The Merchants of Zigong: Industrial Entrepreneurship in Early Modern China / Edition 1

by Madeleine Zelin

Overview

At the periphery of the Chinese empire, a group of innovative entrepreneurs built companies that dominated the Chinese salt trade and created thousands of jobs in the Sichuan region. From its dramatic expansion in the early nineteenth century to its decline on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War in the late 1930s, salt production in Zigong was one of the largest and one of the only indigenous large-scale industries in China. Madeleine Zelin recounts the history of the salt industry to reveal a fascinating chapter in China's history and provide new insight into the forces and institutions that shaped Chinese economic and social development independent of Western or Japanese influence. Her book challenges long-held beliefs that social structure, state extraction, the absence of modern banking, and cultural bias against business precluded industrial development in China.

Zelin details the novel ways in which Zigong merchants mobilized capital through financial-industrial networks. She describes how entrepreneurs spurred growth by developing new technologies, capturing markets, and building integrated business organizations. Without the state establishing and enforcing rules, Zigong businessmen were free to regulate themselves, utilize contracts, and shape their industry. However, this freedom came at a price, and ultimately the merchants suffered from the underdevelopment of a transportation infrastructure, the political instability of early-twentieth-century China, and the absence of a legislative forum to develop and codify business practices.

Zelin's analysis of the political and economic contexts that allowed for the rise and fall of the salt industry also considers why its success did not contribute to "industrial takeoff" during that period in China. Based on extensive research, Zelin's work offers a comprehensive study of the growth of a major Chinese industry and resituates the history of Chinese business within the larger story of worldwide industrial development.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231135979
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	03/25/2008
Series:	Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Madeleine Zelin is Dean Lung Professor of Chinese Studies, professor of history and East Asian languages and cultures, and former director of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. She is the author of The Magistrate's Tael: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in Eighteenth Century Ch'ing China and the coeditor of Contract and Property in Early Modern China.
Madeleine Zelin is professor of history and East Asian languages and cultures and former director of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. She is the author of The Magistrate's Tael: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in Eighteenth Century Ch'ing China and the coeditor of Contract and Property in Early Modern China.

Table of Contents

Tables, Figures, Maps, and Illustrations
Chinese Weights, Measures, and Money
Preface
1. Salt Administration and Salt Technology
2. The Structure of Investment in Late Qing Furong
3. Fragmentation as a Business Strategy
4. Organization and Entrepreneurship in Qing Furong
5. The Growth of an Urban Workforce
6. Official Transport and Merchant Sales
7. Technological and Organizational Change, 1894–1930
8. The Changing of the Guard at the Furong Saltyard
9. Politics, Taxes, and Markets: The Fate of Zigong in the Early Twentieth Century
10. Zigong: Industrial City or Handicraft Enclave?
Epilogue
Notes
Glossary of Selected Chinese Names and Terms
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Timothy Brook

This book is the most important scholarly contribution to Chinese business history in many years and provides a wealth of intimate detail about how Chinese businesses functioned before the communist period.

— Timothy Brook, University of British Columbia, author of Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China

Editorial Reviews

A fine-grained study... [The Merchants of Zigong] is a trove of information about business and industry in late traditional China.

China Review - David D. Buck

Both China historians and economic historians have good reason to read this book and to take Chinese economic history seriously.

Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies - R. Bin Wong

Zelin's insightful analysis demonstrates the potential of classical Chinese merchant culture for generating significant technological and organizational innovation.

Technology and Culture - Peter C. Perdue

Focused on a group of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century industrial entrepreneurs in an interior city removed from Western influences, Zelin's masterful study reshapes our understanding of Chinese economic culture. Her powerful account of lineage-based but diverse partnerships raising capital through self-enforcing contracts in the absence of a fully developed legal framework offers a fascinating historical parallel to some of the processes that have shaped China's more recent economic boom.

Jonathan Ocko

An outstanding contribution to the field.

Economic History Review - Elisabeth Köll

this comprehensive study provides new fascinating insights into the forces and networks that shaped Chinese business and industrial development.

H-HistGeog - Thomas Hirzel

The Merchants of Zigong is a well-argued and well-documented book on the history of Chinese trade and industry.

The Sixteenth Century Journal - Juanjuan Peng

[An] important book.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History - William T. Rowe

One of the best books produced on Chinese economic history.

Australian Economic History Review - Tom Wright

A necessary read for business historians.

Historian - Lane J. Harris

An outstanding contribution to the field.

Economic History Review - Elisabeth Köll

This is a model work of business history that everyone in the field should read regardless of his or her country of specialization. It is both deeply researched and theoretically savvy. As a result, Zelin has much to teach us about entrepreneurship, technological innovation, and business practice in China, and she also forces us to reconsider some of our most hallowed beliefs about the importance for economic development of preexisting financial markets and a well-articulated body of commercial law.

Naomi R. Lamoreaux

A stunning piece of historical scholarship. Professor Zelin's is the first work in Chinese economic history to combine exhaustive research in the local archives of numerous late Qing and Republican enterprises with a sophisticated analysis of all of the legal, technical, political, and sociological aspects of the evolution of the nation's salt-mining industry during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book simply has to be read by anyone seriously interested in China's modern economic transformation.

Frederic Wakeman

An outstanding contribution to the field.

Economic History Review - Elisabeth Koll

this comprehensive study provides new fascinating insights into the forces and networks that shaped Chinese business and industrial development.

— Thomas Hirzel

H-HistGeog

The Merchants of Zigong is a well-argued and well-documented book on the history of Chinese trade and industry.

— Juanjuan Peng

The Sixteenth Century Journal

Zelin's insightful analysis demonstrates the potential of classical Chinese merchant culture for generating significant technological and organizational innovation.

— Peter C. Perdue

Technology and Culture

[An] important book.

— William T. Rowe

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

One of the best books produced on Chinese economic history.

— Tom Wright

Australian Economic History Review

A necessary read for business historians.

— Lane J. Harris

Historian

A fine-grained study... [ The Merchants of Zigong] is a trove of information about business and industry in late traditional China.

— David D. Buck

China Review

An outstanding contribution to the field.

— Elisabeth Köll

Economic History Review

Provides a revelatory analysis of a large-scale industry in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries...wonderfully rich detail that repays slow and careful reading.

English Historical Review