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Vol. 7, No. 1 Late Imperial ChinaJune 1986 CHINA AND THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CRISIS Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr.* Imperial rescript to the Board ofRevenue and other yamen: We are reminded that for a number ofyears now there has been no surcease from military hostilities. Hundreds ofmillions have been spent on urgently needed supplies. Added to that, there have been floods and droughts, and the little people have found it difficult to eat. The local officials cannot soothe and pacify them, and as a result, they become vagabonds who cut off Our roads. The entire world within Our territorial boundaries is part of Our own personal Mandate. Unable to endure the sight and sound ofsuch misery, Wefind no solace in sleeping and eating. The time to rescue and protect them cannot be postponed. The Board ofRevenue and other yamen have charge ofcertain tax revenues . Let them all clearly ascertain the actual amount ofsilver taels in their treasuries, and then quickly come forward and let Us see. Special rescript. Twenty-third day ofthe second month ofShunzhi Eleven (1654)1 The fall of the Ming house (1368-1644) and the rise of the Qing regime (1644-1911) was one of the most colorful and abrupt dynastic successions in all of Chinese history.2 Yet in spite of the Manchus' sudden occupation of Beijing in 1644, only six weeks after the Ming emperor committed suicide just outside the vermilion walls of the Forbidden City, the transition from Ming to Qing was no sudden coup d'état. Whether from our own detached perspective in the present, or from the closer vantage points of * The author wishes to express his appreciation to members of the Berkeley research group in comparative theory who commented on this paper. Research for this project was aided by a grant from the Center for Chinese Studies at Berkeley and by the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China in Washington, D.C. 1 Number One National Archives of China, comp., Qingdai dang'an shiliao congbian [Compilation of Historical Materials from the Qing Archives], fascicle 9 (Beijing: Zhonghua shudian, 1983), 1-2. 2 See, for its dramatic aspects, Frederic Wakeman, Jr., "Romantics, Stoics, and Martyrs in Seventeenth-Century China," Journal ofAsian Studies, 43, no. 4 (Aug. 1984):653-656. 2 Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr. Ming subjects and Qing conquerors at the time, the change must appear part of a much longer process: the economic decline of seventeenthcentury commerce, the social disintegration of the Ming order, and the political consolidation of Qing rule. Late Ming China's connection with a global monetary system is by now quite clear to historians.3 Because of a constant deficit in the balance of payments in favor of Chinese goods and industries, silver flowed to China's Weltwirtschaft from throughout the world. "Long before Europeans knew the world in its totality, the globe was already divided up into more or less centralized and more or less coherent zones, that is, into several world economies that coexisted."4 Within the East Asian economic zone during the early 1600s, China probably imported an average of 3348 ,000 kilograms of silver from Japan per year, and from outside that zone even more specie flowed into "the tomb of European moneys."5 China during the seventeenth century, through trade with the Spanish Philippines , became the major recipient of American silver, receiving in a good year between two and three million pesos (57,500-86,250 kilograms ).6 Some historians have argued that this flow of bullion into China 3 Li Tingxian, "Shi Kefa de pingjia wenti" [The Problem of Evaluating the Worth of Shi Kefa], Zhongguo wenshi luncong [Collection of Essays on Chinese Literature and History], no. 1 (1979), 244-245; Wiliam S. Atwell, "Time and Money: Another Approach to the Periodization of Ming History," paper presented at the Sino-American Symposium on Social Change in China from the Song Period to 1900, Beijing, Nov. 1980, 25-28; Atwell, "International Bullion Flows and the Chinese Economy," Past and Present 95:89-90 (1982); Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age ofPhilip II, trans. Sian Reynolds (London, 1972), 1:1, 464. But see also...

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