IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cge/wacage/164.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Discovering Chinese Economic History from Footnotes: the Living Tale of a Private Merchant Archive (1800-1850)

Author

Listed:
  • Ma, Debin

    (London School of Economics)

  • Yuan, Weipeng

    (Chinese Academy of Social Science, Beijing)

Abstract

This article recounts our unique encounter –through the last seven years of our research - with the Tong Taisheng (统泰升) merchant account books in the Ninjing county of Northern China in 1800-1850. By tracing the personal history of the original owner or donor, we address a large historiographical and epistemological issue behind the current Great Divergence debate on why Industrial Revolution occurred in England but not in China. Our article showcases how the development of political ideology and academic discipline in the modern era impacts our understanding of historical statistics and realities of the early modern era, a critical issue largely neglected in the current Great Divergence debate.

Suggested Citation

  • Ma, Debin & Yuan, Weipeng, 2013. "Discovering Chinese Economic History from Footnotes: the Living Tale of a Private Merchant Archive (1800-1850)," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 164, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    • Handle: RePEc:cge:wacage:164
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/manage/publications/164-2013_debin_ma.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert C. Allen & Jean-Pascal Bassino & Debin Ma & Christine Moll-Murata & Jan Luiten Van Zanden, 2011. "Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738–1925: in comparison with Europe, Japan, and India," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64, pages 8-38, February.
    2. Ma, Debin, 2008. "Economic growth in the Lower Yangzi region of China in 1911–1937: a quantitative and historical analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 32398, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Chen, Chau-nan, 1975. "Flexible Bimetallic Exchange Rates in China, 1650-1850: A Historical Example of Optimum Currency Areas," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 7(3), pages 359-376, August.
    4. Ho, Jun Seong & Lewis, James B. & Han-Rog, Kang, 2008. "Korean Expansion and Decline from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century: A View Suggested by Adam Smith," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(1), pages 244-282, March.
    5. Stephen Broadberry & Bishnupriya Gupta, 2006. "The early modern great divergence: wages, prices and economic development in Europe and Asia, 1500–1800," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 59(1), pages 2-31, February.
    6. Allen, Robert C., 2001. "The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 411-447, October.
    7. Ma, Debin, 2008. "Economic Growth in the Lower Yangzi Region of China in 1911–1937: A Quantitative and Historical Analysis," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(2), pages 355-392, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert C. Allen & Jean-Pascal Bassino & Debin Ma & Christine Moll-Murata & Jan Luiten Van Zanden, 2011. "Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738–1925: in comparison with Europe, Japan, and India," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64, pages 8-38, February.
    2. Peter M. Solar, 2021. "China, Europe, and the Great Divergence: Further Concerns about the Historical GDP Estimates for China," Working Papers 0217, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    3. MA, Ye & JONG, Herman de, 2016. "Unfolding the Turbulent Century: A Reconstruction of China's Economic Development, 1840-1912," Discussion paper series HIAS-E-29, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    4. Bassino, Jean-Pascal & Broadberry, Stephen & Fukao, Kyoji & Gupta, Bishnupriya & Takashima, Masanori, 2019. "Japan and the great divergence, 730–1874," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 1-22.
    5. Broadberry Stephen, 2012. "Recent Developments in the Theory of Very Long Run Growth: A Historical Appraisal," Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook, De Gruyter, vol. 53(1), pages 277-306, May.
    6. Alicia Gómez-Tello & Alfonso Díez-Minguela & Julio Martinez-Galarraga & Daniel A. Tirado, 2019. "Regional prices in early twentieth-century Spain: a country-product-dummy approach," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 13(2), pages 245-276, May.
    7. Ken Tabata, 2013. "The Expansion of the Commercial Sector and the Child Quantity-Quality Transition in a Malthusian World," Discussion Paper Series 105, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University, revised May 2013.
    8. Sophia Du Plessis & Stan Du Plessis, 2012. "Happy in the Service of the Company: The Purchasing Power of VOC Salaries at the Cape in the 18th Century," Economic History of Developing Regions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(1), pages 125-149.
    9. Pim de Zwart & Jan Lucassen, 2020. "Poverty or prosperity in northern India? New evidence on real wages, 1590s–1870s," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 73(3), pages 644-667, August.
    10. Allen, Robert C., 2014. "American Exceptionalism as a Problem in Global History," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(2), pages 309-350, June.
    11. Robert C. Allen, 2019. "Real wages once more: a response to Judy Stephenson," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 72(2), pages 738-754, May.
    12. Robert Allen & Ekaterina Khaustova, 2017. "Russian Real Wages Before and After 1917: in Global Perspective," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _158, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    13. James Kai‐Sing Kung & Nansheng Bai & Yiu‐Fai Lee, 2011. "Human capital, migration, and a ‘vent’ for surplus rural labour in 1930s China: the case of the Lower Yangzi," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64(s1), pages 117-141, February.
    14. Peter H. Lindert, 2016. "Purchasing Power Disparity before 1914," NBER Working Papers 22896, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Boško Mijatović & Branko Milanović, 2021. "The real urban wage in an agricultural economy without landless farmers: Serbia, 1862–1910," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 74(2), pages 424-448, May.
    16. Ewout Frankema & Marlous van Waijenburg, 2011. "African Real Wages in Asian Perspective, 1880-1940," Working Papers 0002, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    17. Pim de Zwart, 2012. "Population, labour and living standards in early modern Ceylon: An empirical contribution to the divergence debate," The Indian Economic & Social History Review, , vol. 49(3), pages 365-398, September.
    18. Luis Felipe Zegarra, 2020. "Living Costs and Real Wages in Nineteenth Century Lima: Levels and International Comparisons," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(2), pages 186-219, July.
    19. Ewout Frankema & Marlous van Waijenburg, 2011. "Structural Impediments to African Growth? New Evidence from Real Wages in British Africa, 1880-1965," Working Papers 0024, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    20. Mario García-Zúñiga & Ernesto López-Losa, 2019. "Building Workers in Madrid (1737-1805). New Wage Series and Working Lives," Working Papers 0152, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Industrial Revolution;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cge:wacage:164. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jane Snape (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dewaruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.