Gabriel Groz

Using the collections of the First Historical Archives and National Library of China, this project reconstructs Qing debates about fiscal state-building under the Shunzhi and early Kangxi reigns, contributing to a comparative study on the history of the fiscal state in early-modern China and England and to comparisons of the seventeenth century crisis’s effects on institutional development in early modern Eurasia. This project examines early-Qing controversies over the sociopolitical impacts of land and commercial taxation and the balance of revenue between locality and center. It also discusses conflicts over land tenure and redistribution, and the financing of refugee resettlement. Finally, this research examines Qing debates of arrears in payments: both those owed by the state to troops and those owed to the state by local governments. In so doing, it recovers the range of institutional possibilities present in mid-seventeenth century China, setting the stage for a comparison with fiscal reconstruction in post-crisis England.