The Merchant Network in 16Th Century China a Discussion and Translation of Zhang Han’S “On Merchants”
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The Merchant Network in 16th Century China A Discussion and Translation of Zhang Han’s “On Merchants”
Timothy Brook TOKYO
SOURCE: Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient,Vol. XXIV, 1981, pp. 165–214
I. INTRODUCTION: THE PLACE OF COMMERCE IN MING SOCIETY
he latter half of the Ming dynasty is generally recognized as a period of active Tcommercialization at local, regional, and national levels. The pioneering work of Chinese and Japanese historians beginning with the 1950s debate on the “sprouts of capitalism” brought Ming commercial activity out of its former obscurity and has made it a basic fact in our knowledge of Chinese history.1 What this work revealed about the growing wealth and power of merchants and the spread of a commodity economy can be supported by an abundant base of contemporary documents which these historians have assembled. Among Chinese historians, Fu Yiling has furnished the most comprehensive sources on Ming commerce, most notably in his first book, Ming Qing Shidai Shangren ji Shangye Ziben (Merchants and commercial capital in the Ming-Qing period). One of the sources which he cites in that book, and which continues to receive mention in discussions of the Ming economy, is the essay enti- tled “Shanggu Ji” (On merchants) by Zhang Han (1511–1593).2 This essay has not been translated, nor have the full implications of Zhang’s suggestions for altering state policy toward merchants been examined. Both are attempted here as a contribution toward the problem which historians of the Ming and Qing have set for themselves since the 1950s: why did the Chinese socioeconomy not respond with more signifi- cant qualitative change to the potentially transformative developments occurring in the Chinese economy since the sixteenth century? More specifically, why did commercial capital not shift from pure circulation to become the foundation of production? A counterfactual question is obliged to take this negative form, yet considering such a question may lead us forward to a more positively stated under- standing of the dynamic elements of Chinese social and economic history.
(i) Ming merchants and regional economies Merchants have played many roles of varying importance in the economy of China. Since the second millennium B.C. they have served to create economic links within 06 Part KP1:13 Chapter OJ 30/6/08 13:11 Page 508
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Han and Inner Asian worlds, and this economic role has been of critical importance in forming a long history of specialization and exchange in the Chinese economy. During the Warring States period, the wealth of some merchants brought them social and political roles as well, as Sima Qian records in the chapter on commodities (129) in the Shi Ji (pp. 3255 if).3 The power that the merchants gained because of the needs of warring states was perceived as a threat to the stability of the unified state, and the Han dynasty began a series of anti-commercial laws and practices which, as Zhang Han demonstrates, were continued in different forms through to his own day (see the translation, section 3). The functions and distribution of private merchants in the Ming should be dated to somewhat later origins in the mid to late Tang when state control of commercial activity – both markets and merchants – became less and less feasible, as William Skinner has noted from the work of Denis Twitchett: Given the growing scale of commerce and the decline in the number of yamens per unit of population, the system of administered trade became increasingly arduous and expensive to enforce. Through a process of trial and error – the secular trend was punctuated by the periodic reimposition of controls – there occurred a general withdrawal by government from the minute regulation of commercial affairs.4
What followed was the remarkable commercial expansion of the Song dynasty, in a context of increasing population and some integration of regional economic networks. The invasions of a number of non-Han groups, crowned by the coming of the Mongols with their particular state commercial policies, set back the fortunes of those merchants not some way tied to the Yuan state in the 13th century (with the notable exception of the southeast coast region). Population growth, increasing production, and the expensive maintenance of border forces in the northwest all contributed to a revitalizing of private commerce in the 6th century. Private commerce in the Ming dealt in both agricultural and artisan commodities. In the countryside, commercial cropping appeared, and in some regions on a rather extensive scale, to feed a population which doubled itself to about 150 million in the course of the 16th century. Local periodic markets flourished, held sometimes as often as twice or three times a week.What the rate or extent of participation by peas- ants in their local markets was is unknown, though Evelyn Rawski has argued, too strongly, that “the Chinese farmer was oriented to and had participated in a market economy for at least the last millennium”, unlike their European serf counterparts.5 In the towns, whose expansion was fed by the growth of rural commerce, artisan production expanded and, in some cities in the Yangtze valley, experimented in new forms of labour organization to handle unprecedented numbers of labourers. Textile production experienced particularly strong growth. Silk began to appear as an afford- able luxury in certain areas at the upper stratum of the peasantry; and in the realm of common wear, cotton began to challenge ramie, though ramie did continue to be the practical wear of the poor. Complicated silk weaves were in high demand as luxury items worn by urban and rural gentry. The lower Yangtze valley, especially Suzhou, Hangzhou, Songjiang, and Nanjing, was the centre of textile production in the Ming, and its products were transported and sold throughout the country. Such was the demand, spurred on by population growth and urbanization, that by the late 16th century an official could report to the emperor: