Invited Lecture

Copper and Silver: The Twists and Turns of Currency Circulation in the Ming Dynasty

(Lecture 258 of the Academic Forum on History of Science and Technology and Lecture 17 of the Traditional Culture Forum, University of Science and Technology Beijing, June 19, 2024)

Silver became the main currency used by the people and the government in the Ming Dynasty, and the academic discussion of this important change is often linked to the socio-economic changes in the middle and late Ming Dynasty (the "transformation of the 16th century"), which has led to the "theory of the sprouting of capitalism, " the "Ming silver economy theory", and the early globalisation theory. In this lecture, the presenter links both the supply of Ming currency (including copper and silver) and the demand for market transactions, and examines the function and scale of money circulating in the Ming market from the perspective of empirical analysis. First, on the basis of documentary and archaeological evidence, the amount of money minted and the production of silver mines in the last three hundred years of the Ming dynasty are re-estimated, and the scale of silver inflow into the Ming dynasty from overseas is also estimated. Secondly, it also compares the development process of the Ming market with the money supply on the basis of historical documents, better elucidating the tension between the demand for money and the supply of currency, and challenging the popular theoretical explanations.