The Organization of Imperial Workshops during the Han Dynasty

The Organization of Imperial Workshops during the Han Dynasty

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It is widely believed that assembly-line mass production, quality-control procedures, inventory accounting, and multi-tiered factory management structures are inventions of the modern world, offspring of the mechanization and industrialization which swept through Western Europe and America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 

But two thousand years ago in China, during the Han period (206 BC-AD 220), advanced production and management techniques were already implemented in well-developed forms in the extensive factory system operated by the Han imperial government.

This study was written as Part One of a larger project on workshops and artisans in Ancient China. Part Two was published as the book, Artisans in Early Imperial China (UW Press, 2007, revised 2021).

About the Author

Anthony J. Barbieri-Low is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Ancient Egypt and Early China: State, Society, and Culture.

• Paperback
• 508 pages
• 8.5 x 1.15 x 11 inches
• 2.58 pounds