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Lecture at University of Washington on Foreign Coins in China
sumnom
Posts: 5,963 ✭✭✭
If any of you will be in Seattle, Washington I recommend attending the following lecture. It kills me that I will not be there myself.....
March 3, 2005
Thursday, 3:30-5:00 p.m.
Thomson Hall, Room 317
Richard von Glahn
Professor of History
University of California at Los Angeles
"Foreign Silver Coins in the Monetary Culture of Nineteenth-Century
China"
Richard von Glahn, Professor of History at the University of California,
Los Angeles, was trained in middle imperial (Tang-Song) Chinese economic
history at UC Berkeley and Yale and taught at the University of Rochester
and Connecticut College before joining the history faculty at UCLA in
1987. He is author of The Country of Streams and Grottoes: Expansion,
Settlement, and the Civilizing of the Sichuan Frontier in Song Times
(Harvard, 1987); Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China,
1000-1700 (California, 1996); and The Sinister Way: The Divine and the
Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture (California, 2004); and is co-editor
of The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History (Harvard, 2003) and
Monetary History in Global Perspective, 1470-1800 (Ashgate, 2003).
Both the physical qualities of different types of money, and the cultural
values assigned to them, contributed to the determination of their
economic value. Beginning in the late 18th century, foreign silver
coinsmost notably the Carolus Dollar, the 8-real coins issued in the
name of the Spanish king Carlos IV (r. 1772-1808)became the basis of a
new monetary standard, the yuan. Throughout most of the 19th century,
the Spanish-Mexican silver coins served as the principal medium of
exchange, and the yuan the principal money of account, in the markets of
South China.
In the 19th century Chinese merchants published numerous manuals
explaining how to identify and authenticate these foreign coins. These
manuals offer valuable insights on the mentality of Chinese merchants and
the culture of the Chinese marketplace. In this talk, Professor von
Glahn will utilize these manuals to examine how the physical properties
of coins influenced their value, regional variations in money-use, and
the ways in which merchant knowledge was circulated and reproduced. He
will also discuss the strong regional differences in coin usage between
Guangdong and Jiangnan. In the 19th century, Guangdong reverted to a
commodity money standard that encompassed a wide range of different types
of physical moneys, including chopped (chuoyin) and broken (lanban)
foreign coins. In Jiangnan, in contrast, the Carolus Dollar coins became
fully established as a unified, sovereign monetary standard. This
regional variation attests to the distinctive regional characteristics of
market culture in late imperial China.
March 3, 2005
Thursday, 3:30-5:00 p.m.
Thomson Hall, Room 317
Richard von Glahn
Professor of History
University of California at Los Angeles
"Foreign Silver Coins in the Monetary Culture of Nineteenth-Century
China"
Richard von Glahn, Professor of History at the University of California,
Los Angeles, was trained in middle imperial (Tang-Song) Chinese economic
history at UC Berkeley and Yale and taught at the University of Rochester
and Connecticut College before joining the history faculty at UCLA in
1987. He is author of The Country of Streams and Grottoes: Expansion,
Settlement, and the Civilizing of the Sichuan Frontier in Song Times
(Harvard, 1987); Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China,
1000-1700 (California, 1996); and The Sinister Way: The Divine and the
Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture (California, 2004); and is co-editor
of The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History (Harvard, 2003) and
Monetary History in Global Perspective, 1470-1800 (Ashgate, 2003).
Both the physical qualities of different types of money, and the cultural
values assigned to them, contributed to the determination of their
economic value. Beginning in the late 18th century, foreign silver
coinsmost notably the Carolus Dollar, the 8-real coins issued in the
name of the Spanish king Carlos IV (r. 1772-1808)became the basis of a
new monetary standard, the yuan. Throughout most of the 19th century,
the Spanish-Mexican silver coins served as the principal medium of
exchange, and the yuan the principal money of account, in the markets of
South China.
In the 19th century Chinese merchants published numerous manuals
explaining how to identify and authenticate these foreign coins. These
manuals offer valuable insights on the mentality of Chinese merchants and
the culture of the Chinese marketplace. In this talk, Professor von
Glahn will utilize these manuals to examine how the physical properties
of coins influenced their value, regional variations in money-use, and
the ways in which merchant knowledge was circulated and reproduced. He
will also discuss the strong regional differences in coin usage between
Guangdong and Jiangnan. In the 19th century, Guangdong reverted to a
commodity money standard that encompassed a wide range of different types
of physical moneys, including chopped (chuoyin) and broken (lanban)
foreign coins. In Jiangnan, in contrast, the Carolus Dollar coins became
fully established as a unified, sovereign monetary standard. This
regional variation attests to the distinctive regional characteristics of
market culture in late imperial China.
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