Re-thinking the Late Imperial Chinese Economy: Development, Disaggregation and Decline, circa 1730–1930

Abstract

In this paper, I want to explore a very simple contrast which has many potential implications. China at the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth century was, by most measures, a very poor society. China in the latter part of the eighteenth century seemed – both to its own members and to most, though not all, visitors from abroad – a very rich society. So what happened in between?

Efflorescences and Economic Growth in World History: Rethinking the "Rise of the West" and the Industrial Revolution

“…After 1750, no further new crops, resources, or major technical or institutional innovations provided new re s o u rces. As population growth began to fill up the fro n t i e r s and upriver and northern plains regions, the regional specialization in which the Yangzi delta produced silk and cotton goods in exchange for rice and fertilizer (to augment its own rice production) was diminished by new regional centers of textile and craft production that reduced the need for delta products (Pomeranz 2000b). The innovative administrative stru c t u re of the Qing became gradually overmatched and then overwhelmed by the increase of population density and size within fixed administrative units.…”

“…Clearly, they involved a new system of administration that integrated vast new regions of central and eastern Asia, Mongolia, and Manchuria into a single orbit; the expansion of private, pro p e rt y-h o l ding, market-oriented peasants throughout the south in lieu of the vast g e n t ry and landlord estates of the late Ming; and (especially after 16 8 0) the expansion of international as well as domestic trade (Wills 1993(Wills , 2001Deng 1997). The introduction and spread of New World crops, intensified rice-growing and settlement throughout the Middle and Upper Yangzi and the Pearl River basins, the spread of cotton cloth production to North China through the innovation of underground cellars that provided moisture so that the cloth fibers wouldn't become brittle and break, and intensified production of silk cocoons and textiles as well as huge ranges of ceramics for a variety of domestic and export markets further contributed (Marks 1997, Finlay 1998, Bray 1999, Pomeranz 2000a). …”

“…Ecological constraints began to set in, regional competition for self-sufficiency eroded the complex inter-and intra-regional patterns of trade, and regions poorer in resources and soils grew most rapidly in population (Elvin 1993, Frank 1997, Pomeranz 2000b). This was not a "failure," as some critics of Imperial China's economy might allege, but the normal course of things, the other side of the coin of such exceptional periods of remarkable growth as were attained in the high Qing.…”

“…The second point, which has only in the last few years been winning many converts, is that every one of the above trends that are observed in Europe and labeled as proof of "early modern" charactertechnical improvements in agriculture and production providing rising total output and per capital productivity (including aggressive transformation of the natural landscape); vast urban-based regional and global trade networks supporting wealthy merchant classes; and increasingly centralized and bureaucratized political regimes that created ordered territories and subordinated elites-are also widely evident outside of Europe prior to the eighteenth century, in China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India, and the Ottoman Empire, and often earlier and in a higher state of development (Elvin 1993, Goody 1996, Subrahmanyan 1 9 9 6, Wong 1 9 9 7, Zurn d o rfer 1 9 9 7, Frank 1 9 9 8, Golds t o n e 1998, Rawski 1998, Berry 1999, Lieberman 1999, Reid 1999, Thompson 1999, Pamuk 2000, Pomeranz 2000a). Therefore, historians of these regions have become quite comfortable in referring to these regions, in the years from perhaps a .…”

“…I make this point only to illustrate once again how very similar the mix of varied European polities was to the mix of polities found in other parts of Eurasia. We have already learned that in the early eighteenth century the advanced regions of northwest Europe and East and South Asia were comparable in living standards, in the extent of production for market and domestic and international trade, and in the progress of printing, vernacularization of literatures, and centralization of territorial rule (Pomeranz 2000a, Das Gupta 1994, Wong 1997, Blussé and Gaastra 1998, Lieberman 1999, Pollock 1999, Wills 2001. The basic temporal, economic, and political patterns of the expansion and contraction of power followed similar rhythms and causal foundations, as the balances of population and resources, of elite mobility and administrative stability, and of price inflation and its effect on state finances, were basically similar from England to the Ottoman Empire to China (Lieberman 1999, Goldstone 1991.…”