China's War on Smuggling (eBook)

Law, Economic Life, and the Making of the Modern State, 1842-1965

Philip Thai (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2018
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-54636-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Philip Thai chronicles the vicissitudes of smuggling in modern China to demonstrate how defiance helped the state redefine its power. China's War on Smuggling traces how different regimes sought to police maritime trade and the unintended consequences their campaigns unleashed, offering new insights into Chinese social, legal, and economic history.

ThaiPhilip: Philip Thai (P.h.D., Stanford University) is an Assistant Professor of History at Northeastern University and currently a Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS China Studies Postdoctoral Fellow. He has published articles in Law and History Review, Modern Asian Studies, and Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Cultural Review.Philip Thai is assistant professor of history at Northeastern University.

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Smuggling along the Chinese coast has been a thorn in the side of many regimes. From opium and weapons concealed aboard foreign steamships in the Qing dynasty to nylon stockings and wristwatches trafficked in the People's Republic, contests between state and smuggler have exerted a surprising but crucial influence on the political economy of modern China. Seeking to consolidate domestic authority and confront foreign challenges, states introduced tighter regulations, higher taxes, and harsher enforcement. These interventions sparked widespread defiance, triggering further coercive measures. Smuggling simultaneously threatened the state's power while inviting repression that strengthened its authority.Philip Thai chronicles the vicissitudes of smuggling in modern China-its practice, suppression, and significance-to demonstrate the intimate link between illicit coastal trade and the amplification of state power. China's War on Smuggling shows that the fight against smuggling was not a simple law enforcement problem but rather an impetus to centralize authority and expand economic controls. The smuggling epidemic gave Chinese states pretext to define legal and illegal behavior, and the resulting constraints on consumption and movement remade everyday life for individuals, merchants, and communities. Drawing from varied sources such as legal cases, customs records, and popular press reports and including diverse perspectives from political leaders, frontline enforcers, organized traffickers, and petty runners, Thai uncovers how different regimes policed maritime trade and the unintended consequences their campaigns unleashed. China's War on Smuggling traces how defiance and repression redefined state power, offering new insights into modern Chinese social, legal, and economic history.

Inhalt

List of Maps, Tables, and FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Coastal Commerce and Imperial Legacies: Smuggling and Interdiction in the Treaty Port Legal Order2. Tariff Autonomy and Economic Control: The Intellectual Lineage of the Smuggling Epidemic3. State Interventions and Legal Transformations: Asserting Sovereignty in the War on Smuggling4. Shadow Economies and Popular Anxieties: The Business of Smuggling in Operation and Imagination5. Economic Blockades and Wartime Trafficking: Clandestine Political Economies Under Competing Sovereignties6. State Rebuilding and New Smuggling Geographies: Restoring and Evading Economic Controls in Civil War China7. Old Menace in New China: Symbiotic Economies in the Early People’s RepublicConclusionCharacter ListNotesBibliographyIndex

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.9.2018
• Reihe/Serie: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
• Zusatzinfo: 19 illustrations and 5 maps
• Verlagsort: New York
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Freizeit / Hobby ► Sammeln / Sammlerkataloge
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 0-231-54636-X / 023154636X
• ISBN-13: 978-0-231-54636-2 / 9780231546362