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Subject:
From:
Alain Alcouffe <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:18:38 -0400
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On the diffusion of wu-wei (an ancient Chinese concept of political 
economy) throughout Europe, I found a very interesting study (I guess 
part of a work in progress) by Christian Gerlach on
http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/daten/2005/gerlach_christian_wu-wei.pdf

I quote the abstract :
This present paper focuses on the diffusion of wu-wei (an ancient 
Chinese concept of political economy) throughout Europe, between 1648 
and 1848. It argues that at the core of this diffusion process were 
three major developments; firstly the importation and active 
transmission of wu-wei by the Low Countries, during the seventeenth 
century. It is revealed that the details of Chinese expertise entered 
Europe via the textual diffusion of Jesuit texts and the visual 
diffusion of million of so-called minben-images, during the ceramic 
boom of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thus, the 
hypothesis is advanced that the diffusion of wu-wei, co-evolved with 
the inner-European laissez-faire principle, the Libaniusian model.

Alain Alcouffe

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