Series of Agricultural Economic History Free

When problems such as food safety, ecological crisis, famine, etc. which is still harassing human being in this rapidly developing today, we need to stop to retrospect and reflect. Against the background that economic science dominates, and the political and social history becomes popular in historiography, agricultural economic history has inevitably been marginalized. However, even though it's not a rational choice to study agricultural economic history, there are still some young Chinese academic scholars standing on the desolated field and insist on their research wholeheartedly. Series of Agricultural Economic History, published by the Chinese Agriculture Press on May 2011 and January 2013, is a typical representative for this field. The series includes Disaster Relief in Traditional Chinese Society – Supply, Blocking and Evolution, Research on Northeast China's One-Hundred-Year of Agricultural Growth (1914-2005), Farmer Labor under the Work-Point System, Beijing Agricultural Policy’s Development and Evolution (1949-2010) and Shandong Agricultural Relief History (1949-2009), which edited by Li Jun, Li Wenming and Wang Xiuqing, Huang Yingwei, Fan Ming and Wang Qiang. These books make much a lot breakthrough in the research vision, research methods, etc. and are promoting the Chinese agricultural economic history to forward to a new stage.

In 1920s and 1930s, along with the dissemination of Marxist materialism and the polemic on the nature of Chinese society in China, some scholars started to study Chinese agricultural economic history. In the following 20 years, the research basically had been off from land system, agricultural policy, agricultural production and farmers’ living situation. After the foundation of the PRC, with the influence of the political climate, Marxist theory of Feudal Society and “Productivity – Production Relations” had been almost dominating all the studies on history of agricultural economy. The research field was also limited to several aspects, such as feudal land system, agricultural production relations and peasants’ uprisings. During this period, Chinese agricultural economic history research was significantly characterized by narrow content, single view and the narrow research conclusions. This situation has significantly changed after 1990s. In recent years, a group of young scholars have expanded the study vision of the agricultural economic history to agricultural disasters, regional agricultural growth, regional agricultural policy, farmers’ economic behavior, etc., which greatly enriched the connotation of Chinese agricultural economic history. And in College of Economics & Management of China Agricultural University, there come into being a research team in agricultural economic history. Based on the doctoral program of agricultural economic history, the research team launched study on agricultural economic thought history, agricultural economic institutional history and comparative history of agriculture, and maintained close contact with the domestic and foreign research institutes and has a high social visibility and recognition. In recent years, the research team also cultivated a group of young scholars engaged in agricultural economic history and achieved fruitful research results. Among them, Li Jun, Li Wenming, Fan Ming and Wang Qiang undoubtedly are prominent ones.

In Disaster Relief in Traditional Chinese Society: Supply, Blocking and Evolution, started from historical climate change and disaster, Dr Li Jun systematically studied the disaster relief systems in Chinese traditional agricultural society. He explored the ancient official disaster relief systems and unofficial disaster relief systems and the inherent interdependence and mutual transformation logical relation between these two systems. He analyzed the main factors causing the Chinese traditional society's disaster relief system to evolve periodically: North Paradox, path dependence and financial and economic situation of the time. About the problem that Chinese traditional society disaster relief system had been clogged and inefficient, the author argued that the fundamental reasons are the institutional contradictions caused by the principal-agent relations showing in officials’ appointment and dismissal, and benefit games among government, wealthy class and victims in disaster relieving process. However, Wang Qiang's Shandong Agricultural Disaster Relief History (1949-2009), even though also talked about the agricultural disaster relief problem in the history, he focussed on the Shandong Province after the founding of the PRC. The research area and time span are more specific, which can be seen as a model for the regional disaster history research. Based on analyzing the basic law of Shandong Province's disaster in 60 years after the new China’ founding, this book sketched the evolution of Shandong Province's agricultural disaster relief system, and summed up some lessons as well. In the end, the author pointed out that the future agricultural should establish a diversified disaster relief systematic, adhere to the disaster relief combined with production and improve the disaster loss compensation mechanism. Those views have the strong reference value for the entire Chinese agricultural disaster relief.

Agriculture carries strong geographical characteristics, so the regional agricultural development should be one of the orientations in agricultural economic history research. Li Wenming and Wang Xiuqing's Research on Northeast China's a Hundred Years of Agricultural Growth (1914-2005), has no doubt to be the pioneering works in this area. In the book, the authors studied the northeast China’s agricultural growth in the past century in a long-term perspective and analyzed the agriculture TFP trends and the reasons, and empirically explored sources and influence factors of the northeast region's agricultural growth. Lastly, the writers pointed out that, to maintain a regional agricultural sustainable development, its need to practice a strict farmland protection system, to tap the potential of grain production, to strengthen the infrastructure construction, to enhance the ability of agriculture’s withstanding the natural disasters and to increase the technological content of agricultural products. This conclusion does make sense in reality.

As the top design, agricultural policy is essential to promoting the development of agriculture. The systematic study on a region’s agricultural policy is helpful to understand the basic path of this region’s agricultural development. In Beijing Agricultural Policy’s Development and Evolution (1949-2010), Fan Ming investigated the development of Beijing's agricultural policies in different historical periods. He argued that, before the Reform and Opening, Beijing agricultural policy characteristically showed its nature of being set for serving the political needs, surrounding the strategic objective of “rural areas guarantees supply for urban”, with the core that how to ensure production increase. After the Reform and Opening, Beijing's agricultural function had gradually undergone some radical change, with agricultural policy paying more attention on ensuring coordinative development of urban-rural area and to promote agricultural modernization. In the near future, to develop urban agriculture and valley area economy, to undertake large-scale operations will be the main direction for agricultural policy in Beijing. For Beijing policymakers, this assertion is quite enlightening.

In the study of new China's agricultural economic history, Work-Point System is an important issue that cannot be ignored. As an important labor management and distribution system in the People's Commune period, Work-Point System reflected problems such as rural productive activities’ operation order, labor deployment, income difference among farmers, the agricultural productivity, etc. under the People's Commune system. In the book Farmer Labor under Work-Point System, based the data rural production teams’ accounting books, Huang Yingwei systematically studied the Work-Point System. The writer argued that the Work-Point System contributed a lot to China’s industrialization, social stability, improve labor commune members’ enthusiasm improvement and the rural social security, but it had inherent defects in its setting, which weakened part of the members’ enthusiasm. For example, while the Work-Point System was discriminative to the landlords and the rich peasants, it would lead “the better class members” to reserve portion of their labor; the mechanical scoring method damaged the female labors’ enthusiasm, resulting in working without efforts. After comparing farmers’ harvest from collective land and plots for private use, the writer suggested that the efficiency loss of people’s commune was about 20-30 percent. The research provided a new perspective to understand the less efficient and eventual failure of the people's commune system.

Generally speaking, Agricultural Economic History Series covers the important issues such as the history of agricultural disaster relief, regional agricultural growth, regional agricultural policy and rural households’ economic behavior, which greatly expands the horizons of Chinese economic history research, and provides an important orientation for future research.

In the past century, Chinese agricultural economic history study has inherited the good tradition of “discussions depend on the history,” and stressed “no one word without origin.” However, being confined to the tradition also made the agricultural economic history research stuck in the mug in many aspects. First, since research methods have been confined to historiography, philology and archeology, many published books just pile up the historical date and lack rational thinking. Second, the study of the agricultural economic history have been limited in the context far from the reality, and purposefully separated the history research from real-world issues, with little attention to the social reality. Lastly, the lack of international perspective has made it difficult to catch up with the international research frontier and dynamics, and to have dialogues with foreign scholars.

In fact, to get out of the stuck, the agricultural economic historians can try to make breakthrough in the following aspects. First, to fully exploit the new historical materials and date to base studies on solid historical foundation, and to focus on the basic law of the agricultural economic history research, to do quantitative analysis when it’s necessary. Second, to make the awareness of multidisciplinary research, to learn and borrow research methods from economics, sociology, anthropology, ethnology, statistics, archeology, agronomy and so on, and to practice “there is no rule for history” in the research which means executing multidimensional rational thinking based on the research content and condition. Third, “to learn in anytime and anywhere,” to continuously broaden research horizons and explore new issues in agriculture economic development process, and to link the history and the reality together to form own systematic thinking. Fourth, to master the international frontiers and dynamics and to dialogue with the foreign scholars by international mentality, research methods and language.

Honestly, the writers in Agricultural Economic History Series have got rid of the traditional shackles to a large extent, with significant breakthrough in research methods and academic awareness. For example, in terms of historical data digging and processing, Li Jun integrated historical data of China’s disasters’ spatial and temporal distribution, data of major disasters in Chinese history, data of disaster relief in relevant dynasties, and quantitatively analyzed the ancient China’s disaster history and governments’ disaster relieving actions. Wang Qiang has fully exploited and utilized the statistical date of locust plague, floods, droughts and other issues and data of food and money allocated by the government in Shandong Province during 1949-2009, and systematically studied contemporary Shandong agricultural disaster relief history. Li Wenming and Wang Xiuqing based on sorting out the data of the food production and planting acreage from northeast area in 1914-2005, and analyzed the actual situation in the northeastern China during this period. Huang Yingwei used the data from rural production team accounting books, and studied the Work-Point System's efficiency and farmers’ labor configuration.

In multidisciplinary research, Li Jun synthetically deployed methods in historiography, historical geography, institution economics, statistics, political science, etc. Li Wenming and Wang Xiuqing integrated methods of the historiography, development economics, historical geography, agricultural economics, econometrics, Huang Yingwei comprehensively made use of methods in historiography, literature, political science, statistics and so on. In terms of research purpose, the writers in Agricultural Economic History Series all have taken the initiative in linking history with reality, to serve the current social and economic development by studying history. For example, Li Jun and Wang Qiang's ultimate research purpose on the disaster and agricultural disaster relief is to promote the study of China's disaster relief system improvement, Li Wenming and Wang Xiuqing’s study on northeast China’s agricultural growth, was aimed at proposing policy suggestions for achieving China's sustainable agricultural growth. To indicate the evolution of Beijing's future agricultural policy was the core purpose of Fan Ming's research. In terms of academic vision, some writers have proactively kept eyes on international academic frontier and dynamics, and taken active dialogues with international renowned scholars. For example, Li Jun's disaster relief research on Chinese traditional society absorbed a lot from a large number of internationally renowned scholars, such as Kenneth J. Arrow, Gary S. Becker, George J. Stigler, John L. Buck, Dwight H. Perkins, Richard A. Posner, Amartya Sen, Gordon Tullock, W.H. Mallory, Ping-ti Ho, Justin Lin, etc. Meanwhile, Disaster Relief in Traditional Chinese Society- Supply, Blocking and Evolution was the extension of Mallory's China-Lang of Famine, Pierre-Etienne Will's Bureaucratie et Famine en Chine au 18e Siecle, Lillian M. Li's Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market and Enviroment Decline,1690s-1900s, Kathryn's Tears from Iron Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth-Century China and Gerald H. Haug's Influence of the Intertropical Convergence Zone on the East Asian Monsoon. Through this way, Li Jun also had a profound dialogue with the internationally renowned scholars studying China's famine, which was quite difficult for precedent Chinese scholars in this field.

Standing at the margin, sticking in the desolation, innovating while learning, serving reality with history, are the required qualities of Chinese scholars in agricultural economic history and missions for them as well. The writers in Agricultural Economic History Series have already done, and there must have more scholars in the future, aren’t they?