms not based on codified contract law. Several case studies from the Qing dynasty Chongqing archives are presented to illustrate how the mechanisms of contract enforcement operated.

scholarly journals John Fryer and the Shanghai Polytechnic: making space for science in nineteenth-century China

1996 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wright
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Science Textbooks ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
John Fryer ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Creation ◽  
New System

The introduction of modern Western science into late imperial China naturally involved the creation of new linguistic spaces through the translation of science textbooks and the formation of a modern scientific lexicon, but it also required translation in another, physical, sense through the creation of institutions whereby the new system of practices and ideas could be transmitted. The Shanghai Polytechnic, opened in 1876 under the direction of John Fryer, was promoted as an academy for the ‘extension of learning’; this paper explores the role John Fryer and his Polytechnic played in making space for science in late nineteenth-century China.

Overseas Chinese and Merchant Philanthropy in China: From Culturalism to Nationalism

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glen Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Overseas Chinese ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Elite Status ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Native Place

AbstractThis article discusses how and why the cultural and political significance of China as ancestral home was transformed during the half century between 1850, which marked the start of mass migration from China, and the turn of the twentieth century when modern nationalist ideologies first appeared in China and then spread rapidly to Chinese emigrant communities in Southeast Asia and beyond. This phenomenon is examined by looking at the role of merchant philanthropy, which is a crucial site for the construction and articulation of emigrant discourses of native place attachment. The article first examines the rise of philanthropy as a merchant strategy for claiming elite status and community leadership and for negotiating with political power in late Imperial China. It then looks at how and why homeland philanthropy was embraced by merchants in overseas Chinese communities in Singapore and Malaya beginning in the late nineteenth century. The final section studies the shift in the ideological underpinning of merchant philanthropy from Confucian culturalism to modern nationalism, and considers the implications of this shift for merchants' role in native place society and politics.

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