Empire of Silver: A New Monetary History of China (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780300250046)

A thousand-year history of how China's obsession with silver influenced the country's financial well-being, global standing, and political stability

"A wonderful book for understanding one thousand years of Chinese monetary history."--Debin Ma, Hitotsubashi University

This revelatory account of the ways in which silver shaped Chinese history shows how an obsession with "white metal" held China back from financial modernization. First used as currency during the Song dynasty in around 900 CE, silver gradually became central to China's economic framework and was officially monetized in the middle of the Ming dynasty during the sixteenth century. However, due to the early adoption of paper money in China, silver was not formed into coins but became a cumbersome "weighing currency," for which ingots had to be constantly examined for weight and purity--an unwieldy practice that lasted for centuries. Jin Xu argues that even as China's interest in silver spurred new avenues of trade and helped increase the country's global economic footprint, in the long run silver played a key role in the struggles and entanglements that led to the decline of the Chinese empire.

Author: Jin Xu
ISBN-10: 0300250045
ISBN-13: 9780300250046
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 02/23/2021
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.46lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.50w x 1.20d