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Collection Highlights

Global History with Chinese Characteristics: Autocratic

States along the Silk Road in the Decline of the Spanish
and Qing Empires 1680-1796 Manuel Perez-Garcia

Europe in the Modern World: A New Narrative History Since

1500 1st Edition Edward Berenson

Approaches to the History and Dialectology of Arabic

Papers in Honor of Pierre Larcher Manuel Sartori

Nation States and the Global Environment New Approaches to

International Environmental History 1st Edition Erika
Marie Bsumek
South Asia in world history 1st Edition Gilbert

Unequal Family Lives Causes and Consequences in Europe and

the Americas Naomi R. Cahn

Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook Loucas

Liberalism and Chinese Economic Development Perspectives

from Europe and Asia Routledge Studies in the Modern World
Economy Gilles Campagnolo

Latino Politics in America Spectrum Series_ Race and

Ethnicity in National and Global Politics John A. Garcia
 Foreword by Patrick O’Brien
Edited by Manuel Perez Garcia · Lucio De Sousa

GLOBAL HISTORY AND

NEW POLYCENTRIC
APPROACHES
Europe, Asia and the Americas
in a World Network System
Palgrave Studies in Comparative Global History

Series Editors
Manuel Perez Garcia
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Shanghai, China

Lucio De Sousa
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Tokyo, Japan
This series proposes a new geography of Global History research using
Asian and Western sources, welcoming quality research and engag-
ing outstanding scholarship from China, Europe and the Americas.
Promoting academic excellence and critical intellectual analysis, it offers a
rich source of global history research in sub-continental areas of Europe,
Asia (notably China, Japan and the Philippines) and the Americas and
aims to help understand the divergences and convergences between East
and West.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/15711
Manuel Perez Garcia · Lucio De Sousa
Editors

Global History and

New Polycentric
Approaches
Europe, Asia and the Americas in a World
Network System
Editors
Manuel Perez Garcia Lucio De Sousa
Shanghai Jiao Tong University Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Shanghai, China Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan
Pablo de Olavide University
Seville, Spain

Palgrave Studies in Comparative Global History

ISBN 978-981-10-4052-8 ISBN 978-981-10-4053-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4053-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937489

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018. This book is an open access publication.
Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
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“The development of a global economy has generated a movement for a
truly global history. There is still a long way to go, but this volume of essays
by Western and Asian historians constitutes a brave attempt to bridge the great
divide.”
—Sir John Elliott, Regius Professor of Modern History,
University of Oxford, UK

“The multiple perspectives offered by this volume’s chapters together make an

important contribution to the goal of transforming global history from an aspira-
tion to a reality.”
—Jan de Vries, Ehrman Professor Emeritus, University of California
at Berkeley, USA

“These scholars delve deeply into Asian data and global interpretation, showing
the centrality of East Asia in the trade networks of the early modern world. They
successfully set Atlantic developments in the context of the Asia-Pacific region.”
—Patrick Manning, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of World History,
Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh, USA

“This is a stimulating attempt to present Global History, focusing on compari-

son of Maritime History between the Asia-Pacific and the Atlantic. Readers may
clearly understand a rich historiography in East Asia on Global/World History
studies.”
—Shigeru Akita, Chairman, Asian Association of World Historians,
South Korea and Professor of British Imperial History
and Global History, Osaka University, Japan

“Manuel Perez Garcia and Lucio de Sousa have edited a thought-provoking

volume, addressing the question of global history as conceived by European,
Chinese and Japanese scholars, and revitalizing this field of studies in East Asian
historiography. No doubt that this volume, linking maritime history and global
history, will open new paths of research free of any “centrisms” as has often been
the case so far. The various chapters that make up this volume combine different
scales of analysis (local, regional, transnational and global) to implement a truly
interdisciplinary analysis of a world network system that has shaped international
trade from the the XVIth through the XIXth centuries.”
—Francois Gipouloux, Emeritus Research Director, National
Centre for Scientific Research, France
“A thoroughly, well-organised and outstanding book for a deeper understand-
ing of the real impact of global history on East Asian historiographies and fresh
insights on intercontinental comparisons.”
—Liu Beicheng, Professor, Tsinghua University, China

“This book demonstrates superbly the important contribution of GECEM pro-

ject and the Global History Network (GHN) in bringing together diverse Asian,
European and American historiographical approaches based on different meth-
ods, sources, and theories. The cases presented urge a careful reconceptualization
of our received streams of thought, a process that will open exciting new routes
for grasping history and expanding our cognitive capabilities, as the challenges of
our rapidly globalizing world demand.”
—J. B. Owens, Research Professor, Idaho State University, USA

“Global history releases itself from the straightjacket of national boundaries and
supersedes the East-West divide that still characterises much scholarship: in this
book, the early modern world is analysed by a new type of global polycentric
­history.”
—Giorgio Riello, Professor, University of Warwick, UK

“Global History and New Polycentric Approaches features a group of scholarly

essays from western and eastern historians that clearly show how to assess the
great questions posed by a truly global history. The book is a must – read for aca-
demics and students that want to deepen their understanding of modern world
history.”
—Antonio Ibarra Romero, Professor, Universidad Nacional
Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico

“Manuel Perez Garcia and Lucio de Sousa have magisterially collected fresh
research works by outstanding scholars in Global History and East Asian
studies. Certainly, it gives a new ‘polycentric’ turn going beyond Eurocentric and
Sinocentric perspectives in Global history.”
—Bernd Hausberger, Professor, Colegio de Mexico, Mexico
This research has been sponsored and financially supported by GECEM
(‘Global Encounters between China and Europe: Trade Networks,
Consumption and Cultural Exchanges in Macau and Marseille, 1680–
1840’) project hosted by the Pablo de Olavide University, UPO (Seville,
Spain). The GECEM ­project is funded by the ERC (European Research
Council)-Starting Grant, under the European Union’s Horizon 2020
Research and Innovation Programme, ref. 679371, www.gecem.eu. The
P.I. (Principal Investigator) is Professor Manuel Perez Garcia (Distinguished
Researcher at UPO).
We would like to dedicate this book to Liu Beicheng (Tsinghua University)
and Naotoshi Kurosawa (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies), respectively
our mentors in China and Japan.
 Foreword

History is marked by alternating movements across an imaginary line,

separating East from West in Eurasia.1
As an evangelical advocate for the inclusion of courses in global his-
tory for systems of higher education throughout the world, I strongly
applaud the endeavours of two young Iberians, with posts at major uni-
versities in China and Japan, to persuade their East Asian colleagues to
make real space in their curricula for an engagement with history that is
‘truly global’.
‘Truly global’ means that teaching and research in faculties of history
should represent something much more profound, heuristic and mod-
ern than extensions to the histories of East Asian or European societies
that includes hard-won knowledge of other countries and cultures. The
editors and their distinguished colleagues conceive of global history as a
challenge to obsolete, patriotic and centric histories of all kinds.
Located as both editors are as foreign academics in cultures with
ancient and strong national identities, their laudable mission has met
with a different kind and quality of resistance to both the now-moribund
antipathies of post-modern critics in the West to grand narratives, as
well as the more conventional and explicable obsessions of professional
historians everywhere with erudition, detail and archival research. How
could this contemporaneously significant, politically necessary and mor-
ally imperative style of history meet the standards of rigour long estab-
lished for the social sciences and for national and international histories
are not questions that are easy to evade or to answer. Could the respect

xi
xii    Foreword

for evidence, the comprehension of contexts, aspirations for imaginative

insights and elegant clarification demanded by modern micro-history be
satisfied?
Japanese history with deep roots in Rankean scholarship continues
to be meticulous in its attention to detail, while China’s ancient tradi-
tion in writing encyclopaedic histories of imperial dynasties could only
strengthen a preference for world, rather than the more refined and
complex approach to global history that the editors have in mind.
Furthermore, objections to the whole notion for global history (particu-
larly if it is explicitly comparative) as a moral malign agenda for Western
triumphalism and cultural domination continue to be made by European
as well as Chinese radicals, who have suffered from both.
Nevertheless, there has been a revival of grand narratives and most
historians now recognize that further and prolonged engagement with
philosophers for history, linguistic turns and literary theory are produc-
ing diminishing returns and bore their students.
For millennia, historians from all civilizations (Chinese, Japanese,
Islamic and European) have been involved with the problem of how best
to reconcile religious beliefs, cultural norms and packages of “moder-
nities” from outside their communities, polities and empires with the
indigenous traditions and traditional values they wish to preserve.
How these interactions between the local and the global played out
historically in the port cities of East Asia and the Spanish Empire in the
context of maritime commerce is cogently analysed with respect for facts
and imaginatively conveyed by the chapters in a book that sets out to
expose the role and connections rather than the divisions or ranks in a
global history of civilizations.
This collection of scholarly essays exposes and illustrates an early
modern history of the East in the West. They represent the most per-
suasive way of persuading a conservative profession to welcome a style
of history that has escaped from national narratives, avoids centrisms
and evades invidious comparisons. This volume should allay the fears or
anxieties of Chinese, Japanese and European and Latin American histo-
rians who have been explicably sceptical if not antipathetic to the global
turn. Indeed, as the editors hoped, they are ‘polycentric’ and represent
an innovative, ideologically neutral and enlightened approach to a global
history for these times of inescapable and intensified globalization.
These chapters represent history that is politically, economically and
culturally significant for the great debates of our times, not because
 Foreword    xiii

the subject could recover truth and hard evidence about the past, but
because an understanding of the economic, social and political processes
that are intrinsic to maritime commerce can be acute and useful. The
opportunity should be seized because history without purpose or agen-
das is just another form of literature. Yes, ironic detachment and care-
ful attention to evidence are universal virtues to be nurtured. But so too
are the construction and reconfiguration of meta-narratives, which will
educate societies, appeal to the young and serve the needs of dangerous
times for a sense of global citizenship. Anything less would be folly and,
as Bolingbroke anticipated, folly can be remedied ‘by historical study
which should purge the mind of national partialities and prejudices. For
a wise man looks upon himself as a citizen of the world’.2

Patrick O’Brien
Emeritus Professor University of London and
Fellow of St. Antonys College
University of Oxford

Notes
1. Quoted by A.G. Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age
(Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998), p. ix.
2. B. Southgate, Why Bother with History? (London, Longman, 2000), p. 163.
 Acknowledgements

This book is the result of the 1st GECEM (‘Global Encounters between
China and Europe: Trade Networks, Consumption and Cultural Exchanges
in Macau and Marseille, 1680–1840’) workshop, Quantitative Economic
History and Open Science in China and Europe (host by the University
of Chicago-Center in Beijing, China, November 21, 2016), and the 2nd
GECEM workshop, New Technologies, and Databases to Analyse Modern
Economic Growth in China and Europe (host by the Pablo de Olavide
University, Seville, Spain February 8, 2017). The long-lasting academic
cooperation between Lucio de Sousa and I through the organization of sev-
eral academic meetings and talks in Beijing, Macau and Tokyo, helped us to
come up with the idea of founding an academic network on global history
in 2011, Global History Network (GHN), invigorating the field in China
and Japan. Joining synergies with outstanding experts from Asia, Europe,
and the Americas, we might gain a complete picture on the implementa-
tion and new directions of global history. The obtaining of my European
Research Council (ERC) Starting-Grant in the Fall of 2015, Global
Encounters between China and Europe (GECEM project) has made possible
the current cooperation with Palgrave Macmillan. This book is the first in
the series on Palgrave Studies in Comparative Global History. The GECEM
project, in constant cooperation with the GHN, has contributed to this
book. Liu Beicheng, Naotoshi Kurosawa, Patrick O’Brien, Joe McDermott,
François Gipouloux, Patt Manning, Shigeru Akita, Antonio Ibarra, Jack
Owens, Harriet Zurndorfer, Richard Von Glahn, Bartolome Yun, Anne
McCants, Gakusho Nakajima, Mihoko Oka, Carlos Marichal and Colin

xv
xvi    Acknowledgements

Mackerras have been constantly offering us the support, courage and con-
fidence to undertake this work and continue to develop the field of global
history in China and Japan respectively. The GECEM team, Sergio Serrano
as research fellow of GECEM, Marisol Vidales Bernal as project manager of
GECEM, Lei Jin and Guimel Hernandez as GECEM PhD researchers, and
professor Bartolome Yun Casalilla as senior staff, have correspondingly con-
tributed to arrange the final format, style and edition, as well as the prepara-
tion with Palgrave Macmillan to have the book in Open Access.
The task for Lucio and myself, in China and Japan respectively, to
implement global history proved to be a daunting yet rewarding journey.
Recognized Sinologists and experts in Japanese studies might know what
we are referring to. In our case, as Western scholars and faculty staff in
China and Japan, the marginal internationalization and very recent ‘aca-
demic openness’ in both countries to engage a global academic agenda
in higher education systems constitutes the final frontier and obstacle
that we both must confront on an everyday basis. For this reason, we
sincerely express our gratitude to scholars and friends, as well as our fam-
ilies, who generously give us support in Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo.
This mission requires patience, but mostly personal sacrifices that we
have already undertaken. Without the constant support of our parents in
Spain and Portugal, this mission might have been fruitless. A big word of
thanks to my father, Manuel Perez, who gave me the courage to come to
China in 2011, and of course to my wife Marisol, as we have both gone
through many odds in our Chinese venture and have of course shed tears
of joy. My gratitude to all my family members and friends for their con-
stant inspiration and support. Special thanks to my deceased friend Pedro
Lança. You died very young , but your life will always live on in my spirit.
We are undoubtedly grateful to Sara Crowley Vigneau, Senior Editor
in Humanities and Social Sciences at Palgrave Macmillan in the China
and Asia Pacific region, as well as her team, for their continuous support
for this book and the new Palgrave series in Comparative Global History.
We are greatly grateful to the sponsor institution of the GECEM pro-
ject-679371, ERC-Starting Grant under the European Union’s Horizon
2020 Research and Innovation Programme, being the University Pablo
de Olavide (UPO) in Seville the European host institution of GECEM.
This project has made possible the Open Access publication of this book.
Such achievement constitutes a breakthrough for GECEM and therefore,
as the ultimate result has made the scientific work open to the world for
both academic and non-academic audiences.
 Acknowledgements    xvii

In this way, the support of the ERC stands out as being of great
importance. Likewise, the assistance of the Delegation of the European
Union to China and Mongolia and Euraxess China has been cru-
cial in order to carry out outreach activities and scientific networking
in China. I have no words to express my thanks for the constant and
generous support of Laurent Bochereau (Minister Counsellor, Head of
Science, Technology and Environment Section of the Delegation of the
European Union to China and Mongolia) and Andrea Strelçova (former
Chief Representative of Euraxess China), their work being of the utmost
importance for European and non-European researchers based in China.
Mistakes could have been made, but we can learn from them and
improve. Risks must be taken to achieve our goals and objectives, as in
life one must bet high: high risk, high gain.
Beijing, Fall 2016
 Contents

Introduction: Current Challenges of Global History in East

Asian Historiographies 1
Manuel Perez Garcia

Part I Escaping from National Narratives: The New Global

History in China and Japan

Global History, the Role of Scientific Discovery

and the ‘Needham Question’: Europe and China
in the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries 21
Colin Mackerras

Encounter and Coexistence: Portugal and Ming China

1511–1610: Rethinking the Dynamics of a Century
of Global–Local Relations 37
Harriet Zurndorfer

Challenging National Narratives: On the Origins

of Sweet Potato in China as Global Commodity
During the Early Modern Period 53
Manuel Perez Garcia

xix
xx    Contents

Economic Depression and the Silver Question

in Nineteenth-Century China 81
Richard von Glahn

Kaiiki-Shi and World/Global History: A Japanese Perspective 119

Hideaki Suzuki

Part II Trade Networks and Maritime Expansion

in East Asian Studies

The Structure and Transformation of the Ming

Tribute Trade System 137
Gakusho Nakajima

The Nanban and Shuinsen Trade in Sixteenth

and Seventeenth-Century Japan 163
Mihoko Oka

The Jewish Presence in China and Japan in the Early Modern

Period: A Social Representation 183
Lucio de Sousa

Quantifying Ocean Currents as Story Models: Global Oceanic

Currents and Their Introduction to Global Navigation 219
Agnes Kneitz

Part III Circulation of Technology and Commodities

in the Atlantic and Pacific

Global History and the History of Consumption:

Congruence and Divergence 241
Anne E.C. McCants

Mexican Cochineal, Local Technologies and the Rise

of Global Trade from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth
Centuries 255
Carlos Marichal Salinas
 Contents    xxi

Social Networks and the Circulation of Technology

and Knowledge in the Global Spanish Empire 275
Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla

Global Commodities in Early Modern Spain 293

Nadia Fernández-de-Pinedo

Big History as a Commodity at Chinese Universities:

A Study in Circulation 321
David Pickus

Index 341
 Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Manuel Perez Garcia is Associate Professor at the Department of

History, School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China).
He obtained his PhD at the European University Institute (Italy). He
has been awarded with an ERC-StG 679371, under the framework of
Horizon 2020 European Union Funding for Research & Innovation, to
conduct the GECEM project (Global Encounters between China and
Europe), www.gecem.eu. He is also Distinguished Researcher at the
Pablo de Olavide University (Seville, Spain), European host institution
of GECEM. He is founder and director of the Global History Network
(GHN) in China, www.globalhistorynetwork.com. He was Associate
Professor at the School of International Studies, Renmin University of
China from 2013 until 2017. Prof. Perez was postdoctoral fellow and
Assistant Chair at the Department of History at Tsinghua University
(Beijing, China) from 2011 to 2013. He was research fellow at UC
Berkeley, International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden University) as
Marie Curie fellow and visiting professor at UNAM (Mexico), University
of Tokyo (Japan) and University of Macerata (Italy).
Among his publications stands out the book Vicarious Consumers:
Transnational Meetings between the West and East (1730–1808), pub-
lished by Routledge (2013), and several articles in SSCI journals.

xxiii
xxiv    Editors and Contributors

Lucio de Sousa is Associate Professor at Tokyo University of Foreign

Studies (Japan). He obtained his PhD in Asian Studies at University
of Oporto (Portugal). He is a member of the Steering Committee of
Global History Network and Chair of the Board of advisors of GECEM
project. He was a postdoctoral fellow at European University Institute
(Italy). He was a book winner of the Macao Foundation, the Social
Science in China Press and the Guangdong Social Sciences Association
(2013). His primary field of research is the slave trade and Jewish dias-
pora in Asia in the Early Modern Period.

Contributors

Nadia Fernández-de-Pinedo is Senior Lecturer at the Universidad

Autónoma of Madrid, Spain. Her work covers a wide range con-
sumption and distribution networks, including eighteenth- and nine-
teenth-century Spanish and Atlantic history. She participates in various
cross-disciplinary projects where she has embarked on research for exam-
ining technology transfer processes, institutions, fabric distribution and
material culture.
Agnes Kneitz is Assistant Professor of World Environmental History at
Renmin University of China, Beijing. She finished a PhD dissertation on
representations of environmental justice in the nineteenth century social
novels in 2013 and since then has been on working on interdisciplinary
environmental historical topics with an increasingly global focus.
Colin Mackerras has published very widely in Chinese history and con-
temporary China, including Western images of China, China’s ethnic
minorities and its musical theatre. He has visited and taught in China
many times, the first time being from 1964 to 1966, and is based at
Griffith University, Australia.
Anne E.C. McCants is Professor of History at MIT and the
­Vice-President of the International Economic History Association. She
is the author of Civic Charity in a Golden Age: Orphan Care in Early
Modern Amsterdam, and numerous articles on welfare in the Dutch
Republic, European historical demography, and technological change,
material culture and global consumption.
 Editors and Contributors    xxv

Gakusho Nakajima is Doctor of Literature at Waseda University, Japan.

Currently he is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Kyushu
University, Japan. His fields of research are Chinese social history and
East Asian maritime history.
Mihoko Oka is Associate Professor at the Historiographical Institute,
University of Tokyo, with which she has been affiliated since 2003.
Her chief research interests are maritime history surrounding Japan in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christian history in Japan and
Christian merchants in Nagasaki.
David Pickus is Associate Professor in the Global Engagement Program,
School of International Studies at Zhejiang University (Hangzhou,
China). He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1995,
specializing in German intellectual history. His current research cov-
ers the topics of refugee intellectuals, the history of globalization and
improving higher education in East Asia.
Carlos Marichal Salinas is Professor of Latin American history at El
Colegio de Mexico, a leading research and postgraduate institute. He is
author or editor of some 20 books in English and Spanish on Mexican
and Latin American economic history. He was also the founder and for-
mer president (2000–2004) of the Mexican Association of Economic
History.
Hideaki Suzuki is Associate Professor at the School of Global
Humanities and Social Sciences, Nagasaki University, Japan. His research
interests cover Indian Ocean history, world/global history, slavery and
the slave trade, the Indian merchant network and medieval Arab geog-
raphy. He is the editor of Abolitions as a Global Experience (Singapore:
NUS Press, 2016).
Richard von Glahn is Professor of History at the University of
California, Los Angeles and the author of The Economic History of China
from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2016), Fountain
of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China (California, 1996) and
other books.
Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla is Full Professor at the Pablo de Olavide
University in Seville, Spain. He specializes in the study of political econo-
mies, the Spanish Empire, the history of consumption and the history
xxvi    Editors and Contributors

of the aristocracy. An expert on global, transnational and compara-

tive history, from 2003 to 2013 he taught at the European University
Institute of Florence, where he directed the Department of History and
Civilization from 2009 to 2012.
Harriet Zurndorfer is an affiliated fellow at LIAS, Leiden University
where she has worked since 1978. She is the author of Change and
Continuity in Chinese Local History: The Development of Huizhou
Prefecture 800–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 1989) and China Bibliography: A
Research Guide to Reference Works about China, Past and Present (Leiden:
Brill, 1995), and is also the editor of six books and the author of more
than 200 articles and reviews.
 List of Figures

Challenging National Narratives: On the Origins of Sweet Potato

in China as Global Commodity During the Early
Modern Period
Fig. 1 The trend of academic articles on the research
of the introduction of sweet potato (1958–2015) 57
Fig. 2 Two kinds of potato: Dioscorea Esculenta and Ipomoea Batatas 63
Fig. 3 Population growth in China from 1000 to 1820 72
Economic Depression and the Silver Question
in Nineteenth-Century China
Fig. 1 Population density and rates of growth, 1776–1820 92
Fig. 2 Grain prices in South China, 1660–1850 92
Fig. 3 Rice prices in five major markets, 1826–1852 93
Fig. 4 Prices of agricultural and manufactured goods in Ningjin
(Hebei), 1800–1850 94
Fig. 5 Prices and wages (Silver equivalents) in Ningjin (Hebei),
1800–1850 95
Fig. 6 Daily wages of unskilled labourers in Beijing, 1807–1838.
Wages in coin: wen/day (based on Buck). Wages in silver
equivalent: li/day (based on exchange ratios in Tongtaisheng
ledgers). Wages in grain equivalent: shao/day
(based on Jiangnan rice prices) 96
Fig. 7 Growth of the money supply, 1726–1833 (annual averages) 97
Fig. 8 Silver: Bronze coin exchange ratios and bronze coin output,
1691–1800. 1721–1730 = 100 98

xxvii
xxviii    List of Figures

Fig. 9 Tea and silk exports, 1756–1833. (annual averages; tea exports
in thousands of piculs; silk exports in hundreds of piculs):
Silk data is incomplete and no silk data is available for
1756–1762 and 1814–1820 101
Fig. 10 Silver: Bronze coin exchange ratios, 1790–1860 102
Fig. 11 Silver–Bronze coin exchange ratios, 1870–1906 104
Fig. 12 Silver: Coin exchange ratios in Vietnam, 1807–1860 105
Kaiiki-Shi and World/Global History: A Japanese Perspective
Fig. 1 The number of accepted KAKEN-HI projects under
the title including “Kaiiki” 126
Global History and the History of Consumption: Congruence
and Divergence
Fig. 1 World History’ as a subject in 20th c. English language books 245
Fig. 2 The rise of ‘Global History’ since 1940 246
Fig. 3 World history as a subject in 20th c. French language books 246
Fig. 4 World history as a subject in 20th c. German language books 247
Mexican Cochineal, Local Technologies and the Rise of Global
Trade from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries
Fig. 1 The cochineal trade: Mercantile networks in Mexico 263
Fig. 2 The Commodity Chain of Cochineal from Oaxaca
and Veracruz to Europe, circa 1780 268
Fig. 3 Annual Production and Prices of Cochinilla Registered at
the Oficina del Registro y la Administración Principal
de Rentas, Oaxaca, 1758–1854 269
Global Commodities in Early Modern Spain
Fig. 1 Classification by record registered and social status 297
Big History as a Commodity at Chinese Universities: A Study
in Circulation
Fig. 1 Student responses to the question: ‘What qualities do nations
need to engage successfully in international trade?’ 331
Fig. 2 Student responses to the question: ‘Do you know the history
of any individual commodities? How did you learn about it?’ 331
Fig. 3 Student responses to the question: ‘How important
is it to know world economic history and why?’ 331
Fig. 4 Students’ responses to the question ‘Do you have specific
knowledge of the history of any commodity?’ 332
 List of Tables

Challenging National Narratives: On the Origins of Sweet Potato

in China as Global Commodity During the Early Modern Period
Table 1 Period and areas of introduction of sweet potato in China
during the Ming Dynasty 66
Table 2 The field area statement in Central China and Southwestern
China in the Qing Dynasty (units: 1000 Mu) 71
Table 3 The yield and increment of corn and sweet potato
in the Qing Dynasty 71
Economic Depression and the Silver Question
in Nineteenth-Century China
Table 1 Estimates of Chinese GDP 87
Table 2 Population of Qing China 91
Table 3 Lin Man-houng’s estimates of net silver flows in and out
of Qing China. Unit: millions of silver pesos 99
Table 4 Net flow of silver from China, 1818–1854 (all figures
in millions of pesos) 100
Table 5 Customs revenues, 1725–1831. (thousands of silver taels) 106
The Structure and Transformation of the Ming Tribute
Trade System
Table 1 Tributaries of the Ming listed in Ta-Ming huitian 大明會典
(1587 edn) 139
Table 2 The number of tributes by main tributary states in the Ming
(1368–1566) 141
Table 3 The structure of the 1570 system in the late sixteenth
century 153

xxix
xxx    List of Tables

Global Commodities in Early Modern Spain

Table 1 Per Capita/Per Year purchases by social groups
in pounds (weight) 299
Table 2 Items from China introduced in Madrid for personal
consumption, 1741–1743 304
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