In this study, the first of its kind in English, Richard von Glahn offers a definitive analysis of the economic, political, and social history of money and monetary policy during the Song, Yuan, Ming, and early Qing dynasties. Von Glahn departs from previously held ideas about the effects of money and international trade in bullion on the rise and decline of dynastic power in China.

His study also links Chinese monetary history to changing trends in money-use and trade in gold and silver in Asia, Europe, and the Western Hemisphere. He argues that China's shift to a silver economy had a decisive influence not only on the growth of a market economy in China but also on the formation of a global economy in the early modern era.

1. Exhaustively researched from archival sources, Fountain of Fortune examines critically the many facets of China's domestic and foreign monetary policy, including the foundations of Chinese monetary theory.