![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Bibliographic Data: Segal, Ethan Isaac. Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Main Argument: Segal looks at the economic history of early medieval Japan and argues that diffuse political authority in this period enabled three significant changes: one, that the country began to shift definitively from commodity money to metal currency; two, that this initial shift took place in defiance of government control; and three, that "the sweeping changes of this period allowed provincial figures greater economic agency than they experienced in earlier times" (3).
Historiographical Engagement: Delmer Brown, whom Segal disagrees with (Brown saw an unbreakable linkage between political stability and economic growth); Tom Smith and others who believe that monetization did not really pick up until the Edo period (incorrect); Toyoda and Sugiyama, who saw economic growth as a byproduct of political fragmentation
( This is not a good book )
Critical assessment: Ethan Segal is no Wally Scheidel, I have to say. He does not actually know enough about money to say some of the things he is saying--for example, he blithely declares that "even when the government attempted to declare some coins to be worth more than others, people appear to have used coins as if they were of uniform value" (59). Only if you take "uniform value" to mean that "bad money had driven out the good in accordance with Gresham's Law, and general debasement meant that most money was not worth much, despite what the court declared" does this sentence make sense. You could also say something like "the Japanese court attempted to enforce a fiduciary currency but was unable to do so, since people tended to use money at its intrinsic value." He also doesn't appear to understand that taxes and rents are not the same thing.
That having been said, although Segal's analysis is often not very sophisticated, I think his conclusions are fundamentally correct. I also think that there is a better book out there waiting to be written on Japanese currency and monetization than this one.
Further reading: William Wayne Farris, Japan's Medieval Population; Janet Goodwin, Alms and Vagabonds
Meta notes: It might be useful to understand how money works before writing a book about it, IJS.
Main Argument: Segal looks at the economic history of early medieval Japan and argues that diffuse political authority in this period enabled three significant changes: one, that the country began to shift definitively from commodity money to metal currency; two, that this initial shift took place in defiance of government control; and three, that "the sweeping changes of this period allowed provincial figures greater economic agency than they experienced in earlier times" (3).
Historiographical Engagement: Delmer Brown, whom Segal disagrees with (Brown saw an unbreakable linkage between political stability and economic growth); Tom Smith and others who believe that monetization did not really pick up until the Edo period (incorrect); Toyoda and Sugiyama, who saw economic growth as a byproduct of political fragmentation
( This is not a good book )
Critical assessment: Ethan Segal is no Wally Scheidel, I have to say. He does not actually know enough about money to say some of the things he is saying--for example, he blithely declares that "even when the government attempted to declare some coins to be worth more than others, people appear to have used coins as if they were of uniform value" (59). Only if you take "uniform value" to mean that "bad money had driven out the good in accordance with Gresham's Law, and general debasement meant that most money was not worth much, despite what the court declared" does this sentence make sense. You could also say something like "the Japanese court attempted to enforce a fiduciary currency but was unable to do so, since people tended to use money at its intrinsic value." He also doesn't appear to understand that taxes and rents are not the same thing.
That having been said, although Segal's analysis is often not very sophisticated, I think his conclusions are fundamentally correct. I also think that there is a better book out there waiting to be written on Japanese currency and monetization than this one.
Further reading: William Wayne Farris, Japan's Medieval Population; Janet Goodwin, Alms and Vagabonds
Meta notes: It might be useful to understand how money works before writing a book about it, IJS.