From the early twentieth century on, the study of Chinese history in China and Japan had undergone several changes as responses to the contemporary political and intellectual environment. The aim of this chapter is not to offer a comprehensive literature review of modern scholarship on Qin 秦 and Han 漢(221 BCE–220 CE) economic history, which is almost an impossible task given the limited length of this chapter, but rather to contextualize the writing of Qin and Han economic history in the development of modern Chinese and Japanese historiographies, so as to show the changes of concerns and methodologies in this field. Part one situates the studies of Chinese economic history in the transformations of Chinese and Japanese historiographies at the turn of the twentieth century. Part two examines the studies of Qin and Han socioeconomic history under Chinese Marxist historiography. Part three discusses the publishing of the Food and Commodities Semimonthly (Shihuo banyuekan 食貨半月刊) and the development of Qin and Han economic history in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The chapter concludes with a section introducing the new trends in the studies of early Chinese economy which are due mainly to the remarkable growth of the discoveries of ancient texts in recent decades.