The Silver Empire: a New Monetary History of China (Revised Edition)

Currency is the wheel of economic prosperity and decline of a country. As one of the main forms of currency, silver played a particularly important role in China's monetary history from the Song and Yuan Dynasties to modern times, which spanned nearly 1,000 years. Since the 1640s, China has used silver as a medium to participate in the creation of the world market, began to evolve into a "silver empire", and created a prosperous age. However, in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the West transitioned to the gold standard and gradually gave birth to a modern financial system, China still adhered to the silver standard, and the "silver empire" gradually came to an end. This book examines this period of history, from the monetization of silver to the silver standard, from the failure of paper currency to China's dependence on silver, from China's participation in the creation of the world market to being controlled by the Western economic system, and sorts out the difficult journey of silver becoming a standard currency. In addition, the author focuses more on China's experiment with paper currency, which began hundreds of years before the West, as well as China's persistence in silver under the global gold standard, and explores the impact of the Great Divergence between China and the West and China's silver standard on later generations. Therefore, this is not only a history of Chinese currency, but also a glimpse into the changes in Chinese society over thousands of years.