Abstract
Conversion of China's monetary and fiscal systems to a silver standard led to a doubling in the value of silver in China vis-à-vis the rest of the world by the early sixteenth century. Heightened profit opportunities induced an unprecedented surge in silver production in Spanish America and in Japan. Destined ultimately for China, tens of thousands of tons of silver passed through Europe via long-distance maritime and overland trade routes. Fifty tons of silver annually also reached China via the Pacific Ocean after the founding of the Spanish city of Manila in 1571. Japan exported huge quantities of silver to China until the late seventeenth century. New American crops were also introduced to Chinese agriculture via the Manila galleons, contributing to a doubling or more of Chinese population in the eighteenth century. Silver demand grew along with China's population, which in turn led to a fifty percent silver price premium in China. Largely in response to buoyant demand, more Mexican silver was produced during the eighteenth century than had been produced by all of Spanish America during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries combined. Subsequently, during the second half of the eighteenth century, a "tea and opium cycle" propelled British fortunes in Asia. Economic, environmental, and demographic histories must not be viewed as independent phenomena. It is a mistake to view societies around the world as independent of or weakly connected to global forces. All heavily populated continents have been deeply connected since the sixteenth century.
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Devoted to historical analysis from a global point of view, the Journal of World History features a range of comparative and cross-cultural scholarship and encourages research on forces that work their influences across cultures and civilizations. Themes examined include large-scale population movements and economic fluctuations; cross-cultural transfers of technology; the spread of infectious diseases; long-distance trade; and the spread of religious faiths, ideas, and ideals. Individual subscription is by membership in the World History Association.
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Since its establishment in 1947, University of Hawai'i Press has published over 2,000 books and over 900 journal issues. Within the worldwide scholarly community, University of Hawai'i Press is recognized as a leading publisher of books and journals in Asian, Asian American, and Pacific studies. Disciplines covered include the arts, history, language, literature, natural science, philosophy, religion, and the social sciences. The University of Hawai'i Press also serves as a distributor for more than 140 scholarly publishers in North America, Asia, the Pacific, and elsewhere.
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journal article
Myth and Reality of China's Seventeenth-Century Monetary CrisisThe Journal of Economic History
Vol. 56, No. 2, Papers Presented at the Fifty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association (Jun., 1996)
, pp. 429-454 (26 pages)
Published By: Cambridge University Press
//www.jstor.org/stable/2123972
Abstract
The impact of China's demand for silver on global trade in specie and monetary metals during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries remains poorly understood. Conventional wisdom postulates that seventeenth-century China became so dependent on foreign silver to sustain domestic economic growth that a sharp fall in silver imports in the 1640s led to the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644. This hypothesis rests on dubious theoretical and empirical grounds. The demand for silver in China was determined by long-term changes in indigenous demand for money rather than short-term fluctuations in the flow of silver imports.
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The Journal of Economic History is devoted to the multidisciplinary study of history and economics, and is of interest not only to economic historians but to social and demographic historians, as well as economists in general. The journal has broad coverage, in terms of both methodology and geographic scope. Topics covered include money and banking, trade, manufacturing, technology, transportation, industrial organisation, labour, agriculture, servitude, demography, education, economic growth, and the role of government and regulation. In addition, an extensive book review section keeps readers informed about the latest work in economic history and related fields. Instructions for Contributors at Cambridge Journals Online
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Cambridge University Press (www.cambridge.org) is the publishing division of the University of Cambridge, one of the world’s leading research institutions and winner of 81 Nobel Prizes. Cambridge University Press is committed by its charter to disseminate knowledge as widely as possible across the globe. It publishes over 2,500 books a year for distribution in more than 200 countries. Cambridge Journals publishes over 250 peer-reviewed academic journals across a wide range of subject areas, in print and online. Many of these journals are the leading academic publications in their fields and together they form one of the most valuable and comprehensive bodies of research available today. For more information, visit //journals.cambridge.org.
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The Journal of Economic History © 1996 Economic History Association
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