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Mark Elvin

The Pattern of the Chinese Past Paperback – June 1, 1973

by Mark Elvin (Author)

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A satisfactory comprehensive history of the social and economic development of pre-modern China, the largest country in the world in terms of population, and with a documentary record covering three millennia, is still far from possible. The present work is only an attempt to disengage the major themes that seem to be of relevance to our understanding of China today. In particular, this volume studies three questions. Why did the Chinese Empire stay together when the Roman Empire, and every other empire of antiquity of the middle ages, ultimately collapsed? What were the causes of the medieval revolution which made the Chinese economy after about 1100 the most advanced in the world? And why did China after about 1350 fail to maintain her earlier pace of technological advance while still, in many respects, advancing economically? The three sections of the book deal with these problems in turn but the division of a subject matter is to some extent only one of convenience. These topics are so interrelated that, in the last analysis, none of them can be considered in isolation from the others.

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Print length

346 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Stanford University Press
Publication date

June 1, 1973
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.87 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

9780804708760
ISBN-13

978-0804708760
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The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China
Mark Elvin

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Godfree Roberts
A Wonderful Introduction to the Oldest Civilization on Earth.
Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2017
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A wonderful yet condensed overview of China's 5,000 year history that answers the question, "Why, when every other empire on earth collapsed, is China's still going strong?"
It's also an excellent introduction to F.W. Mote's 1000-page "Imperial China 900-1800"

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Rob Wong
good book
Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2021
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old, but still good book

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jeldoi
Three Stars
Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2017
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Concise history of China's past.

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Glauber
Chinese Imperial age split into three phases showing social and ...
Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2016
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Chinese Imperial age split into three phases showing social and economic developments as well restraints. Further qualifies money market, market structure and neighboring matters in early empire.

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Daniel Stroup
"High-level Equilibrium Trap"
Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2004
Professor Elvin renders Chinese history through an economic perspective instead of using the common dynastic classification by attempting to answer three questions:
-What contributed to the continuity of the Chinese empire?
-Why was the Chinese economy the most advanced in the world from the Song dynasty (960-1279) up until the latter half of the Qing dynasty (mid-1800's)?
-Why did China fail to maintain her technological advantage after the mid-fourteenth century while advancing economically?
In the first section of the book, the author elucidates the staying power of the Chinese empire was due to the following factors. The economics of defense in relation to the size of empire and the power of its neighbors never became an extreme burden that it rendered the state impotent for any consecutively long period of time. It was always able to reformulate itself after a short disunity or rule by a foreign power of the whole, which only happened twice within a two thousand year period (Mongol and Manchu rule). Two other factors that contributed to the continuity of the Chinese state include a relatively isolated existence from the rest of the Eurasian landmass and the important placed on cultural unity, beginning with the first emperor's destruction of local records in order to quell local loyalties (pp.21-22). Both of these factors had been built up over time through a revolution in communication and transportation.
The second section of the book analyses the causes of the economic revolution that occurred between the 8th and 12th centuries and the technological growth that accompanied it. The transformation of agriculture, especially in the south, was the major impetus that fuelled the economic growth of this period. This revolution in agriculture had four aspects. 1.) The preparation of soil became more effective as a result of improved or new tools and the extensive use of manure and lime as fertilizer. 2.) Seed improvements allowed for double cropping. 3.) Improvements in hydraulic techniques and irrigation networks and 4.) specialization in crops other than basic foodgrains (p.118). Improvements in transportation and communications were almost as important as agriculture in growing the economy. Water transport saw big gains and led to the golden age of geographic studies and cartography, with envoys travelling as far away as Africa. Money and credit matured during this time helping to expand the economy. Paper money made its first appearence in 1024. Improvements in science, medicine, and technology also occurred during this period. However, dispite all these advancements, "this period was the climax and also the end of many preceding centuries of scientific and technical progress"(p.179). Although the Chinese economy continued to advance from the 14th century on, albeit on a smaller scale, it was not accompanied by improvements in technology.
The last section deals with this phenomenon, describing the distinctive characteristics of this late traditional period (1300-1800), and then proceeding to point out why technological advancements did not keep pace with the growth in the economy. This period sees a rise of small market towns in the sixteenth century and a decline in contact with the non-Chinese world around the middle of the fifteenth century. Also, by the eighteenth century serfdom disappeared which aided in the growth in the population, which had reached 400 million by the mid-1800's. Elvin interestingly points out that the highly sophisticated metaphysics that evaded Chinese intellectual thought during the Ming and Qing dyansties negated any deep scientific inquiry (p.233). In the attempt to explain the lack of technological advancement, Elvin disputes a number of conventional explinations. Contrary to popular belief, there was enough capital during this period to finance simple technological advances, also there was minimal political obstacles to economic growth.
In short, Elvin believes "that in late traditional China economic forces developed in such a way as to make profitable invention more and more difficult. With falling surplus in agriculture, and so falling per capita income and per capita demand, with cheapening labour but increasingly expensive resources and capital, with farming and transport technologies so good that no simple improvements could be made, rational strategy for peasants and merchants alike tended in the direction not so much of labour-saving machinery as of economizing on resources and fixed capital. Huge but nearly static markets created no bottlenecks in the production system that might have prompted creativity" (p.314). This condition is what he terms as a "high-level equilibrium trap". The term "trap" to describe the condition of late imperial China's technological advancement in relation to the economy is similar to "Escape from Predicament", Thomas A. Metzger's analysis of the "predicament" Chinese intellectual thought found itself confronted with from the Song through to the end of the Qing dynasty. Both explanations have at its core the idea of late imperial China not being able to generate real substainable progress internally, stating that it was the Chinese response to the Western threat in the mid to late 1800's that finally brought the needed change.

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R. Albin
An Important Book; 4.5 Stars
Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2014
This very interesting book was published in the early 1970s. Despite the passage of decades, it continues to be an important and influential effort to broadly interpret the Chinese past. This book is divided into 3 primary sections; the first on the formation and remarkable persistence of the Chinese imperial state, the second on the impressive economic and technological achievements of medieval Chinese civilization, and the last on the relative stagnation of later premodern Chinese society. This is generally a well written and very thoughtful book. Elvin effectively uses a good deal of quotation from primary sources to make his arguments and the integration of a variety of sources of evidence is impressive. A defect of this approach is that there are parts of the text where the use of primary source quotations tends to ovewhelm the analysis.

The first section covers much of the basic narrative of Chinese Imperial history and addresses the interesting question of how the basic pattern of Chinese imperial states persisted for so many centuries. Elvin stresses a number of important factors. China was in a relative geographic cul de sac and the surrounding threatening cultures were mainly Central Asian pastoralists with ecological limits on their power. Elvin also stresses a fairly traditional view that conquering Central Asians could govern only by being absorbed into Chinese culture. I think this point of view has been modified in recent years by scholars of the Qing. He also stresses the power of the imperial idea and the great continuity of Confucianism as powerful binding forces. These ideas contributed not only to maintaining the imperial state per se, but in particular probably contributed greatly to preventing the emergence of a durable multi-state system in China.

The second part of the book is arguably the most interesting. Elvin describes the considerable dynamism of Chinese medieval society which was characterized by a great deal of economic and technological achievement. He describes expanding markets, the development of sophisticated credit markets, and huge advances in many technologies, including agriculture, transport, and many aspects of manufacturing, The analogies with medieval and early modern Europe are unmistakable. In particular, he points to the emergence of sophisticated machinery including textile technology strongly analogous to the machinery that was a critical part of the European Industrial Revolution. In his account, medieval China appears to have been on the threshold of an industrial revolution. He also discusses interesting scientific or proto-scientific developments in medieval China.

The third section is devoted to explaining why China didn't cross the threshold to industrialization. He describes a multifactorial process producing what he famously describes as a "high equilibrium trap". The end of expansion into Southern China, coupled with changes in land tenure systems favoring small holdings, resulted in significant resource limitations and relatively low demand for key consumer goods. Chinese intellectuals never really developed a scientific approach to the natural world. Finally, the successful growth of the Chinese state and economy in the 18th century produced what was in many ways a very successful Smithian economy that significantly reduced incentives for investing in new technologies, particularly manufacturing technologies. This is a cogent explanation but I believe that Elvin's analysis underestimates the importance of 2 major features - the lack of a scientific world view among Chinese intellectuals and the unified state reducing intrastate competition as force for technological innovation.

Elvin returned to this issue in a more recent and equally interesting book, The Retreat of the Elephants. In the latter, he makes more of the lack of Chinese scientific tradition and suggests also that the need for the Chinese state to invest in major hydrological projects tended to reduce capital that the state could have invested in incenting new technologies.

Elvin encourages comparisons between Chinese and European history in explaining major developments such as the industrial revolution. From his account, both in this book and The Retreat..., leads to the conclusion that several factors were important. While Chinese society faced constraints after the occupation of southern China, early modern Europe had the ecological windfall of the Western Hemisphere, intrastate competition in Europe was a source of dynamism, Chinese intellectuals never developed a scientific world view, and successful Smithian economies could lead to a form of stagnation. There are 2 quite interesting implications. One is that industrialization in the Europe was an incredibly lucky event and the second that the Smithian economic fundamentals seen by some economic historians as crucial dterminants of industrialization are not nearly as important as often asserted.

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