UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Timber Trade along the Yangzi River: Market, Institutions, and Environment, 1750-1911 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5xz4h77g Author Zhang, Meng Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Timber Trade along the Yangzi River: Market, Institutions, and Environment, 1750-1911 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Meng Zhang 2017 © Copyright by Meng Zhang 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Timber Trade along the Yangzi River: Market, Institutions, and Environment, 1750-1911 by Meng Zhang Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Roy Bin Wong, Chair This dissertation studies the history of the long-distance timber trade along the Yangzi River during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This voluminous trade is an important aspect of the economic, environmental, and frontier history of Qing China, but has yet to receive much examination in the literature. In addition to published materials, my study employs contracts, palace memorials, legal cases, guild records, and genealogies collected from several Chinese archives. The cultivation, trade, and taxation of timber lend the focal points for me to address a number of central debates regarding state building, environmental transition, and business paradigms in Chinese history. I examine the evolution of the relationship between the state and merchant groups, the enforcement mechanisms that sustained the expansion of long- distance trade networks, the economic and environmental impacts of core-periphery integration, and the property rights regime that enabled market-oriented reforestation. ii This study provides the first reconstruction of the overall structure of the South China timber trade with hand-collected data and situates the story of timber in a broader perspective. It demonstrates the way in which merchants and the state negotiated the institutional foundations for their relationship, and how such institutional arrangements co-evolved with and reshaped the trade environment for two centuries. The project’s scrutiny of the mechanisms of contract enforcement rejects the dichotomy of formal and informal institutions derived from European experiences and argues that formal and informal institutions existed along a continuum instead of in separate spheres in China’s late imperial and Republican history. It also explores the impacts of the state and market expansion into the internal ethnic frontiers in the Southwest. By examining the local population’s active participation in the timber trade and tree planting, this study highlights their economic agency and revises the one-sided story from earlier works that unsophisticated natives were deprived of their resources by in-migrating Han colonizers. The property rights regime on timberlands adopted here and elsewhere across South China effectively solved the liquidity problem associated with the long-term nature of tree growth and proved successful in promoting commercialized reforestation in a rural household-based economy. iii The dissertation of Meng Zhang is approved. Richard Von Glahn Jean-Laurent Rosenthal Dora Luisa Costa Jessica Lillian Goldberg Roy Bin Wong, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 iv To my grandfather, Zhang Zongrong v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ....................................................................................... ii LIST OF MAPS, FIGURES, AND TABLES ................................................................................ ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... xi CURRICULUM VITAE ............................................................................................................... xv INTRODUCTION. ......................................................................................................................... 1 Timber Rafts on the Yangzi: the Big Picture .............................................................................. 1 Deforestation, Re-planting, and Frontier..................................................................................... 5 Taxation, Procurement, and Market Regulation ....................................................................... 12 Networks, Courts, and Contract Enforcement .......................................................................... 20 A Note on Main Sources ........................................................................................................... 25 Chapter 1. Scale and Structure of the South China Timber Market ............................................. 28 The Rise of Jiangnan and its Source of Timber ........................................................................ 29 The Ming-Qing Timber-Taxing Customs ................................................................................. 35 The Qing Management of Customs Revenues .......................................................................... 39 Timber Consumption in Jiangnan ............................................................................................. 46 Sources of Timber Supply ......................................................................................................... 52 The Chen Guan Station in West Hunan .................................................................................... 57 Timber Markets and Merchant Groups ..................................................................................... 65 Chapter 2. State in the Market: Timber Tribute Procurement and State Personnel’s Sideline Business ........................................................................................................................................ 77 The Routinized Timber Tribute System of the Qing................................................................. 77 Categories and Quota of Timber Tribute .................................................................................. 80 vi Insufficient Official Funding ..................................................................................................... 89 Business Conduct of Timber tribute Officials .......................................................................... 93 Negotiations between Merchants and Officials ...................................................................... 100 Sideline Timber Trade in the Grain Tribute System ............................................................... 105 Chapter 3. The Timberland Economy: Co-ownership, Securitization, and Risk-Sharing .......... 114 The Miao Frontier and Its Timber Industry ............................................................................ 116 The Lower Qingshui Communities ......................................................................................... 122 The Technology of Tree Planting and Its Challenges ............................................................. 128 Categories of Mountain Land Transactions ............................................................................ 132 Creation of Landowners’ and Planters’ Shares ....................................................................... 134 The Division and Securitization of Timberlands .................................................................... 140 Co-ownership Structures ......................................................................................................... 146 Felling, Sales, and Transportation ........................................................................................... 153 Comparison to Timberland Practices in the “Old South” ....................................................... 157 Chapter 4. Timber Brokerages and the Eighteenth-Century Market Management .................... 166 Long-term Trends in Late Imperial Market Management ...................................................... 166 The Qing Licensed Brokerage System .................................................................................... 174 Timber Brokerage Licenses in Practice .................................................................................. 182 Matchmaking and Financial Intermediation ........................................................................... 188 Broker-Seller Network ............................................................................................................ 192 Peculiarities of the Timber Brokerages in the Miao Frontier .................................................. 201 Chapter 5. Merchant Guilds, Collective Taxation, and Local Government Finance .................. 214 From Individual Brokers to Guilds ......................................................................................... 214 vii Official Duties, Contributions, and Merchant Groups ............................................................ 217 Exclusive Responsibility for Independent Standing ............................................................... 224 The Lijin Tax ........................................................................................................................... 229 Merchant Guilds “Undertake Contributions” .......................................................................... 236 Chapter 6. Guild Regulations and Mechanisms of Contract