Rice Prices, Food Supply, and Market Structure in Eighteenth-Century South China

Assessing Market (Dis)Integration in Early Modern China and Europe

“…There is a general consensus in the literature that there is a high degree of veracity in these data series and that they are comparable across locations (Chuan and Kraus, 1975;Marks, 1991Marks, , 1998Shiue, 2002Shiue, , 2004Shiue, , 2015Shiue and Keller, 2007). 6 As monthly highest price and lowest price for each prefecture are available we follow the literature and use their average as the monthly price.…”

Looking at it from Asia: the Processes that Shaped the Sources of History of Science

“…This province was, moreover, well integrated with the rest of the empire. However, a career in medicine could be also a step upward, though less so for merchants, as seems to have been the case in Jiangnan, than for people born into poverty, particularly 47 (Marks 1991). Although Guangdong and the eastern part of Guangxi were interrelated thanks to a network of navigable rivers, 44 45 (Hymes 1987) 46 (Grant 2003, 32). constituting, in Skinner's words, ''one physiographic unit'' which the Chinese once called Lingnan (South of the mountains), no rivers in Yunnan were navigable and all official and commercial transport had to be done by land.…”

“…As a result, Lingnan, whose population had risen from 15 to 28 million people between the beginning and the end of the eighteenth century, was, by the end of the nineteenth century, highly urbanized. According to (Lee 1982b andMarks 1991), the rate of urban population for Yunnan in 1830 reaches 10%, while for Skinner, this rate was of 4% only. By the end of the empire, the macroregion of Yungui (composed of the provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou) was among the least urbanized regions of China, comprising small and tenuously interrelated cities.…”

Chinese Biographies of Experts in Medicine: What Uses Can We Make of Them?

“…The growing interest in medicine during the late imperial times in the far south of China can be explained with the reasons that have been brought to light for the Jiangnan region. The demographic increase, the disruption of the social components of the late imperial society (Lee 1982;Marks 1991), and the increasing number of learned people forced an increasing number of educated men to seek their livelihood outside government service. By devoting their life to relieving the suffering of their kin and the populace, they chose one of the most respected alternatives-with teaching-to government service, as was formulated by the Song scholar Fan Zhongyan-"If one does not become a good official, then one should become a good physician" (Hymes 1987).…”