COMPTES RENDUS - AFEC

Comptes rendus
set out systematically why they are unhappy with them. It has also to be
noted that the book contains no treatment of the base-level social structure
across the period. The Song-Yuan-Ming has been notable for varying
views among scholars (Japanese and Western) about the régional and
temporal patterns of spécial status groups from 'serfs' (or 'bond-servants')
on down through artisan and military households at the end of the period.
If one reads materials on économie matters from thèse periods, one keeps
encountering issues of socio-economic leadership and subordination (a
striking example for the years 1324-1327 can be found on page 78 of my
Another History '). Some view needs to be established about this issue as a
foundation for a gênerai understanding of the society of this period. As it
is, such understanding as there is floats in an idealized haze.
The second is that the conceptual terms that a number of the authors
tend to use such as 'productivity', 'révolution', 'cycle', and indeed 'transition'
are not adequately scrutinized. 'Cycle' seems, mercifully, to be dying
but the ghost lingers. I dealt with the problem of using it rigorously in my
chapter in Heitzman and Schenkluhn, The World in the Year 1000 (University
Press of America, 2004), and will only note hère the basic tests that
strict controls need to be imposed for long-term trends, fluctuations such
as mean annual température, and point-like disruptions, while in each case
a mechanism needs to be identified that reverses itself, for reasons intrinsic
to its nature, at both its extrême points. Interestingly, and in simply in
passing, the title of this pièce was 'Différent Transitions' and it made the
simple but important point that the long-term 'transition' through 1000 for
Jiaxing in the Yangzi delta was not at ail like that for Zunhua in the northeast,
an area outside Chinese society and political control for about fïve
centuries prior to the Ming. The volume under review does not look at the
very différent transitions in geographically marginal areas in which Chinese
and non-Chinese cultures mixed. A quite différent pattern to that in
Zunhua appeared, for example, in the southwestern realm of Dali, which is
mentioned but not examined in détail. Its élite was sophisticated and sinified,
and had good relations with the Song dynasty, also being one of the
latter's main sources of silver. While its history is to some degree elusive,
it appears that while it was damaged to some extent by the Mongol con-
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