Richard Von Glahn

Featuring a renowned author team and the best recent scholarship, World in the Making: A Global History explores both the global and local dimensions of world history. Abundant full-color maps and images, along with other special pedagogical features that highlight the lives and voices of the world's peoples, make this synthesis accessible and memorable for students--all at an affordable low price.

Featuring a renowned author team and the best recent scholarship, World in the Making: A Global History explores both the global and local dimensions of world history. Abundant full-color maps and images, along with other special pedagogical features that highlight the lives and voices of the world's peoples, make this synthesis accessible and memorable for students--all at an affordable low price.

This two-volume workbook includes approximately thirty-five reference maps and fifty outline maps that provide opportunities to deepen understanding of world history through coloring exercises.

Edited by the authors of World in the Making and designed specifically to complement the text, this two-volume sourcebook includes more than 100 sources that give voice to both notable figures and everyday individuals. Every chapter includes an introduction and approximately six sources representing both major works and fresh perspectives. The "Contrasting Views" feature presents sources with divergent perspectives to foster comparative analysis.

Edited by the authors of World in the Making and designed specifically to complement the text, this two-volume sourcebook includes more than 100 sources that give voice to both notable figures and everyday individuals. Every chapter includes an introduction and approximately six sources representing both major works and fresh perspectives. The "Contrasting Views" feature presents sources with divergent perspectives to foster comparative analysis.

The invention of paper currency marked a watershed in global financial history. In this deeply researched study, Richard von Glahn explains why paper money first arose in China rather than any other part of the world – and why it ultimately failed. Although paper money achieved notable success during the Song and Yuan dynasties, it collapsed under the very different principles of political economy adopted by the Ming. In the first English-language examination of the rise and demise of paper money, von Glahn argues that the answer lies in China's unique monetary system and political economy, introducing readers to the eleventh-century origins of paper money in China, the principles of Chinese monetary theory, China's bronze coin monetary standard and specific forms of fiscal governance. This is not only an essential introduction to Chinese monetary history, but a major contribution to global economic history.

The invention of paper currency marked a watershed in global financial history. In this deeply researched study, Richard von Glahn explains why paper money first arose in China rather than any other part of the world – and why it ultimately failed. Although paper money achieved notable success during the Song and Yuan dynasties, it collapsed under the very different principles of political economy adopted by the Ming. In the first English-language examination of the rise and demise of paper money, von Glahn argues that the answer lies in China's unique monetary system and political economy, introducing readers to the eleventh-century origins of paper money in China, the principles of Chinese monetary theory, China's bronze coin monetary standard and specific forms of fiscal governance. This is not only an essential introduction to Chinese monetary history, but a major contribution to global economic history.

China's extraordinary rise as an economic powerhouse in the past two decades poses a challenge to many long-held assumptions about the relationship between political institutions and economic development. Economic prosperity also was vitally important to the longevity of the Chinese Empire throughout the preindustrial era. Before the eighteenth century, China's economy shared some of the features, such as highly productive agriculture and sophisticated markets, found in the most advanced regions of Europe. But in many respects, from the central importance of irrigated rice farming to family structure, property rights, the status of merchants, the monetary system, and the imperial state's fiscal and economic policies, China's preindustrial economy diverged from the Western path of development. In this comprehensive but accessible study, Richard von Glahn examines the institutional foundations, continuities and discontinuities in China's economic development over three millennia, from the Bronze Age to the early twentieth century.

China's extraordinary rise as an economic powerhouse in the past two decades poses a challenge to many long-held assumptions about the relationship between political institutions and economic development. Economic prosperity also was vitally important to the longevity of the Chinese Empire throughout the preindustrial era. Before the eighteenth century, China's economy shared some of the features, such as highly productive agriculture and sophisticated markets, found in the most advanced regions of Europe. But in many respects, from the central importance of irrigated rice farming to family structure, property rights, the status of merchants, the monetary system, and the imperial state's fiscal and economic policies, China's preindustrial economy diverged from the Western path of development. In this comprehensive but accessible study, Richard von Glahn examines the institutional foundations, continuities and discontinuities in China's economic development over three millennia, from the Bronze Age to the early twentieth century.

The most striking feature of Wutong, the preeminent God of Wealth in late imperial China, was the deity's diabolical character. Wutong was perceived not as a heroic figure or paragon of noble qualities but rather as an embodiment of humanity's basest vices, greed and lust, a maleficent demon who preyed on the weak and vulnerable. In "The Sinister Way", Richard von Glahn examines the emergence and evolution of the Wutong cult within the larger framework of the historical development of Chinese popular or vernacular religion - as opposed to institutional religions such as Buddhism or Daoism. Von Glahn's study, spanning three millennia, gives due recognition to the morally ambivalent and demonic aspects of divine power within the common Chinese religious culture.

The most striking feature of Wutong, the preeminent God of Wealth in late imperial China, was the deity's diabolical character. Wutong was perceived not as a heroic figure or paragon but rather as an embodiment of greed and lust, a maleficent demon who preyed on the weak and vulnerable. In "The Sinister Way", Richard von Glahn examines the emergence and evolution of the Wutong cult within the larger framework of the historical development of Chinese popular or vernacular religion - as opposed to institutional religions such as Buddhism or Daoism. Von Glahn's study, spanning three millennia, gives due recognition to the morally ambivalent and demonic aspects of divine power within the common Chinese religious culture. Surveying Chinese religion from 1000 BCE to the beginning of the twentieth century, "The Sinister Way" views the Wutong cult as by no means an aberration. In Von Glahn's work we see how, from earliest times, the Chinese imagined an enchanted world populated by fiendish fairies and goblins, ancient stones and trees that spring suddenly to life, ghosts of the unshriven dead, and the blood-eating spirits of the mountains and forests. From earliest times, too, we find in Chinese religious culture an abiding tension between two fundamental orientations: on one hand, belief in the power of sacrifice and exorcism to win blessings and avert calamity through direct appeal to a multitude of gods; on the other, faith in an all-encompassing moral equilibrium inhering in the cosmos.

Until the Song dynasty, the mountains and rocky gorges of Sichuan were inhabited primarily by forest peoples. Increased settlement by Han Chinese farmers from the rice-growing plains altered the landscape, changed the balance of power among tribes, and adapted Han custom to new conditions. This book describes how the remote Luzhou area of Sichuan became fully integrated into Chinese civilization. First colonized under private auspices, the region was early dominated by tribal chiefs and local Han magnates with personal armies; but eventually state intervention increased as the military was called in to protect profitable salt wells, Han farming, and the trade routes over which timber, minerals, aromatics, and horses were carried to central markets. Richard von Glahn describes how administrative structures emerged in towns and villages. He argues that policy decisions by the central government and economic imperatives from core regions instigated and determined local development. The book thus provides detailed knowledge of a particular place and has implications for the theoretical study of frontiers.