The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies

by Francesca Bray

The contrast in the rate of growth between Western and Eastern societies since 1800 has caused Asian societies to be characterized as backward and resistant to change, though until 1600 or so certain Asian states were technologically far in advance of Europe. The Rice Economies , drawing on original source materials, examines patterns of technological and social evolution specific to East-Asian wet-rice economies in order to clarfiy some general historical trends in economic development.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

271 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1986

About the author

Francesca Bray is a historian and anthropologist of science, technology and medicine, specialising in China. Bray is particularly interested in how politics are expressed and enacted through everyday technologies (with lots of work on technology, gender and the state), and in the politics underpinning different narratives about technology in national, comparative and global history. Bray has worked at the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, UCLA, the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester, then UC Santa Barbara and, since 2005, the University of Edinburgh.