Pokrewne
- Strona Główna
- May Peter Wyspa Lewis 2 Czlowiek z Wyspy Lewis
- Peter Charles Hoffer The Brave New World, A History of Early America Second Edition (2006)
- Peter Berling Dzieci Graala 02 Krew królów
- Hamilton Peter F. Swit nocy 2.2 Widmo Alchemika Konflikt
- Peter Berling Dzieci Graala Krew krolow
- Sheckley Robert Zbior opowiadan
- Grisham John Malowany Dom (2)
- Rice Anne Krzyk w niebiosa (SCAN dal 961)
- Dukaj Jacek Czarne oceany (SCAN dal 758)
- What Does a Martian Look Like The Science of Extraterrestrial Life by Jack Cohen & Ian Stewart (2002)
- zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- psmlw.htw.pl
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Some economic interpretations date the agrarian crisis to the 1920s at the earliest and conclude that in many respects the peasantry was relatively well off until then.2 Agricultural growth may have averaged as much as 1.5 percent per year – about 0.5percent above population growth.But journalists’ and travelers’ accounts suggests strongly that conditions were deteriorating long before then.The large number of anti-tax petitions, anti-rent movements, and rural riots suggest that something was going badly wrong.3 Of course, the most optimistic of economic historians do not argue that the peasantry became suddenly immune from bad harvests, market fluctuations, or misgovern-ment: only that in the aggregate rural incomes might well have been improving, if only slightly, into the twentieth century.Signs of endemic agrarian crisis marked the 1920s.The economic historian Ramon Myers has concluded: “This was not just a temporary crisis of272Nationalism and revolution, 1919–37subsistence for rural people but a series of dislocating effects taking place on a sustained basis,” resulting in rural misery.4 Other historians see the peasantry holding its own until the Great Depression hit in the 1930s.5 The loss of agricultural exports as the industrialized nations closed their markets pushed segments of rural China (already facing difficulties) over the edge.One must also note the great Yangzi floods of 1931 and the 1934–5 drought in central China.Given the lack of precise quantitative records, we will never know exactly how the rural economy was developing year by year and region by region; statistical analysis and inference can be easily skewed along the lines of the old Chinese colloquialism “off by an inch in the beginning, off by a thousand miles at the end.”6 Regional downturns occurred periodically in Chinese history, but a national depression when there was no slack left in the economy, on top of demographic explosion, on top of a broke government, on top of China’s vulnerability to international financial shifts – this was unprecedented.Unemployment rates were catastrophic, not to mention underemployment.And this was the legacy inherited by the Nationalists.As a Japanese traveler succinctly noted in 1911: “The peasantry cannot escape from their bare subsistence level as they cannot accumulate any savings.And if there is one bad harvest, they are reduced to starvation.”7Twenty years later a British observer noted: “There are districts in which the position of the rural population is that of a man standing permanently up to the neck in water, so that even a ripple is sufficient to drown him.”8The socialist economist R.H.Tawney was particularly struck by the systemic nature of the crisis: “The individual cannot be rescued by his neighbours, since whole districts together are in the same position.The district cannot be rescued by the nation because means of communication do not permit of food being moved in sufficient quantities.” The rural economy had, in significant ways, slid back from the days the Qing maintained relatively efficient famine-prevention systems.9The chief division in Chinese society as a whole was the rural–urban split.Rural areas were defined by what they were not: they lacked radio, cinema, department stores, paved roads, newspapers, electricity, modern schools, and any of the features that made cities a virtually different world.At the same time, industrialization depended on the rural economy: cotton, silk, tobacco, foodstuffs, all produced by extremely cheap farm labor.The migration of the wealthy to urban areas was a long-term trend related to the rise of merchant culture from the sixteenth century, but it was exacerbated by the political instability of the late Qing.The result was that “rural elites”were not all that elite and their wealth was not very secure.Such families were often not much better off than their poor peasant neighbors – whom they feared and whom they feared becoming.Thus the Chinese countryside turned on itself in an extremely harsh way.The engine producing the disintegration of rural society was perhaps more political than economic.The institutions that had held imperial ChinaPeasants and Communists273together had failed.Yet, in the final analysis, the politics and the economics of decline are tightly related [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl agnieszka90.opx.pl
.Some economic interpretations date the agrarian crisis to the 1920s at the earliest and conclude that in many respects the peasantry was relatively well off until then.2 Agricultural growth may have averaged as much as 1.5 percent per year – about 0.5percent above population growth.But journalists’ and travelers’ accounts suggests strongly that conditions were deteriorating long before then.The large number of anti-tax petitions, anti-rent movements, and rural riots suggest that something was going badly wrong.3 Of course, the most optimistic of economic historians do not argue that the peasantry became suddenly immune from bad harvests, market fluctuations, or misgovern-ment: only that in the aggregate rural incomes might well have been improving, if only slightly, into the twentieth century.Signs of endemic agrarian crisis marked the 1920s.The economic historian Ramon Myers has concluded: “This was not just a temporary crisis of272Nationalism and revolution, 1919–37subsistence for rural people but a series of dislocating effects taking place on a sustained basis,” resulting in rural misery.4 Other historians see the peasantry holding its own until the Great Depression hit in the 1930s.5 The loss of agricultural exports as the industrialized nations closed their markets pushed segments of rural China (already facing difficulties) over the edge.One must also note the great Yangzi floods of 1931 and the 1934–5 drought in central China.Given the lack of precise quantitative records, we will never know exactly how the rural economy was developing year by year and region by region; statistical analysis and inference can be easily skewed along the lines of the old Chinese colloquialism “off by an inch in the beginning, off by a thousand miles at the end.”6 Regional downturns occurred periodically in Chinese history, but a national depression when there was no slack left in the economy, on top of demographic explosion, on top of a broke government, on top of China’s vulnerability to international financial shifts – this was unprecedented.Unemployment rates were catastrophic, not to mention underemployment.And this was the legacy inherited by the Nationalists.As a Japanese traveler succinctly noted in 1911: “The peasantry cannot escape from their bare subsistence level as they cannot accumulate any savings.And if there is one bad harvest, they are reduced to starvation.”7Twenty years later a British observer noted: “There are districts in which the position of the rural population is that of a man standing permanently up to the neck in water, so that even a ripple is sufficient to drown him.”8The socialist economist R.H.Tawney was particularly struck by the systemic nature of the crisis: “The individual cannot be rescued by his neighbours, since whole districts together are in the same position.The district cannot be rescued by the nation because means of communication do not permit of food being moved in sufficient quantities.” The rural economy had, in significant ways, slid back from the days the Qing maintained relatively efficient famine-prevention systems.9The chief division in Chinese society as a whole was the rural–urban split.Rural areas were defined by what they were not: they lacked radio, cinema, department stores, paved roads, newspapers, electricity, modern schools, and any of the features that made cities a virtually different world.At the same time, industrialization depended on the rural economy: cotton, silk, tobacco, foodstuffs, all produced by extremely cheap farm labor.The migration of the wealthy to urban areas was a long-term trend related to the rise of merchant culture from the sixteenth century, but it was exacerbated by the political instability of the late Qing.The result was that “rural elites”were not all that elite and their wealth was not very secure.Such families were often not much better off than their poor peasant neighbors – whom they feared and whom they feared becoming.Thus the Chinese countryside turned on itself in an extremely harsh way.The engine producing the disintegration of rural society was perhaps more political than economic.The institutions that had held imperial ChinaPeasants and Communists273together had failed.Yet, in the final analysis, the politics and the economics of decline are tightly related [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]