Saved by Étienne Fortier-Dubois
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China’s part in international commerce may have been relatively small, but its internal trade may have been as large, if not larger, than that of contemporary Europe.
John Darwin • After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
Pre-industrial China had reached a ‘high-level equilibrium’, a plateau of economic success. Its misfortune was that there was no incentive to climb any higher: the high-level equilibrium had become a trap.
John Darwin • After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
Then the Mongols invaded, and after that came the Ming empire. And the Ming were quite the opposite of the Song. They wanted tight, centralized control of everything. They literally controlled where you could travel, and they needed a report from every merchant on how much stock he held in his warehouse at regular intervals. This was a recipe for... See more
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purely contingent and accidental reasons. Pomeranz puts great stress on one factor, that China’s coal reserves were both geologically inaccessible and geographically remote, making a steam-powered industrial revolution like the one in Europe impossible
Stephen Davies • Just a moment...
So, that shifts under the Song policy to a policy of "hey maybe let's not tax the pants off of the peasant farmers, and instead try something craazy." That "crazy" idea is to tax trade - both internal & with foreign entities.