Myth and Reality of China's Seventeenth-Century Monetary Crisis

Richard Von Glahn

The Journal of Economic History, 1996, vol. 56, issue 2, 429-454

Abstract: The impact of China's demand for silver on global trade in specie and monetary metals during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries remains poorly understood. Conventional wisdom postulates that seventeenth-century China became so dependent on foreign silver to sustain domestic economic growth that a sharp fall in silver imports in the 1640s led to the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644. This hypothesis rests on dubious theoretical and empirical grounds. The demand for silver in China was determined by long-term changes in indigenous demand for money rather than short-term fluctuations in the flow of silver imports.

Date: 1996
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