State or Merchant? Political Economy and Political Process in 1740s China

DUNSTAN, Helen

ISBN 10: 0674022629 / ISBN 13: 9780674022621

Published by Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, Mass., 2006

About this Item

Harvard East Asian Monographs 273. xv, 523, [13] p. 24 cm. Black cloth in mylar-covered dustjacket. Ex library with labels on spine and rear endpapers, ink stamps on text block edges, front pastedown, and title. Jacket taped to book. Jacket spine sunned.

Seller Inventory # 155925

Bibliographic Details

• Title: State or Merchant? Political Economy and Political Process in 1740s China
• Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, Mass.
• Publication Date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0674022629
• ISBN 13: 9780674022621
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: ex library-very good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • History

About this title

Synopsis

What did it mean to run a large, commercialized agrarian polity according to the best Confucian principles?

This book is intended as a contribution to both intellectual and political history. It is partly a study of how Confucian-trained officials thought about the grain trade and the state's role in it, particularly the "ever-normal granaries," the stockpiles of grain maintained by every county government as protection against shortages and high prices. The author investigates the scope and limits of belief in market forces among those critical of government intervention, establishing that rudimentary economic arguments for state withdrawal from the grain trade were available by 1750. She then explores challenges, from within the ruling apparatus, to the state's claim that its own stockpiling served the public interest, as well as the factors behind decisions in the mid- and late 1740s to suspend or decrease state purchases of grain.

As a study of Confucian government in action, this book describes a mode of public policy discussion far less dominated by the Confucian scriptures than one might expect. As a contribution to intellectual history, the work offers a detailed view of members of an ostensibly Confucian government pursuing divergent agendas around the question of "state or merchant?"

About the Author

Helen Dunstan is Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney.