...greater security or less, may have been rather different from what we would expect in a growing economy. From the standpoint of an eighteenth-century Chinese...of survival in a competitive and crowded society. Commerce and manufacturing enabled hard-pressed rural families to hang on, but only through maximum...

...greater security or less, may have been rather different from what we would expect in a growing economy. From the standpoint of an eighteenth-century Chinese...of survival in a competitive and crowded society. ... A free-wheeling labor market, the decline of personal dependency and servile status . . . [were]...

...Philip Kuhn has noted, at the macroeconomic level the eighteenth century was a prosperous era, but the very economic changes that brought prosperity...ordinary peasant household. "From the standpoint of an eighteendi-century Chinese commoner, commercial growth may have meant, not the prospect of riches or...