History

State or Merchant: Political Economy and Political Process in 1740s China

This book is a study of how Confucian-trained officials thought about the grain trade and the state’s role in it, particularly the “ever-normal granaries,” the stockpiles of grain maintained by every county government as protection against shortages and high prices, the scope of beliefs in market forces in the 1750s, and the factors behind Chinese state decisions surrounding the purchase and stockpiling of grain.

Localities at the Center: Native Place, Space, and Power in Late Imperial Beijing

This book considers how native-place ties functioned as channels of communication between China’s provinces and the political center; how sojourners to the capital used native-place ties to create solidarity within their communities of fellow provincials and within the class of scholar-officials as a whole; how the state co-opted these ties as a means of maintaining order within the city and controlling the imperial bureaucracy; how native-place ties transformed the urban landscape and social structure of the city; and how these functions were refashioned in the decades of political innovation that closed the Qing period.