The articles of this volume present the majority of papers presented on the First International Workshop of the research group "Monies, Markets and Finance in China and East Asia" held at Heidelberg 12-16 October 2006. Contributions explore the production and circulation of currencies in Qing China, Tokugawa Japan and the Ryukyu kingdom, the function of ad hoc administrative structures and the sale of offices in the Qing period, with research on Qing demography, links between global silver flows and local events, and European conceptions of the value of monetary metals providing comparative perspective.

Mining, Monies, and Culture in Early Modern Societies explores substantial and methodological issues in the early modern history of mining for monetary metals and monies of Japan, China, and Europe. The largest group in the thirteen articles presents empirical research on mining, metallurgy, and metals trade in the context of global trade systems. Another group focuses on the effects of money in government and everyday life. Several articles investigate scroll paintings and material remains as sources for the history of technology, or apply Geographic Information Systems to the analysis of spatial dimensions of mining areas.

This volume documents recent efforts to track the transformation and trajectory of silver during the early modern period, from its origins in ores located on either side of the Atlantic to its use as currency in the financial centres of continental Europe. As a point of comparison, copper mining and its monetary use in the early modern Atlantic World will also be considered. Contributors rely mainly on economic and economic history methodologies, complemented by geographical and cultural history approaches. The use of novel software applications as tools to explain economic-historical episodes is also detailed.

This book is a critical interpretation of a seminal and protracted debate in comparative global economic history. Since its emergence, in now classic publications in economic history between 1997-2000, debate on the divergent economic development that has marked the long-term economic growth of China and Western Europe has generated a vast collection of books and articles, conferences, networks, and new journals as well as intense interest from the media and educated public. O’Brien provides an historiographical survey and critique of Western views on the long-run economic development of the Imperial Economy of China – a field of commentary that stretches back to the Enlightenment. The book’s structure and core argument is concentrated upon an elaboration of, and critical engagement with, the major themes of recent academic debate on the “Great Divergence” and it will be of enormous interest to academics and students of economic history, political economy, the economics of growth and development, state formation, statistical measurements, environmental history, and the histories of science and globalization.

This volume tells a story of Welsh industrial history different from the one traditionally dominated by the coal and iron communities of Victorian and Edwardian Wales. Extending the chronological scope from the early eighteenth- to the late twentieth-century, and encompassing a wider range of industries, the contributors combine studies of the internal organisation of workplace and production with outward-facing perspectives of Welsh industry in the context of the global economy. The volume offers important new insights into the companies, the employers, the markets and the money behind some of the key sectors of the Welsh economy – from coal to copper, and from steel to manufacturing – and challenges us to reconsider what we think of as constituting ‘industry’ in Wales.

At the intersection of art and religious history, Susan Naquin’s richly illustrated history presents a fresh method for studying Chinese gods and sacred places as it tells the full story of Mount Tai and the premier female deity of North China.

This book is the first to trace the unique monetary history of the Indian Ocean World. Long-distance trade across the region was facilitated by a highly complex multi-currency system undergirded by shared ideas that transcended ethno-linguistic, religious and class divisions. Currencies also occupied key roles in local spiritual, aesthetic and affective practices. Foregrounding these tensions between the global/universalistic and the local/particularistic, the volume shows how this traditional currency system remained in place until the middle of the twentieth century, and how aspects of the system continue to inform monetary practices throughout the region. With case studies covering China, India, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, East Africa, Zanzibar, Madagascar and Mauritius from the thirteenth to the twenty-first centuries, this volume explores the central role currencies played in economic exchange as well as in establishing communal bonds, defining state power and expressing religious sentiments.