Description
Book SynopsisAt 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. This book challenges long-held beliefs that social structure, absence of modern banking, and cultural bias against business precluded industrial development in China.
Trade ReviewFocused 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, North Carolina State University, author of Bureaucratic Reform in Provincial China 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, University of California, Berkeley, author of Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861 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, University of California, Los Angeles, editor of Learning by Doing in Firms, Markets, and Countries An outstanding contribution to the field. -- Elisabeth Koll Economic History Review 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 A necessary read for business historians. -- Lane J. Harris Historian One of the best books produced on Chinese economic history. -- Tom Wright Australian Economic History Review [An] important book. -- William T. Rowe Journal of Interdisciplinary History 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 Both China historians and economic historians have good reason to read this book and to take Chinese economic history seriously. -- R. Bin Wong Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 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 this comprehensive study provides new fascinating insights into the forces and networks that shaped Chinese business and industrial development. -- Thomas Hirzel H-HistGeog
Table of ContentsTables, 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
