What was the main thrust of chinese economic and political policy in the early modern period?

1 Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 12.

2 In deploying the concept of hegemony we are deliberately interpolating between distinct yet by no means mutually exclusive meanings of the word in scholarly usage. The first stems from American historiography, where Jackson Lears and others have elaborated on Antonio Gramsci’s ideas of cultural hegemony as a form of domination based on an apparently “spontaneous philosophy” established, in part by the placement of verifiably empirical facts, altering the content of both “common sense” and “empirical knowledge” to create an “entire system of belief.” We believe that China’s role in establishing silver bullion as the apparently “money of the world” meets this definition, notwithstanding that Gramsci’s analysis was intended for the analysis of cultural hegemony within a single state rather than a world system per se. This limitation, however, only makes sense if one believes that cultures bounded nationally, a notion which recent research has undermined fatally. T. J. Jackson lears, “The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities”, The American Historical Review, 90, 3, 1 June 1985, p. 93-567, DOI: 10.2307/1860957. The second stems from world-systems analysis. In the context of the capitalist world system Wallerstein defines hegemony thusly: “Hegemony involves more than core status. It may be defined as a situation wherein the products of a given core state are produced so efficiently that they are by and large competitive even in other core states, and therefore the given core state will be the primary beneficiary of a maximally free world market. Obviously, to take advantage of this productive superiority such a state must be strong enough to prevent or minimize the erection of internal and external political barriers to the free flow of the factors of production; and to preserve their advantage, once ensconced, the dominant economic forces find it helpful to encourage certain intellectual and cultural thrusts, movements, and ideologies. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World Economy 1600-1750, New York, Academic Press, 1980, p. 38. Early modern China seems to meet this definition as well. Its fermented teas were consumed worldwide, and with its porcelain and silk defined luxury and taste well into the twentieth-century. China fares just as well on other, more quantitative measures of supremacy. In 1800 China had per-capita income roughly 10 percent higher than all of Western Europe, which had less than half China’s population, making it without question the wealthiest polity on earth. Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, 3, New York, Harper and Row, 1982, p. 544; Angus Maddison, The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, Paris, France, Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2001, p. 384; Patrick Karl O'Brien and Armand Clesse, Two Hegemonies: Britain 1846-1914 and the United States 1941-2001, Aldershot-UK, Ashgate, 2002. Dennis O. Flynn and his collaborators have provided crucial analysis of China’s centrality in evoking global trade, though they have avoided attributing this centrality to potency of China as a polity. Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez, “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon’: The Origin of World Trade in 1571”, Journal of World History, 6, 2, 1 October 1995, p. 21-201; Dennis O. Flynn and Marie A. Lee, “East Asian Trade Before/after 1590s Occupation of Korea: Modelling Imports and Exports in Global Context”, The Asian Review of World Histories, 1, 1, 31 January 2013, p. 49-117, DOI:10.12773/arwh.2013.1.1.117; Dennis O. Flynn, “Comparing the Tokagawa Shogunate with Hapsburg Spain: Two Silver-Based Empires in a Global Setting”, in James D. Tracy (ed.), The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350-1750, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1997; Arturo Giraldez and Dennis O. Flynn, “Cycles of Silver: Global Economic Unity through the Mid-Eighteenth Century”, Journal of World History, 13, 2, 2002, p. 391-427, DOI:10.1353/jwh.2002.0035; Global Connections and Monetary History, 1470-1800, edited by Dennis O. Flynn, Arturo Giráldez, Richard Von Glahn, Aldershot-UK and Burlington-VT, Ashgate, 2003. The classic introduction to the notion of multiple early modernities the Daedalus special issue devoted to the topic in 1998. See Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and Wolfgang Schluchter, “Introduction: Paths to Early Modernities: A Comparative View” Daedalus, 127, 3, 1 July 1998, p. 1-18. For an earlier, influential analysis see Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991. For one powerful critique of this approach see Sebastian Conrad, “Enlightenment in Global History: A Historiographical Critique”, The American Historical Review, 117, 4, 1 October 2012, p. 999-1027, DOI:10.1093/ahr/117.4.999.

3 A clarification is perhaps due here. By suggesting that China’s monetary system coupled with China’s role as a supplier of merchandises for the West implied the rise of silver metal as a standard for global exchanges, we are not conflating the Chinese and the global monetary systems, which remain separate entities. Indeed, it is precisely outside the space of political sovereignty that money inevitably acquires the characteristic of a commodity. However, given the central position occupied by China in global trades, we believe there existed a tight link between Chinese monetary system and the global silver standard, where the former helped shaping the latter. Such monetary hegemony is best appreciated on a deeper level: we think that the commodification of silver – that is, the very choice of silver rather than, say, gold, as global standard for settling transactions between the xvi and xix centuries – was determined by Chinese practices.

4 C. R. Boxer, “Plata es Sangre: Sidelights on the Drain of Spanish American Silver in the Far East, 1550-1700”, Philippine Studies, 18, 3, 1970, p. 461, p. 463.

5 For an influential analysis of contemporary “liberal hegemony,” see G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2011. For a cogent critique of Ikenberry’s analysis see Sam Moyn, “Soft Sells: On Liberal Internationalism”, in Human Rights and the Uses of History, London-UK, Brooklyn-NY, Verso, 2014, p. 121-134.

6 On the Great Divergence and the rough parity between China and industrializing early modern Europe see: Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000; Roy Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience, Ithaca, United States, Cornell University Press, 1997. For examples of the best work on global cultural exchange and hybridity see: Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia”, Modern Asian Studies, 31, 3, 1 July 1997, p. 762-735, DOI:10.2307/312798; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia, Cambridge-MA, Harvard University Press, 2012; By Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Holding the World in Balance: The Connected Histories of the Iberian Overseas Empires, 1500-1640”, The American Historical Review, 112, 5, 1 December 2007, p. 1359-1385, DOI:10.1086/ahr.112.5.1359; Stuart B. Schwartz, Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting and Reflecting on the Encounters Between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1994; Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2003. For an example of comparative global history stressing interdependence see Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

7 On the centrality of the commodity form of money to capitalism see: Karl Polanyl, The Great Transformation, Boston, Beacon Press, 1957, p. 25-26, p. 75-76 et 212; Christine Desan, Making Money: Coin, Currency and the Coming of Capitalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014; Andrew David Edwards, “The American Revolution and Christine Desan’s New History of Money”: Law and Social Inquiry, 15 August 2016, DOI:10.1111/lsi.12224; Antonio Negri, Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse, New York, Autonomedia, 1991, p. 10-40; Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, New York, Penguin, 2005, p. 115-239; Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, New York, Modern Library, 1906, p. 41-162. The importance of the commodity form of money to capitalism as analysed by Marx and other nineteenth-century authors is less obvious as a historical factor if one believes that the monetary form, the cultural and institutional content of the term money, is a trans-historical constant – extending in the popular analysis from Lydian electrum and Roman coinage to the present. This assumption, we believe, is fundamentally unhistorical, the result of an anachronistic notion of money projected on a heterogeneous past. The best recent scholarship on the history of money supports position. For recent challenges to the understanding of money for example see: Richard Von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000-1700, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996; Daniel Lord Smail, Legal Plunder, Cambridge-MA, Harvard University Press, 2016; Mark Metzler, Lever of Empire: The International Gold Standard and the Crisis of Liberalism in Prewar Japan, University of California Press, 2006; Akinobu Kuroda, “Anonymous Currencies or Named Debts? Comparison of Currencies, Local Credits and Units of Account between China, Japan and England in the Pre-Industrial Era”, Socio-Economic Review, 11, 1, 1 January 2013, p. 57-80, DOI:10.1093/ser/mws013; Akinobu Kuroda, “Copper Coins Chosen and Silver Differentiated: Another Aspect of The ‘Silver Centuryʼ in East Asia”, Acta Asiatica, 88, 2005, p. 65-86; Richard Seaford, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2004; John Smithin, What Is Money?, Routledge, 2002; Nigel Dodd, The Social Life of Money, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2016; Luigi Einaudi, “The Theory of Imaginary Money from Charlemagne to the French Revolution”, in Luigi Einaudi, Riccardo Faucci and Roberto Marchionatti (eds), Luigi Einaudi: Selected Economic Essays, Basingstoke-UK, New York-US, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 81-153; David Graeber, Debt The First 5,000 years, New York, Melville House Publishing, 2011; D. Graham Burnett, “Relational Economics”, Cabinet, http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/50/burnett.php; Mark Peacok, Introducing Money, London-UK, New York-US, Routledge, 2013; Geffrey Ingham, “Money is a Social Relation”, Review of Social Economy, 54, 4, 1 December 1996, p. 29-507, DOI:10.1080/00346769600000031; Shahzavar Karimazadi, Money and Its Origins, London-UK, New York-US, Routledge, 2013; Jane I. Guyer, Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa, Foreword by Anthony T. Carter, Chicago-US, London-UK, The University of Chicago Press, 2004; Marie-Thérèse Boyer-Xambeu, Ghislain Delaplace, and Lucien Gillard, Private Money and Public Currencies: The 16th Century Challenge, translated by Azizeh Azodi, Armonk-NY, ME Sharpe, 1994.

8 For a good overview of the silver supply story see Dennis O. Flynn, “Comparing the Tokagawa Shogunate with Hapsburg Spain: Two Silver-Based Empires in a Global Setting,” in James D. Tracy (ed.), The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350-1750, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1997; Serge Gruzinski, What Time Is It There, Malden-MA, Polity, 2011.

9 E. Backhouse and J. O. P. Bland, Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking, Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1914, p. 322-331. A more recent translation renders the last line of Qianlong’s memorial: “The Celestial Empire, ruling all within the four seas, simply concentrates on carrying out the affairs of government properly, and does not set value on rare and precious things”. Mark C. Elliot, Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World, New York, Longman Publishing Group, 2009, p. 138. Elliot’s biography is a useful introduction to the Chinese claim to “universal rule” in the early modern era. In the introduction to his classic volume on the “Chinese world order” John Fairbank argued that “in Chinese terms the Far-Eastern world was Sinocentric, T’ien-hsia, ‘all-under-heaven’, presided over by ’ien-tzu, the ‘Son of Heaven’, sometimes used to embrace the whole world including everything outside of China”. John King Fairbank (ed.), The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign Relations, Cambridge-MA, Harvard University Press, London-UK, Oxford University Press, 1968. For a more recent take see Brantly Womack, China among Unequals: Asymmetric Foreign Relationships in Asia, Singapore, Hackensack-US, London-UK, World Scientific, 2010.

10 Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, 3, New York, Harper and Row, 1982, p. 484-534; Mark C. Elliot, Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World, New York, Longman Publishing Group, 2009, p. 141; Takeshi Hamashita, China, East Asia and the Global Economy, Linda Grove and Mark Selden (eds), New York, Routledge, 2008, p. 29, p. 49.

11 Richard Von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000-1700, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996, p. 57, p. 60; Peter Spufford, Money and its use in medieval Europe, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 204-205; Akinobu Kuroda, “The Eurasian Silver Century, 1276-1359: Commensurability and Multiplicity”, Journal of Global History, 4, July 2009, p. 249, p. 254.

12 P. Spufford, Money and its use in medieval Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 394; Marie-Thérèse Boyer-Xambeu, Ghislain Deleplace, Lucian Gillard, Private Money and Public Currencies: The 16th Century Challenge, translated by Azizeh Azody, Armonk-NY, ME Sharpe, 1994; Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1998; Luigi Einaudi, “The Theory of Imaginary Money”, in Luigi Einaudi, Riccardo Fauci and Roberto Marchionatti (eds), Luigi Einaudi: Selected Economic Writings, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 153-181; Christine Desan, Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 270.

13 Von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996, p. 83-112; Akinobu Kuroda, “Anonymous Currencies or named Debts? Comparison of Currencies, Local Credits and Units of Account between China, Japan and England in the pre-industrial Era”, Socio-Economic Review, 11, 1, 1 January 2013, p. 57-80, DOI.org/10.1093/ser/mws013.

14 C. Northcote Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, 1739-1813, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1937, p. 317. Quoted originally in Carl A. Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade 1750-1950, London-UK, New York, Routledge, 1999, p. 42.

15 Rice Vaughan, “A Discourse of Coin and Coinage: The First Invention, Use, Matter, Forms, Proportions and Differences, Ancient and Modern: With the Advantages and Disadvantages of the Rise or Fall Thereof, in Our Own or Neighbouring Nations: And the Reasons from the Original of Vaughan”, in John Ramsay, McCulloch (eds), A Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on Money, London, printed for the Political Economy Club, 1856, p. 89.

16 J. Fairbank, The Chinese World Order: Traditional China's Foreign Relations, Cambridge-MA, Harvard University Press, 1968, p. 13; Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez, “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon’: The Origin of World Trade in 1571”, Journal of World History, 6, 2, 1 October 1995, p. 201-222; William S. Atwell, “International Bullion Flows and The Chinese Economy Circa 1530-1650”, Past and Present, 95, 1, May 1982, p. 68-90.

17 For a good overview of the European entrance into Asian trade see Michael N. Pearson, The Indian Ocean, New York, London, Routledge, 2003, p. 167.

18 Cotton Mather, Some Considerations on the Bills of Credit, Boston, Benjamin Harris and Joe Allen, 1691, p. 6-7; Jacob Price, Overseas Trade and Traders: Essays on the Commercial, Financial and Political Challenges of British Atlantic Merchants, 1660-1775, Brookfield-VT, Variorum, 1996, p. 272.

19 Craig Muldrew, The Economy of obligation: The culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1998; Carl Wennerlind, Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620-1720, Cambridge-MA, Harvard University Press, 2011.

20 Barbara Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney (eds), The papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, Charlottesville-VA, University of Virginia Press, 2009, “To John Wayles Eppes”, http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-03-06-02-0458.

21 See among others Berry Emanuel Supple, Commercial Crisis and Change in England 1600-1642: A Study in the Instability of a Mercantile Economy, Cambridge-UK, University press, 1959 and Joyce Appleby “Locke, Liberalism and the Natural Law of Money”, published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society, 71, May, 1976, p. 43-69.

22 “Drawing on the example of the Bank of Amsterdam, metal coin came to be understood by many as nothing else but a kind of security which men receive upon parting with their commodities”, C. Wennerlind, “Credit-Money as the Philosopher’s Stone: Alchemy and the Coinage Problem in seventeenth-century England”, History of Political Economy, 35 (Annual Supplement), 2003, p. 250.

23 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, New York, Vintage Books, 1994, p. 168, p. 170, p. 177; John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, New York, Harcourt, 1964, p. 334.

24 John Shaw (ed.), Charters Relating to the East India Company from 1600 to 1761: Reprinted from a Former Collection with Some Additions and a Preface for the Government of Madras, Madras, London, R. Hill at the Government Press, 1887, p. 10, p. 39; K. N. Chaudhuri, “Treasure and Trade Balances: The East India Company’s Export Trade, 1660-1720”, The Economic History Review, 21, 3, 1968, p. 8-497; John Craig, The Mint: A History of the London Mint from A.D. 287 to 1948, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1953, p. 191; Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and John Harold Plumb (eds), The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England, Bloomington-IN, Indian University Press, 1982, p. 206.

25 Thomas Mun, England’s treasure by foreign trade, Glasgow, R. and A. Foulis, 1755, p. 7; Christine Desan, Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 331; C. Wennerlind, Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620-1720, Cambridge-MA, Harvard University Press, 2011, p. 19.

26 David Ormrod, The Rise of Commercial Empires : England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650-1770, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2003; Charles Wilson, “Treasure and Trade Balances: The Mercantilist Problem”, The Economic History Review, 2, 2, 1949, p. 152-161; Henrik Langelüddecke, “ ‘I Finde All Men and My Officers All Soe Unwilling’: The Collection of Ship Money, 1635-1640”, Journal of British Studies, 46, 3, 1 July 2007, p. 42-509.

27 C. Desan, Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014; Steven C. A. incus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2009; Peter George Muir Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688-1756, Melbourne, Macmillan, 1967; L. Einaudi, “The Theory of Imaginary Money”. For an early version of this argument see Earl J. Hamilton, “American Treasure and the Rise of Capitalism (1500-1700)”, Economica, 27, November 1929, p. 338-357.

28 A. Fearvearyer, The Pound Sterling: A History of English Money, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1931, p. 115.

29 Among others, Sir Dudley North investigated the problematic of a general re-coinage in his ‘Discourses upon Trade’ issued in 1691, Baltimore-MD, Lord Baltimore Press, 1907.

30 Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England, from the Accession of James II - Volume 5, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1856, p. 90.

31 At least until 1696, when new laws envisaging capital punishment for forgers were approved and implemented. It is worth considering this change in legislation in the context of the simultaneous implementation of paper credit and hard currency. Geoffrey Ingham, The Nature of Money, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2004, p. 128, wrote that ‘As credit money became the most common means of transacting business, England also moved towards the creation of the strongest metallic currency in history’. See also Carl Wennerlind, Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620-1720, Cambridge-MA, Harvard University Press, 2011.

32 Richard Von Glahn, “Money-Use in China and Changing Patterns of Global Trade in Monetary Metals, 1500-1800”, in Clara Eugenia Núñez (ed.), Historia Monetaria: Una Perspectiva Global, 1500-1808, Sevilla, Universidad de Sevilla, 1998, p. 57.

33 C. Wennerlind, Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620-1720, Cambridge-MA, Harvard University Press, 2011, p. 148; Takeshi Hamashita, China, East Asia, and the Global Economy: Regional and Historical Perspectives, New York, Routledge, 2008, p. 49; John Locke, Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money. In a Letter Sent to a Member of Parliament [i.e.] Sir John Somers, London, Awnsham and John Churchill, 1692, p. 47, p. 49.

34 J. Locke, Further Considerations Concerning Raising the Value of Money. Wherein Mrs. Lowndes’s Arguments for it in his late Report concerning An Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins, are particularly Examined, London, A. and J. Churchill, 1695, p. 9.

35 Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth-Century and the Dawn of the Global World, London, Profile Books, 2009, p. 154.

36 K. N. Chaudhuri, “Treasure and Trade Balances: The East India Company’s Export Trade, 1660-1720”, The Economic History Review, 21, 3, 1968, p. 498; John Locke, Further Considerations Concerning Raising the Value of Money, London, A. and J. Churchill, 1695, p. 20-21.

37 For one example, which prefigures some of our arguments, see K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 153-189.

38 Isaac Newton, “On the Value of Gold and Silver in European Currencies and the Consequences on the World-wide Gold and Silver-Trade, 25 September 1717”, in William Shaw (ed.), Select Tracts and Documents Illustrative of English Monetary History 1626-1730, London, Wilsons and Milne, 1896, p. 166-171.

39 Thomas Paine, The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, Philip S. Foner (ed.), York, Citadel Press, 1945, p. 2, p. 674.

40 G. John Ikenberry and Charles A. Kupchan, “Socialization and Hegemonic Power”, International Organization, 44, 3, 1990, p. 283.

41 K. N. Chaudhury, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 65-464.

42 Letters of Court, November 11, 1768, quoted in Sanjay Garg, “History of the Currency Legislations of the East India Company, 1772-1835, in The Sikka and the Raj: a History of Currency Legislations of the East India Company, 1772-1835, New Delhi, Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 2013.

43 Letters of Court, November 11, 1768, quoted in Sanjay Garg, “History of the Currency Legislations of the East India Company, 1772-1835, in The Sikka and the Raj: a History of Currency Legislations of the East India Company, 1772-1835, New Delhi, Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 2013.

44 K. N. Chaudhury, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 510, Table C.2.

45 K. N. Chaudhury, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 153-155.

46 K. N. Chaudhury, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 155, p. 160, p. 182.

47 William Wilson Hunter, The Annals of Rural Bengal, [4th (ed.)], London, Smith Elder and Co., 1871, p. 32; Richard Price, An Essay on the Population of England, from the Revolution to the Present Time: With an Appendix, Containing Remarks on the Account of the Population, Trade, and Resources of the Kingdom, in Mr. Eden’s Letters to Lord Carlisle, London, T. Cadell, 1780, p. 14.

48 Pandit Sunderlal, How India Lost Her Freedom, [4th (ed.)], Bombay, Popular Prakashan, 1970, p. 78.

49 David Arnold, “Hunger in the Garden of Plenty the Bengal Famine of 1770”, in Alessa Johns (ed.), Dreadful Visitations: Confronting Natural Catastrophe in the Age of Enlightenment, New York, Routledge, 2013, 84.

50 Nikhil Sur, “The Bihar Famine of 1770”, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 13, 4, October 1976, p. 525-531; D. Arnold, “Hunger in the Garden of Plenty the Bengal Famine of 1770”, in Alessa Johns (ed.), Dreadful Visitations: Confronting Natural Catastrophe in the Age of Enlightenment, New York, Routledge, 2013, p. 83.

51 History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons in the fourth Session of the Fifteenth Parliament of GREAT BRITAIN, XI, London, J. Debrett, 1784, p. 277.

52 Romesh Chunder Dutt, The Economic History of India Under Early British Rule, London, K. Paul, Trench, Trübner and Company, Ltd, 1908, p. 53; Vinita Damodaran, “Famine in Bengal: A Comparison of the 1770 Famine in Bengal and the 1897 Famine in Chotanagpur”, The Medieval History Journal, 10, 1-2, 1 October 2007, p. 149, DOI:10.1177/097194580701000206; W. W. Hunter, The Annals of Rural Bengal, London, Smith, Elder and Company, 1868, p. 26. The violence was primarily indirect. Taxes depleted resources that otherwise could have been used to pay for grain, turning a difficult situation lethal. In 1908, the Bengali historian Romesh Chunder Dutt described the famine of 1770 in terms Amartya Sen would echo decades later on the relationship between economics failures and famine: ‘Famines in India are directly related to a deficiency in the annual rainfall; but the intensity of such famines and the loss of lives caused by them are largely due to the chronic poverty of the people. If the people were generally in a prosperous condition, they could make up for the local failure of crops by purchases from neighboring provinces, and there would be no loss of life. But when the people are absolutely resourceless, they cannot buy from surrounding tracts, and they perish in hundreds of thousands, or in millions, whenever there is a local failure of crops’. R. C. Dutt, The Economic History of India Under Early British Rule, London, K. Paul, Trench, Trübner and Company, Ltd, 1908, p. 51. For a continuation of the story see Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts : El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, New York, Verso, 2001.

53 Rajat Datta, “Rural Bengal: Social Structure and Agrarian Economy in the Late Eighteenth-Century”, PhD dissertation, Kings College London, 1990, p. 107-109.

54 Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan, London, T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1772, p. 71. On Dow’s biography see Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, Crime and Empire: The Colony in Nineteenth-Century Fictions of Crime, Oxford-UK, New York, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 28.

55 For a recent overview of the cowrie economy see Bin Yan, “The Rise and Fall of Cowrie Shells: The Asian Story,” Journal of World History, 22, 1, March 2011, p. 1-25.

56 Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan, London, T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1772, p. 67. For general conditions in Bengal see Rajat Datta, “Rural Bengal: Social Structure and Agrarian Economy in the Late Eighteenth-Century”, PhD dissertation, Kings College London, 1990.

57 W. W. Hunter, The Annals of Rural Bengal, [4th (ed.)], London, Smith Elder and Co., 1871, p. 36-37. For contemporary revenue figures see Harry Verelst, A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal: Including a Reply to the Misrepresentation of Mr. Bolts, and Other Writers, London, Nourse, 1772, p. 82.

58 W. W. Hunter, The Annals of Rural Bengal, [4th (ed.)], London, Smith Elder and Co., 1871, p. 32.

59 H. V. Bowen, Revenue and Reform: The Indian Problem in British Politics, 1757-1773, Cambridge-UK, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 189.

60 H. Verelst, A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal: Including a Reply to the Misrepresentation of Mr. Bolts, and Other Writers, London, Nourse, 1772, p. 103.

61 H. V. Bowen, “Bullion for Trade, War, and Debt-Relief: British Movements of Silver To, Around, and From Asia, 1760-1833”, Modern Asian Studies, 44, 03, May 2010, p. 454, DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X09004004.

62 H. Verelst, A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal: Including a Reply to the Misrepresentation of Mr. Bolts, and Other Writers, London, Nourse, 1772, p. 81.

63 Sir James Steuart, The Principles of Money Applied to the Present State of the Coin of Bengal: Being an Inquiry Into the Methods to Be Used for Correcting the Defects of the Present Currency; for Stopping the Drains Which Carry Off the Coin; and for Extending Circulation by the Means of Paper Credit, London, East India Company, 1772, p. 57.

64 H. Verelst, A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal: Including a Reply to the Misrepresentation of Mr. Bolts, and Other Writers, London, Nourse, 1772, p. 106.

65 J. Steuart, The Principles of Money Applied to the Present State of the Coin of Bengal, London, East India Company, 1772, p. 57.

66 H. V. Bowen, Revenue and Reform: The Indian Problem in British Politics, 1757-1773, Cambridge-UK, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 119.

67 J. Steuart, The Principles of Money Applied to the Present State of the Coin of Bengal: Being an Inquiry Into the Methods to Be Used for Correcting the Defects of the Present Currency; for Stopping the Drains Which Carry Off the Coin; and for Extending Circulation by the Means of Paper Credit, London, East India Company, 1772, p. 65.

68 Isaac Newton, “On the Value of Gold and Silver in European Currencies and the Consequences on the World-wide Gold and Silver-Trade, 25 September 1717”, in William Shaw (ed.), Select Tracts and Documents Illustrative of English Monetary History 1626-1730, London, Wilsons and Milne, 1896, p. 38.

69 H. V. Bowen, “British India, 1765-1813: The Metropolitan Context” in Roger Louis (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume II: The Eighteenth Century, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 534.

70 Jesse Prinz, “The Return of Concept Empiricism,” in Henri Cohen and Claire Lefebvre (eds), Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science, New York, Elsevier, 2005, p. 680; Verelst, A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal, p. 88.

71 H. Verelst, A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal: Including a Reply to the Misrepresentation of Mr. Bolts, and Other Writers, London, Nourse, 1772, p. 89.

72 H. Verelst, A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal: Including a Reply to the Misrepresentation of Mr. Bolts, and Other Writers, London, Nourse, 1772, p. 90.

73 H. Verelst, A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal: Including a Reply to the Misrepresentation of Mr. Bolts, and Other Writers, London, Nourse, 1772, p. 93.

74 H. Verelst, A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal: Including a Reply to the Misrepresentation of Mr. Bolts, and Other Writers, London, Nourse, 1772, p. 95.

75 H. Verelst, A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal: Including a Reply to the Misrepresentation of Mr. Bolts, and Other Writers, London, Nourse, 1772, p. 103.

76 Haim Gerber, “The Monetary System of the Ottoman Empire”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 25, 3, 1982, p. 308-324, p. 313.

77 In 1700, almost 93 % of them used silver. See Daniel Panzac, “L’économie-monde ottomane en question. Les clauses monétaires dans les contrats d’affrètement maritime au xviiie siècle”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 39, 3, 1996, p. 370.

78 The mining activity definitely did play a smaller part than is usually acknowledged, for the imperial mint relied “almost exclusively on the market” in its procurement of precious metals. See Ömerül Faruk Bolukbasi, 18. Yüzyilin Ikinci Yarisinda Darbhâne - I âmire [The Imperial Mint in the Second Half of the 18th Century], İstanbul, İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2013, p. 12-15.

79 Dennis O. Flinn and Arturo Giraldez, “Silver and Ottoman Monetary History in Global Perspective”, The Journal of European Economic History, 31, 1, 2002, p. 16.

80 Şevket Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 163.

81 Edhem Eldem, “Capitulations and Western Trade”, in Suraiya N. Faroqhi (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 281-335, p. 316.

82 Neşe Erim, “Trade, Traders and the State in Eighteenth-Century Erzurum”, New Perspectives on Turkey, 6, 1991, p. 123-149; Daniel Panzac, “International and Domestic Maritime Trade in the Ottoman Empire during the 18th Century”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 24, 2, 1992, p. 191.

83 Halil Sahillioglu, Studies on Ottoman Economic and Social History, Istanbul, IRCICA, 1999, p. 42-55.

84 The silver content of the Kuruş in grams declined from 14,5/1740 to 11,4/1767 and finally to 5,9/1794. Ş. Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 163.

85 Ş. Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 170-171.

86 Ethan Lewis Menchinger, “An Ottoman Historian in an Age of Reform: Ahmed Vâsıf Efendi (ca. 1730-1806)”, PhD Thesis, University of Michigan, 2014, p. 223-232.

87 For Penah Efendiʼs biography, see Marinos Sariyannis and Ekin Tuşalp Atyas, Ottoman Political Thought up to the Tanzimat: A Concise History, Rethymno, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas – Institute for Mediterranean Studies, 2015, p. 144–146.

88 Süleyman Penah Efendi, “Mora Ihtilâli Tarihçesi Veya Penah Efendi Mecmuası, 1769”, in Aziz Berker (ed.), Tarih Vesikaları 2 (1942-1943), fasc. 7: 63–80, fasc. 8: 153–160, fasc. 9: 228–240, fasc. 10: 309–320, fasc. 11: 385–400, fasc. 12: 473–480, 1942.

89 That is, being the “sahib-i sikke ve hutbe”.

90 Ş. Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 16.

91 Ş. Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 477.

92 Ş. Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 319-391, p. 399-400, p. 475-479.

93 Fatih Ermis, A History of Ottoman Economic Thought: Developments before the Nineteenth-Century, Abingdon-Oxon, New York, Routledge, 2014, p. 121-157; O. F. Bölükbaşi, 18. Yüzyılın Ikinci Yarısında Darbhâne-I Âmire, Istanbul, Istanbul Bilgi Universitesi Yaymlari, 2013. After 1774, the financial bureaucracy reformed the tax-farming system on a life-time basis, called ‘malikane’. The new system, called ‘esham’, the annual net revenues of a tax source were specified in nominal terms. This amount was divided into a large number of shares which were then sold to the public for the lifetime of the buyers. Ş. Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 190-191. Şevket Pamuk notes in a recent contribution the “striking” similarities in the development of Ottoman and European institutions of public finance during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Our contribution can point to silver and money as a possible explanation. See Şevket Pamuk, “The Evolution of Fiscal Institutions in the Ottoman Empire, 1500-1914”, in Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla and Patrick K. O’Brien (eds), The Rise of Fiscal States. A Global History, 1500-1914, Cambridge-UK, Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 304-334.

94 Ş. Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 170-172, p. 188-204.

95 Ş. Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 186-187.

96 On the Chinese tributary system see Takeshi Hamashita, China, East Asia and the Global Economy, Linda Grove and Mark Selden (eds), Milton Park-Abingdon-Oxon, New York-NY, Routledge, 2008.