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Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in 18th-Century Tosa
Author(s): Luke S. Roberts (Author)
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press
- Publication Date: 26 Nov. 2010
- Edition: Revised ed.
- Language: English
- Print length: 268 pages
- ISBN-10: 0521893356
- ISBN-13: 9780521893350
Book Description
This book explores the historical roots of economic nationalism within Japan. By examining how mercantilist thought developed in the eighteenth-century domain of Toas, Luke Roberts shows how economic ideas were generated at the regional level. During the Edo period (1600-1867), Japan was divided into over 230 competitive states, many of which wished to reduce the dominance of the shogun’s economy. The seventeenth-century Japanese economy was based on samurai notions of service – especially the duty performed by the dominal lord to the shogun – and the rhetoric of political economy that centred on the lord and the samurai class. This ‘economy of service,’ however, led to crises in deforestation and land degradation, government fiscal insolvency and increasingly corrupt tax levies, and finally a loss of faith in government.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“This is a significant work that raises hypotheses worthy of further exploration in other regional contexts.” Philip C. Brown, Journal of Japanese Studies
