Community, Trade, and Networks

Community, Trade, and Networks traces the economic and demographic history of a corner of China's southeast coast from the third to the thirteenth century, investigating the relationship between changes in the agrarian and urban economies of the area and the expanding role of domestic and foreign trade. It provides a fresh perspective on the role of commercialized production and trade in a regional economy in the premodern era and demonstrates that trade was able to drive change in a premodern economy in a way that has not generally been recognized.

• A major study covering one thousand years of economic and demographic history in an area of vital importance to the development of foreign trade
• Reveals the ways in which trade revolutionised the surrounding social and economic structures