1 Rating(s)
List: $24.99
| Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49
Empire of Silver
A New Monetary History of China
Author: Jin Xu
Narrator: Nancy Wu
Unabridged: 12 hr 32 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Dreamscape Media
Published: 04/22/2021
Category: History - Asia - China
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.