264 replies to this topic

[brightness]

I have been to rural country in China. The animals lived in stalls very close to the farmers house. They fed animals anything they have, left over, grass stalk of grain etc.

That's why the most prevalent domestic animal (not poultry) was pig. Pig eats everything, including human refuse . . . the same reason why Judeo-Christian-Islamic cultures prohibits pork.

It's not entirely impossible for Rome to have 50 million people, but that's just too much population for Rome's own good. A preindustrial society can have 1 billion people, like China and India, but it means the vast majority of population have to live in desperate poverty. By the time of late republic, the population was probably 10 to 20 million, Rome was already periled with famine and revolution. A healthy population for Rome was probably 1 - 2million, within Italy and 5 million for the whole empire. Similarly, for preindustrial China, the best population was 100 to 200 million like that from Song to Ming. It was a healthy and vibrant society. But when the population was stretched to above 400 million like late Qing, Chinese society became lifeless, stagnant and a hot bed for famines, civil wars and revolutions.

Ming was just as lifeless, stagnant and full of internal unrest . . . in fact, it was overthrown by a peasant rebellion due to the government incompetence in managing taxation levels according to changes in economic and monetary reality. The fundamental problem was/is not the total number of people, but what the society did/does to handle the "excess" population when the most efficient famers could/can produce more than they could/can consume themselves. The "excess" is not really the Malthusian concept of going beyond the land's carry-capacity . . . but almost the exact opposite: as farm productivity increase, there is no need to devote 100% of the population to subsistence farming; what to do with the population who can not compete in the market place when the agro product price drops? Roman approached the problem with direct government handouts, when the arrival of grain from Egypt must have driven many of the local farms in Italy out of business, in addition to the hands who were not needed on the local farms to begin with (even Italian farms were beginning to have surpluses before the arrival of Egyption import). Government handouts of course meant than an even greater quantity of goods than that which was handed out had to be confiscated from producers to begin with. China apoached the problem by pushing population onto poorer and poorer lands, and periodicly disrupt farm productivity growth through the break-up of successful farms that were buying out their less successful neighbors. Both policies led to hopeless stagnations as vast numbers of human labor were essentially laid to waste either not working at all or working inefficiently subsidized by government transfers at the expense of more efficient farmers. Efficient farmers were discouraged from improving as the fruit of their labor was confiscated by the government through taxation, inflation and outright "equalization" attemps. Sooner or later some kind of disaster struck, and the society simply did not have the reserve capacity to handle it.

Eventually, a splintered Europe in the 1700-1800's figured out a way to get out of this lower level equilibrium, and figured out how to utilize hands that were no longered needed on the farms: commerce and manufacturing. So that the "excess" labor in the agro sector could do something else to pay for the food that they needed. The splintered Euopean governments simply did not have the power to either run a bread-and-circus like Romans did, or to engage in "levelling" or bureacratic transfers on a vast scale like Chiense did. The people who got "laid off" from the farms due to producitivity increases had to look for real productive jobs to earn their daily bread! That made new experiments in commerce and manufacturing possible as they all required labor, and initially relatively cheap ones because the business methods were immature at the beginning. Subsequent commercial gains lured the intellectuals away from scholarsticism based on scriptures (which was temporizing but fundamentally non-productive just like the old Chinese exam system based on scriptures); that led to modern science and technology, which eventually made farms far more productive, which in a couple more centuries made the vast majority of the population available for endeavors other than farming. Interestingly enough, China stumbled upon the value of commerce in Soutern Song, when the country was splintered, and the high farm output of the south did not have to be confiscated by bureacratic transfers to the north. The brief period of baby steps towards industrial take-off in China was cut short when the bureacrats and government sponsored opinion makers in the government universities insisted on fighting the Jurchens and only to have a far more dangerous band of nomads the Mongols coming up close to the door steps.

[brightness]

Fine, let´s have a look at the past population of Jiangsu.

In 1949, Jiangsu held 35 millions of mouths. This was after 12 years of wars and trade disruptions. If Jiangsu needed trade or imports to sustain those people, excess people would have famished to death already as some point in those 12 years. Therefore, those 35 million souls could be and were fed locally.

At this sustainable level of 350 souls per square km, a plot of say 2 square km (1400 m sides, 1 km centre to corner) could feed 700 souls.

War did not mean total stoppage of trade. On the contrary, when war is going through a region, comparatively more people become engaged in commerce and exchange (some of which may not be voluntary) as opposed to farming. Why would any one focus on growing crop when that crop could be burned or looted by either warring party at any time? Instead, armies had to be supplied. That was accomplished by shipment of goods (especially food) from other areas. That's why since time immemorial there have been camp followers whereever armies went. In pre-modern times, the camp followers often outnumbered the troops themselves.

Oh, the density was easy. They had long ago accumulated that capacity.

In 1898, there was a village of 700 souls in Kowloon. Kowloon Walled City.

It took up a total of 26 000 square m. Which means average 27 000 souls per square km. Roughly the density of Manhattan.

You are not counting the spaces taken up by the people who were engaged in all sorts of commerces that supported those 700 souls. As you scale up from 700 to 70 million, you will need all sorts of other professions that you are discounting when you are treating those 700 as some kind of isolated world of their own, when they actually were not. Kowloon was a fishing village, and it sold liquor to British sailors, with the silver income from the sales presumably used towards buying food etc. from Chinese interior. That was workable for a village of 700, but in order to run scale up that model to 70 million, we will run into fish stock depletion not to mention not being able to find millions of drunken British sailors (and billions of Chinese opium addicts to be at the demand end of smuggling). LOL. The Walled City itself was originally conceived as a military outpost, so obviously it was also reliant upon logistic support from the rest of China through official channels.

See? The people farming a 200 ha plot of Jiangsu could easily be housed in just 2,6 ha of buildings. With 1898 building technology, without piped water or electric lighting. Over 98 % of land would still have been free for farming.

No, we can not. As we scale up, we will run into the "elevator problem" when connecting all the parts of the settlement together. "Elevator problem" refers to the fact that when building a skyscraper, elevator shafts start to take up higher and higher per centage of the building interior volume, compared to simple 6-story buildings with single-length elevators going from the bottom of the building to the top. In the skysraper, in order to make the higher levels useable, there have to be express elevators that bring people from ground level directly to higher levels, which means we will need many additional elevators that top out at the lower levels. The "connective tissues" in a large city would require much higher percentage of surface area on the ground level devoted to roads etc., so we do not end up with traffic jams all day. That means, the remaining lower per centage of surface area would have to be occupied by much taller buildings.

Suppose that you want to develop this 200 ha plot economically, so that it now feeds 1500 mouths (the present population density)? 300 families?

You also have modern technologies, to build multistorey houses, provide piped water to upper stories, electric lighting to lower, air conditioning et cetera. There is no reason you cannot accommodate those 1500 souls in exact same 2,6 ha plot, and provide each of them more floor area and comfort than the mostly one-story village had had. You do not have to waste the good farmland on a sprawl of single family houses and gardens.

When did the discussion become "today"? Today's dewellers of high rises are usually not farmers. The fundamental deciding factor in designing, constructing and maintaining buildings is economic and financial. The typical profit for farming grain is $20-100 per acre per year. Land price in the farm belt is a few hundred per acre. how would that kind of land value possibly justify the cost of constructing and maintaining high rises? 200 ha, or 500 acres, can be farmed by a handful of people with modern equipment. What would the other 1495 out of the 1500 be doing sitting in that building? That's why as farming technology improved, the "excess" people left the farming villages and went to the urban centers in search of better economic opportunities that were available by closer interaction with hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people living in conditions no longer constrained by daily commute to the farm plot. That happened long before the farms were as productive as they are today.

A few hundred years of commerce and technological advance have led us to this point, where only a handful of people are needed to farm the 500 acres, with GPS-directed combines. The other 1495 people can do other things to earn their keep, including inventing the combines and GPS's in the previous iteration. Whereas in Roman time, as soon as the farm tech level advanced to needing only 1000 people to farm what used to take 1500 people, the 500 got placed on the government dough and didn't have to earn their keep . . . whereas the Chinese solution seemed to be a combination of creating 500 officials out of them who then mandate that the remaining 1000 have to be allocated exactly one small plot each, and no more consolidation (which would be inevitable result of productivity increase) was allowed! LOL. Instead of embracing change and the consequent challenges, the imperial masters of both Rome and China opted for stagnation.

[brightness]

and yet, "Western experts" are encouraging the already densely populated regions of East Asia to open up to mass immigration. Seems like they aren't history buffs.

Well, it depends on what people will be doing in the densely populated regions. If there's enough real job opportunity (i.e. productivity due to commerce and manufacturing), then having more people is not a problem. If people come because of welfare dough, well then there's a problem. Removing migration barrier is actually a good thing, so that some of the people already in the densely packed area who are not really enjoying the place or taking advantage of the commercial opportunities, such as the retirees, the chronicly ill and the job holders with lower pays, can move out to a place of lower cost of living without fear of not being able to move back in.

[moobie]

commerce and manufacturing

You mean slave owning and colony? Because Europe still manufactured little that the rest of the world was interested in at that time.

Edited by moobie, 24 July 2009 - 04:46 PM.

[brightness]

You mean slave owning and colony? Because Europe still manufactured little that the rest of the world was interested in at that time.

What are you talking about? Which "densely populated regions of East Asia" is still slave owning?

Get out of your revanchist mental trap once in a while, and smell the coffee. For what it's worth, the merchants travelling the "silk road"
and the Arabic/Persian boats plying the waters of Indian Ocean were not charity organizations organized by the Son of Heaven.
The merchants had to ship goods both ways in order to keep going back and forth. While we are quite aware of the consumables
such as silk and tea going from east to west, from the west the merchants had to keep ferrying items like silver to the east in order to
buy any silk and tea in the east. What the West provided the East was an escape route for the people of the East from the
rapacious despots that were well known in the East. Hard money was one way to escape arbitrary rules of the despots; the laws in
leased territories and even colonies were another, coming much later. As racist and unfair as some of the colonial laws were to the natives, they were still a huge step up from being subjet to the local despots (some of which were foreign military aristocracy from the interior steppes anyway). How did we know that people of the East favored the rules of the new comers? They voted with their own feet in droves.

[Howard Fu]

Ming was just as lifeless, stagnant and full of internal unrest . . . in fact, it was overthrown by a peasant rebellion due to the government incompetence in managing taxation levels according to changes in economic and monetary reality.

No. Ming was the richest dynasty ever and richer than other dynasties with a big margin.

[moobie]

That post was so ridiculous it's almost not worth dignifying with a response. Almost.

from the west the merchants had to keep ferrying items like silver to the east in order to
buy any silk and tea in the east.

Like I said, if your "commerce and manufacturing" are what you shuffled your "excess population" into, why is it that these "great, superior Europeans" could not produce anything the rest of the world wanted except silver (which they stole from South Americans, after killing them and subjecting them to horrific conditions)

What the West provided the East was an escape route for the people of the East from the
rapacious despots that were well known in the East.

What is "the East", it looks you're generalizing half a millennium and almost all of the civilized world with one word. Do you mean the Arabs in 1200, Indians in 1800 or the Qing Dynasty? As for rapacious despots, Europe was full of them. Still is, for that matter. So is America.

As racist and unfair as some of the colonial laws were to the natives, they were still a huge step up from being subjet to the local despots

No, they were not. Again, which natives do you refer to? Americans killed 98% of North American natives, the Taino were so beleaguered that many committed mass suicide, and the South Americans were treated horribly by the Spaniards and Portuguese. Are you done insulting everyone's intelligence with your Europhile revisionism or are you ready to actually debate?

How did we know that people of the East favored the rules of the new comers? They voted with their own feet in droves.

Okay, so you're equating the Congo Free State, slaughter of Aztecs by the Spaniards, annihilation of the Taino to the British parasitism of Hong Kong. Like I said several times, Hong Kong was treated relatively well (not that the British contributed anything to its success). Meanwhile, Europeans committed mass murder against the Bengalis and Congolese.

When I asked you why the Chinese didn't flood into starving Bangladesh and you argued "well, Hong Kong is closer" I rolled my eyes. Do you REALLY think anyone would immigrate to an area which was under a deliberate policy of starvation-for-profit?

Ming was just as lifeless, stagnant and full of internal unrest . . . in fact, it was overthrown by a peasant rebellion due to the government incompetence in managing taxation levels according to changes in economic and monetary reality.

As Howard Fu said, Ming was richer than all other dynasties and richer than all of Europe combined at the time. Check your facts.

Edited by moobie, 24 July 2009 - 07:15 PM.

[brightness]

That post was so ridiculous it's almost not worth dignifying with a response. Almost.

Then perhaps you should not have responded

Like I said, if your "commerce and manufacturing" are what you shuffled your "excess population" into, why is it that these "great, superior Europeans" could not produce anything the rest of the world wanted except silver (which they stole from South Americans, after killing them and subjecting them to horrific conditions)

Why are you saying "great, superior Europeans"? I never made such claim.
The eurasian silver trade was taking place long before the New World was discovered. In fact, the silver trade was taking place in Roman time. Then, in the middle ages before the Age of Discovery, it was the Bohemian and German silver that was being exported to China along the "silk road." As for why silver, the answer is quite simple: comparative advantage; you should read up on some classical economic theories once in a while. If the ancients on both ends of the Eurasian continental mass considered silver money, then the area where that money is produced would have such a high wage measured in silver that most other goods would be price non-competitive when all goods are priced in silver. It's a little like the current situation: people the world over consider US$ real money (which it hardly qualifies), that makes US labor wage much much higher than the real productivity warrants in comparison to the rest of the world. The result is US export of dollar in exchange for all sorts of goods being imported.

What is "the East", it looks you're generalizing half a millennium and almost all of the civilized world with one word. Do you mean the Arabs in 1200, Indians in 1800 or the Qing Dynasty? As for rapacious despots, Europe was full of them. Still is, for that matter. So is America.

I was discussing the silver trade. In the context of the silver trade, China, India and to a lesser degree even the Arabs and Persians all qualified as "the East."; the distinction was actually easily observable in gold-to-silver ratio. In Europe, the gold-to-silver ratio was usually 16:1 before the mid-19th century. In India, it was usually about 12:1, and in China, the ratio was usually closer to 8:1. The Arabs and Persians were somewhere in between European ratio and Indian ratio. The ratio difference was the real driving force behind the global trade network that existed even before the Age of Discovery. As for "Oriental Despotism," that was a concept dating back to ancient Greek times. It's not about the rapaciousness of particular despots, but the tendency toward unification (inevitably becoming highly dictatorial) that existed in "the East," as opposed to the concept of "Greek Liberty"; i.e. local self-determination. As for America today, well, we can see the emergence of that "oriental despotism" in America ever since the wrong side won the Civil War. A big centralized government like that inevitably becomes systematicly dictatorial and systematicly rapacious, regardless which particular leader is at the helm; the world is learning plenty about that lately.

No, they were not. Again, which natives do you refer to? Americans killed 98% of North American natives, the Taino were so beleaguered that many committed mass suicide, and the South Americans were treated horribly by the Spaniards and Portuguese. Are you done insulting everyone's intelligence with your Europhile revisionism or are you ready to actually debate?

You are conflating two very different issues. The trade-based policies practiced by European merchants in China was very different from the colonial displacement policies that were practiced by settlers in the Americas. As far as we know, Europeans never tried to push Chinese out of China so that they could farm the land themselves. LOL.

BTW, committing mass suicide in wars only goes to show how brain-washed the victims were. I doubt even you would prefer to live under Japanese militarism instead of allied occupation . . . but mass suicde was precisely what many Okinawans did when the island was sieged.

Okay, so you're equating the Congo Free State, slaughter of Aztecs by the Spaniards, annihilation of the Taino to the British parasitism of Hong Kong. Like I said several times, Hong Kong was treated relatively well (not that the British contributed anything to its success). Meanwhile, Europeans committed mass murder against the Bengalis and Congolese.

hmm, you are the one who is equating the two sets of very different policies. Congo and Mesoamerica were never considered "the East."
BTW, the most important British contribution to Hongkong was "benign neglect." If Ming and Qing China could have done that to various locales in China, Chinese ships may well have discovered Europe instead of the other way around. It sucks to be "discovered."

When I asked you why the Chinese didn't flood into starving Bangladesh and you argued "well, Hong Kong is closer" I rolled my eyes. Do you REALLY think anyone would immigrate to an area which was under a deliberate policy of starvation-for-profit?

Bangladesh did not exist as a country until the 1970's. In any case, the choice of Bangladesh simply never came up because what choices the Chinese did have in front of them were the leased zones in Shanghai, Ninpo, Wuhan, and the colony of Hongkong; Chinese flocked to those locations.

The first time northeast India (the hinterland behind Bengal) did come up as a choice for significant numbers of Chinese, that was during WWII, when three divisions of Chinese troops were cut off by Japanese in the Burma Campaign. Miraculously, the Chinese troops that were known for combat ineffectiveness (had to fight Japanese on 8-to-1 to 12-to-1 terms, in division count) suddenly became quite an effective force, holding off Japanese division for division; the magic was quite simple: for once, the Chinese soldiers were paid on time, well fed, well clothed, and decently equipped on British colonial soil, unlike how they had been treated back in China. Were the British especially fond of Chinese soldiers? Hardly, but they valued human lives and understood how to get the most out of each individual. Those divisions later became the top elite divisions in Chinese army.

As Howard Fu said, Ming was richer than all other dynasties and richer than all of Europe combined at the time. Check your facts.

That's a dubious claim at the best. Ming economy was running on silver imported from Mexico and Peru, shipped across the Pacific by the Manilla Galleons, once or twice a year. In terms of monetary income, the per capita silver income in Flanders and Southeast England was always higher than that of the highest income region in China, the Yangtze Delta. Of course, we can debate all day about purchasing power parity, as the consumer baskets of the two locations were very different. The fact remains that multi-level (3 levels or more) commercial and residential buildings showed up all along the English Channel and the southern Baltic around the time of Ming and Qing, whereas Ming and Qing never developed the economic and commercial sophistication to justify building those structures.

[moobie]

The eurasian silver trade was taking place long before the New World was discovered.

That wasn't my point. You suggested that Europeans went into commerce and manufacturing with their agricultural surplus, and thus raised their living standards. That is not true, the main driver behind England's "agricultural surplus", for example, was a system of cheaper food/labor being traded around between colonies and Europe.

as opposed to the concept of "Greek Liberty"

Right. Greek liberty where 90% of Athenians had no political rights.

As far as we know, Europeans never tried to push Chinese out of China so that they could farm the land themselves. LOL.

Because they didn't have the chance. They did however, in Manchuria... and as you can see there are no Manchus in Russian Manchuria anymore. They were slaughtered wholesale.

hmm, you are the one who is equating the two sets of very different policies. Congo and Mesoamerica were never considered "the East."

Again, you are using Hong Kong to justify all of European colonialism which includes these places. Don't try to dodge this.

Chinese flocked to those locations.

Stop trying to dodge. They would not have gone to Bangladesh (NOTE: I said Bengalis, and yes they existed as a people at that time despite arrogant claims) because Bangladesh was under a policy of mass murder through starvation. Understand me? Lets get back to the point through your obfuscation and tangents: British inflicted death tolls are not vindicated by Qianlong's arrogance.

Ming economy was running on silver imported from Mexico and Peru

More arrogance. The Ming economy accepted silver as a currency. Their economy ran on domestic production, was self-sufficient and they earned money from exports including silks, porcelain, lacquerware, tea etc.

In terms of monetary income, the per capita silver income in Flanders and Southeast England was always higher than that of the highest income region in China, the Yangtze Delta.

Uh are you thinking of the Qing Dynasty? Do you have the capability to stay within the right time period to support your Europhile nonsense? If not try to skip around at most two centuries at a time, not four, if possible.

whereas Ming and Qing never developed the economic and commercial sophistication to justify building those structures.

Yet Ming and Qing produced products the world wanted. Britain did not. A select few having three story hovels does not change this fact

[Tibet Libre]

What's so special about the Ming economy? If people don't believe what historians say abouth the economic off-take of medieval and Renaissance Europe, one only needs to compare extant European and Ming city structures and surviving signs of urbanity to determine the direction of the international money flow then.

PS: Moobie, never mind that you made it to my ignore list.

[Pattie]

Back on topic please, everyone. No more attacks, personal or otherwise, thank you.

[brightness]

That wasn't my point. You suggested that Europeans went into commerce and manufacturing with their agricultural surplus, and thus raised their living standards. That is not true, the main driver behind England's "agricultural surplus", for example, was a system of cheaper food/labor being traded around between colonies and Europe.

You are misinterpreting my point and the rebutting your misinterpretation. The "surplus" that I was referring to was not agricultural surplus, but "surplus" labor who could not produce food at market competitive prices. Cheap import just resulted in more of that "surplus" labor who could not produce food in England (or in Rome) at price point competitive to imports. The same "surplus" labor shows up regardless whether grain price is dropping due to import or due to technological innovation, or just some harder/smarter working neighbor showing up. Roman solution to that "surplus" labor was to send them to the colosium; Chinese solution was to build a corps of grain eating bureaucrats (and myriads more apprentice bureacrats lost in scripture studies) and ban efficient farmers from taking over their less efficient neighbors. England not having the wherewitheral to do either, simply left people to figure out how to support themselves; in that, they found commerce as a way of paying for their food import.

Right. Greek liberty where 90% of Athenians had no political rights.

10% of the population having a real vote in selecting the top leaders is still better than what Chinese had 2000 years ago, 200 years, 20 years ago! I will leave "2 years ago" and "today" out of this discussion out of respect for the forum policies. In terms of political power, Chinese had for thousands of years till 1979 (the cut off point for this forum) were little more than that of Spartan Helots: not owned by anyone, but no real political rights either, and often subject to random political violence from the ruling elite as a way of intimidating and controlling the Helots.

Because they didn't have the chance. They did however, in Manchuria... and as you can see there are no Manchus in Russian Manchuria anymore. They were slaughtered wholesale.

In case it's not obvious, while the Russians consider themselves European, much of the rest of Europe considered Rusia a hotbed of "oriental despotism."

Again, you are using Hong Kong to justify all of European colonialism which includes these places. Don't try to dodge this.

No dodge necessary. Hongkong, Shanghai, Ninpo, Wuhan, etc. those were the places where Chinese came into direct contact with British rule, learned how a modern society should be run, and demanded Manchu to change from their traditional despotic ways. What happened in the steppes of North America, in the rainforest of Congo, or even for that matter what happened in Bangel had little to do with the Chinese experience with colonial powers.

Stop trying to dodge. They would not have gone to Bangladesh (NOTE: I said Bengalis, and yes they existed as a people at that time despite arrogant claims) because Bangladesh was under a policy of mass murder through starvation. Understand me? Lets get back to the point through your obfuscation and tangents: British inflicted death tolls are not vindicated by Qianlong's arrogance.

See point above. You may prefer to object to modernity because the messenger is not perfect, the Chinese of the late 19th century and early 20th century had a pretty clear choice in front of them. What they saw with their own eyes in Hongkong, Shanghai, Ninpo, Wuhan, etc. etc. They did not need heresay about Bangel, much less the Dakotas. People starving due to government mismangement and over-taxation wasn't exactly news in China anyway; that's how Ming fell and Qing came through the Great Wall passes to begin with, and it's to be repeated in the mid-20th century.

More arrogance. The Ming economy accepted silver as a currency. Their economy ran on domestic production, was self-sufficient and they earned money from exports including silks, porcelain, lacquerware, tea etc.

Unless you are saying Ming economy was a barter economy (which it wasn't), the money was what tied the entire economy together. The source of that money, silver, was almost exclusively imported. The contineud supply of that silver was critical to the well being of Ming economy. It replaced the official paper money that led to repeated hyperinflations and economic collapses. Initially the Ming court actually fought the importation of silver. Many of Qi JiGuan's "Japanese" badits were actually Chinese smuggling silver into China to help form a monteary base. Eventually Ming court gave in to reality.

Uh are you thinking of the Qing Dynasty? Do you have the capability to stay within the right time period to support your Europhile nonsense? If not try to skip around at most two centuries at a time, not four, if possible.

I'm hardly a Europhile, just no shy about facts, and don't have much patience for nationalistic nonsense. What I said regarding the relative wage levels at the two ends of the Eurasian continent was true for both Ming and Qing dynasties.

Yet Ming and Qing produced products the world wanted. Britain did not. A select few having three story hovels does not change this fact

Yes, Ming and Qing China produced goods at a competitive silver price. You can say something similar about Chinese goods today. People the world over want them because they are offered at a good prices. In return, China imported silver money then (and paper dollars today). Does that say something about Chinese superiority? Hardly. All it says is that, compared to much of the rest of the world, it's cheaper in China to make silk, porcelain, etc. than to dig up silver in China. Trade is about comparative advantages. We do not need to assign ethnocentric "superiorities" to them. Otherwise, what are we to say about Chinese penchant for importing Spanish siver dollars? That the government mints in China were crooks? Chinese never learned how to refine metal? It's silly to make ethnocentric "superiority claims" based on who export what; trade takes place both ways. Obviously both parties wanted something that the other one had.

[brightness]

No. Ming was the richest dynasty ever and richer than other dynasties with a big margin.

What evidence is there to that claim? And how is "richness" measured across hundreds of years?
Since Ming's currency was silver, and it was almost exclusively imported, either by Manila Galleons across the Pacific or by the old route through Europe, it stands to reason that the siver price for all the items that Ming was exporting was actually cheaper than the same items in much of the rest of the world. As far as we know, Ming did not have machine tools that would make the production of those goods much less labor intensive than production in other parts of the world (like the price advantage that industrialized England had later) . . . so it only stands to reason that Ming labor cost was lower than that of the target markets. That's not exactly a recipe for being rich.

[Howard Fu]

That's a dubious claim at the best. Ming economy was running on silver imported from Mexico and Peru, shipped across the Pacific by the Manilla Galleons, once or twice a year. In terms of monetary income, the per capita silver income in Flanders and Southeast England was always higher than that of the highest income region in China, the Yangtze Delta. Of course, we can debate all day about purchasing power parity, as the consumer baskets of the two locations were very different.

Your claim can't even be counted as dubious. It's simply ridiculous and ignorant.
From late Ming to early Qing, China imported about 8 million tls of silver annually, and about half of them from Japan. To put this into perspective, all silver circulated in England at the beginning of 18th century was about 10 million tls. Travelers from China to Japan at the time observed, almost everything he saw, from furnitures, cloth to rouge used by women were imported from China. There were about a dozen cities in Mexico specialized in silk making, but they all went out of business after Mexico imported silk from China directly. Till this day, there is a kind of Mexico traditional clothes called China-pobulana. The amount of porcelains exported to Europe was so large, that some Arabian coast are still swashing with porcelain shards from sunken ships of the time.

Don't talk about things you don't understand. Here's a new reading for you, Mises's The Theory of Money and Credit. It's not something you can finish in two days.

Edited by Howard Fu, 26 July 2009 - 03:40 AM.

[Mei Houwang]

From what I remember, in terms of food per capita, the Qing would be the richest dynasty (this would naturally be the case due to new improvements in knowledge and more diversity in food crops thanks to the discovery of the New World). However this is not so when the Qing is compared with the rest of the contemporary world rather than past dynasties. If you want to find the richest dynasty as compared with the contemporary world, the Song would probably be the richest dynasty. However, Borijin made a case way back that the Song dynasty has a significantly lower median in wealth due to the greatly uneven distribution of wealth. So all in all indications of wealth is pretty hard to put onto a 1 dimensional scale.

Edited by Mei Houwang, 26 July 2009 - 05:26 AM.