China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937 / / Austin Dean.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2020
• VerfasserIn: Dean, Austin,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2020]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Cornell Studies in Money
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (264 p.) :; 5 b&w halftones

In the late nineteenth century, as much of the world adopted some variant of the gold standard, China remained the most populous country still using silver. Yet China had no unified national currency; there was not one monetary standard but many. Silver coins circulated alongside chunks of silver and every transaction became an "encounter of wits." China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937 focuses on how officials, policymakers, bankers, merchants, academics, and journalists in China and around the world answered a simple question: how should China change its monetary system? Far from a narrow, technical issue, Chinese monetary reform is a dramatic story full of political revolutions, economic depressions, chance, and contingency. As different governments in China attempted to create a unified monetary standard in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the United States, England, and Japan tried to shape the direction of Chinese monetary reform for their own benefit. Austin Dean argues convincingly that the Silver Era in world history ended due to the interaction of imperial competition in East Asia and the state-building projects of different governments in China. When the Nationalist government of China went off the silver standard in 1935, it marked a key moment not just in Chinese history but in world history.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Notes on Terms, Currencies, Weights, and Measures -- Introduction: Following the Money -- 1. A Primer on the Qing Dynasty Monetary System -- 2. Silver Begins Its Fall -- 3. Provincial Silver Coins and the Fragmenting Chinese Monetary System, 1887–1900 -- 4. The Gold-Exchange Standard and Imperial Competition in China, 1901–1905 -- 5. Money and Power on the World’s Last “Silver Frontier” -- 6. The Shanghai Mint and Establishing a Silver Standard in China, 1920–1933 -- 7. The Fabi and the End of the Global Silver Era, 1933–1937 -- Conclusion: Reflections on the End of Global Silver -- Appendix: Price of Bar Silver in London, 1833–1933 -- Chinese and Japanese Character List -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index