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Empire of Silver: A New Monetary History of China

By (author) Jin Xu, Translated by Stacy Mosher

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normal price: R 961.95

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A thousand-year history of how Chinaâ€™s obsession with silver influenced the countryâ€™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 â€œwhite metalâ€ held China back from financial modernization. First used as currency during the Song dynasty in around 900 CE, silver gradually became central to Chinaâ€™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 â€œweighing currency,â€ for which ingots had to be constantly examined for weight and purityâ€”an unwieldy practice that lasted for centuries. Jin Xu argues that even as Chinaâ€™s interest in silver spurred new avenues of trade and helped increase the countryâ€™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.