要认识中国今天的经济奇迹，就必须对19世纪中期以前中国经济的真实状况作全面深入的研讨。本书是极具国际影响力的中国经济史学者李伯重先生数十年间用英文写作的学术成果汇编，内容主要围绕如何抛弃以往盛行的西方中心论史观，从新的视野来认识明清时期中国经济史的变化。所选论文在内容上分为两大类：一类是比较宏现的，在大型国际历史学活动上发表的主题讲演和报告，另一类是经济史专题研究成果，特别集中于明清江南经济史和中西比较经济史。本书旨在促进中国经济史的国际交流，以及提高我国年轻一代经济史学者的国际视野。本书适合经济学、历史学学者和大学研究生阅读。

Part I Journal articles and book chapters
Changes in Climate, Land, and Human Efforts: The Production of Wet-filed Rice in Jiangnan During the Ming and Qing Dynasties
Was There a "Thirteenth-and-Fourteenth-Century Turning-Point"? Population, Land, Technology, and Farm Management
Farm Labor Productivity in Jiangnan, 1620-1850
Rural Economy in Jiangnan During the Late Imperial Times
Wages in Huating-Lou Counties in the 1820s
Involution and Chinese Cotton Textile Production: Songjiang in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
An Early Modern Economy in China: A Study of the GDP of the Huating-Lou Area, 1823-1829
Before the Great Divergence? Comparing the Yangzi Delta and the Netherlands at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century
The "Daoguang Depression" and the "Guiwei Great Flood": Economic Decline and Climatic Cataclysm in Early Nineteenth-Century
Songjiang in a New Perspective
The Early Modern Economy of the Yangzi Delta in a New Perspective
An Examination of Traditional Research Methods in Economic History——"Choosing the Refined", "Collecting the Essential" and "the Agricultural Revolution in the Yangzi Delta During the Song Dynasty"
Economic History in China——Tradition, Divergence and Potential
Water and the History of China
The Termination of the Silk Road: A Study of the History of the Silk Road in a New Perspective
Book Review: Ni, Yuping. Customs Duties in the Qing Dynasty, ca. 1644-1911. Leiden: Brill, 2016
Author's Preface: Preface to An Early Modern Economy in China: The Yangzi Delta in the 1820s
Part II Conference and lecture papers
The Development of Agriculture and Industry in Jiangnan, 1644-1850: Trends and Prospects
Traditional Peasant Culture: The Root of China's Economic Miracle
The Formation of China's National Market, 1550-1840
Internationalization and Indigenization: The Principal Axis Along which Social and Economic Historiography Has Evolved in China
During the Past Two Decades
The Farm Economy of Songjiang in the Early Nineteenth Century
Involution or Not Involution: The Farm Economy of Songjiang and the Theory of Involution in Chinese Studies
Climate, Market, Economy and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis
"The countrymen are well fed"--A Study of Food Consumption in Early-Nineteenth Century Songjiang
Creating a Modern Army: The Late Ming Military Reform under the Shadow of Financial Crisis
Why Does the Theory of the Great Divergence Matter?--Taking the Case of the Study of the Economic History of the Yangzi Delta
Notes of Papers