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Different transitions: comparing China and Europe, 1600–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Adam McKeown
Adam McKeown
Affiliation:
Columbia University, USA E-mail: amm2009@columbia.edu
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Journal of Global History , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , July 2011 , pp. 309 - 319
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 Wilbur Zelinsky, ‘The hypothesis of a mobility transition’, Geographical Review, 61, 1971, pp. 219–49.

2 Adam McKeown, ‘Chinese emigration in global context, 1850–1940’, Journal of Global History, 5, 2010, pp. 95–124; idem, ‘Global migration, 1846–1940’, Journal of World History, 15, 2004, pp. 155–8.

3 My data and methods for China are discussed more fully in my paper ‘A different transition: human mobility in China, 1600–1900’, presented at the ‘Migration and Mobility in a Global Perspective’ conference, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 26–28 August 2010. A version of that paper will be included in a forthcoming volume edited by Jan and Leo Lucassen. Data for Europe is taken from the Lucassens’ technical paper, ‘The mobility transition in Europe revisited, 1500–1900: sources and methods’, International Institute of Social History Research Paper 46 (2010), available at http://www.iisg.nl/publications/respap46.pdf (consulted 9 April 2011). These data supersede those presented in their Journal of Global History article.

4 Estimates of Chinese population are in Shuji, Cao, Zhongguo renkou shi (China’s population history), vol. 5, Qing shiqi, Shanghai: Fudan Daxue Chubanshe, 2001, p 832Google Scholar; Cao Shuji and Chen Yixin, ‘Maersasi lilun he Qingdai yilaide Zhongguo renkou: ping Meiguo xuezhe jinnianlai de xiangguan yaniu (Malthusian theory and Chinese population since the Qing: a critique of recent American research)’, Lishi yanjiu, no. 1, 2002, p. 43; and William Lavely and R. Bin Wong, ‘Revising the Malthusian narrative: the comparative study of population dynamics in late imperial China’, Journal of Asian Studies, 57, 1998, p. 717.

5 James Lee and R. Bin Wong, ‘Population movements in Qing China and their linguistic legacy’, Journal of Chinese Linguistics, monograph series 3, Languages and dialects of China, 1991, p. 54, uses land registration to estimate a total of twenty-five million migrant settlers to frontiers from 1650 to 1900. This is higher than my estimate of seventeen million frontier migrants in this period, but lower than my estimate of thirty-one million, which includes interior hill areas and the post-Taiping Yangtze delta. Kenneth Pomeranz has put colonization at the centre of his recent understandings of the Qing: see ‘Calamities without collapse: environment, economy, and society in China, ca. 1800–1949’, in McAnany, Patricia and Yoffee, Norman, eds., Questioning collapse: human resilience, ecological vulnerability, and the aftermath of empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 71–110Google Scholar; and ‘Their own path to crisis? Social change, state-building and the limits of Qing expansion, c. 1770–1840’, in Armitage, David and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, eds., The age of revolutions in global context, c. 1760–1840, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 189–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Cao Shuji, Zhongguo yimin shi (China’s immigration history), vol. 6, Qing shiqi, Fuzhou: Fujian Renmin Chubanshe, 1997; Dai, Yingcong, The Sichuan frontier in Tibet: imperial strategy in the early Qing, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2009Google Scholar; Robert Entenmann, ‘Sichuan and Qing migration policy’, Ch’ing shi wen-t’i, 4, 1980, pp. 35–54; Guo Songyi, ‘Qingdai renkou liudong yu bianjiang kaifa (Population movement and frontier settlement in the Qing)’, in Ruheng, Ma and Dazhang, Ma, eds., Qingdai bianjiang kaifa yanjiu (Research on Qing border settlement), Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 1990, pp. 10–51Google Scholar; James Lee, ‘The legacy of immigration in Southwest China, 1250–1850’, Annales de Démographie Historique, 1982, pp. 280–304; Xu Bofu, ‘Qingdai qianqi Xinjiang diqu di mintun (The civilian colonies in the Xinjiang area during the Qing)’, Zhongguo Shi Yanjiu, 2, 1985, pp. 85–96.

7 Stephen Averill, ‘The shed people and the opening of the Yangzi highlands’, Modern China, 9, 1983, pp. 84–126; Sow-theng, Leong, Migration and ethnicity in Chinese history: Hakkas, Pengmin, and their neighbors, ed. Tim Wright, Stanford, CA: Sanford University Press, 1997Google Scholar; Steven Miles, ‘Expanding the Cantonese diaspora: sojourners and settlers in the West River basin’, Journal of Chinese Overseas, 2, 2006, pp. 220–46; Perdue, Peter, Exhausting the earth: state and peasant in Hunan, 1500–1850, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Council for East Asian Studies, 1987, pp. 93–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eduard Vermeer, ‘The mountain frontier in late imperial China: economic and social developments in the Bashan’, T’oung Pao, second series, 77, 1991, pp. 4–5.

8 Averill, ‘Shed people’, p. 89; James Lee, ‘Food supply and population growth in southwest China, 1250–1850’, Journal of Asian Studies, 41, 1982, pp. 729–31; Lee, James Z. and Campbell, Cameron, Fate and fortune in rural China: social organization and population behavior in Liaoning 1774–1873, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John Shepherd, ‘Some demographic characteristics of Chinese immigrant populations: lessons for the study of Taiwan’s population history’, in Gungwu, Wang and Chin-keong, Ng, eds., Maritime China in transition 1750–1850, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004, pp. 115–37Google Scholar.

9 Gottschang, Thomas and Lary, Diana, Swallows and settlers: the great migration from north China to Manchuria, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies, 2000, p. 171CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 McKeown, ‘A different transition’.

11 Urban population data is in Cao Shuji, Zhongguo Renkou Shi (China’s population history), vol. 5, p. 829; Rozman, Gilbert, Urban networks in Ch’ing China and Tokugawa Japan, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973, pp. 101–2, 282–3Google Scholar; and G. William Skinner, ‘Regional urbanization in nineteenth-century China’, in Skinner, G. William, ed., The city in late imperial China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1977, pp. 229, 248Google Scholar.

12 Robert Brenner and Christopher Isett, ‘England’s divergence from China’s Yangzi delta: property relations, microeconomics, and patterns of development’, Journal of Asian Studies, 61, 2002, p. 636; Pomeranz, ‘Calamities’.

13 Chandler, Tertius, Four thousand years of urban growth: an historical census, Lewiston, NY: St. David’s University Press, 1987Google Scholar.

14 Lucassen, Jan, Migrant labour in Europe 1600–1900: the drift to the North Sea, trans. Bloch, Donald, London: Croon Helm, 1987Google Scholar.

15 Lucassen and Lucassen, ‘Mobility transition’, p. 377.

16 G. William Skinner, ‘Mobility strategies in late imperial China: a regional systems analysis’, in Smith, Carol A., ed., Regional analysis, vol. 1: economic systems, New York: Academic Press, 1976, pp. 327–64Google Scholar.

17 Ownby, David, Brotherhoods and secret societies in early and mid-Qing China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996Google Scholar.

18 Dai, Sichuan frontier, pp. 181–3.

19 Huang, Philip, The peasant family and rural development in the Yangzi delta, 1350–1988, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 110Google Scholar.

20 Shi Qi and Fang Zhuofen, ‘Capitalism in agriculture in the early and middle Qing dynasty’, in Dixin, Xu and Chengming, Wu, eds., Chinese capitalism 1522–1840, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000, pp. 142–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 See also Ulbe Bosma, ‘European colonial soldiers in the nineteenth century: their role in white global migration and patterns of colonial settlement’, Journal of Global History, 4, 2009, pp. 317–36.

22 Cameron Campbell and James Lee, ‘Free and unfree labor in Qing China: emigration and escape among the bannermen of northeast China, 1789–1909’, History of the Family, 6, 2001, pp. 455–76; Elliot, Mark, The Manchu way: the eight banners and ethnic identity in late imperial China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001Google Scholar.

23 Ergang, Luo, Lü ying bing zhi (History of the Green Standard Army), Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1984, pp. 62, 229–33, 287–8, 367Google Scholar.

24 Josephine Meihui Tiampo Khu, ‘The making of a frontier: the Qing military in Taiwan, 1684–1783’, PhD thesis Columbia University, 2001; Qin Shucai, Qingdai Yunnan lu ying bing yaniu: yi xuntang wei zhongxin (Research on the Green Standard Army during the Qing: with a focus on the xuntang system), Kunming: Yunnan Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 2004; G. William Skinner, ‘Cities and the hierarchy of local systems’, in Skinner, The city, pp. 265–336.