The UBC History Empires and (Post-)Colonialisms in the Asia-Pacific Cluster features local scholars who have recently published monographs to have informal discussions about a chapter or two of their book. We invite all faculty and graduate students with interests in modern Asia/-Pacific (broadly defined) and the themes of empire, colonialism, or postcolonialism/decolonization to join, regardless of discipline or department.
If you are interested in joining the cluster, please contact Quinton Huang (qhuang98@student.ubc.ca) to be added to the mailing list, and please direct other inquiries to Ryan Sun (rchsun29@student.ubc.ca).
The UBC History Empires and (Post-)Colonialisms in the Asia-Pacific Cluster is pleased to invite you to a seminar by Dr. Timothy Brook (Emeritus) on his latest book, The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China.
This seminar will be held on November 21, 12:00-2:00pm in Buchanan Tower 1112. The conversation will begin with brief remarks from Professor Brook about the motivation behind the book. Participants will be invited to share their own reflections, thoughts, and connections made with the assigned chapters. Light lunch will be provided. All are welcome; no RSVP required.
Participants are asked to read the introduction and Chapter 4 of The Price of Collapse. The book can be accessed and downloaded via the UBC Library. If you encounter trouble accessing the readings, please email qhuang98@mail.ubc.ca to enquire about PDF files.
This event is funded by the UBC Department of History and co-sponsored by UBC Centre for Chinese Research.
The Price of Collapse provides an entirely new approach to the economic and social history of China, exploring how global climate crisis spelled the end of Ming rule. The mid-seventeenth century witnessed the deadliest phase of the Little Ice Age, when temperatures and rainfall plunged and world economies buckled. Timothy Brook draws on the history of grain prices to paint a gripping portrait of the final tumultuous years of a once-great dynasty. He explores how global trade networks that increasingly moved silver into China may have affected prices and describes the daily struggle to survive amid grain shortages and famine. By the early 1640s, as the subjects of the Ming found themselves caught in a deadly combination of cold and drought that defied all attempts to stave off disaster, the Ming price regime collapsed, and with it the Ming political regime.
Timothy Brook is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at UBC. He is a historian of China whose work has focused on the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) but extends to issues that span the period from the Mongol occupation of China in the 13th century to the Japanese occupation of China in the 20th. In addition to serving as the general editor of Harvard University Press’ History of Imperial China, he has published extensively on China in the world. A co-edited volume on the inter-polity relations of Inner and East Asia, Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations since Chinggis Khan, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2018. His previous book, Great State: China and the World, appeared in Britain and France (the French edition under the title of Le Léopard de Kubilai Khan) in September 2019 and on this side of the Atlantic by HarperCollins in March 2020. The French edition was awarded the Grand Prix des Rendez-vous de l’Histoire in October 2020.