Western Utopias, Missionary Economics, and the Chinese Village

Bibliographic Data

ID23212038
AuthorsMargherita Zanasi (corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume24
Issue2
Pages359-387
Publication date2013-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of world history (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1045-6007 • E-ISSN: 1527-8050
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/jwh.2013.0036
OpenAlexW2014956695
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited16

This article explores the impact of Western economics on early twentieth-century Chinese economic thought by focusing on the work of Richard Tawney and John Bernard Tayler on the modernization of Chinese agriculture. Tawney’s and Tayler’s approaches differed considerably. An established economic historian from the London School of Economics, Tawney was committed to a purely social science approach. Tayler, a Protestant missionary and professor of economics at Yanjing University, was representative of what the emerging group of Western academic economists called “missionary economics,” which combined economic reforms with evangelical goals. Despite their differences, however, both Tawney and Tayler saw in the Chinese rural village an opportunity to create their own version of a social and economic utopia, a living critique of Western industrial modernity.

Economic history · Economics · Modernity · Modernization theory · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Protestantism · Schools of economic thought · Social science · Sociology · Utopia · Chinese history and philosophy · Classics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law · Political Economy and Marxism

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