Economic History of China from Antiquity to the 19th Century

FAIN: FA-55564-10

Richard von Glahn
UCLA; Regents of the University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA 90024-4201)

I intend to complete an on-going book project, tentatively titled The Economic History of China from Antiquity to the 19th Century. This book will be the first comprehensive study of Chinese economic history in English (or any Western language). Existing scholarship on Chinese economic history has focused on explaining the "failure" of the Chinese economy to generate the kind of "industrial revolution" that has come to characterize the modern world. In contrast, my book seeks to explain the development of the Chinese economy in its own terms rather than within a framework derived from the European historical experience. At the same time I intend to utilize the insights of comparative economic history and recent scholarship in global history to illuminate both the distinctive features of the Chinese economy and its relationship to transnational patterns of economic, social, and technological exchange.