[go: up one dir, main page]

IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tth/wpaper/53.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Production and Circulation of Manuscripts and Printed Books in China Compared to Europe, ca. 581-1840

Author

Listed:
  • Ting Xu
Abstract
Literature dealing with the history of Chinese printed books and printing is voluminous. Yet studies of how knowledge in general and utilitarian forms of knowledge in particular were generated, accumulated and circulated by printed books and their relationship with the long-term socio-economic transformation of China are rare. This paper aims to open up the subject by examining long-term trends in the production of manuscripts and books and focussing on connections between the generation and dissemination of useful knowledge in China and the production and circulation of printed books over the centuries and dynasties from circa 581 to 1840 compared to Europe. It connects trends in this indicator for knowledge formation and diffusion to economic growth, urbanisation, changes in higher forms of education, the rise of literacy, the development of printing technologies, and changes in perceptions of the natural world. It concludes that human capital formation in China probably proceeded at a slower rate, which is relevant for narratives of the .divergenceÿ between China and Europe.

Suggested Citation

  • Ting Xu, 2013. "The Production and Circulation of Manuscripts and Printed Books in China Compared to Europe, ca. 581-1840," The Other Canon Foundation and Tallinn University of Technology Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics 53, TUT Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance.
  • Handle: RePEc:tth:wpaper:53
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hum.ttu.ee/wp/paper53.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maya Shatzmiller, 2015. "An early knowledge economy: the adoption of paper, human capital and economic change in the medieval Islamic Middle East, 700-1300 AD," Working Papers 0064, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tth:wpaper:53. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Shobhit Shakya (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ahittee.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.