From Local History to Cultural History Reflections on Some Recent Publications

Review Article

FROM LOCAL HISTORY TO CULTURAL HISTORY REFLECTIONS ON SOME RECENT PUBLICATIONS

HARRIETT. ZURNDORFER

Paul J. Smith, Taxing Heaven's Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destruction of the Sichuan Tea Industry 1074-1224 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1991). xiii, 489 pp. $32.00. Hugh R. Clark, Community, Trade and Networks: Southern Fujian Province from the Third to the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1991). xii, 266 pp. $65.00. Hans Ulrich Vogel, Untersuchungen itber die Saltzgeschichte von Si chuan (311 v. Chr.-1911); Strukturen des Monopols und der Pro duktion [Researches on the History of Salt in Sichuan (311 B.C.- 1911); Structures of the Monopoly and of Production] (Stuttgart: Miinchener Ostasiatische studien, 1990). 361 pp. DM 90 (paper). David M. Farquhar, The Government of China under Mongolian Rule: A Reference Guide (Stuttgart: Miinchener Ostasiatische studien, 1990). xviii, 594 pp. DM 120. Carney T. Fisher, The Chosen One: Succession and Adoption in the Court of Ming Shizong (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990). x, 220 pp. $24.95. Fran<;:oise Lauwaert, Recevoir, conserver, transmettre: ['adoption dans l'histoire de la famille chinoise. Aspects reli[Jieux, sociaux et juridiques (Bruxelles: Institut Belge des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, 1991). 228 pp. FB 1500. Benjamin A. Elman, Classicism, Politics and Kinship: The Ch 'ang chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). xxxiv, 409 pp. $45.00. '

During the last 20 years or so, many of the paradigms em ployed in the study of Chinese economic and social history before 1800 have been re-formulated or discarded.1 One may see this change clearly in the terminology applied to the examination of late Ming through mid-Qing history, i.e. circa 1550-1840. As the distinguished professor of Chinese history Albert Feuerwerker noted in a presidential address to the Association for Asian Stu dies not long ago, the words employed to represent mid-to-late imperial China have changed dramatically within the span of his own career. 2 The idea that "the Chinese economy and society in the late-Ming and early Qing dynasties were remarkably dynamic" has replaced an earlier assumption that "the economy was stag nant and backward," and the society feudal [emphasis added], is well-known. Like other Chinese historians, Feuerwerker sees the develop ment of the Chinese economy within the context of "specifically Chinese cultural features."3 He sketches its history in a series of stages which featured several forms of economic growth, and the period from the Tang-Song to the 19th century as a time of "ab solute additions to the population and output without sustained per capita increments,"4 or in his terms, 'a period of extensive growth' (in contrast to 'modern growth', or 'intensive growth'). In Feuerwerker's estimation late imperial China never surpassed the economic performance of the Song period, and it was the

1 For an introduction to the secondary literature, see Harriet T. Zurndorfer, "A Guide to the 'New' Chinese History: Recent Publications concerning Chinese Social and Economic Development before 1800," International Review of Social History, 33 (1988): 148-201. 2 Albert Feuerwerker, "Presidential Address: Questions about China's Early Modern Economic History that I Wish I Could Answer," journal of Asian Studies [hereafter,JAS], 51.4 (1992):757-769. Reference here is to pp. 757-758. Compare Timothy Brook, "Capitalism, Modern History, and the Chinese Premodern," in Immanuel Wallerstein, Gregory Blue, Timothy Brook, and R. Bin Wong, eds., China and Capitalism: European Genealogies and Sinological Knowledge (Cambridge: forthcoming). 3 Compare Madeline Zelin, "The Structure of the Chinese Economy during the Qing Period: Some Thoughts on the 150th Anniversary of the Opium War," in Kenneth Lieberthal, Joyce Kallgren, Roderick MacFarquhar, and Frederic Wakeman, Jr., eds., Perspectives on Modern China: Four Anniversaries (Armonk, N.Y., 1991), pp. 31-67. She summarizes that "by the early 1800s the Chinese economy was one in which a highly fragmented agrarian sector, based on small-scale farm management by tenants and owner-cultivators, was supported by a large, bottom heavy, and extremely lively network of rural periodic markets and market towns." (p.31). 4 Feuerwerker, "Presidential Address," p. 766.