History of Technology

This excerpt is taken from the Chinese Cultural Studies: A Brief Chinese Chronology by Paul Halsall,  July1998-October 2000. Original material is available at http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/chron.html  

Chinese Periodization in Light of Economic Developments

Derived from Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past, (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1973)

Elvin begins by asking the question "why did the Chinese Empire stay together when the Roman Empire, and every other empire of antiquity or the middle ages, ultimately collapse?" His basic response is that large political units are not stable over long periods of time since "in order to maintain itself intact an empire must be continually improving its technology at a pace sufficient to counter-balance the improvements made by its hostile neighbors" (pp. 18-19) and that "the Chinese must on the whole have managed to keep one step ahead of their neighbors in the relevant technical skills, military, economic and organizational; or more precisely, since strength in one of these sectors could at least be partially offset weakness in another, in the complex of such skills considered as a whole" (p.20). The Chinese were not immune to political conquest "but in the last resort [they were] immune to political fragmentation" (p. 20). From this perspective, Elvin sees the economic and technological periods of Chinese history as fundamental to understanding the Chinese past.

Early Origins - in Yellow River Valley

Origins of Chinese Culture in lower valley of Yellow River

Burn and clear agriculture

7th Century BCE on- Permanent Agriculture

Permanent agriculture. Fields take the place of clearances. A free peasantry

3rd Century CE - State Administration of Land Holdings

Establishment of state colonies and hereditary military households in Wei. In other areas distribution of large land-holdings.

7th Century CE - Expansion into Yangtze River Valley

Expansion of population and administrative base to Yangtze valley. Building of the Grand Canal under the Sui dynasty to link the "two Chinas" [North China and Yangtze China]. The Yangtze River valley becomes the chief rice surplus area of China and the basis of imperial power. Large private manors grew up as in Europe of this period, but there was no "feudal" overstructure. Bondage to the soil is first found in the 10th century.

8th-12th Centuries - Revolutions in Farming Methods, Transportation, and the Money Economy

This was a matter of new techniques. Some cam from the North (e.g. millet farming), but the main impetus was from the south. This involved new types of rice, but above all the development and expansion of wet-farming (using paddy-fields). The significance of the manor was that it alone had the resources to coordinate the work requires to establish the requisite dams, sluices and irrigation machinery. Woodblock printing, invented in the 9th century [500 years earlier than commercially exploitable printing in Europe] contributed to the rapid spread of new methods. Multiple cropping became possible. The same period sees a revolution in Water transportation, allowing for an expansion in trade and commerce. There was also an expansion in the availability of money, including paper money, which also enable the economic expansion of the period. The period also saw, up to the fourteenth century, a vast study of nature and science, including the development of machinery.

14th Century on - Failure to Maintain Economic Advantages

From about 1350 on, China's economy declined. There was economic development but it took place without the significant technological change which had marked earlier periods. The period sees the disappearance of serfdom by the eighteenth century, the rapid expansion in the sixteenth century of small market towns. There were also increasingly large co-ordinations of manufactures. But this economic activity took place without technological change, and, Elvin concludes, was not a prelude to an industrial revolution. (p. 284). He sums it up with the phrase "quantitative growth, qualitative standstill". In other words China got caught in a "high level equilibrium trap".

1800 on - China's Economic Subjugation By the West

As China did not break through, the expanding Western world-economy swamped China, which had difficulty adjusting.

This web page is under the supervision of Dr. Patricia Backer, the chair of the Department of Aviation and Technology at San Jose State University in San Jose, CA.  She can be reached at pabacker@email.sjsu.edu or by phone at (408) 924-3190. This page is part of an self-paced Internet tutorial on the History of Technology for the Advanced General Education class Technology and Civilization (Tech 198) at San Jose State University. This page was last updated on 06/10/05 .