China and the Birth of Globalization in the 16th Century

China and the Birth of Globalization in the 16th Century
Author: Dennis O. Flynn
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2024-10-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1040250688

Including 11 essays published over the last 15 years, this volume by Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez concerns the origins and early development of globalization. It opens with their 1995 "Silver Spoon" essay and a theoretical essay published in 2002. Subsequent sections deal with Pacific Ocean exchanges, interconnections between the Spanish, Ottoman, Japanese and Chinese empires, and the necessity of multidisciplinary approaches to global history. The volume follows the evolution of the authors' thinking concerning the central role of China in the global silver trade, as well as interrelations among silver and non-silver markets. Research before 2002 paved the way for development of a coherent 'Birth of Globalization' narrative that portrays economic factors in the context of powerful epidemiological, ecological, demographic, and cultural forces. In the final essay Flynn and Giráldez argue for incorporating the work of all academic disciplines when attempting to understand the history of globalization, advocating an inclusive historical data base which recognizes contextual realities and an inductive process of reasoning.

China and the Birth of Globalization in the 16th Century

China and the Birth of Globalization in the 16th Century
Author: Dennis Owen Flynn
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: China
ISBN: 9780754668589

Including 11 essays published over the last 15 years, this volume by Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giràldez concerns the origins and early development of globalization. It opens with their 1995 Silver Spoon essay and a theoretical essay published in 2002. Subsequent sections deal with Pacific Ocean exchanges, interconnections between the Spanish, Ottoman, Japanese and Chinese empires, and the necessity of multidisciplinary approaches to global history. The volume follows the evolution of the authors' thinking concerning the central role of China in the global silver trade, as well as interrelations among silver and non-silver markets. It concludes with an argument for incorporating the work of all academic disciplines when attempting to understand the history of globalization, advocating an inclusive historical data base which recognizes contextual realities and an inductive process of reasoning.

The Eagle and the Dragon

The Eagle and the Dragon
Author: Serge Gruzinski
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2015-01-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0745681344

In this important new book the renowned historian Serge Gruzinski returns to two episodes in the sixteenth century which mark a decisive stage in global history and show how China and Mexico experienced the expansion of Europe. In the early 1520s, Magellan set sail for Asia by the Western route, Cortes seized Mexico and some Portuguese based in Malacca dreamed of colonizing China. The Aztec Eagle was destroyed but the Chinese Dragon held strong and repelled the invaders - after first seizing their cannon. For the first time, people from three continents encountered one other, confronted one other and their lives became entangled. These events were of great interest to contemporaries and many people at the time grasped the magnitude of what was going on around them. The Iberians succeeded in America and failed in China. The New World became inseparable from the Europeans who were to conquer it, while the Celestial Empire became, for a long time to come, an unattainable goal. Gruzinski explores this encounter between civilizations that were different from one another but that already fascinated contemporaries, and he shows that our world today bears the mark of this distant age. For it was in the sixteenth century that human history began to be played out on a global stage. It was then that connections between different parts of the world began to accelerate, not only between Europe and the Americas but also between Europe and China. This is what is revealed by a global history of the sixteenth century, conceived as another way of reading the Renaissance, less Eurocentric and more in tune with our age.

The Silver Way: China, Spanish America and the birth of globalisation 1565-1815: Penguin Specials

The Silver Way: China, Spanish America and the birth of globalisation 1565-1815: Penguin Specials
Author: Peter Gordon
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
Total Pages: 100
Release: 2017-01-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1760143715

Long before London and New York rose to international prominence, a trading route was discovered between Spanish America and China that ushered in a new era of globalisation. The Ruta de la Plata or ’Silver Way’ catalysed economic and cultural exchange, built the foundations for the first global currency and led to the rise of the first ‘world city’. And yet, for all its importance, the Silver Way is too often neglected in conventional narratives on the birth of globalisation. Gordon and Morales re-establish its fascinating role in economic and cultural history, with direct consequences for how we understand China today.

China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937

China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937
Author: Austin Dean
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2020-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501752413

In the late nineteenth century, as much of the world adopted some variant of the gold standard, China remained the most populous country still using silver. Yet China had no unified national currency; there was not one monetary standard but many. Silver coins circulated alongside chunks of silver and every transaction became an "encounter of wits." China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937 focuses on how officials, policy makers, bankers, merchants, academics, and journalists in China and around the world answered a simple question: how should China change its monetary system? Far from a narrow, technical issue, Chinese monetary reform is a dramatic story full of political revolutions, economic depressions, chance, and contingency. As different governments in China attempted to create a unified monetary standard in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the United States, England, and Japan tried to shape the direction of Chinese monetary reform for their own benefit. Austin Dean argues convincingly that the Silver Era in world history ended owing to the interaction of imperial competition in East Asia and the state-building projects of different governments in China. When the Nationalist government of China went off the silver standard in 1935, it marked a key moment not just in Chinese history but in world history.

Vermeer's Hat

Vermeer's Hat
Author: Timothy Brook
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2010-08-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 159691727X

In this critical darling Vermeer's captivating and enigmatic paintings become windows that reveal how daily life and thought-from Delft to Beijing--were transformed in the 17th century, when the world first became global. A Vermeer painting shows a military officer in a Dutch sitting room, talking to a laughing girl. In another canvas, fruit spills from a blue-and-white porcelain bowl. Familiar images that captivate us with their beauty--but as Timothy Brook shows us, these intimate pictures actually give us a remarkable view of an expanding world. The officer's dashing hat is made of beaver fur from North America, and it was beaver pelts from America that financed the voyages of explorers seeking routes to China-prized for the porcelains so often shown in Dutch paintings of this time, including Vermeer's. In this dazzling history, Timothy Brook uses Vermeer's works, and other contemporary images from Europe, Asia, and the Americas to trace the rapidly growing web of global trade, and the explosive, transforming, and sometimes destructive changes it wrought in the age when globalization really began.

Voyages, Migration, and the Maritime World

Voyages, Migration, and the Maritime World
Author: Clara Ho
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2018-09-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110587688

This is a multi-author volume resulted from an international conference focusing on topics related to our understanding of the role of China in the global history. Apart from introductory chapters exploring methodological issues and providing big pictures of framing China in the world in particular time zones, this volume also covers rich discussions on the following themes from the ancient period to the twentieth century: organized water transport, cultural interactions, navigators, port cities, smuggling activities, customs service, foreign relations, migration, and diasporas. Written by scholars of different generations who are based in diverse regions including Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, the UK and the US, the chapters in this volume either address old questions from new perspectives, or table new topics that were largely ignored in previous scholarship. Some go further to brainstorm possible research directions in the future. This thought-provoking volume will be beneficial to readers who are interested in rethinking China's position in the global historical stage against the backdrop of Post-Orientalism.

China's Development from a Global Perspective

China's Development from a Global Perspective
Author: María Dolores Elizalde
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2017-11-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1527504174

For a long time, the idea of China as a culture and society which was voluntarily secluding itself from the rest of the world was dominant. But, in reality, China has always been part of the world, just as the world has always sought to penetrate China. The relationship between China and the world was, in the past, sometimes smooth, and at other times it was difficult, but nevertheless the bond remained alive. This collection presents an analysis of China from a global perspective within a broad temporal and spatial spectrum. It reveals the early relations established between the Roman Empire and China, the dynamics developed with the countries of the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and Japan, and the gradual path of Europeans and Americans towards China. The book reviews the development of diplomatic relations, the signing of agreements and alliances, and the rise and resolution of conflicts. It also analyses the forging of economic relations, the establishment of commercial exchanges and the creation of companies, professional bodies and institutions of collaboration.

Global History with Chinese Characteristics

Global History with Chinese Characteristics
Author: Manuel Perez-Garcia
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-11-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9811578656

This open access book considers a pivotal era in Chinese history from a global perspective. This book’s insight into Chinese and international history offers timely and challenging perspectives on initiatives like “Chinese characteristics”, “The New Silk Road” and “One Belt, One Road” in broad historical context. Global History with Chinese Characteristics analyses the feeble state capacity of Qing China questioning the so-called “High Qing” (shèng qīng 盛清) era’s economic prosperity as the political system was set into a “power paradox” or “supremacy dilemma”. This is a new thesis introduced by the author demonstrating that interventionist states entail weak governance. Macao and Marseille as a new case study aims to compare Mediterranean and South China markets to provide new insights into both modern eras’ rising trade networks, non-official institutions and interventionist impulses of autocratic states such as China’s Qing and Spain’s Bourbon empires.

The Chinese Impact upon English Renaissance Literature

The Chinese Impact upon English Renaissance Literature
Author: Mingjun Lu
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2016-03-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317038509

The Chinese Impact upon English Renaissance Literature examines how English writers responded to the cultural shock caused by the first substantial encounter between China and Western Europe. Author Mingjun Lu explores how Donne and Milton came to be aware of England’s participation in ’the race for the Far East’ launched by Spain and Portugal, and how this new global awareness shaped their conceptions of cultural pluralism. Drawing on globalization theory, a framework that proves useful to help us rethink the literary world of Renaissance England in terms of global maritime networks, Lu proposes the concept of ’liberal cosmopolitanism’ to study early modern English engagement with the other. The advanced culture of the Chinese, Lu argues, inculcated in Donne and Milton a respect for difference and a cosmopolitan curiosity that ultimately led both authors to reflect in profound and previously unexamined ways upon their Eurocentric and monotheistic assumptions. The liberal cosmopolitan model not only opens Renaissance literary texts to globalization theory but also initiates a new way of thinking about the early modern encounter with the other beyond the conventional colonial/postcolonial, nationalist, and Orientalist frameworks. By pushing East-West contact back to the period in 1570s-1670s, Lu’s work uncovers some hitherto unrecognized Chinese elements in Western culture and their shaping influence upon English literary imagination.