Modalities of the Fiscal State in Imperial China

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Richard von Glahn
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Past ◽  
Administrative Efficiency ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Fiscal State ◽  
Chinese Empire

AbstractIn 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.

scholarly journals Alternative Pasts and Colonial Engagements in the North: The Materiality and Meanings of the Pajala ‘Runestone’ (Vinsavaara Stone), Northern Sweden

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-628
Author(s):  
Vesa-Pekka Herva ◽  
Janne Ikäheimo ◽  
Matti Enbuske ◽  
Jari Okkonen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
General Level ◽  
Northern Sweden ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Cosmological Context ◽  
Ancient Times

The unknown and exotic North fascinated European minds in the early modern period. A land of natural and supernatural wonders, and of the indigenous Sámi people, the northern margins of Europe stirred up imagination and a plethora of cultural fantasies, which also affected early antiquarian research and the period understanding of the past. This article employs an alleged runestone discovered in northernmost Sweden in the seventeenth century to explore how ancient times and northern margins of the continent were understood in early modern Europe. We examine how the peculiar monument of the Vinsavaara stone was perceived and signified in relation to its materiality, landscape setting, and the cultural-cosmological context of the Renaissance–Baroque world. On a more general level, we use the Vinsavaara stone to assess the nature and character of early modern antiquarianism in relation to the period's nationalism, colonialism and classicism.

Money, Power, and the State: The Origins of the Military-Fiscal State in Modern China

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 392-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen R. Halsey
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Government Spending ◽  
Eastern China ◽  
Military Spending ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Fiscal State ◽  
The Military

Abstract During the late 1800s, internal rebellion and European imperialism transformed existing patterns of taxation, resource distribution, and government spending in China. Continual preparation for war led to an enormous growth in the state’s extractive capacity, and indirect commercial taxes supplanted the system of direct agrarian levies established in the early Qing era. Authorities earmarked the majority of these new resources for military spending in eastern China in an effort to amass the sinews of politico-economic power. Together these changes laid the initial foundation for the military-fiscal state in modern China, a transformation that parallels the experience of early modern Europe.

Customizing the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Pollmann
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Past ◽  
Legal Power ◽  
The Status ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Stable Source

Memory in early modern Europe closely related to the knowledge of what was ‘customary’. The term ‘custom’ was used to describe both cultural, often local, habits, and usages that had acquired legal power, and its status derived from its being ancient and its being common knowledge. Custom was both an elite tool to keep the poor in place, and the best strategy for poor people to defend themselves against unwanted changes. In the course of the early modern period the status of custom changed. First, codification of custom rendered it less flexible than it had once been. Secondly, the emergence of new intellectual tools led to more scepticism about the past as a stable source of authority. Finally, as a consequence of contact with non-Europeans, there emerged new ideas on the development of human culture, in which the abandoning of custom came to be seen as a hallmark of civility.

Theresa Earenfight, ed., Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle. Explorations in Medieval Culture 6. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018. 416 pp.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 251-251
Author(s):  
Charlotte A. Stanford
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Europe

This collection of sixteen essays examines the households of royal and aristocratic figures from the ninth through sixteenth centuries in Western Europe. Based on a variety of sources, ranging from economic records to letters, wills, legal charters, and inventories, the studies in this volume showcase the complexity of great households with their large cast of characters. While length restrictions make detailed discussion of individual essays impractical here, the different contributions complement each other along several thematic strands, notably court studies, economic history, and especially gender studies. Nine contributors focus on female households (Megan Welton, Penelope Nash, Linda E. Mitchell, Eileen Kim, Sally Fisher, Caroline Dunn, Manuela Santos Silva, Zita Rohr, and Theresa Earenfight), five on primarily male households (David McDermott, Alexander Brondarbit, Alana Lord, Audrey M. Thorstad, and Hélder Carvalhal), and one deals equally with the households of a king and queen (Isabel de Pina Baleiras). Many of the contributors focus on English material, although several essays give insights on France, Germany, Italy and the Iberian Peninsula.

Religion and International Security

2018 ◽  
pp. 273-287
Author(s):  
Daniel Philpott
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
International Security ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Past ◽  
Religious Actors ◽  
Religious Terrorism

This chapter on religion and international security begins by arguing that religion was largely absent from International Relations (IR) theory since its modern founding in early modern Europe, mirroring its lack of influence on actual IR during the same period. Over the past four decades, though, religion has resurged in its global political influence, while, over the past decade-and-a-half, a literature on religion and IR has appeared and developed. The chapter then looks at this literature, particularly at scholarship that argues for and against religion’s inherently violent nature; that sees religion as a force for both peace and violence; that describes and tracks trends in religious war and religious terrorism; that argues for and against Islam’s proneness to violence; and that seeks to theorize the varying political stances of religious actors. The chapter closes with an analysis of a normative debate on religious freedom.

Some Reflections on the Pre-Industrial City

Urban History ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 13-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Burke
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
The Social ◽  
Tribal Societies ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Europe ◽  
The City

In the last few years, a new word has gained popularity among historians: ‘pre-industrial’. Specialists in the social and economic history of Europe before 1800 have become increasingly aware that the object of their studies is simply one case among others of what sociologists call ‘traditional society’, and that it is easier to understand traditional or pre-industrial Europe if it is compared and contrasted with other societies of this type. Thus Keith Thomas and Alan Macfarlane have illuminated English witchcraft by making comparisons with witchcraft in African tribal societies, while Frédéric Mauro and Witold Kula, among others, have compared the economies of early modern Europe with those of the developing countries today. Even Richard Cobb, no great friend to the social sciences, has recorded that he came to understand eighteenth-century Paris better after visiting contemporary Calcutta. In fact, the city is an obvious and splendidly tangible unit of comparison, and it is not surprising that the term ‘pre-industrial city’ is passing into general use.

Cross-Jurisdictional Trade and Contract Enforcement in Qing China

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maura Dykstra
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
Contract Enforcement ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
History Of ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Enforcement Mechanisms

AbstractThis article argues that claims about the different economic trajectories of early modern Europe and late imperial China have incorrectly focused on the importance of formal contract enforcement mechanisms. As a first step toward more productive conversations about the history of economic development across world regions, this article provides a look at the factors in the development of the late imperial Chinese economy that led to the emergence of contract enforcement mechanisms not based on codified contract law. Several case studies from the Qing dynasty Chongqing archives are presented to illustrate how the mechanisms of contract enforcement operated.

Human Progress — And Collapse?

2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 441-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang E. Kasper
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structural Flexibility ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Disintegration ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Institutions

Against the human experience of long-term stagnation and misery, the record of growing prosperity over the past two centuries, and in particular the last fifty years, is astounding. Economic growth owes much to the mobilisation of resources and structural flexibility, but this depends on the ‘software of economic development’ – institutions, which change slowly. Now, old fears and growth-impeding policies are being justified on environmental grounds. One example is Jared Diamond's recent book ‘Collapse’, which discusses the possibility of a swift descent of the world into social disintegration. To anyone familiar with long-term economic history and the theory of growth, the book is pure millennial pessimism. It could become self-fulfilling if environmentalist doomsayers win the political argument with the doers — the engineers, entrepreneurs and economists.

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