Table of Contents

Outline history of the monopoly - background; the establishment of the monopoly, criticism and disputation, the reforms of Wang Mang, the Eastern Han period; discourses on salt and iron - the state and the forces of nature, the scale of industrial production, the blessings of wealth, the body politic, calculation; the administration of the iron monopoly - the Iron Offices, the archaeology of the Iron Offices, management, labour; reasons for the monopoly, reasons for opposition - state finance, contraband trade, control of the wealthy, product quality, environmental issues, the trade cycle; the technology of the Iron Offices - blast furnaces, cupola furnaces, the bellows, fining hearths; concluding remarks.