Format:
1 Online-Ressource (xiv, 233 Seiten)
ISBN:
9780691253701
,
0691253706
Content:
"In 1644, after close to three centuries of relative stability and prosperity, the Ming dynasty collapsed. Many historians attribute its demise to the Manchu invasion of China, but the truth is far more profound. The Price of Collapse provides an entirely new approach to the economic and social history of China, exploring how global climate crisis spelled the end of Ming rule. The mid-seventeenth century witnessed the deadliest phase of the Little Ice Age, when temperatures and rainfall plunged and world economies buckled. Timothy Brook draws on the history of grain prices to paint a gripping portrait of the final tumultuous years of a once-great dynasty. He explores how global trade networks that increasingly moved silver into China may have affected prices and describes the daily struggle to survive amid grain shortages and famine. By the early 1640s, as the subjects of the Ming found themselves caught in a deadly combination of cold and drought that defied all attempts to stave off disaster, the Ming price regime collapsed, and with it the Ming political regime. The Price of Collapse reconstructs the experience of ordinary people under the immense pressure of unaffordable prices as their country slid from prosperity to calamity and shows how the market mediated the relationship between an empire and the climate that turned against it." --
Note:
Description based upon print version of record
,
Cover -- Contents -- List of Tables and Figures -- Preface. My Brief Life as a Price Historian -- 1. The Tale of Chen Qide -- 2. Halcyon Days? The Wanli Price Regime -- 3. Silver, Prices, and Maritime Trade -- 4. The Famine Price of Grain -- 5. The Chongzhen Price Surge -- Afterword: Climate and History -- Appendix A. Units of Measurement -- Appendix B. Reign Eras of the Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644 -- Appendix C. Tables for Reference -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780691253695
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe Brook, Timothy, 1951 - The price of collapse Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2023 ISBN 0691250405
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780691250403
Language:
English
Keywords:
China
;
Mingdynastie
;
Kleine Eiszeit
;
Klimaänderung
;
Asien
Author information:
Brook, Timothy 1951-
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