Local merchants and the Chinese bureaucracy : 1750-1950

291 Pages·1987·7.342 MB·English

by  Susan Mann

Local Merchants and the
Chinese Bureaucracy, 1750-1950

Susan Mann
Local Merchants
and the
Chinese Bureaucracy,
1750-1950
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
1987
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 1987 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States of America
CIP data appear at the end of the book
Maps i and 3-7 were drawn by Yue Zumou: Map 1 is adapted from Huang 1974b:
54, with permission of the publisher, Cambridge University Press; the Map 3 inset is
adapted from Hou Renzhi 1979: 339; Map 4 is based on data in S. F. Wright 192.0:
99—110, and Luo Yudong 1936: 290; the locations of lijin stations in Map 5 were iden­
tified by Yue Zumou using data in Gu 1919, zheli (zhong), 25—64; Map 6 is adapted
from GDCZSMS 1910, using data in Kobayashi 1971; and Map 7 is based on data in
Schoppa 1982 and Zhejiang caizheng yuekan, 4, no. 6 (1931). Map 2 is reproduced
from CSXZ 1801, juan shou, with data from CSXZ 1801, juan 1, 30a—33b.
In memory of
John Raymond Mann
(1882-1971)
and
George Willoughby
(1886-1972)

Acknowledgments
As a scholar I have enjoyed the best the American academy has to offer.
I cannot measure or adequately acknowledge here the influence of
teachers, friends, and colleagues in the making of this book. My fore­
most intellectual debts are two: to G. William Skinner, whose teaching
and writing led me to my first work in local history; and to Philip A.
Kuhn, who consistently and generously shared his scholarly interests
with me over a period of many years. I also wish to thank Fu-mei
Chang Chen, Hamashita Takeshi, Harold L. Kahn, Thomas Rawski,
William T. Rowe, and Dorothy Solinger for advice and bibliographic
guidance during the time when I was writing and revising the manu­
script. During a visit to Stanford in 1982, Professor Hou Renzhi was
kind enough to discuss the findings in his book with me. Professor
Shiba Yoshinobu has helped me to keep abreast of Japanese scholarship
on Chinese economic history, and has managed a faithful correspon­
dence on subjects of mutual interest in spite of the many demands on
his time. Readers will see my debts to his assistance in several chapters.
A generous fellowship from the National Endowment for the Hu­
manities gave me a year to read and write while completing the first
drafts of the manuscript. I am grateful to Dr. Ramon Myers of the East
Asian Collection at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, for
providing me with an office and with access to a library and a scholarly
community during that period. The Faculty Research Committee, the
Division of Humanities, and the Comparative and International Stud­
ies ORA at the University of California, Santa Cruz, supplied’com­
puter time, text-editing services, and other financial assistance, with­
out which the manuscript would have been considerably delayed. At an
earlier stage in my work, I also received research support from the
Center for Far Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. I wish to
thank colleagues there, particularly Tetsuo Najita and Harry Harootu-
nian, for their encouragement.
viii Acknowledgments
My thinking about this book has been shaped in discussions with
members of two research groups: the Project on Local Leadership in
China, directed by Tsou Tang and sponsored at the University of Chi­
cago from 1977-1980 by the National Endowment for the Human­
ities; and the Comparative and International Studies research group at
►
the University of California, Santa Cruz. I thank them collectively for
their support, their interest, and their many suggestions.
Particular individuals contributed in substantive ways to the writing I
of the manuscript. Kwan Manbun was both research assistant and in­
tellectual collaborator in searching out documentary evidence. Yue
Zumou prepared maps and wrote the characters for the glossary; his
calligraphy also graces the cover of this volume. Madeleine Zelin gave
the first five chapters the benefit of a careful and critical reading at an
early stage. Prasenjit Duara, Mary Rankin, Jonathan Ocko, and Joseph
Fewsmith read later drafts and offered important advice. I am espe­
cially grateful to G. William Skinner and to anonymous readers for
Stanford University Press for astute and constructive criticism that
shaped the final text. Editor J. G. Bell’s encouragement, confidence,
and vision helped to bring the book to its present form, and kept me
working on its problems. Finally, it gives me pleasure to record my spe­
cial debts to Margery Wolf and Carol A. Smith, who insisted on taking
time away from their own work to read and criticize early versions of
many chapters, and who as a result moved the manuscript along at a
critical point. None of these people bears responsibility for the prob­
lems that remain, despite their best efforts.
At home I owe thanks for a different kind of support, tangible and
intangible. I wish to acknowledge, with affection and gratitude, the
help I have received from women who took care of my children over
the years so that I could do research and write: Claudia Mae Moore,
the late Sister Ruby Lynch, Carol Swanson, Clarice Begemann, Ana-
Maria Navas, and the teachers at College Terrace Preschool Center. I
thank the members of my several extended families who will celebrate
the publication of this book. And I pay special tribute to my parents,
for raising me in a world where grandparents were a regular presence;
to my children, for being a constant source of joy and comfort; to
Thomas M. Jones, who has been a loving father to our two boys; to
Frances Van Loo, who has been better than a sister; and to William,
for sharing fully with me the joys and the heartaches of these years.
S.M.
Contents
Maps and Figures xi
i. Introduction: State-Building and Market Taxes
in Presocialist China i
2. Liturgical Governance and the Merchant Class 12
3. Regulation and Revenue: High Qing Policy
and Historical Precedent 29
4. The State and Local Markets in Eighteenth-
Century Shandong 52
5. Liturgical Leadership and Market Town Development
in the Jinan Region 70
6. The Lijin Tax: Ideology and Organization 94
7. Lijin Taxes and the Merchant Response 121
8. Tax-Farming and State-Building: The Late Qing and
Early Republic 145
9. Brokerage Tax Reform and Tax-Farming
at the Local Level 171
10. Epilogue: Commercial Taxation in the
People’s Republic of China 200
Notes 217 Bibliography 255
Character List 269 Index 273