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Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China. By ROBERT MARKS. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xx + 383. $64.95 (cloth).
Sugar and Society in China: Peasants, Technology and the World Market. By SUCHETA MAZUMDAR. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 1998. Pp. xx + 657- $49.50 (cloth).
Historians of China have long recognized the economic vitality of Late Imperial China. This knowledge has become increasingly incorporated into studies of world economies, challenging earlier assertions of European "uniqueness" that were based more on ignorance of the rest of the world than on comparative research. These two insightful and well-documented works by Robert Marks and Sucheta Mazumdar focus on the Pearl River Delta area around Canton in south China, a particularly important node in early modern world history. They not only confirm the high levels of commercialization in Late Imperial south China, but also place it within the context of an extensive Sino-- Pacific economy, and a temporal context of over two thousand years.
Both authors are ultimately concerned (Mazumdar more explicitly than Marks) with the perennial question of why Western Europe industrialized and China did not, yet each draws from distinct sources to create different perspectives on the society and economy of south China. Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt attempts to figure nature into Chinese history by correlating environmental changes with economic shifts, political history, and population movements. Sugar and Society in China focuses on the production and marketing of sugar, using this as a window to understanding the domestic and international trade of China, the appropriation and development of technology, and the importance of social property relations. The state plays an important role in both works, but while Marks focuses on its activities regarding market regulation and famine relief, Mazumdar looks at the influence of its cultural, property, and taxation policies. The two perspectives are largely complementary, suggesting contradictions only in their characterizations of domestic markets. Marks takes a bird's eye view that depicts regional foodstuff markets in terms of extensive penetration and stability by the eighteenth century, whereas Mazumdar focuses on village and family practices that resulted in a "limited" market economy. These differences appear most explicitly in Marks's insistence that Pearl River Delta...