China, World

Social, economic, and cultural history of China, 10th-18th centuries; popular religion, urban history, popular social movements; comparative economic history; global economic integration, 1000-1800.

After completing an undergraduate degree majoring in Chinese at Connecticut College, I pursued graduate study in Chinese history at UC Berkeley (M.A.) and Yale University (Ph.D., 1983). I held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard and the University of Rochester and a tenure-track assistant professorship at Connecticut College before I joined the UCLA faculty in 1987. My primary field of research is the economic and social history of premodern China, with a particular focus on the period 1000-1700. My publications include three monographs in Chinese history and several edited books. My current writing projects include a co-authored textbook in world history, to be published by Bedford-St. Martin’s in 2011, and a comprehensive economic history of imperial China. I also am continuing to pursue research in Chinese monetary history, especially the interrelationship between China’s monetary system and wider spheres of monetary circulation within Asia and on a global scale. I’m also collaborating in a joint research project funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education entitled “Empires, World Systems, and Supra-Regional Networks: Maritime Asian Experiences from the 14th to the 19th Centuries.” In addition to teaching courses on all periods of Chinese history, I have served as the coordinator for the History Department’s program in world history for the past ten years, and teach a range of undergraduate and graduate courses in world history. I am currently serving as President of the Western Branch of the American Oriental Society (2009-11).

Books:

The Country of Streams and Grottoes: Expansion, Settlement, and the Civilizing of the Sichuan Frontier in Song Times. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1987.

Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000-1700. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996.

The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History. Co-edited with Paul Jakov Smith. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003.

Monetary History in Global Perspective, 1470-1800. Co-edited with Dennis O. Flynn & Arturo Giráldez. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Press, 2003.

The Sinister Way: The Divine and the Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004.

Crossroads and Cultures: A History of the World. Co-authored with Bonnie Smith, Marc van der Mieroop, and Kris Lane. Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2012.

Recent Articles:

"La storia economica della Cina dal 221 a.C. al 1850 d.C.” In La civiltà cinese: dalle origini ai giorni nostri, volume 2, pp. 117-216. Ed. Mauritzio Scarpari. Turino: Einaudi, 2010.

“Monies of Account and Monetary Transition in China, Twelfth to Fourteenth Centuries.” Forthcoming in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 53.3 (2010).

“南宋中国における複合通貨と地域通貨圏の形成” (Multiple Currencies and the Formation of Regional Currency Systems in Southern Song China). In 宋銭の世界 (The World of Song Money), pp. 275-294. Ed. Ihara Hiroshi 伊原弘. Tokyo: Bensei shuppan, 2009.

“Foreign Silver Coins in the Market Culture of Nineteenth Century China.” International Journal of Asian Studies 4.1 (2007): 51-78.

“Zhu Yuanzhang ex nihilo?” Ming Studies 55 (2007): 113-41.

“Re-examining the Authenticity of Song Paper Money Specimens.” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 36 (2006): 79-106.

“Origins of Paper Money in China.” In Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations that Created Modern Capital Markets, pp. 65-89. Ed. K. Geert Rouwenhorst and William N. Goetzmann. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

“Revisiting the Song Monetary Revolution: A Review Essay.” International Journal of Asian Studies 1.1 (2004): 159-178.


Forthcoming Publications:

“Household Registration, Property Rights, and Social Obligations in Imperial China: Principles and Practices.” Forthcoming in Registration: The Infrastructure of Legal Personhood in Historical Perspective. Ed. Keith Breckenridge and Simon Szreter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

“Cycles of Silver in China, Twelfth to Nineteenth Centuries,” Forthcoming in New Perspectives on Historical Chinese Market Economy: Studies of Late Imperial Lower Yangzi Delta. Ed. Billy K.L. So. London: Routledge, 2012.

“The Ningbo-Hakata Merchant Network and the Reorientation of East Asian Maritime Trade, 1150-1300.” Forthcoming in Empires and Networks: Maritime Asian Experiences 9th to 19th Centuries. Ed. Kayoko Fujita and Geoff Wade. (publisher to be determined)


Current Research and Writing Projects:

A book-length study of the economic history of China from antiquity to the mid-nineteenth century.

“State Formation in China, 581-1368,” for The Cambridge History of the World, volume 5.

“Public and Private Finance in China, 1000-1700,” for the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Financial Globalization

“Value in Economic Theory and Practice in Song China,” for a volume of essays entitled Modern Chinese Religion: Value Systems in Transformation, ed. John Lagerwey.