Pacific centuries : Pacific and Pacific Rim economic history since the 16th century / edited by Dennis O. Flynn, Lionel Frost and A.J.H. Latham.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Pacific centuries emerging / Dennis O. Flynn, Lionel Frost and A. J. H. Latham -- 1. Spanish profitability in the Pacific: the Philippines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries / Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez -- 2. The great silk exchange: how the world was connected and developed / Debin Ma -- 3. Islands in the rim: ecology and history in and around the Pacific, 1521-1996 / John R. McNeill -- 4. Maritime trade and the agro-ecology of South China, 1685-1850 / Robert B. Marks -- 5. Rice is a luxury, not a necessity: the sources of Asian growth / A. J. H. Latham -- 6. Gold rushes and the trans-Pacific wheat trade: California and Australia, 1848-57 / James Gerber -- 7. American trade dollars in nineteenth-century China / David J. St. Clair -- 8. Alfred Crosby's Ecological Imperialism reconsidered: a case study of European settlement and environmental change on the Pacific Rim / Warwick Frost --

9. Economic motivations for China-United States rapproachment in 1971 / Lori Warner -- 10. Migration and perceptions of identity: the case of Singapore and Malaysian perceptions of the Australian identity, 1966-96 / Kevin Blackburn.

Starting with the 16th century trade of Latin American silver and Chinese silk, leading researchers trace the economic, environmental and social history of the Pacific region. Chapters examine the trade of diverse commodities within the Pacific and analyse the ecological and social impacts of this increasing economic activity. The strong Chinese marketplace emerges as crucial to early Pacific development, and is compared with Japan's central role in the region's modern economy.