Empire of Silver, Jin Xu
Empire of Silver, Jin Xu
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Empire of Silver
A New Monetary History of China

Author: Jin Xu

Narrator: Nancy Wu

Unabridged: 12 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/22/2021

Synopsis

This revelatory account of the ways silver shaped Chinese history shows how an obsession with white metal held China back from financial modernization. First used as currency during the Song dynasty in around 900 CE, silver gradually became central to Chinas economic framework and was officially monetized in the middle of the Ming dynasty during the sixteenth century. However, due to the early adoption of paper money in China, silver was not formed into coins but became a cumbersome weighing currency, for which ingots had to be constantly examined for weight and purityan unwieldy practice that lasted for centuries.While Chinas interest in silver spurred new avenues of trade and helped increase the countrys global economic footprint, Jin Xu argues that, in the long run, silver played a key role in the struggles and entanglements that led to the decline of the Chinese empire.

About Jin Xu

Jin Xu is senior editor and chief financial commentator at the Financial Times Chinese. She has been a visiting fellow at the University of Tokyo and a Caijing Fellow at Peking University. She lives in Shanghai.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jonathan on April 07, 2021

Jin Xu's Empire of Silver is an interesting book that delves into the complex topic of China's financial history up to the Nationalist regime preceding Mao. It covers a fairly long period, from the bronze age to the mid-1940s. Most of the book is, nevertheless, spent on the Tang/Song, the Ming, and......more

Goodreads review by Juhyundred on June 11, 2021

I learned so much, and this book was also so boring. Found the author’s affinity for people like Milton Friedman kind of weird, but also had lots of solid observations. Had to reread a lot and read other stuff because I was just so bored......more

Goodreads review by Nilesh on December 22, 2021

The book is a treasure trove of new information on the centuries-long monetary history of a society (which happens to be China). While its content may have value for many political historians of China or East Asia, there are numerous things of all kinds to learn for monetary economists. To be sure,......more

Goodreads review by Ocean on March 24, 2022

At first I thought this book would basically be an economic history of China. Then it seemed like it was one of those books overly emphasizing one single item throughout history (c.f. Salt, Cod, etc.). It turned out to be a combination of the two. Silver really did overly influence China's trajector......more

Goodreads review by Rachel on May 27, 2024

This is a sweeping monetary history of China up to the Republican era, with a thematic focus on the use of silver as currency, but bringing together broader themes of economic and political history. The framing question is a subsidiary of the Needham question of, roughly, "Why did China, after being......more

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