This volume investigates the emergence and spread of maritime commerce and interconnectivity across the Indian Ocean World-the world’s first “global economy”-from a longue durée perspective. Spanning from antiquity to the nineteenth century, these essays move beyond the usual focus on...

Sino-Japanese relations experienced great qualitative changes during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. By the reign period of the Yongzheng Emperor (r. 1723-1735) one can even speak of a partial reversal of the former master-vassal relationship, which existed during the Ming...

The present volume is a collection of studies discussing trade and exchange relations across the East China Sea in the time period between c. 1400 and 1840. It introduces and analyses characteristics of trade and exchange, of economic and personal networks including knowledge transfer between...

The Chinese reform programme of a "socialist market-economy" was established on substantial initiative of Deng Xiaoping, one of the most famous politicians of 20th century China. The reform programme was a revision of China's hitherto prevailing socialist planned economy towards capitalistic...