Discovering economic history in footnotes: the story of Tŏng Tàishēng merchant archive (1790-1850) and the historiography of modern China

The Tong Taisheng (统泰升) merchant account books in the Ninjing county of Northern China in 1800-1850 is the most complete and integrated surviving archive of a family business. It contains unusually detailed and high-quality statistics on exchange rates, commodity prices and other information. Utilized once in the 1950s, the archive has been left largely untouched until our recent, almost accidental rediscovery. Tracing the personal history of the original owner and donor, we show that the nature of evidence and records of economic statistics of China’s early 19th century, - indeed - of the entire early modern era – have been profoundly impacted by the development of political ideology and consequently of academic discipline in modern and contemporary China. Our article discusses the important historiographical and epistemological issue in interpreting surviving historical statistics which have been largely neglected in the current Great Divergence debate.