Mark Elvin

Elvin, the only child of Lionel Elvin and Mona Bedortha Dutton, was born on 18 August 1938. He grew up in Cambridge, attended The Dragon School, and matriculated as an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge. He held posts at the University of Glasgow and at St. Antony's College, Oxford.{{Cite web |title=Mark Elvin: August 1938 – December 2023 |url=https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/news/mark-elvin-1938-2023/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=St Antony's |language=en-US}}

Elvin is noted for his high-level equilibrium trap theory to explain why an industrial revolution happened in Europe but not in China, despite the fact that the state of scientific knowledge was far more advanced in China, much earlier than in Europe. Elvin proposed that pre-industrial production methods were extremely efficient in China, which obviated much of the economic pressure for scientific progress. At the same time, a philosophical shift occurred, whereby Taoism was gradually replaced by Confucianism as the dominant intellectual paradigm, and moral philosophy and the development of rigid social organization became more important than scientific inquiry among intellectuals.

Elvin was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1993.{{Cite web |title=Fellow Profile: Mark Elvin |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240725170837/https://humanities.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/OBITUARY-MARK-ELVIN-1938-2023.pdf |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=Australian Academy of the Humanities |language=en-AU}}

Elvin died on 6 December 2023, at the age of 85.{{Cite web |date=2024-01-29 |title=Mark Elvin (1938–2023) |url=https://www.asianstudies.org/mark-elvin-1938-2023/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=Association for Asian Studies |language=en-US}}

;Monographs

• [https://archive.org/details/patternofchinese00elvi The Pattern of the Chinese Past: A Social and Economic Interpretation] (Eyre Methuen, 1973; Stanford University Press, 1973)
• [https://archive.org/details/anotherhistoryes0000elvi Another History: Essays on China from a European Perspective] (Wild Peony, 1996)
• [https://archive.org/details/changingstoriesi0000elvi Changing Stories in the Chinese World] (Stanford University Press, 1997)
• Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
• [https://archive.org/details/retreatofelephan0000elvi The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China] (Yale University Press, 2006)

;Other works

• [https://archive.org/details/commercesocietyi00shib/ Commerce and Society in Sung China] (Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1970) - translation of Yoshinobu Shiba
• [https://archive.org/details/townsinsocieties0000abra/page/79/ Chinese Cities Since the Sung Dynasty] (Cambridge University Press, 1978)
• [https://archive.org/details/culturalatlasofc00blun/mode/2up Cultural Atlas of China] (Oxford: Phaidon, 1983; Facts of Fi;e, 1983; rev. ed.: 1998) (joint author: Caroline Blunden)

• Great Divergence

{{Reflist}}

• [https://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1366996 Interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 24 July 2012 (video)]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20120401184456/http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/people/personal/elvim_pah.php Mark Elvin's home page] at ANU
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20110719103743/http://gw.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/staff/elvin/index.htm Mark Elvin's home page] at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20240725170837/https://humanities.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/OBITUARY-MARK-ELVIN-1938-2023.pdf Mark Elvin FAHA] at Australian Academy of the Humanities

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Category:1938 births

Category:2023 deaths

Category:Academic staff of the Australian National University

Category:Historians of China

Category:Australian sinologists

Category:Australian historians

Category:Fellows of St Antony's College, Oxford

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Category:Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities