Read more
Advance praise: 'Taisu Zhang has taken a bold leap into the heart of the Great Divergence debate. Combining the theoretical tools of law and economics, the insights of a comparative legal historian, and the skills of a meticulous archival investigator, Zhang offers a new take on norms governing land alienation in early modern China and England and their impact on economic development.' Madeleine Zelin, Dean Lung Professor of Chinese Studies, Columbia University Informationen zum Autor Taisu Zhang is an Associate Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Connecticut and works on comparative legal history - specifically, economic institutions in modern China and early modern Western Europe - comparative law, property law, and contemporary Chinese Law. This is his first book. In dissertation form, it was the recipient of Yale University's Arthur and Mary Wright Dissertation Prize and the American Society for Legal History's Kathryn T. Preyer Award. Zhang is a founding board member of the International Society for Chinese Law and History. Klappentext Tying together cultural history, legal history, and institutional economics, The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property in Preindustrial China and England offers a novel argument as to why Chinese and English preindustrial economic development went down different paths. The dominance of Neo-Confucian social hierarchies in Late Imperial and Republican China, under which advanced age and generational seniority were the primary determinants of sociopolitical status, allowed many poor but senior individuals to possess status and political authority highly disproportionate to their wealth. In comparison, landed wealth was a fairly strict prerequisite for high status and authority in the far more 'individualist' society of early modern England, essentially excluding low-income individuals from secular positions of prestige and leadership. Zhang argues that this social difference had major consequences for property institutions and agricultural production.This book explores how property institutions in preindustrial China and England differed, and how those differences changed the trajectories of agricultural production. Tying together previously separated fields of cultural and legal history and institutional economics, it will be of interest to scholars of history, law, sociology, and economics. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1. 'Dian' sales in Qing and Republican China; 2. Mortgages in early modern England; 3. Kinship, social hierarchy, and institutional divergence (theories); 4. Kinship, social hierarchy, and institutional divergence (empirics); 5. Kinship hierarchies in Late Imperial history; 6. Property institutions and agricultural capitalism; Conclusion; Index....
