MACMILLAN Global History with Chinese Characteristics: Autocratic States along the Silk Road in the Decline of the Spanish and Qing Empires 1680-1796 (Palgrave Studies in Comparative Global History)

This open access book considers a pivotal era in Chinese history from a global perspective. This book’s insight into Chinese and international history offers timely and challenging perspectives on initiatives like “Chinese characteristics”, “The New Silk Road” and “One Belt, One Road” in broad historical context. Global History with Chinese Characteristics analyses the feeble state capacity of Qing China questioning the so-called “High Qing” (shèng qīng 盛清) era’s economic prosperity as the political system was set into a “power paradox” or “supremacy dilemma”. This is a new thesis introduced by the author demonstrating that interventionist states entail weak governance. Macao and Marseille as a new case study aims to compare Mediterranean and South China markets to provide new insights into both modern eras’ rising trade networks, non-official institutions and interventionist impulses of autocratic states such as China’s Qing and Spain’s Bourbon empires. Review “Perez-Garcia’s book exemplifies his ambition and investment of real time acquiring the languages and intellectual credentials required to write a truly impressive foundational text for a series of books in global history revealing the heuristic insights obtainable from reciprocal comparisons.” (Patrick Karl O’Brien, FBA, Visiting Professor of Economic History at LSE and former fellow of St. Antony’s College, UK) “Manuel Perez-Garcia’s book outlines a truly “global” history of the development of the early modern trade networks linking China and Europe. This is a work that neither follows the heavy-handed “One Belt One Road” school of world history emanating from China nor the need to explain China’s lack of an industrial revolution that dominates Western analysis. Instead, it unfolds a global history through more localized research of market integration between Asia and Europe. Perez-Garcia refocuses our attention on the unofficial links between China and Europe that were the foundation of the pre-modern economy. Conducting global history from the ground up reveals how merchants and merchant networks were the engines of both economic development and new consumer tastes. This is an important work that will provide a framework for future research in global history and urban development.” (James Cook, Associate Director, Asian Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh, USA) “In a world where global has become the synonym of all that is modern and up-to-date, this trend has not left history and academia out of its influence. Global History with Chinese Characteristics. Autocratic States along the Silk Road in the Decline of the Spanish and Qing Empire 1680-1796 is one of the finest works of its kind. Dr. Manuel Perez Garcia, one of the leading historians in the field, confronts the existing narratives of global history and pursues the creation of a systematized guideline on methodology and approaches to various readers, academic and even casual. This masterpiece shows the light at the end of the tunnel for historians who seem to believe that a new age of global history is approaching.” (Liu Shiyung, Adjunct Professor, Asian Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh, USA, and Distinguished Professor, School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China) “Manuel Perez-Garcia argues that Chinese history must be viewed in global context and that Sinocentrism is no improvement over Eurocentrism. His theoretical/methodological framework is used to construct a new case study that compares economic axes of Macao-Canton vis-à-vis Marseille-Seville, both micro-scale areas beyond the dominion of mercantilist and autocratic states of Qing China and Bourbon Spain. Perez-Garcia analyzes the state capacity of Qing China via a new “power paradox theory” and “supremacy dilemma,” which demonstrates that state interventionism entails weak governance. Empirical information gleaned from trade records, probate-inventories, local gazetteers, imperial e