Taxation And Governmental Finance In Sixteenth Century Ming China

Originally published in 1974, this is a detailed study of the financial administration of the Chinese government during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), with particular attention to the sixteenth century, a topic about which very little has been published either in Chinese or any Western language. Professor Huang has worked through an enormous quantity and variety of source material - in particular the 133 substantial volumes of the Ming Veritable Records - and has compared the documents on financial matters with the entries in local gazetteers. The complicated workings of government finance present great difficulties to all specialists in Chinese financial and administrative history and in different branches of local Chinese history from the fifteenth century onwards. Professor Huang's study will provide all such researchers with an authoritative work of reference.

In The Rise and Fall of a Public Debt Market in 16th-Century China, Wing-kin Puk explains the fate of Capitalism in late imperial China through the strange journey of a piece of paper: the Ming salt certificate.

Thomas G. Nimick, a leading authority on Ming government, draws on Chinese sources to provide the most detailed account of local Ming government available in English. Rational bureaucratic administration is one of China's greatest contributions to the art of governance. After centuries of evolution, the Chinese civil service system reached new heights during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Local Administration in Ming China traces the origins and evolution of the lowest level of administrative offices over the course of the dynasty. It starts with the Ming founder's experiments with using members of the local elite to collect taxes and goes on to the increased reliance on magistrates and prefects sent out from the center. The story concludes with the fiscal problems at the end of the dynasty. This work includes the following contents: Introduction, Local Government in Early Ming, Changes in Local Government int he Fifteenth Century, From Specially Selected Officials to Province and Magistrate, Fiscal Pressures and Operational Changes, Continued Possibility of Structural Changes and the Climax of Fiscal Troubles, Conclusion, and Annotated Bibliography

This book is a study of the social and cultural change in Ming China's lower Yangzi delta region from about 1500 to 1644. It takes three social groups—literati, scholarofficials and merchants—as the framework for discussing the political, socioeconomic and cultural forces that coalesced and reinforced one another to influence and facilitate the region’s change. A still wider perspective reveals how the region’s political ties with the state and commercial links with external markets impacted the region for better and for worse. The book also discusses the literati's reflection and discourse, which their participation in the change generated, on the issues of morality, money, politics and disorder. The reader, when brought into the richly textured social and cultural life of Ming China's heartland, will foster an appreciation of what it was like for the region and its people to live in an age of commercial and cultural vigor, which then descended into distress and despair. For scholars and for others conversant with Chinese history, and Ming history in particular, the extensive use of literati sources and the references to contemporary scholarship will be of interest.

Leading economic historians present a groundbreaking series of country case studies exploring the formation of fiscal states in Eurasia.

Gathered here are research papers, speeches, and lecture notes, a multifaceted survey of Chinese history embracing a wide range of subjects, from historical antecedents, relevant Western experience, and recent revelations to locus classicus and statistics. All lead to Huang's grand synthesis: That the one-and-a-half-century-long Chinese revolution is nearing fulfillment as Chinese civilization merges with Western history. While not everyone will agree with Ray Huang, no one who is seriously concerned with these issues can afford to ignore the provocative and erudite challenge of his vision.

This book is a study of the dual capital system of Ming dynasty China (1368-1644), with a focus on the administrative functions of the auxiliary Southern Capital, Nanjing. It argues that the immense geographical expanse of the Chinese empire and the poor communication infrastructure of pre-modern times necessitated the establishment of an additional capital administration for effective control of the Ming realm. The existence of the Southern Capital, which has been dismissed by scholars as redundant and insignificant, was, the author argues, justified by its ability to assist the primary Northern Capital better control the southern part of the imperial land. The practice of maintaining auxiliary capitals, where the bureaucratic structures of the primary capital were replicated in varying degrees, was a unique and valuable approach to effecting bureaucratic control over vast territory in pre-modern conditions. Nanjing translates into English as "Southern Capital" and Beijing as "Northern Capital".