The Imperial Silk Factories of Kangxi in China, 1661-1722 A mirror for Louis XIV's Royal Factories?

Abstract

This thesis explores the silk trade in China and Europe at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth century through a transnational point of view, taking an example of France, by comparing the imperial silk factories of the Emperor Kangxi of Qing Dynasty (1661-1722) and the Grande Fabrique of Luis XVIII of France (1643-1715), analyzes the variation of business organization system, the manufacturing equipment scale, finance, personnel management, income and social status of the craftsmen, product types and sales, etc., which reflected the differences of the economic development strategies of the two monarchs; Like a butterfly effect, it could be inferred from the details of the official silk production and consumption in the studied geographical and time range, the causes and effects of diverse economic and political roads each monarch took subsequently.