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Due to China's ongoing economic rise, recent studies in global (economic) history have moved away from the traditional Eurocentric view to a Sinocentric one. There is extensive literature focused on the introduction of Chinese goods to Europe, as well as on China's economic development within the framework of the great divergence debate. However, less research has centred on the introduction of European goods to Chinese markets, specifically the markets in Guangdong or other coastal regions (such as Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangsu), before the First Opium War. This paper aims to side-step the Sinocentric approach, eschewing the current wave of national history in China, by analysing the international trade in Qing China from the Kangxi era until the Qianlong period. It provides new empirical evidence from the First Historical Archives of China (FHAC) by examining the impact on global trade of China's imperial edicts and interventionist policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature dealing with the history of Chinese printed books and printing is voluminous. Yet studies of how knowledge in general and utilitarian forms of knowledge in particular were generated, accumulated and circulated by printed books and their relationship with the long-term socio-economic transformation of China are rare. This paper aims to open up the subject by examining the long-term trends in the production of manuscripts and books and focusing on the connections between the generation and dissemination of useful knowledge in China and the production and circulation of printed books over the centuries and dynasties from circa 581 to 1840 compared to Europe. It connects trends in this indicator for knowledge formation and diffusion to economic growth, urbanization, changes in higher forms of education, the rise of literacy, the development of printing technologies, and changes in perceptions of the natural world. It concludes that human capital formation in China probably proceeded at a slower rate, which is relevant for narratives of the “divergence” between China and Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Economic History Research / Investigaciones de Historia Económica is the property of Asociacion Espanola de Historia Economica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This special issue is devoted to exploring the manifestations of Mr. Science in May Fourth China and to examining this icon's significance not only to China's modern era but also to our understandings of science and society beyond. In this introduction, the co-editors make a case for critically engaging Mr. Science and, by extension, questions of science in early twentieth century China, particularly in light of China's emergence as a scientific and technological superpower today—a fact which has, incidentally, been framed by the current PRC government as a realization of May Fourth dreams. In concurrently reinvigorating Mr. Science's idealism, critical edge, and cosmopolitanism while challenging his common association with scientism, the articles in this special issue offer new insights into topics from science and democracy to universality without Eurocentricism, which are of relevance and interest to both modern Chinese history and the global history of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, the Department of Education in China made a policy change by elevating the study and teaching of world history to a first-class academic field. This article argues that this elevation reflects an unprecedented move by both the Chinese government and historical community to put world history on a par with Chinese history with regard to their importance as subjects of knowledge. It discusses the three periods where world history developed as a field of study in modern China, focusing on the latest one from the turn of the twenty-first century to today. During this period, world historians in China launched their search for a new, Chinese grand narrative for understanding and interpreting worldwide historical development. While inspired by the theory of modernization and advances in global history, the historians have also endeavoured to draw wisdom from China's rich cultural tradition and its recent successful experience in economic expansion. The elevation of world history to a first class field of academic study suggests a landmark development in the direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Modern Italian Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This contribution argues that the right of access to extraterritorial jurisdiction shaped privilege-based communities across national borders. It discusses extraterritoriality as a legal framework that enabled and shaped the building of communities of foreigners from many different backgrounds. Extraterritoriality – counterintuitively – amalgamated and strengthened a community through that very diversity. This was precisely why that community of foreigners – specified as the odd ones out – understood itself as a social unit across national boundaries, loosening and even contesting its affiliation to a specific nation and/or empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past two decades, increasing attention has been paid to the significance of the fiscal capacity of the premodern state to promote or retard economic growth. In particular, scholarship on economic history has stressed the positive impact the emergence of the "fiscal state" had in enhancing economic growth in early modern Europe. Comparative studies have contrasted the administrative efficiency of the emerging European fiscal state with contemporary Asian empires (the Ottomans, Mughals, and the Ming and Qing empires in China). But the Ming-Qing state represents only one version of Chinese state formation under the Chinese empire. This article identifies four basic types of fiscal state that appeared between the Qin unification and the Ming-Qing era, analyzes their ideological foundations, and assesses their implications for economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative literature has long defined itself as interdisciplinary, intercultural, and interlingual. These traits have led some to criticize the discipline as lacking discipline. Yet indiscipline--not to mention the intercultural, interlingual, and interdisciplinary--is a matter of perspective; in many ways, comparative literature is highly disciplined. So how then to break discipline more thoroughly? This article engages in one approach--incorporating literature into a wider range of global history and other scholarly discussions of transregional/global processes. The focus is Africa-China relationships. Integral to China's rapid rise as a world power have been its global initiatives and investments. These are most pronounced in Africa, where in many nations the financial, military, and political connections with China now run exceptionally deep. The human dimensions of Africa-China contact are just as complex, but unlike other types of contact they remain woefully understudied. African artistic engagement with China and Chinese artistic engagement with Africa enhance our understandings of these interconnections. But rather than simply exposing and then either affirming or dismantling stereotypes, many Chinese and African creative works across the centuries are more nuanced. This literary engagement provides valuable perspectives on some of today's most controversial and anxiety producing transregional dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores textual genres related to the production of ceramics in Jingdezhen, including maps, literati collections, the literature of connoisseurship, local gazetteers, and merchant manuals. An analysis of these genres brings the Chinese textual record of ceramics into sharper focus and reveals what has remained unwritten. Whereas European writings on Chinese ceramics from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries dwell on modes of manufacture in a global context, Chinese writers generally ignore matters of technology and commerce beyond the confines of the Chinese realm. These omissions emerge in part from the peculiarities of the genres within which these writings have been transmitted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]