The Structure and Transformation of Brokerage in Mid-Qing Chongqin, Sichuan

• Main Authors: Lin shiow-jing, 林秀靜
• Other Authors: Chiu,Peng-shan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/88401967331096440690

碩士 === 國立暨南國際大學 === 歷史學系 === 93 === In the Chinese society, there have always been people whose jobs are similar to the brokers in commercial activities. During the Ming and Qing dynasty, the economy was prosperous, so these people were very active and the brokerage was developed greatly. They were like the official brokers and the government had power to control and manage them. Based on the official laws, almost every deal was involved with them. As a result, by understanding the brokerage system, we can easily get the whole glimpse of the economy, the commercial activities, and the merchants at that time. The study chooses Chongqin (重慶) as the main discussed area because of the following two reasons. One is that Chongqin was the commercial center of the southwest areas of China during the emperors Qian-long and Jia-qing because there were many commercial activities going on there. The other reason is about historic information. The Ba-xin files (巴縣檔案) are regarded as the books that keep the most resources of the local government (衙門). Through these resources, we can understand a lot of events happened at many local places and some real processes of practice made by the local government that we can not tell from a large number of the central laws. In this thesis, the brokers are defined in a broad way; for example, the Yahang (牙行), the Jiaofu (腳夫), and the Chuanhu (船戶) are all included. As for the time discussed is between the beginning of the Qing dynasty and the Mid-Qing (清中葉), the Dao-guang periods of time. In other words, that is the time before the western commercial acitivites started to affect the Chinese economy. The thesis hopes to understand how the Yahang works by using the Ba-xian files. In the Qing dynasty, there were a lot of laws about the Yahang. However, we are not sure that the local government puts them into practice. Therefore, through the Ba-xian files, we can know how the local officials change the rules of the central laws in practice and why they did this. On the other hand, by reading the Ba-xian files, we can understand some factors that affect the practice and organizations of the Yahang aside from the laws.