Richard von Glahn (Professor, UCLA), directeur d’études invité à l’EHESS, présentera 4 conférences en mai 2017. Après avoir soutenu sa thèse à l'Université de Yale en 1983, Richard von Glahn a été professeur adjoint au Collège du Connecticut avant de rejoindre la faculté de l'UCLA en 1987. Son domaine principal de recherche est l'histoire économique et sociale de la Chine prémoderne, avec une attention particulière à la période 1000-1700.

CONFÉRENCES

Fiscal Management and the Creation of a Paper Money Economy in Song-Yuan China

Dans le cadre du séminaire de Christian Lamouroux, « Lettrés, financiers et militaires : les monnaies des Généralités dans la Chine des XIIe et XIIIe siècles »

The precocious development of paper money during the Song dynasty (960-1276) was an integral part of a medieval “commercial revolution” marking the definitive emergence of a money economy in China. Paper money was one part of a multiple currency monetary system—which included uncoined silver specie, bronze and iron coins, and other negotiable paper instruments—in Song China. I propose that it was the pervasive impact of “fiscal circulation”—the monetization of taxation, interregional transfers of revenues, and state procurement and expenditure—that integrated these diverse currencies into a coherent monetary order. By the late Song period paper money had become a principal means of public and private payments, and under the succeeding Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) paper money became the exclusive form of circulating currency. The crucial importance of fiscal circulation (on a scale far greater than what we witness in Europe and the Islamic world at that time) explains why the Song and Yuan states succeeded in maintaining a viable paper currency over a span of nearly four centuries.

• Mercredi 10 mai 2017, de 13h à 15h - EHESS (Salle A 737, 7e étage) – 54, bld Raspail 75006 Paris

The “Great Divergence” Revisited: What Do We Now Know?

Dans le cadre du séminaire de François Gipouloux, « Aux origines de la mondialisation : histoire économique comparée Asie Europe, 1500-2000 »

The publication of Ken Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern Economy in 2000 revolutionized the field of economic history by challenging long-held assumptions about the superiority of European economic institutions and performance in the premodern era. In the wake of Pomeranz’s study scholars have been compelled to reassess the theoretical and methodological foundations of comparative economic history. Pomeranz’s revisionist analysis has been subjected to searching criticism while stimulating new research and creating a new field of global economic history. This lecture will examine the debates sparked by The Great Divergence and the major reinterpretations of the dynamics of development and growth in the global economy that have appeared in recent years.

• Mardi 16 mai 2017, de 11h à 13h - EHESS (Salle A 737, 7e étage) - 54, bld Raspail 75006 Paris

The Rise and Demise of Chinese Coin as the International Monetary Standard in Maritime East Asia, 1150-1650

Dans le cadre du séminaire de Christian Lamouroux, « Lettrés, financiers et militaires : les monnaies des Généralités dans la Chine des XIIe et XIIIe siècles »

In the twelfth-thirteenth centuries massive quantities of bronze coin issued by the Song dynasty in China were exported and became the de facto monetary standard throughout maritime East Asia—a region encompassing China, Japan, Ryūkyū, Vietnam, and Java. Even as the Chinese empire in the late Song and Yuan dynasties shifted toward a paper currency standard, Chinese coin exports stimulated the development of market economies across maritime East Asia. However, the cessation of minting by the Ming dynasty in the 1430s provoked a monetary crisis. Private coinage proliferated both in China and abroad, creating a profusion of heterogeneous transactional currencies and numerous regional monetary circuits. This paper examines monetary circulation in maritime East Asia from the twelfth to the seventeenth century in order to assess the impact of Chinese coin in fostering monetary integration (and disintegration).

• Vendredi 19 mai 2017, de 13h à 15h - EHESS (Salle A 737, 7e étage) – 54, bld Raspail 75006 Paris

Modalities of the Fiscal State in Imperial China

Dans le cadre du séminaire « Histoire économique », organisé par J. Bourdieu, J.Y. Grenier, P.C. Hautcoeur, T. Piketty, G. Postel-Vinay

In the past two decades, increasing attention has been paid to the significance of the fiscal capacity of the premodern state in promoting or retarding economic growth. In particular, the economic history scholarship has stressed the positive impact that the emergence of the “fiscal state” (drawing on Schumpeter’s concept of the tax state) had in enhancing economic growth in early modern Europe. Comparative studies have contrasted the administrative efficiency of the emerging European fiscal state with contemporary Asian empires (the Ottomans, Mughals, and the Ming-Qing empires in China) to explain the “Great Divergence” in economic performance and state formation in the early modern period. My intervention in this discussion seeks to contextualize the Ming-Qing state within the larger framework of Chinese state formation over the whole arc of the imperial era. I identify four basic types of fiscal state that have appeared in China from the Qin unification to Ming-Qing times and assess their implications for economic growth.

• Mercredi 24 mai 2017, de 12h30 à 14h - Campus Jourdan (Salle R2-20) - 48, boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris