Empire of Silver: A New Monetary History of China

A thousand-year history of how Chinas obsession with silver influenced the countrys financial well-being, global standing, and political stability

A wonderful book for understanding one thousand years of Chinese monetary history.--Debin Ma, Hitotsubashi University

This revelatory account of the ways in which 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. Jin Xu argues that even as Chinas interest in silver spurred new avenues of trade and helped increase the countrys global economic footprint, in the long run silver played a key role in the struggles and entanglements that led to the decline of the Chinese empire. See more