1966/03/01 by Robert Hartwell · 4 citations
Social Sciences · #Chinese history and philosophy #Eurasian Exchange Networks #Eleventh #Industrial Revolution #China #Economic history #Treaty #Ancient history #Economy #History #Economics #Political science #Archaeology #Law
paper · doi:10.1017/s0022050700061842
openalex publication_date 1966/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
From about 750 to 1100, China experienced a series of economic changes roughly comparable to the subsequent patterns of European growth from the Crusades to the eve of the French Revolution. The spread in the use of money, development of new credit and fiscal institutions, increase in interregional and international trade, and colonization of hitherto marginal land which took place in the Occident during the half millennium preceding the Reformation was paralleled by an earlier era of progress in East Asia during the two-hundred-fifty years from the rebellion of An Lu-shan (755) to the treaty of Shan-yüan 1004). And the achievements of late sixteenthand early seventeenth-century England, which John Nef terms an “early industrial revolution,” were in many respects even exceeded by the impressive expansion of mining and manufacturing in eleventh-century China.