In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Vol. 10, No. 2 Late Imperial ChinaDecember 1989 WHY THE SPROUTS OF CAPITALISM WERE DELAYED IN CHINA Fang Xing* In China the sprouts of capitalist relations of production began in the late Ming, approximately two centuries later than in Western Europe. By the mid-Qing they had developed to a certain extent. But in agriculture they were so puny as to be hardly worth mentioning; moreover, they represented an extremely small proportion of handicrafts. After over three hundred years, on the eve of the Opium War, the sprouts still had not reached the stage of workshop handicraft (gongchang shougongye). They were far behind Western Europe.1 This section discusses why the sprouts of capitalism developed so belatedly in China. The reasons for this are largely also the basic reasons why China's feudal society lasted so long, and are one basic source of modern China's economic backwardness. According to Marx, "The economic structure of capitalistic society has grown out of the economic structure of feudal society. The dissolution of the latter set free the elements of the former." And the development of a commodity economy "has a more or less dissolving influence everywhere [Translator's Note: This is a translation of pages 673-695 (chapter six, section 1, subsections 1 through 3) of Zhongguo ziben zhuyi de mengya, edited by Xu Dixin and Wu Chengming (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1985), which is volume one of the projected fourvolume Zhongguo ziben zhuyi fazhan shi. This first volume was reviewed in detail by Kishimoto Mio" in Toyöshi kenkyiT, vol. 46, no. 1 (June 1987), pp. 168-179. For background on earlier interpretations of the "sprouts" issue, see William T. Rowe, "Review Article: Recent Writing in the People's Republic on Early Ch'ing Economic History," Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i, vol. IV, no. 7 (June 1982), pp.73-90, and the works cited therein. To save space, a few extraneous or redundant passages have been omitted. Page references have been made as precise as possible. I am grateful to the East Asian Library and the School of International Affairs Library at Columbia University, to Chu Mi Wiens of the Library of Congress for her help in checking citations, and to Professor Harold L. Kahn of Stanford University for his suggestions and corrections — James H. Cole.] 1 The sprouts of capitalism in Western Europe appeared in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries , first in Italian cities on the Mediterranean, next in the coastal cities of the Netherlands, and then in England. In the sixteenth century England and several cities on the continent had already entered the stage of workshop handicraft and were in transition to the capitalist mode of production. The Industrial Revolution began in the late eighteenth century, via the bourgeois revolutions in the Netherlands and England, and entered the stage of heavy industry [FX]. Late Imperial China 10, No. 2 (December 1989): 106-138° by the Society for Qing Studies 106 Why the Sprouts ofCapitalism Were Delayed in China107 on the producing organization which it finds at hand.... To what extent it brings about a dissolution of the old mode of production depends on its solidity and internal structure."2 China's feudal society evolved rather early from a seigneural (lingzhu) economy to a landlord economy, gave evidence rather early of a market in land, and achieved rather early a centralized, unified monarchy; the forces of production developed to a high level. China became a classic example of a mature feudal system. Precisely because it was a mature feudal society, it had a rather stable economic structure, it was rather fully selfsufficient , and its superstructure was rather strong. Moreover, the system had a rather considerable capacity for self-adjustment, so that it was not easily damaged and destroyed. We take these to be the basic reasons why the sprouts of capitalism developed only belatedly in China. Our discussion below shall proceed in terms of production, circulation, distribution, and the superstructure. [The present translation is limited to the first three of these four topics — JHC. ] This section is in the nature of a general conclusion. I. Production: The Close Combination of Smallholder Cultivation and Household Handicraft The combination of agriculture and...

pdf

Share