China and the Birth of Globalization in the 16th Century - 9780754668589

During the late 1980s, economist Flynn and a colleague at the University of the Pacific developed the Unified Theory of Prices using Optimal Control Theory, and when Gitádez arrived soon after, the two of them used it to trace the prices of Spanish American silver, and discovered that its dominant end customer was Ming China, where somehow no Western economic historian had ever thought to look for it. Here they reproduce 11 articles they have written about it from historical and economics journals published between 1995 and 2008. The broad themes are overviews of world trade; the Pacific as linchpin of world trade; winners and losers n the global silver trade; and ecological, economic, epidemiological, and demographic interactions in the debate over the birth of globalization. Among their specific topics are the role of silver in global economic history, Spanish profitability in the Pacific and especially the Philippines in the 16th and 17th centuries, money and growth without development in Ming China, and global economic unity through the middle of the 18th century. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)