European and Chinese Efforts at Research Proposal

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" (nd) the conception of Ringrose is one that was based upon "family, clan, and community allegiances. The links in such a network are stated to have resulted from "individual decisions and, in the aggregate, they constituted the inter-city transactions that, described collectively, allow us to identify urban networks." (nd)

II. GLOBAL EXPANSION of CHINA

Ringrose relates that the same process is observable in the history in Ming China. The community schools were only nominal providers of education and "were subverted by local elites in a predictable way." (nd) However, in sixteenth century China central authority was not nearly as overwhelming in affairs that were local resulting in these schools being transformed by elites into "academies that provided the training necessary to pass the Imperial Civil Service examination." (Ringrose, nd) Not only did bureaucracy become more acknowledging of local dynamics in communities but also resulting was the construction of "commercial and political urban networks...by family and community-based networks." (Ringrose, nd) Ringrose states that the support systems in Europe as well as the individuals that comprised these systems of support "began to extend their reach beyond Europe and the Mediterranean...after about 1400." (nd) This resulted in an interaction with the world around them. Ringrose states that the truth is that the European empires "of the sixteenth through eighteen centuries spread as much by collaboration as by conquest and force." (Ringrose, nd)

III. INTERACTIONS BETWEEN EUROPE and CHINA

The work of Harriet T. Zurndorfer entitled: "Cotton Textiles and Ming/Qing China in the Global Economy (1500-1840) states that the economy of Ming China during the period 1368 to 1644 "became an arena of competing commercial entrepots and specialized cash-cropping regions." (nd) Additionally stated is that during this period "...the interaction between the Chinese production of, and the European consumption of silks and porcelain was in full swing and that it would take at least another 200 years before the power of technology and the drug trade would shift this situation into other directions." (Zurndorfer, nd) as well, China and Asia were "vital trading partners..." And that they "engaged in lucrative commerce..." (Zurndorfer, nd)

Zurndorfer states that the idea of "regional dynamics is a crucial facet to one of the best-known themes of East Asian history or the 'silver century'" which were the years beginning 1550 and lasting until 1650 in which "large quantities of silver.
..penetrated China, a development associated with 'the restless movement of money, commodities, and statuses of the late Ming." (nd) While some scholars state that the "silver influx" was the 'primary stimulus to commercialization in Ming China" beginning in 1580 and onward and "consequently the decline of New World imports from the 1620s were "key factor[s] to the destabilization of the economy before the dynastic collapse..." others believe the precise opposite stating that it was "...commercial expansion in the domestic economy, by raising the demand for media of exchange, attracted silver from abroad and promoted foreign trade." (Zurndorfer, nd)

SUMMARY & CONCLUSION

This work has demonstrated that while history has it that global expansion was through means of military and force, in actuality much of the global expansion of the Europeans and Chinese that took place during the period between 1400 and 1600 was actually accomplished through networking on several levels of society in both Europe and China. These networks included social networks, personal affinity networks, all of which were communication and trade networks within the cities and towns of both Europe and China. These networks were community and family-based networks. Therefore, it can be understood that this expansion was as stated in the work of Ringrose, to be as much the result of "collaboration as by conquest and force." (nd)

Bibliography

Europeans Abroad, 1400-1700: Strangers in Not-so-Strange Lands" Online available at http://www.iga.ucdavis.edu/Research/All-UC/conferences/2006-fall/Ringrose.pdf

Zurndorfer, Harriet T. (nd) Cotton Textiles and Ming/Qing China in the Global Economy (1500-1840) Online available at http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/GEHN/GEHNPDF/PUNEZurndorfer.pdf

Frank, Andre Gunder. 1998. ReOrient: The Silver Age in Asia and the World Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press)

Pikerman, Allen (2002) the Iberian Golden Age: European Expansion, Exploration and Colonization 1400-1650. 2002. Online available at http://history-world.org/iberian_golden_age.htm.....

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