Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-02T08:14:59.810Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE PENDULUM SWINGS AGAIN: RECENT DEBATES ON CHINA'S PREWAR ECONOMY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2009

Niv Horesh
Niv Horesh
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales E-mail [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The aim of this brief survey is to provide a critical review of studies of China's economic history recently published by prominent Western scholars. It will explore two veins of scholarly debates that underlie Western perceptions of both China's past and its trajectory of future development, and also consider the historic significance of joint-stock enterprise in China as opposed to Britain and Japan.

Type
State of the field
Information
International Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , July 2009 , pp. 201 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alborn 1998 Alborn, Timothy L.Conceiving Companies: Joint-Stock Politics in Victorian England. London: Routledge, 1998.Google Scholar
Ash 1976 Ash, Robert. Land Tenure in Pre-Revolutionary China: Kiangsu Province in the 1920s and 1930s [Research Notes and Studies No. 1]. London: University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, Contemporary China Institute, 1976.Google Scholar
Balazs 1964 Balazs, Etienne. Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Bowen and Rose 1998 Bowen, J.Ray and David C. Rose. “On the Absence of Privately Owned, Publicly Traded Corporations in China: The Kirby Puzzle.” Journal of Asian Studies 57:2 (1998), pp. 442–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandt 1989 Brandt, Loren. Commercialization and Agricultural Development: Central and Eastern China, 1870–1937. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Brandt 2000 Brandt, Loren. “Reflections on China's Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century.” In Reappraising Republican China, ed. Wakeman, Frederic and Edmonds, Richard L.. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 28–54.Google Scholar
Broadberry and Gupta 2006 Broadberry, Stephen and Gupta, Bishnupriya. “The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices and Economic Development in Europe and Asia, 1500–1800.” Economic History Review 59:1 (2006), pp. 2–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron 1967 Cameron, Rondo. “England, 1750–1844.” In Banking in the Early Stages of Industrialization: A Study in Comparative Economic History, ed. Crisp, Olga, Patrick, Hugh T. and Tilly, Richard. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967, pp. 15–59.Google Scholar
Carlos and Nicholas 1988 Carlos, Ann M. and Nicholas, Stephen. “‘Giants of an Earlier Capitalism’: The Chartered Trading Companies as Modern Multinationals.” Business History Review 62 (1988), pp. 398–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chakepaichayon 1982 Chakepaichayon, Vichian. Meiji shoki no kaisha kigyō (2) – 81 sha no teikan bunseki 明治初期の会社企業 (2) – 81 社の定款分析 [Joint-Stock Companies in the Early Meiji Era (2): An Analysis of 81 Articles of Corporations]. Ōsaka daigaku keizaigaku 32:1 (1982), pp. 66–87.Google Scholar
Chan 1977 Chan, Wellington K. K.Merchants, Mandarins, and Modern Enterprise in Late Ch'ing China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Chandler 1977 Chandler, Alfred D.The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Chang 1962 Chang, Chung-li. The Income of the Chinese Gentry. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Davis and North 1971 Davis, Lance E. and North, Douglass C.. Institutional Change and American Economic Growth. London: Cambridge University Press, 1971.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Bary 1991 De Bary, William T.The Trouble with Confucianism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Vries 1976 De Vries, Jan. Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Elvin 1973 Elvin, Mark. The Pattern of the Chinese Past. London: Eyre Methuen, 1973.Google Scholar
Elvin 1981 Elvin, Mark. “Making Progress Pay – a Basic Problem in China's Early Economic Modernization.” In Symposium on the History of the Republic of China, vol. 3 (Northern Expedition and Period of Political Tutelage). Taipei, Taiwan: Compilation Committee of the Symposium on the History of the Republic of China, pp. 254–86.Google Scholar
Elvin 2001 Elvin, Mark. Book Review. China Quarterly 167 (2001), pp. 754–58.Google Scholar
Elvin 2004 Elvin, Mark. “Some Reflections on the Use of ‘Styles of Scientific Thinking’ to Disaggregate and Sharpen Comparisons Between China and Europe from Song to Mid-Qing Times (960–1850 CE).” History of Technology 25 (2004), pp. 53–103.Google Scholar
Esherick 1991 Esherick, Joseph. Book Review. Journal of Economic History 51:2 (1991), pp. 501–03.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faure 2006 Faure, David. China and Capitalism: A History Business Enterprise in Modern China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Fox 1994 Fox, Josephine J.Access to Work in Republican China: Technology, Patronage and Industrial Conflict. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Australian National University.Google Scholar
Frank 1998 Frank, Andre Gunder. ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feuerwerker 1958 Feuerwerker, Albert. China's Early Industrialization: Sheng Hsuan-huai (1844–1916) and the Mandarin Enterprise. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardella 1992 Gardella, Robert. “Squaring Accounts: Commercial Bookkeeping Methods and Capitalist Rationalism in Late Qing and Republican China.” Journal of Asian Studies 51:2 (1992), pp. 317–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerschenkron 1966 Gerschenkron, Alexander. Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: a Book of Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Goetzmann and Köll 2004 Goetzmann, William N., and Köll, Elisabeth. “The History of Corporate Ownership in China: State Patronage, Company Legislation, and the Issue of Control.” Yale International Centre for Finance Working Paper no. 4–29.Google Scholar
Goldstone 1996 Goldstone, Jack A. “Gender, Work and Culture: Why the Industrial Revolution Came Early to England but Late to China.” Sociological Perspectives 39:1 (1996), pp. 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstone 2002 Goldstone, Jack A. “Efflorescences and Economic Growth in World History: Rethinking ‘The Rise of the West’ and the Industrial Revolution.” Journal of World History 13:2 (2002), pp. 323–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greif 2005 Greif, Avner. “Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade.” In Handbook of New Institutional Economics, ed. Ménard, Claude and Shirley, Mary M.. New York: Springer, 2005, pp. 727–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobson 2004 Hobson, John M.The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horesh 2007 Horesh, Niv. “The Bund and Beyond: Rethinking the Sino-Foreign Financial Grid in Prewar Shanghai.” The China Review 7:1 (2007), pp. 1–26.Google Scholar
Hsiao 1974 Hsiao, Liang-lin. China's Foreign Trade Statistics, 1864–1949. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Huang 1990 Huang, Philip C.The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350–1988. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isett 2007 Isett, Christopher M.State, Peasant, and Merchant in Qing Manchuria, 1644–1862. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Ishii 2007 Ishii, Kanji 石井寛治. Keizai hatten to ryōgaeshō kin'yū 経済発展と両替商金融 [Economic Development and Finance of Moneychangers]. Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 2007.Google Scholar
Kirby 1995 Kirby, William C. “China Unincorporated: Company Law and Business Enterprise in Twentieth-Century China.” Journal of Asian Studies 54:1 (1995), pp. 43–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiser and Tong 1992 Kiser, Edgar and Xiaoxi, Tong. “Determinants of the Amount and Type of Corruption in State Fiscal Bureaucracies: an Analysis of Late Imperial China.” Comparative Political Studies 25:3 (1992), pp. 300–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuroda 2006 Kuroda, Akinobu. “Too Commercialised to Synchronise Currencies: Monetary Peasant Economy in Late Imperial China in Comparison with Contemporary Japan.” Proceedings of the XIV International Economic History Congress. Helsinki 2006. Available for download at http://www.helsinki.fi/iehc2006/papers3/Kuroda.pdf (accessed 6 October 2008).Google Scholar
Landes 2003 Landes, David S.Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present [new edition]. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li 1998 Li, Bozhong. Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, 1620–1850. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li 2007 Li, Lillian M.Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s–1990s. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lippit 1978 Lippit, Victor D. “The Development of Underdevelopment in China.” Modern China 4:3 (1978), pp. 251–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Little 1992 Little, Daniel. Book Review. Economic Development and Cultural Change 40:2 (1992), pp. 425–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ma 2004 Ma, Debin. “Growth, Institutions and Knowledge: a Review and Reflection on the Historiography of Eighteenth–Twentieth Century China.” Australian Economic History Review 44:3 (2004), pp. 259–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ma 2008 Ma, Debin. “Economic Growth in the Lower Yangzi Region of China in 1911–1937: a Quantitative and Historical Analysis.” Journal of Economic History 68:2 (2008), pp. 355–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michie 1999 Michie, Ranald C.The London Stock Exchange: a History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Minami 1994 Minami, Ryoshin. The Economic Development of China: a Comparison with the Japanese Experience. London: Macmillan, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchener and Ohnuki 2008 Mitchener, Kris J. and Ohnuki, Mari. “Institutions, Competition, and Capital Market Integration in Japan.” NBER Working Paper 14090.Google Scholar
Miwa and Ramseyer 2002 Miwa, Yoshiro and Ramseyer, J. Mark. “Banks and Economic Growth: Implications from Japanese History.” Journal of Law and Economics 45 (2002), pp. 127–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mokyr 1976 Mokyr, Joel. Industrialization in the Low Countries, 1795–1850. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Morck and Nakamura 2005 Morck, Randall K. and Nakamura, Masao. “A Frog in a Well Knows Nothing of the Ocean: A History of Corporate Ownership in Japan.” In A History of Corporate Governance Around the World: Family Business Groups to Professional Managers, ed. Morck, Randall K.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 367–465.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mosk 2001 Mosk, Carl. Japanese Industrial History: Technology, Urbanization, and Economic Growth. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2001.Google Scholar
Myers 1991 Myers, Ramon H. “How Did the Modern Chinese Economy Develop? A Review Article.” Journal of Asian Studies 50:3 (1991), pp. 604–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nobutaka 1954 Nobutaka, Ike. “The Pattern of Railway Development in Japan.” The Far Eastern Quarterly 14:1 (1954), pp. 217–29.Google Scholar
Noda 1980 Noda, Masaho 野田正穂. Nihon shōken shijō seiritsu 日本証券市場成立史 [History of the Japanese Securities Markets]. Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1980.Google Scholar
North 1973 North, Douglass C. and Thomas, Robert. The Rise of the Western World: a New Economic History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oi and Waldre 1999 Oi, Jean C. and Waldre, Andrew G., eds., Property Rights and Economic Reform in China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perdue 1987 Perdue, Peter C.Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan, 1500–1850. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Perkins 1969 Perkins, Dwight H.Agricultural Development in China. Chicago: Aldine, 1969.Google Scholar
Pomeranz 1993 Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society, and Economy in Inland North China, 1853–1937. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pomeranz 2000 Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: Europe, China and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rajan and Zingales 2003 Rajan, Raghuram G. and Zingales, Luigi. “The Great Reversals: The Politics of Financial Development in the Twentieth Century.” Journal of Financial Economics 69:1 (2003), pp. 5–50.Google Scholar
Rawski 1989 Rawski, Thomas G.Economic Growth in Prewar China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Riskin 1978 Riskin, Carl. “The Symposium on China's Economic History: Discussion and Comments.” Modern China 4:3 (1978), pp. 359–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg and Birdzell, Jr., 1985 Rosenberg, Nathan and Birdzell, L. E. Jr.How the West Grew Rich: the Economic Transformation of the Industrial World. New York: Basic Books, 1985.Google Scholar
Rowe 1984 Rowe, William T.Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796–1889. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Rozelle 1992 Rozelle, Scott. “Contemporary Reflections on Development in Republican China.” Republican China 18:1 (1992), pp. 122–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schran 1978 Schran, Peter. “China's Demographic Evolution 1850–1953 Reconsidered.” The China Quarterly 75 (1978), pp. 639–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott 1912 Scott, William R.The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720 [3 vols.]. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1912.Google Scholar
Shiba 1968 Shiba, Yoshinobu. Sōdai shōgyōshi kenkyū 宋代商業史研究 [The Mercantile History of the Song Dynasty]. Tokyo: Kazama shobō, 1968.Google Scholar
Shiue 2002 Shiue, Carol H. 2002. “Transport Costs and the Geography of Arbitrage in Eighteenth-Century China.” American Economic Review 92:5 (2002), pp. 1406–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shiue and Keller 2004 Shiue, Carol H. and Keller, Wolfgang. “Markets in China and Europe on the Eve of the Industrial Revolution.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 10778, pp. 1–45.Google Scholar
Skinner 1993 Skinner, G. William. Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China. Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies, 1993.Google Scholar
So 1986 So, Alvin Y.The South China Silk District: Local Historical Transformation and World-System Theory. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Sugihara 2007 Sugihara, Kaoru. “Labour-Intensive Industrialisation in Global History.” Australian Economic History Review 47:2 (2007), pp. 121–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suzuki et al. 2005 Suzuki, Tsuneo 鈴木恒夫, Yoichi, Kobayakawa 小早川洋一 and Kazuo, Wada 和田一夫. Meiji 31 nenji ni okeru menshi bōseki kaisha kabunushi meibo no bunseki 明治 31 年時における綿糸紡績会社株主名簿の分析 [An Analysis of Shareholders' Lists for 60 Cotton Spinning Companies in 1898]. University of Tokyo, Centre for International Research on the Japanese Economy. Discussion Paper J-129.Google Scholar
Taylor 2006 Taylor, James. Creating Capitalism: Joint-Stock Enterprise in British Politics and Culture, 1800–1870. Rochester, NY: Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Thomas 2001 Thomas, W. A.Western Capitalism in China: a History of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001.Google Scholar
Tsurumi 2002 Tsurumi, Masayoshi 靎見誠良. “Kindai no kahei shin'yō” 近代の貨幣信用 [Early Modern Currency and Credit]. In Ryūtsū keizaishi 流通経済史 [History of Circulating Currencies and Goods], ed. Eiji, Sakurai 桜井英治 and Satoru, Nakanishi 中西聡. Tokyo: Yamakawa, 2002, pp. 470–513.Google Scholar
Tortella 2000 Tortella, Gabriel. The Development of Modern Spain: An Economic History of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Trans. from the Spanish by Herr, Valerie J.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Van der Eng 2004 Van der Eng, Pierre. “Economic History of Asia: Comparative Perspectives.” Australian Economic History Review 44:3 (2004), pp. 215–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vries 2003 Vries, Peer. “Via Peking Back to Manchester: Britain, the Industrial Revolution, and China.” Studies in Overseas History 4 (2003), pp. 1–109.Google Scholar
Wagel 1980 Wagel, Srinivas R.Finance in China. New York: Garland [1914], Reprint 1980.Google Scholar
Weber 1951 Weber, Max. The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism. Trans. from the German by Gert, Hans H.. New York: Macmillan [1922], 1951.Google Scholar
Wiens 1992 Wiens, Thomas B. “Trends in the Late Qing and Republican Rural Economy: Reality or Illusion?” Republican China 18:1 (1992), pp. 63–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittfogel 1957 Wittfogel, Karl August. Oriental Despotism: a Comparative Study of Total Power. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Wong 1997 Wong, R. Bin. China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Wright 2000 Wright, Tim. “Distant Thunder: The Regional Economies of Southwest China and the Impact of the Great Depression.” Modern Asian Studies 34:3 (2000), pp. 697–738.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zelin 1988 Zelin, Madeleine. “Capital Accumulation and Investment Strategies in Early Modern China: the Case of the Furong Salt Yard.” Late Imperial China 9:1 (1988), pp. 79–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zelin 1998 Zelin, Madeleine. “Critique of Scholarship on Chinese Business in the People's Republic of China and Taiwan.” Chinese Studies in History 31:3–4 (1998), pp. 95–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar