Event
Economic history requires the use of numbers and units. Nevertheless, numbers and units themselves as recorded in Chinese historical sources could be problematic, due to misprints and copyists’ errors, variations in weights and measures, different institutional settings, as well as others. A universal solution in theory is very likely to be improbable if not impossible. This talk, studying grain prices in the Mongol Yuan dynasty, roughly from 1260 to 1350, intends to approach these challenges in a pragmatic and practical way. By contextualizing price numbers in multiple dimensions, I hope that the degree of consistency among numbers could be at least partially clarified, and that relatively more acceptable data series could be built. This talk will first give a brief introduction to the primary sources, then devote length to discussions on three key common issues: (1) institutional settings of original numbers, (2) official and local units of capacity, and (3) types and varieties of grain. After that, an overall presentation of price data will be given with some supplementary remarks. In conclusion, I will briefly outline some implications of the newly developed data series for further studies.
Li Chunyuan is an Associate Professor at the Department of History, Xiamen University, China, and currently a Harvard-Yenching visiting scholar at Harvard University. He received his Bachelor degree in Economics in 2006 from Fudan University, China, then received his Doctoral Degree in History in 2014 also from Fudan University. Since 2013, he has been a visiting fellow or a visiting scholar at Tübingen University in Germany, The Academy of Korean Studies in South Korea, and Hongkong University of Science and Technology.
His research focuses on the historical transition of China from 1150 to 1450 with an emphasis on the Mongol-Yuan era, addressing questions of two dimensions: 1) how nomadic and sedentary cultures interacted with and adapted to each other in the Yuan period; and 2) how the Mongol Yuan period had reshaped Chinese traditions since Song-Liao-Jin and therefore laid a new foundation for later dynasties.
So far, he has published more than thirty journal articles. They concern mainly two areas. One is the economic situation under the Mongol Yuan dynasty, such as fiscal practices, salt monopolies, and market economies. He published a series of articles on prices under the Yuan dynasty, including land price, grain price, salt price, as well as interest rates. The other area of concern is the political dynamics in Yuan China, such as the transition of the Koryǒ-Mongol relations around 1260, the perception of the Chinese dynastic title Da Yuan among various cultural groups.
Currently, he is working on a framework for interpreting the extant scant primary sources on grain prices in Yuan China, trying to make use of those unsystematic, randomly recorded numbers and to piece together some useful data series.