海外中国近代经济史研究范式的转换——王路曼《中国内陆资本主义与山西票号:1720—1910年间的银行、国家与家庭》述评

A Paradigmatic Chang in Overseas Study of Modern Chinese Economic History:Review of Wang Luman s Hinterland Capitalism and Shanxi Piaohao:Banking,State,and Family,1720—1910

王路曼2020年出版的英文专著《中国内陆资本主义与山西票号:1720—1910年间的银行、国家与家庭》对近代中国经济和商业史研究的贡献主要有三:第一,该书从全球史变迁的视角考察了晋商和票号近两百年的扩张与变迁,揭示了中国内陆地区在近代中国经济与社会发展中所扮演的关键作用。第二,该书从国家视角探讨了晚清中央和地方的政治经济制度与民间金融机构之间的作用力与反作用力,批判和修正了新自由主义话语主导下“政府”与“自由市场”的二元对立思维对晚清中国经济和商业史发展的误读。第三,该书将晋商和票号的历史叙事从“资本逻辑”压抑中解放出来,还原了更接近票号和其家庭本来面目、与韦伯式“理性经济人”企业存在差异的非资本主义性质的历史叙事。

The book forms the original theory of Chinese hinterland capitalism and sheds new light on modern Chinese economic and business history as follows.First,it foregrounds the expansionist role played by Shanxi?piaohao and hinterland?in transforming China s market and trade and deepens the existing understanding of capitalist dynamics at work in the families and financial institutions of late imperial China.Second,in a departure from economic history,the book also rescues the noncapitalist histories of the people and their lifeworlds behind financial institutions from the universal capitalist narratives.Third,this book transcends the persistent binary oppositions between coastal areas versus hinterland,state versus market,and institutions versus families in recounting the local histories of global capital in the marginalized countryside and borderlands of China.