The book Southwest China in Regional and Global Perspectives (c. 1600-1911) is dedicated to important issues in society, trade, and local policy in the southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan during the late phase of the Qing period. It combines the methods of various disciplines to bring more light into the neglected history of a region that witnessed a faster population growth than any other region in China during that age. The contributions to the volume analyse conflicts and arrangements in immigrant societies, problems of environmental change, the economic significance of copper as the most important âexportâ product, topographical and legal obstacles in trade and transport, specific problems in inter-regional trade, and the roots of modern transnational enterprise.
CAO Jin, (Ph.D. 2012) is a post-doctoral researcher in the field of Chinese studies at Tübingen University, Germany, and Peking University. Her scholarship focuses on questions of social and economic history as well as on the history of science and technology in late Imperial China.
Ulrich Theobald, (Ph.D. 2009) is Senior Lecturer for Chinese Studies at Tübingen University. He has published on military labour, war finance and logistics, monetary history, and border peoples. He currently works on changes in the appointment of local officials in 19th-century China.
Contents PrefaceList of FiguresList of MapsList of TablesNotes on Contributors
Part 1: Space and Setting
1 Southwest China: Local Conditions and Economic Trajectories âUlrich Theobald 2 Newcomers in the Eighteenth-Century South-West Frontier: An Introduction to the 1784 Huguang Huiguan Records âFei Huang 3 Borders, Ethnicities, Brotherhoods, Provinces: Neglected Aspects of Qing Mining History âJohn E. Wills, Jr. (â ) 4 Fuel for the Smelters: Copper Mining and Deforestation in Northeastern Yunnan during the High Qing, 1700 to 1850 âNanny Kim
Part 2: Metal and Money
5 Legal and Illegal Copper Markets in Eighteenth-Century Hankou âRoger Greatrex 6 The Copper Market of Hankou and the Illegal Trade of Yunnan Copper in the Mid-Qing Period âYang Yuda 7 The Chinese Way of Minting: Comparative Perspectives on Coin Production before Mechanisation âCao Jin
Part 3: Trade and Transport
8 Numeric Communication in Intercontinental Trade and Monetary Matters: Coins, Weights and Measures in China and East-Asia in Merchantsâ Pocketbooks and Commercial Guides (16thâ19th Centuries) âHarald Witthöft 9 The Story of the Mayangzi: Shipping and Technological Change in Qing China âNanny Kim 10 The Illegal Trade in Saltpetre in Southern China in the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries âRoger Greatrex 11 Sichuan as a Pivot: Provincial Politics and Gentry Power in Late Qing Railway Projects in Southwestern China âElisabeth Kaske 12 Yunnanese Transnational Business Firms in the Early Twentieth Century: Xizhouâs Yongchangxiang as a Case Study âC. Pat GierschIndex