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'A place full of trade' : placing an early modern Chinese town in global cultural history
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Gerritsen, Anne (2020) 'A place full of trade' : placing an early modern Chinese town in global cultural history. Cultural History, 9 (2). pp. 171-194. doi:10.3366/cult.2020.0220 ISSN 2045-290X.
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WRAP-placing-early-modern-Chinese-town-global-cultural-history-Gerritsen-2020.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (2089Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.3366/cult.2020.0220
Abstract
This article focuses on the history of Wuchengzhen 吳城鎮, a small town in the inland province of Jiangxi. It explores the history of the town between 1500 and 1850 in terms of both its local significance as an entrepot for trade in grain and tea and its global connections to early modern Europe, by way of the trade in porcelain. The question this paper explores concerns the juxtaposition between, on the one hand, the idea gained from global historians, that during the early modern period, globally traded commodities like tea and porcelain situate a small town like this in a globalized, perhaps even unified or homogenous, world, and on the other hand, the insight gained from cultural historians, that no two people would ever see, or assign meaning to, this small town in the same way. Drawing on this insight, the history of Wuchengzhen is explored on the basis of different textual (administrative records, local gazetteers, merchant manuals) and visual sources (maps and visual depictions of the town), exploring the ways in which the different meanings of the town are constructed in each. The combination of global and cultural history places Wuchengzhen on our map of the early modern world.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DS Asia H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Wuchengzhen (China) -- History -- 16th century, Wuchengzhen (China) -- Economic conditions -- 16th century, Porcelain -- China -- Wuchengzhen (China), Tea -- China -- Wuchengzhen (China) | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Cultural History | ||||||||
Publisher: | Edinburgh University Press | ||||||||
ISSN: | 2045-290X | ||||||||
Official Date: | October 2020 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 9 | ||||||||
Number: | 2 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 171-194 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.3366/cult.2020.0220 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article accepted for publication by Edinburgh University Press in Cultural History. The Version of Record will be available online at: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/cult.2020.0220 | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 28 May 2020 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 1 June 2020 | ||||||||
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