Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000-1700 First Edition

Provided plenty of detailed monetary history for the Ming Dynasty and some crucial data about the Qing Dynasty. This allowed me to connect globalization's effect on China and how China - whether willingly or unwillingly - brought nations to its doorstep through the mutual benefit of trade. This book also analyzes Spain's influence on Chinese money matters, especially as Spain shipped silver from the Americas on their Manila galleons. Seriously, thank you for selling this book; it gave me an A on my paper.

This monograph is an extensive yet thorough study of Chinese monetary thought and policy, a social and cultural history of money from early modern China to late imperial China, and an examination of international trade through the lens of Chinese monetary system. Through an integrated analysis of Chinese monetary system and international trade, Von Glahn convincingly reveals the inadequacy of both `early modern paradigm' that depicts late imperial Chinese economy through the lens of the capitalist development in Europe and the `seventeenth-century crisis' hypothesis that emphasizes the vulnerability of Chinese economy under the dominance of global trade and bullion flows (p3-5 &p256-7).To gain access to the real story of Chinese monetary history and to understand the social meaning of money, one must first understand the Chinese thought on money that involved the dialectic interplay of theoretical cartalism that viewed money as the state's creation and practical metalism that viewed money as grounded in its metallic value. In addition to the Chinese monetary thought, one also needs to understand the functions of money as 1) means of exchange; 2) measure of value; 3) store of value; and the Chugokushi kenkyukai group's discovery of money as 4) a means of state payments since the Northern Song. Furthermore, the typology of money also matters: viewing money as 1) commodity money; 2) fiat money; and 3) nominal money will greatly affect our understanding of the workings of Chinese monetary system (p.19). Most importantly, it is imperative to understand that, in late imperial Chinese economy, different money forms (coin, uncoined silver, paper money) fulfilled different functions and typologies of money to suit specific needs of various Chinese markets.The rise of the silver economy is one good example to understand the entanglement of monetary thought, monetary policy, as well as the social meanings of money in the evolution of Chinese monetary system. During Wang Anshi (1021-86)'s reform, his new laws dragged farmers into market exchange by demanding money instead of grains as the fulfillment of the state tax payment (49-50). As such, contrary to the contemporary understanding of money as the mediation between the individual and the market, money as a state instrument in defining its relationship with its subjects drove up the need for money, which subsequently incited the need for paper money and silver money when copper-mining could not keep up with the market demand. Yuan's monetary policy that favored silver and paper money further increased the need for silver (p. 56). It was during the Mongol rule that silver replaced coin as both a storage and a measure of value. The failure of Ming monetary policy (both paper money and coin) further strengthened the need for silver over coin (p.114). As a result, the rise of silver economy were neither a boom to Chinese economy as the `early modern paradigm' would have predicted nor a result of massive influx of Spanish and Japanese silver during the `silver century' (1550-1650). Rather, a more plausible story is that "the rise of the silver economy was a precondition of the influx of foreign silver, which was triggered by the conjuncture of escalating demand in China and falling costs of production in the silver-mining regions of the world"(p.257). Though it is neither possible to summarize all Von Glahn's important arguments in such a short review nor likely to fully appreciate the impact and ingenuity of his research in one reading, the most important message readers can take home is the following: money meant different things in different time periods of China at different regions. Thus, to make meaning comparisons with European economy and to fully appreciate Chinese economy in its own terms, one must heed attention to Chinese monetary thought, the internal logic of Chinese monetary system, the complexity of Chinese markets, as well as the relation between regional economic autonomy and the various degree of integratedness of regional economy with the global system through trade.

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