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2 Marks, Robert, Tigers, , Rice, , Silk, , ‘Rice Prices, Food Supply, and Market Structure in 18th Century China’, Late Imperial China 12/2 (December) 77–78Google Scholar for ajustification of this figure.

3 Perkins, Dwight, Agricultural Development in China: 1368–1968 (Chicago 1969) 301Google Scholar.

4 Clark, Gregory, Huberman, Michael, and Linden, Peter H., ‘A British Food Puzzle, 1770–1850’, Economic History Review 48/1 (1995) 223–226Google Scholar. Pan, Ming-te, ‘Rural Credit Market and the Peasant Economy, 1600–1949 – the State, Elite Peasant, and “Usury”’ (PhD dissertation, University of California, Irvine 1994) 327Google Scholar and accompanying notes, makes a good case for estimating adult male consumption double at that for adult females. If this is true, which is the conversion used to get the adult male equivalent consumption figure above. It is, however, a much larger male-female differential than that used by Clark, Huberman and Lindert, ‘British Food Puzzle’, 226 n. 25, which complicates comparisons considerably.

5 See, for instance, Ho, Ping-ti, ‘The Introduction of American Food Plants Into China’, The American Anthropologist 57 (1955) 191–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem, ‘Meizhou zuowu di yinjin zhuanbo qi dui Zhongguo liangshi shengchan de yingxiang’ (‘The Introduction and Diffusion of American Crops and their Effect on Chinese Food Production’) in: Dagongbao zaigang fukan sanshi zhouji jinian wenji II (Hongkong 1978) 673–731.

6 See for instance Adshead, S.A.M., Material Culture in China and Europe 1400–1800 (New York 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For ajapanese parallel, see MacFarlane, Alan, The Savage Wars of Peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap (Oxford 1997)Google Scholar.

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8 Zhongqing, Li (James Lee), ‘Zhongguo lishi renkou zhidu: Qingdai renkou xingwei ji qi yiyi’ in: Zhongqing, Li and Songyi, Guo eds, Qingdai huangzu renkou xingwei de shehui huanjing (Beijing 1994) 3Google Scholar., Lee and Feng, Wang, Malthusian Mythologies and Chinese Realities (Cambridge 1999) 84–90Google Scholar.

9 Bozhong, Li, ‘Kongzhi zengchan g yi bao fuyu – Qingdai qian, zhong, qi Jiangnan de renkou xingwei’, Xin shixue 5/3 (09 1994) 32–34Google Scholar; compare McEvedy, Colin and Jones, Richard, Atlas of World Population History (New York 1979) 28–29Google Scholar.

10 Xing, Fang, ‘Qingdai Jiangnan nongmin de xiaofei’, Zhongguo jingji xhi yanjiu 3 (1996) 93, 95Google Scholar.

11 Brown, Henry Phelps and Hopkins, Sheila V., A Perspective of Wages and Prices (London 1981) 14Google Scholar.

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13 See the complaint about peasants' ‘gaudy’ clothing at religious festivals by the official Chen Hongmou in: Changling, He, Yuan, Wei et al. eds, Huang chao jingshi wenbian [original edition 1820] (Beijing 1992) 68: 5a–6aGoogle Scholar.

14 Particularly striking accounts may be found in the novels Jin ping mei and Xingshi yinyuan zhuan – striking in part because they deal with a medium sized city and a small town, respectively, in North China rather than with any of the country's great metropolises. For some reflections on consumption in China by a leading historian of early modern European consumption, see Burke, Peter, ‘Res et Verba: Conspicuous Consumption in the Early Modern World’ in: Brewer, John and Porter, Roy eds, Consumption and the World of Goods (London 1993) 148–161Google Scholar. I deal with this at much greater length in Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton 2000) chapter 3Google Scholar.

15 Staunton, George, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China II (London 1801)Google Scholar, 48 and Macartney, (1793) in: Cranmer-Byng, L. ed., An Embassy to China: Being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney During his Embassy to the Emperor ch'ien-lung 1793–1794 (London 1962) 225Google Scholar.

16 Cited in Dermigny, Louis, Chine, La et L'Occident: Le Commerce a Canton au XVIIIe Siecle, 1719–1833 III (Paris 1964) 1253Google Scholar.

17 DaCruz, in: Boxer, Charles ed., South China in the Sixteenth Century (London 1953) 106Google Scholar; see also 99.

18 Cited in Daniels, Christian, ‘Agro-Industries: Sugarcane Technology’ in: Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilization in China VI, part III (Cambridge 1996) Section 42a: 97, 105Google Scholar.

19 For further discussion, see Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, chapter 3.

20 Based on figures for forested area from Daxie, Ling, ‘Wo guo senlin ziyuan de bianqian’, Zhongguo nongshi 3/2 (1983) 34–35Google Scholar and a population of 100–120 million in 1700 and 450–500 million in 1937. Deforestation an d trends in harvestable wood supply per capita per year are discussed in muc h greater detail in Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, chapter 5.

21 DeVries, Jan, ‘Peasant Demand and Economic Development: Friesland 1550–1750’ in: Parker, William and Jones, E.L. eds, European Peasants and Their Markets (Princeton 1975)Google Scholar table 6–16; Buck, John L., Land Utilization in China (New York 1964/1937) 456Google Scholar.

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23 If one adds the three soybean crops on the North China plot, versus two clover crops for the British crop, the North China land is probably a better total food producer.

24 Very wide observed variation around mean for individual cases of both clover and soybeans – relatively little is known about what.determines these variations.

25 Compare Chung-li, Chang, The Income of the Chinese Gentry (Seattle 1955) 303Google Scholar and Jinzan, Wu, ‘Zhonghua Mingo linye fazhan zhi yanjiu – Minguo yuan nian zhi Minguo sanshiwu nian’ (PhD thesis, Zhongguo Wenhua Daxue, Taibei 1982) 99Google Scholar, dividing by a population of 380,000,000.

26 See, for instance, the estimate of-roughly 2.2 pounds of sugar consumption per capita for the 1930's cited by Daniels, ‘Agro-Industries: Sugarcane Technology’, 85. For cotton, see Gang, Zhao (Kang Chao), The Development of Cotton Textile Production in China (Cambridge, MA 1977) 233Google Scholar.

27 Calculated based on Skinner, G.W., ‘Regional Urbanization in Nineteenth Century China’ in: Skinner, G.W. ed., The City in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA 1977) 213Google Scholar; Skinner, G.W., ‘Sichuan's Population in the Nineteenth Century: Lessons from Disaggregated Data’, Late Imperial China 8/1 (06 1987) 67–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fangzhong, Liang, Zhangguo Lidai hihou, tiandi, tianfu tongji (Shanghai 1980) 395–413Google Scholar.

28 The effect of the regional redistribution of population alone would lower an average consumption of 4.3 pounds to about 2.5, and Buck reported average consumption of centrifugal sugar of 2.2 pounds. Sugar processed in other ways, plus what was eaten raw in producing areas (where sucking on cane was common) could easily, make up the remaining difference.

29 Susuma, Yamamoto, ‘Shindai Shikawa no chi-iki keizai’ (‘Regional Development in Qing Dynasty Sichuan’), Shigaku Zasshi 100/12 (12 1991) 1–31Google Scholar; idem, ‘Shonin seisan kenkyu no kiseki’ (‘Directions in Research on the Production of Commodities’) in: Mori Masao ed., Min Shinjidaishi no kihon mondai (Tokyo 1997).

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33 Guancheng, Fang quoted in Gang, Zhang, ‘Qingdai Zhili shangpin jingji fenxi’, Hebei shiyuan xuebao 3 (1985) 99Google Scholar.

34 See Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, Appendix F for details.

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36 Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, ‘Rice Prices’, 77, noting estimates that range from 1.74 to 2.62 shi per person, uses 2.17 for Lingnan, which was more prosperous than North China.

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38 Pomeranz, Kenneth, ‘How Exhausted an Earth? Some thoughts on Qing (1644–1911) Environmental History’, Chinese Environmental History Newsletter 2/2 (11 1995)Google Scholar.

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41 See Pomeranz, The Great Divergence for a review of the evidence from one part of North China.

42 Li, forthcoming: cited by permission.

43 Hejdra, Martin, ‘The Ming – Rural Socio-Economic Development’ in: Jvlote, Frederick and Twitchett, Dennis eds, The Cambridge History of China: The Ming Dynasty VIII/II (Cambridge 1998) 429–439Google Scholar. Hejdra argues for a much higher population by 1700, but the evidence seems to me very weak. H e extrapolates from Ming dynasty growth rates for a few counties, mostly in Honan and Shandong (437), which we know to have been among the areas most severely depopulated by the wars that brought the Ming to power, and therefore to have experienced unusually rapid population increase in the Ming (in part through conscious repopulation efforts). Other historical demographers seem to be standing by earlier estimates like those I have used.

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45 For an example of North China problems causing misery in the seventeenth century Yangzi Delta, see Elvin, Mark, ‘Market Towns and Waterways: The County of Shang-hai from 1480 to 1910’ in: Skinner, G. William ed., The City in Late Imperial China (Stanford 1977) 447Google Scholar.

46 The surface area of Dongting Lake – largest in th e Middle Yangzi and second largest in China – is one fairly good proxy for population-driven ecological stress, since much land reclamation was achieved at the lake's expense, and the resulting drainage problems greatly increased flood dangers in the region. This surface area seems to have declined by almost 800 square miles (thirteen per cent of the lake's previous size) between 1825 and 1850, but then held roughly steady for the rest of the century; dramatic decline began with renewed rapid population growth and industrial development after 1949. Ecological problems in North China – from the falling water table to erosion of over-exploited hillsides to enormous problems associated with the shift of the Yellow River and soil salinisation – were far more dramatic. See Perdue, Peter, Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan 1500–1850 (Cambridge, MA 1987) 204CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pomeranz, , The Great Divergence, 237–238, 244Google Scholar; idem, The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society and Economy in Inland North China, 1835–1937 (Berkeley 1993) 120–265.

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74 Bozhong, Li, Jiangnan de zaoqi gongyehua, 338–339Google Scholar.

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85 Ibid., 129, 132.

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98 Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, chapter 2.

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102 For a lengthy account of this system as a subsidy to ecologically fragile North China – which however, emphasises that the subsidy was withdrawn near the end of the nineteenth century (so that it cannot account for continued rapid population growth in the twentieth century) see Pomeranz, The Making of a Hinterland.

103 Lee, and Campbell, , Fate and Fortune, 85–82Google Scholar;Lee, and Wang, , Malthusian Mythologies, 57–64Google Scholar; on abortifacients and contraceptives, see Bray, , Fabrics of Power, 290–296Google Scholar, 321–325.

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107 Ibid., 201, 227–228.

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112 For an extended discussion of this phenomenon, ibid.

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128 Jinzan, Wu, ‘Zhonghua Mingo linye fazhan zhi yanjiu – Minguo yuan nian zhi Minguo sanshiwu nian’, 71–73Google Scholar; Pomeranz, , The Making of a Hinterland, 140Google Scholar.

129 Pomeranz, , The Making of a Hinterland, 138–142Google Scholar, 146–152.

130 It is worth noting that one important ‘modern’ investment which could potentially have been spread widely across the landscape – the provision of public schooling – lagged seriously, and since it was funded locally or provincially, was concentrated in richer areas. I have argued elsewhere that Chinese literacy rates may well have declined between 1750 and 1930, though the evidence is thin. It is also probably true that the share of the central government budget going for uses besides the military, debt service, and support of the court declined in the century after 1850; this would be in very sharp contrast to most of Europe, where those three items had often taken up almost the entire state budget before the nineteenth century, but declined gradually thereafter.

131 Pomeranz, , The Making of a Hinterland, 159–162Google Scholar, 201–211.

132 Ibid., 21.