China, East Asia and the Global Economy: Regional and Historical Perspectives (Asia's Transformations/Critical Asian Scholarship) - Hardcover

"This volume is more than worthwhile reading...Readers will be challenged, but not disappointed." - Robert B. Marks, Whittier College, Georgia

'China East Asia and the Global Economy is an excellent volume in the spirit of the series' claim to presenting "Critical Asian Scholarship". Hamashita demonstrates how regional history occupies a crucial role in the discussion and definition of global history by questioning whose global perspective is under discussion. Thanks to careful editorial work by Linda Grove and Mark Selden, readers are able to appreciate Hamashita's remarkable scholarly contribution to Chinese and East Asian History as well as to the transformation of economic institutions and processes within regional and global history.' -  Elisabeth Koell, Harvard Business School, The China Journal, No. 63

Takeshi Hamashita, arguably Asia's premier historian of the longue durée, has been instrumental in opening a new field of inquiry in Chinese, East Asian and world historical research. Engaging modernization, Marxist and world system approaches, his wide-ranging redefinition of the evolving relationships between the East Asia regional system and the world economy from the sixteenth century to the present has sent ripples throughout Asian and international scholarship.

His research has led him to reconceptualize the position of China first in the context of an East Asian regional order and subsequently within the framework of a wider Euro-American-Asian trade and financial order that was long gestating within, and indeed contributing to the shape of, the world market.

This book presents a selection of essays from Takeshi Hamashita's oeuvre on Asian trade to introduce this important historian's work to the English speaking reader. It examines the many critical issues surrounding China and East Asia's incorporation to the world economy, including:

• Maritime perspectives on China, Asia and the world economy
• Intra-Asian trade
• Chinese state finance and the tributary trade system
• Banking and finance
• Maritime customs.