Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Survival through transformation: how China's Suzhou-centred world economy weathered the general crisis of the seventeenth century

2007; Routledge; Volume: 32; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03071020701245793

1470-1200

Michael Marmé,

Japanese History and Culture

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1Fan Jinmin, Xia Weizhong, and Luo Lun, Suzhou diqu shehui jingji shi (Ming Qing juan) (Nanjing, Nanjing daxue, 1993), 426 [henceforth cited as Fan and Xia]. Wu can refer to the Jiangnan region (the Lower Yangzi delta), to the district which governed the western half of the city of Suzhou and its immediate hinterland, or to the city of Suzhou and its adjacent areas. Here it is used in the third sense. 2J. D. Spence, Ts'ao Yin and the K'ang-hsi Emperor: Bondservant and Master (New Haven, 1966), 66. A bondservant was in a servile relationship vis-à-vis his master but was the equal of third parties. If (as in Cao Yin's case) the master was a powerful person, the connection might actually be a source of power and status. 3I borrow the concept of the city-centred world economy from Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World (New York, 1984 [1979]), 21–88 and passim. 4Frederic Wakeman, Jnr in his ‘Policing modern Shangai’, China Quarterly, cxv (September 1988), 409, cites an early twentieth-century summary of New York which captures this well: ‘A heaven above based on a hell below.’ 5G. William Skinner, ‘Introduction: urban development in imperial China’ in Skinner (ed.), The City in Late Imperial China (Stanford, 1977), 17. 6See the classic article by Liu Yongcheng, ‘The handicraft guilds in Soochow during the Ch'ing dynasty’, Chinese Studies in History, xv (1981–2), 126–30; Paulo Santangelo, ‘Urban society in late imperial Suzhou’ in L. C. Johnson (ed.), Cities of Jiangnan in Late Imperial China (Albany, 1993), 81–116; Jerlian Tsao, ‘Remembering Suzhou: Urbanism in Late Imperial China’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Berkeley, 1992). 7Michael Marmé, Suzhou: Where the Goods of All the Provinces Converge (Stanford, 2005); unless otherwise noted, detailed references to Ming evidence are provided here. 8In Ming and Qing Suzhou, as in much of China, branches of commerce and many crafts were controlled by communities of males from specific areas. Men could spend decades living and working in urban centres far from their native place. While their parents, wives and children remained in the natal village, such men continued to identify (and to be identified by others) with their place of origin rather than that of residence, and most expected to be buried in – even if they could not retire to – the countryside of their birth. These communities of sojourners were a major feature of late imperial urban life: see G. William Skinner, ‘Mobility strategies in late imperial China: a regional systems analysis’ in C. A. Reed (ed.), Regional Analysis, vol. 1 (New York, 1976), 327–64. 9At least one of those market towns had more than 10,000 resident households in the Qianlong era (1736–95); see Fan and Xia, op. cit., 439. 10Fan Shuzhi, Ming Qing Jiangnan shizhen tanwei (Shanghai, 1990), 479–80, 502. Note that the one addition in Wu, Maple Bridge, was already an important commercial centre in Ming. Conversely, one of Fan's market towns in Ming Changzhou (Zhouzhuang) is not listed in the Ming gazetteers. 11Duan Benluo and Zhang Qifu, Suzhou shougongye shi (Suzhou, Jiangsu guji, 1986), 114, n. 1. 12In this area (as in many other parts of late imperial China), ownership of the topsoil and ownership of the subsoil were separate. The cultivator often owned the former (giving him security of tenure) while owing rent to the holder of the latter rights. The owner of the subsoil – often an absentee – was responsible for payment of the land tax. See Fan Jinmin, ‘Qing qianqi Suzhou nongye jingji tese’, Zhongguo nongshi, xii (1993), 46–51; K. Bernhardt, Rent, Taxes, and Peasant Resistance: The Lower Yangzi Region, 1840–1950 (Stanford, 1992), 25–7. 13Li Bozhong, ‘Changes in climate, land and human efforts’ in M. Elvin and Liu Ts'ui-jung (eds), Sediments of Time (Cambridge, 1998), 447–84; Li Bozhong, Agricultural Developments in Jiangnan, 1620–1850 (St Martin's, 1998); Hamashima Atsutoshi, ‘Tudi kaifa yu keshang huodong’, Zhongnan yanjiu yuan dierjie guojie Hanxue huiyi lunwenji-Ming Qing yu jindai shizu (Taibei, 1989), 101–22; Fan and Xia, op. cit., 417–18; Wang Yeh-chien, ‘Secular trends of rice prices in the Yangzi delta, 1638–1935’ in T. G. Rawski and L. M. Li (eds), Chinese History in Economic Perspective (California, 1992), 35–69. 14Pan Ming-te, ‘Material culture and pattern of consumption in Ming Jiangnan (1520–1650)’, paper presented at the Traditional China Seminar, Columbia University, 18 November 1999. 15In addition to Fang Xing's pioneering work – notably ‘Qingdai Jiangnan nongmin de xiaofei’, Zhongguo jingji shi yanjiu, xi, 3 (1996), 91–8 – see Kenneth Pomeranz, ‘Standards of living in eighteenth-century China: regional differences, temporal trends, and incomplete evidence’ in R. C. Allen, T. Bengtsson and M. Dribe (eds), Living Standards in the Past: New Perspectives on Well-Being in Asia and Europe (Oxford, 2005), 24–32 and Yong Xue, ‘“Treasure Nightsoil as if it were Gold”: economic and ecological links between urban and rural areas in late imperial Jiangnan’, Late Imperial China, xxvi, 1 (June 2005), 63–8. 16Li Bozhong, Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, 1620–1850, op. cit., 104–9; this assumes that the empire's population was 200 million in 1600 and 350 million in 1800 and that Jiangnan's population growth after the fall of Ming was lower than that of the empire as a whole: see J. Lee, Cameron Campbell and Wang Feng, ‘Positive checks or Chinese checks’, Journal of Asian Studies, (hereafter JAS), lxi, 2 (2002), 600 and Li Bozhong, Agricultural Development, op. cit., 19–20. On living standards, see P. C. C. Huang, ‘Further thoughts’ and K. Pomeranz, ‘Facts are stubborn things’, JAS, lxii, 1 (2003), 157–81. 17D. C. Twitchett, ‘The Fan clan's charitable estate, 1050–1760’ in A. F. Wright and D. S. Nivison (eds), Confucianism in Action (Stanford, 1959), 97–133. 18Zhang Zhongmin, ‘Civil role of sojourner and trade associations in Shanghai during the Qing period’ in R. J. Antony and J. K. Leonard (eds), Dragons, Tigers and Dogs (Ithaca, 2002), 103–28 and Fan Jinmin, Ming Qing Jiangnan shangye de fazhan (Nanjing, 1998), 251–6 show that the terms are used interchangeably, even within the same document. Note that huiguan has been translated as ‘(same) native place association’ and gongsuo (even more misleadingly) as ‘guild’. 19See also the discussion in K. Bernhardt, Rent, Taxes, and Peasant Resistance, op. cit., 124–5. 20B. Michael Frolic, ‘State-led Civil Society’ in T. Brook and B. M. Frolic (eds), Civil Society in China (Sharpe, 1997), 46–67; R. J. Antony and J. K. Leonard, ‘Dragons, tigers, and dogs: an introduction’ in their Dragons, Tigers and Dogs, op. cit., 1–26. 21Compare B. Goodman, Native Place, City and Nation (California, 1995) which shows that national identify preceded Shanghai identity among sojourners there. 22Skinner, ‘Urban development in imperial China’, op. cit., 17–23. 23Wu Naifu, Suzhou (Beijing, Zhongguo jinzhu gongye, 1986), 300–1; see also Leung Yuen-sang, The Shanghai Taotai (Hawaii, 1990), 12–16. 24Fan and Xia, op. cit., 383. 25Ho Ping-ti, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China (Columbia, 1962), 246–7, 254. Fan and Xia, op. cit., 514 give 658 jinshi for Qing Suzhou holders of the highest degree. 26See Fan Jinmin and Luo Lun, Dongting shangbang (Xianggang, Zhonghua shuju, 1995), passim. 27Fan and Xia, op. cit., 426 (summarizing Kangxi's findings in 1689). 28Mi Chu Wiens, ‘Origins of modern Chinese landlordism’ in Festschrift in Honor of the Eightieth Birthday of Professor Shen Kang-pao (Taibei, 1976), 328, notes that, in the Qianlong period, wealthy households in the city of Suzhou were said to own half the land in the prefecture, the majority of the rural population having thus become tenants of absentee landlords. In Jiangnan as a whole, 40–50 per cent of landlords were said to reside in district cities, another 30–40 per cent in the market towns by the eighteenth century. Only 10–20 per cent still resided in the countryside. 29Fan and Xia, op. cit., 375, cite the case of a member of Wu's Fan lineage who, in thirty years during the Qianlong reign period, not only increased the Fan charitable estate by 1800 + mu but also added more than 100 shops to its endowment. 30 ibid., 374–80. It is suggested there that this reflected changes in the tax system, rising grain prices after the 1730s and lack of sufficient outlets for investment outside agriculture. (I am sceptical that the last will prove true throughout the entire period.) As Wakeman notes, high rice prices in the mid-seventeenth century led to a scramble to invest in land: F. Wakeman, Jnr, The Great Enterprise (California, 1985), 1061–3. As competition for topsoil rights rose, prices for (and rents on) topsoil increased even faster than those for ownership of subsoil. Merchants invested in the former rather than the latter, collecting a rent from the cultivator, then passing a portion of their return on to the (tax-paying) holder of subsoil rights: Wiens, ‘Origins of modern Chinese landlordism’, op. cit., 337, n. 2. 31R. J. Lufrano, Honorable Merchants (Hawaii, 1997). 32 Xiucai, the popular term for holders of the lowest degree, literally translates as ‘flourishing talent’. 33The reference is, of course, to T. Brook, Confusions of Pleasure (California, 1998). 34 Gu Su zhi (1506 edition; Taibei, Taiwan xuesheng shuju, 1965, reprint), 13, 2b. 35On the area's extravagance and the failed attempt to combat it, see Fan and Xia, op. cit., 381–2, 385–6, 426, 428, 470. 36P. E. Will, ‘Développement quantitative de développement qualitative en Chine à la fin de l'époque impériale’, Annales (1994), no. 4, 892. 37Yinong Xu, The Chinese City in Space and Time (Hawaii, 2000), 135–42; Wu Naifu, Suzhou, op. cit., 86; Hao Bingjian, ‘Wan Ming Qingchu Jiangnan “dahang” yanjiu’, Ming Qing shi (2001), op. cit., 3, 3–16; Santangelo, ‘Urban society’, op. cit., 106–8; Fan and Xia, op. cit., 426, 428, 467. 38On the 1748 rice riot, see Santangelo, ‘Urban society’, op. cit., 104–5; P. E. Will, Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth Century China (Stanford, 1990), 215; and Fan and Xia, op. cit., 422; on greater stability, see ibid., 432. For an overview, see Tsing Yuan, ‘Urban riots and disturbances’ in J. C. Spence and J. E. Wills, Jnr (eds), From Ming to Ch'ing (Yale, 1979), 279–320. 39This draws on the as yet unpublished research of Ming-te Pan, ‘Material culture and patterns of consumption in Ming Jiangnan (1520–1650)’, Traditional China Seminar, Columbia University, 18 November 1999. 40P. Santangelo, ‘The imperial factories of Suzhou’ in S. Schram (ed.), Scope of State Power in China (Hong Kong, St Martin's, 1985), 281, n. 81, 277: in 1628, the factories were closed down and the artisans dispersed. 41Wang Yeh-chien, ‘Secular trend of rice prices in the Yangzi delta’ in Rawski and Li (eds), Chinese History in Economic Perspective, op. cit., 66. 42See Mi Chu Wiens, ‘Origins of modern Chinese landlordism’, op. cit., 333; Fan and Xia, op. cit., 305–9. 43Men were ordered to shave the front of the head; the hair at the back was grown long and braided. This Manchu fashion (a radical departure from the Ming fashion) was imposed as a test of loyalty to the new order. Perceived both as a violation of cultural norms (the Confucian classics contained passages indicating that the body was to be returned to the ancestors in its natural state) and as an emasculating insult, the practice was bitterly resented. 44Fan and Xia, op. cit., 349–50. The quotes are from the accounts of Gu Gongxie and Yi Ming. 45 ibid., 444–5; Santangelo, ‘Imperial factories’, op. cit., 278–9. 46On the tax, see Fan and Xia, op. cit., 353–4, 361–9. On the Su-Song-Tai tax case, see the accounts in J. Dennerline, Chia-ting Loyalists (Yale, 1981), 323–33: Wakeman, The Great Enterprise, op. cit., 1074, n. 1; L. D. Kessler, K'ang-hsi and the Consolidation of Ch'ing Rule 1661–1684 (Chicago, 1976), 33–9; R. B. Oxman, Ruling from Horseback (Chicago, 1975), 101–8. 47Mio Kishimoto-Nakayama, ‘The Kangxi depression and early Qing local markets’, Modern China, x, 2 (1984), 227–56. Wakeman refers to an early Qing boom – made possible by continued privileges and evasion – in Great Enterprise, op. cit., 1063. For arguments that economic problems continued into the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, see the judgements of the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors: Fan and Xia, op. cit., 426. 48Skinner, ‘Urban development in imperial China’, op. cit., 16–17; Fernard Braudel, The Perspective of the World (New York, 1979), 21–45. 49This diverges widely from the tacit assumptions of Fan and Xia, who periodize the area's local history in terms of central policy (1596 – the dispatch of eunuch commissioners – begins the era of crisis; 1667 – the year Jiangsu province was created – begins the high Qing) and who begin their discussion of the high Qing by focusing on the government policy. Given the little government actually was able or willing to do – by Fan and Xia's own account – in the critical decades, I find this approach implausible. 50Wang Weiping, Ming Qing shiqi Jiangnan chengshi shi yanjiu-yi Suzhou wei zhongxin (Suzhou, 1999), 188, 189. 51Li Bozhong gives four examples: 4850 ounces in 1707, 700 ounces in 1725, 7200 ounces in 1772 and 1500 in 1822. Li Bozhong, Jiangnan de zaoqi gongyehua (1550–1850 nian) (Beijing, 2000), 509–10. 52Fan Jinmin, Ming Qing Jiangnan shangye de fazhan, op. cit., 92. 53Fan and Xia, op. cit., 465. 54Gary G. Hamilton and Wei-an Chang, ‘The importance of commerce in the organization of China's late imperial economy’ in G. Arrighi, T. Hamashita and M. Selden (eds), The Resurgence of East Asia (New York, 2003), 173–213. 55On the patricorporation, see Hill Gates, China's Motor: A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism (Ithaca, 1996). 56A. Osborne, ‘Highlands and lowlands: economic and ecological interactions in the lower Yangzi region under the Qing’ in Elvin and Liu (eds), Sediments of Time, op. cit., 215 (citing Li Bozhong). 57Fan and Xia, op. cit., 455–6; the 1661 figure may have been as high as 3400. 58Li Bozhong, Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, op. cit., 99–104. 59Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, Jiangnan sichou shi yanjiu (Beijing, 1993), 220–31, show that at least one of the account houses goes back to 1701 but that they only became a general phenomenon later; see also Li Bozhong, Jiangnan de zaoqi gongyehua, op. cit., 78–80. 60 ibid., 71–5; Li Bozhong, ‘Farm labor productivity in Jiangnan, 1620–1850’ in Allen, Bengtsson and Dribe (eds), Living Standards in the Past, op. cit., 55–76. On the continuing improvement of agricultural practice in this area into the eighteenth century, see Li Bozhong, ‘Changes in climate, land and human efforts: the production of wet-field rice in Jiangnan during the Ming and Qing dynasties’ in Elvin and Liu (eds), Sediments of Time, op. cit., 447–84. 61On this point, Pomeranz agrees with Philip C. C. Huang: see Pomeranz, ‘Women's work, family and economic development in Europe and East Asia’ in Arrighi, Hamashita and Selden (eds), Resurgence of East Asia, op. cit., 137. 62For Wu, WXZ (1933), op. cit., 71 shang: 11a–12a for a list of Ming monuments, WXZ 71 Zhong: 1a–48b, 71, xia: 1a–52b for Qing; for Changzhou/Yuanhe, WXZ 72 shang: 10a–8b for Ming, WXZ 72 zhong: 1a–31a, 72 xia: 1a–26a and 73 xia: 1a–48a for Qing; those honoured as upright and filial: Wu WXZ 74 shang: 34a–38b; Changzhou/Yuanhe WXZ zhong: 24a–27b; 39b–42b – all Qing. 63These thoughts are suggested by J. Goldstone, ‘Gender, work and culture’, Sociological Perspectives, xlix, 1 (1996), 1–21; Hill Gates, ‘Footloose in Fujian: economic correlates of foot-binding’, Comparative Studies of Society and History (2001), 130–48; S. Mann, Precious Records (Stanford, 1997), 143–77; and F. Bray, Technology and Gender (Berkeley, 1997), 175–272. Note that foot-binding was far more prevalent in urban than in rural Suzhou: D. Ko, Cinderella's Sisters (Berkeley, 2005), 20, 130–1, 139–40. 64Philip Huang has forcefully presented the case for involution. The numbers he initially used to argue it were (as he has now admitted) flawed. Yet he dismisses all challenges to the logic of his case: a day in the paddy-fields was more productive than any available alternative, hence anyone doing anything else must lower average productivity per capita. The more ‘developed’ commerce and by-employments in a pre-industrial order, the worse things actually were. See Philip C. C. Huang The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350–1988 (Berkeley, 1990); Huang, ‘Development of involution in eighteenth-century Britain and China?’, JAS, lxi, 2 (2002), 501–38; and Huang, ‘Further thoughts on eighteenth-century Britain and China: rejoinder to Pomeranz's response to my critique’, JAS, lxii, 1 (2003), 157–67. 65K. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000); R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca, 1997). 66Fan, Ming Qing Jiangnan shangye de fazhan, op. cit., 172. Note once again that these were (slightly) more heavily concentrated in the areas north and east rather than those south and west. Although this was part of an empire-wide upsurge in the number of such establishments in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, these three districts accounted for 1.5 per cent of the total (versus 0.2 per cent of the 1549 administrative capitals): see W. T. Rowe, ‘Social stability and social change’, Cambridge History of China (hereafter CHC) (Cambridge, 2002), 9, 517. 67In this regard, Fan Jinmin agrees with the arguments advanced by Pan Ming-te, ‘Rural credit in Ming – Qing Jiangnan and the concept of peasant petty commodity production’, JAS, lv, 1 (1996), 94–117. It was, for example, often better to pawn one's rice than to sell it at the depressed prices of the immediate post-harvest period. As early as 1596 (in Xiushui district of Jiaxing, the prefecture just south of Suzhou), tenants pawned ‘their high quality rice for silver, and use(d) low and medium quality rice to pay rents’. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, peasants in Wuxi (the district just west of Suzhou) had developed a combined system of rice farming and textile production which relied on the local pawnshop to maximize their returns over the year: see Wiens, ‘Origins of modern Chinese landlordism’, op. cit., 330–2. 68I owe this insight to discussions with my brother, Christopher Marmé, Professor of Economics at Augustana. 69A point emphasized by Pomeranz, ‘Women's work, family and economic development’, op. cit., 138. 70See R. Myers and Yeh-chien Wang, ‘Economic developments, 1644–1800’, CHC, 9, 563–617. 71Kishimoto-Nakayama, ‘Kangxi depression’, op. cit., 231. 72Fan and Xia, op. cit., 473, 511. 73Li Bozhong, Jiangnan de zaoqi gongyehua, op. cit., 245. 74 ibid., 224–71. 75 ibid., 314–42: in 1669 there were nine merchants and nine brokers specializing in wood outside the Qi Gate; in 1738 there were ninety-four merchants and five brokers (ibid., 337). 76 ibid., 303–13. 77Fan and Xia, op. cit., 509–13. 78For scepticism about its reality, see P. C. Kuhn, Soulstealers (Harvard, 1970), 37–9 who would limit it to a period between 1780 and the mid-1810s.