Empire of Silver: A New Monetary History of China

Author:   Jin Xu ,  Stacy Mosher
Publisher:   Yale University Press
ISBN:  

9780300250046


Pages:   384
Publication Date:   13 April 2021
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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Empire of Silver: A New Monetary History of China


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Overview

This revelatory account of the ways silver shaped Chinese history shows how an obsession with “white metal” held China back from financial modernization. First used as currency during the Song dynasty in around 900 CE, silver gradually became central to China’s economic framework and was officially monetized in the middle of the Ming dynasty during the sixteenth century. However, due to the early adoption of paper money in China, silver was not formed into coins but became a cumbersome “weighing currency,” for which ingots had to be constantly examined for weight and purity—an unwieldy practice that lasted for centuries.   While China’s interest in silver spurred new avenues of trade and helped increase the country’s global economic footprint, Jin Xu argues that, in the long run, silver played a key role in the struggles and entanglements that led to the decline of the Chinese empire.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jin Xu ,  Stacy Mosher
Publisher:   Yale University Press
Imprint:   Yale University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.70cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.680kg
ISBN:  

9780300250046


ISBN 10:   0300250045
Pages:   384
Publication Date:   13 April 2021
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

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Reviews

"“Makes a good case for how monetary choices can have wider political implications...Its message that China's development has been hampered by weak rule of law and a lack of accountability could not be timelier.”—Matthew Partridge, Money Week ""Empire of Silver is superbly written and a great joy to read. Ingeniously blending literary evidence from materials as diverse as Chinese classical novels with serious academic research, the book gives extraordinary theoretical and historical insights on big questions about politics, money, finance, and the Great Divergence. It is a wonderful book for understanding one thousand years of Chinese monetary history.""--Debin Ma, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan   ""Empire of Silver is a fascinating, in-depth and scholarly work. It traces China's obsession with the precious metal for better and for worse over the centuries. Particularly interesting is the relationship between silver and the decline of the Qing dynasty in the 19th century - a passage of history that maintains crucial relevance to the China of today.""--James Kynge, author of China Shakes the World"


Makes a good case for how monetary choices can have wider political implications...Its message that China's development has been hampered by weak rule of law and a lack of accountability could not be timelier. -Matthew Partridge, Money Week Empire of Silver is superbly written and a great joy to read. Ingeniously blending literary evidence from materials as diverse as Chinese classical novels with serious academic research, the book gives extraordinary theoretical and historical insights on big questions about politics, money, finance, and the Great Divergence. It is a wonderful book for understanding one thousand years of Chinese monetary history. --Debin Ma, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan Empire of Silver is a fascinating, in-depth and scholarly work. It traces China's obsession with the precious metal for better and for worse over the centuries. Particularly interesting is the relationship between silver and the decline of the Qing dynasty in the 19th century - a passage of history that maintains crucial relevance to the China of today. --James Kynge, author of China Shakes the World


Author Information

Jin Xu is senior editor and chief financial commentator at the Financial Times Chinese. She has been a visiting fellow at the University of Tokyo and a Caijing Fellow at Peking University.

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