Knowing I was going to be trapped on an airplane for a considerable time on my way to Asia, I indulged in the 32 CD set from the Teaching Company, “From Yao to Mao, Five Thousand Years of Chinese History.” I’m through the first three thousand years.
In a nutshell, the first three thousand years of Chinese History goes something like this:
A powerful warlord unites China and becomes Emporer and founds the ___ dynasty.
Over time, internal malaise or invasions from the north weaken the Empire.
It dissolves.
A powerful warlord unites China….
Repeat as needed.
One misconception floating around in my head for some time post-college is that some fundamental-to-markets legal institutions (property, contract) are peculiar to Western Civilization and that if one goes East one must think about things a different way. What I am increasingly discovering is that there are far more similarities than there are differences. It is tricky to spot them when very ancient cultures like those rooted in China or India are involved; they are unlikely to be emphasized in histories covering the last thousand years or so. From further back, many records have been lost. By the time we have a lot of legal records from China, the legal system is thousands of years old, mostly based on statute, and pretty baroque by the standards of our frontier culture. Contract and property disputes there are, but they are not prominent in the official records, because such commercial disputes were usually resolved within the commercial guilds, and not by the Imperial courts at all.
Going way back, though, a market is a market is a market. And intervention is intervention. And taxes are taxes. I bring you the Discourses on Salt and Iron, more on salt, taxes, and more on iron.
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