247. A New Perspective on Silver Flows in China and Southeast Asia, 15th to 19th Centuries

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Global silver flows and the “Chinese sink”
The highly commercialized economy of late imperial China and the maritime economies of Southeast Asia used silver as the money for larger transactions. Estimates of the amounts of silver that entered the monetary systems, however, vary widely. We simply know very little about regional trade flows and perhaps even less about silver mining. The Ming and Qing dynasties maintained a highly ambivalent attitude towards the exploitation of mineral resources that created and overall representation of mines as small workings by the landless poor. Outputs of silver mines in the Southwest of the Ming and Qing empires and in the Southeast Asian borderlands for the period of the 14th through the 19th centuries have been estimated at some 500 to 2,600 tons. This panel presents research that dramatically revises this picture. Yang Yuda and Nanny Kim have used material remains of historic mines, specifically the slag dumps that amount to several hundred thousand tons on many larger sites, while Luan Vu employs a combination of Vietnamese and Chinese sources and perspectives to explore borderland mining. The reconstruction from slags suggests outputs not below 30,000 tons, while specific research on local societies and mobilities traces the scale of mining in the area.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• Luan D. Vu, Vietnam National University, Hanoi

Chair

• Arturo Giraldez, University of the Pacific

Individual Presentations

• The Borderland Mines of Northern Vietnam: From Remote Upland Areas to Global Networks - Luan D. Vu, Vietnam National University, Hanoi

• The Awkwardness of Silver Mining and the Realities on Site - Nanny Kim, Heidelberg University

• From Lead Content in the Slags of Historic Mines to Silver Outputs - Yuda Yang, Fudan University

Discussant

• Arturo Giraldez, University of the Pacific