Economic history is the study of history using methodological tools from economics or with a special attention to economic phenomena. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods,statistical methods and the application of economic theory to historical situations and institutions. The field can encompass a wide variety of topics,including equality,finance,technology,labour,and business. It emphasizes historicizing the economy itself,analyzing it as a dynamic entity and attempting to provide insights into the way it is structured and conceived.
The Self-Strengthening Movement,also known as the Westernization or Western Affairs Movement,was a period of radical institutional reforms initiated in China during the late Qing dynasty following the military disasters of the Opium Wars.
Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers. They migrated out of Africa during the Last Glacial Period and had populated most of the Earth by the time the Ice Age ended 12,000 years ago.
John King Fairbank was an American historian of China and United States–China relations. He taught at Harvard University from 1936 until his retirement in 1977. He is credited with building the field of Sinology in the United States after World War II with his organizational ability,his mentorship of students,support of fellow scholars,and formulation of basic concepts to be tested.
The European Miracle:Environments,Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia is a book written by Eric Jones in 1981 to refer to the sudden rise of Europe during the Late Middle Ages. Ahead of the Islamic and Chinese civilizations,Europe steadily rose since the early modern period to a complete domination of world trade and politics that remained unchallenged until the early 20th century.
Comparative history is the comparison of different societies which existed during the same time period or shared similar cultural conditions.
The Great Divergence or European miracle is the socioeconomic shift in which the Western world overcame pre-modern growth constraints and emerged during the 19th century as the most powerful and wealthy world civilizations,eclipsing previously dominant or comparable civilizations from the Middle East and Asia such as Qing China,Mughal India,the Ottoman Empire,Safavid Iran,and Tokugawa Japan,among others.
East Asia is a region of Asia,which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China,Japan,Mongolia,North Korea,South Korea,and Taiwan. Hong Kong and Macau,two coastal cities located in the south of China,are autonomous regions under Chinese sovereignty. The economies of Japan,South Korea,China,Taiwan,Hong Kong,and Macau are some of the world's largest and most prosperous economies. East Asia borders Siberia and the Russian Far East to the north,Southeast Asia to the south,South Asia to the southwest,and Central Asia to the west. To the east is the Pacific Ocean and to the southeast is Micronesia.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam is a historian of the early modern period. He is the author of several books and publications. He holds the Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences at UCLA which he joined in 2004.
The economic history of China covers thousands of years and the region has undergone alternating cycles of prosperity and decline. China,for the last two millennia,was one of the world's largest and most advanced economies. Economic historians usually divide China's history into three periods:the pre-imperial era before the rise of the Qin;the early imperial era from the Qin to the rise of the Song;and the late imperial era,from the Song to the fall of the Qing.
Philip A. Kuhn was an American historian of China and the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.
During the Manchu–led Qing dynasty,the economy was significantly developed and markets continued to expand especially in the High Qing era,and imperial China experienced a second commercial revolution in the economic history of China from the mid-16th century to the end of the 18th century. But akin to the other major non-European powers around the world at that time like the Islamic gunpowder empires and Tokugawa Japan,such an economy development did not keep pace with the economies of European countries in the Industrial Revolution occurring by the early 19th century,which resulted in a dramatic change described by the 19th-century Qing official Li Hongzhang as "the biggest change in more than three thousand years" (三千年未有之大變局).
The sprouts of capitalism,seeds of capitalism or capitalist sprouts are features of the economy of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties that mainland Chinese historians have seen as resembling developments in pre-industrial Europe,and as precursors of a hypothetical indigenous development of industrial capitalism. Korean nationalist historiography has also adopted the idea. In China the sprouts theory was denounced during the Cultural Revolution,but saw renewed interest after the economy began to grow rapidly in the 1980s.
The World History Association Bentley Book Prize is an annual award given by the World History Association. It was first awarded in 1999 as the World History Association Book Prize;the name was changed in 2012 to honor Jerry H. Bentley. The prize is $500.
Albert Feuerwerker was a historian of modern China specializing in economic history and long time member of the University of Michigan faculty. He was the president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1991.
Barak Kushner is an American historian,orientalist,and translator. He is a Professor of East Asian History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at Corpus Christi College,Cambridge. He has written and edited numerous books and articles and has spoken on a range of East Asian history topics including Japanese imperial propaganda,the Japanese empire in East Asia,Japanese war crimes,and justice in East Asia. He has also written on other subjects,ranging from Godzilla and Japanese humor to ramen and the Chinese influence on early twentieth century notions of modern cuisine in Japan. Kushner is married to Mami Mizutori Assistant Secretary-General and Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction,United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR). He speaks and reads Chinese,English,French,Japanese.
This bibliography covers the English language scholarship of major studies in Chinese history.
Liu Kwang-ching,who sometimes published under the name K.C. Liu,was a Chinese-born American historian of China. He taught at University of California-Davis from 1963 until his retirement in 1993. He is best known for his scholarship in late-Qing history,astute bibliographical work,and edited volumes,including co-editing Cambridge History of China volumes.
The Great Divergence:China,Europe,and the Making of the Modern World Economy is a 2000 nonfiction book by Kenneth Pomeranz,published by Princeton University Press,on the subject of Great Divergence in the world history.
The California School of economic history is a label that as been applied to a particular approach to the economic history of the early modern world. The chief elements of their analysis is that over the period from 1400 to 1800 the most advanced economies of Eurasia formed a world of surprising resemblances. They argue that the Great Divergence,a divergence between the West and the Rest only really began with industrialisation in the 19th century. This Great Divergence should be interpreted as a more contingent and more recent phenomenon than the proponents of the Great Divergence have argued for. The basic cause of the divergence being framed in terms of the availability of the resources in the context of global interconnections and comparisons. The most noted proponents of the approach include:Kenneth Pomeranz,Roy Bin Wong,Jack Goldstone,James Z. Lee,Feng Wang,Dennis Flynn,Robert Marks,Andre Gunder Frank and Jack Goody and John Hobson. The name of the approach is due to most of these scholars working at Californian universities. In comparing the Rest with the West,Vries critically reviewing their approach notes some differences in the emphasis of different scholars. Some argue that Europe was more backward,some that Asia was more advanced,some that Europe climbed on top of Asia via various forms of exploitation and some that the West and the Rest were really not that different. This later he refers to as the Eurasian similarity-thesis. Of importance in their analysis,according to Jack Goldstone,is the continuing high productivity of both agricultural and manufacturing technology in India and China with them remaining world-dominant powers up to the end of the 17th Century. This,and the relatively high living standards,and competitive nature of their merchants,who were at least the equal of European trading companies in terms of power until the end of the 17th century. Pomeranz,who is perhaps the dominant figure in the approach,emphasises the access to natural resources,rather than the alleged specialness of European capitalism,with its cultures of enlightenment and bourgeois virtues. Key readings from the California school include:
