Sugar and society in China : peasants, technology, and the world market / Sucheta Mazumdar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mazumdar, Sucheta, 1948-

Series:

Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series ; 45.

Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series ; 45

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sugar trade--China--History.

Sugar trade.

History.

China--Economic conditions.

China.

Economic conditions.

China--Social conditions.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

xx, 657 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Asia Center : Distributed by Harvard University Press, 1998.

Summary:

In this wide-ranging study, Sucheta Mazumdar offers a new answer to the fundamental question of why China, universally acknowledged as one of the most developed economies in the world through the mid-eighteenth century, paused in this development process in the nineteenth. Focusing on cane-sugar production, domestic and international trade, technology, and the history of consumption for over a thousand years as a means of framing the larger questions, the author shows that the economy of late imperial China was not stagnant, nor was the state suppressing trade; indeed, China was integrated into the world market well before the Opium War. But clearly the trajectory of development did not transform the social organization of production or set in motion sustained economic growth.

Notes:

Map on lining papers.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [563]-623) and index.

ISBN:

067485408X

OCLC:

38281638