The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China

Timothy Brook; Timothy Brook

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The Price of Collapse

The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China

Timothy Brook and Timothy Brook

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2023

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About this book

How climate change ushered in the collapse of one of history’s mighty empires

In 1644, after close to three centuries of relative stability and prosperity, the Ming dynasty collapsed. Many historians attribute its demise to the Manchu invasion of China, but the truth is far more profound. The Price of Collapse provides an entirely new approach to the economic and social history of China, exploring how global climate crisis spelled the end of Ming rule.

The mid-seventeenth century witnessed the deadliest phase of the Little Ice Age, when temperatures and rainfall plunged and world economies buckled. Timothy Brook draws on the history of grain prices to paint a gripping portrait of the final tumultuous years of a once-great dynasty. He explores how global trade networks that increasingly moved silver into China may have affected prices and describes the daily struggle to survive amid grain shortages and famine. By the early 1640s, as the subjects of the Ming found themselves caught in a deadly combination of cold and drought that defied all attempts to stave off disaster, the Ming price regime collapsed, and with it the Ming political regime.

A masterful work of scholarship, The Price of Collapse reconstructs the experience of ordinary people under the immense pressure of unaffordable prices as their country slid from prosperity to calamity and shows how the market mediated the relationship between an empire and the climate that turned against it.

Author / Editor information

Timothy Brook is professor emeritus of history at the University of British Columbia and a fellow of the British Academy. His many books include Great State, Mr. Selden’s Map of China, and Vermeer’s Hat.

Reviews

"Fascinating."---David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer --- "The Price of Collapse is an exemplary work on a well-researched topic—the fall of Ming China—from a set of unique perspectives, such as price history and the history of climate. . . . This is an inspiring extended reading of the author’s award-winning book The Confusions of Pleasure, helping readers fully understand the rise and fall of Ming China, once the center of global trade, through a new lens. . . . Highly recommended." --- "The subject of Timothy Brook’s book, the demise of the Ming dynasty, offers a chilling warning of a cost-of-living crisis driven by climate-induced food precarity."---Peter Coates, Times Literary Supplement --- "The Price of Collapse is a little gem."---Rana Mitter, Literary Review

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
List of Tables and Figures Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface. My Brief Life as a Price Historian Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
1 The Tale of Chen Qide Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	1
2 Halcyon Days? The Wanli Price Regime Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	29
3 Silver, Prices, and Maritime Trade Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	69
4 The Famine Price of Grain Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	106
5 The Chongzhen Price Surge Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	138
Afterword: Climate and History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	163
Appendix A. Units of Measurement Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	171
Appendix B. Reign Eras of the Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	173
Appendix C. Tables for Reference Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	175
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	189
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	207
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	223

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

November 22, 2023

eBook ISBN:

9780691253701

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691253701

eBook ISBN: 9780691253701

Keywords for this book

environmental crisis; famine; prices; dynastic collapse; The Price of Collapse; The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China; Asia; China; Princeton; Princeton University Press; History; Timothy Brook

Audience(s) for this book

For a non-specialist adult audience

The Price of Collapse

Overview

About this book

Author / Editor information

Reviews

Topics

Table of contents

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