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31 Commercialization , Agricultural Development, and Landlord Behavior in Shantung Province in the Late Ch'ing Period Ramon H. Kyers * The author is Professor of Economics and History at the University of Miaai, Coral Gables, Florida. He acknowledgee with gratitude the support given b> the East Asian Rssearch Center, Harvard University for the research upon which this essay is based. - 32 Mao Tse-tung's assertion that, "the development of a commodity exchange economy within Chinese feudal society nurtured an incipient capitalism, and had it not been for the influence of foreign capitalism, China would have developed into a capitalistic society, " became a challenge during the 1950s for a generation of Chinese historians to gather all available historical materials and demonstrate that an ' incipient capitalism' existed long before Western influence in China. In that decade Chinese scholars began publishing valions compandiums of historical materials, and some scholars even produced monographs containing specific materials and analysis of agriculture, trade, and handicraft 2 during the Ming and Ch'ing periods. One such study by Ching Su and Lo Lun deals with the social and economic behavior of landlords during the final years of the Ch'ing dynasty and deserves careful review and appraisal because of the unique information contained therein of landlord activities¦a in Shantung during the nineteenth century. This essay summarizes their chief findings, subjects the authors' data and interpretations to some analysis, and evaluates their work from the standpoint of our present knowledge of Ch'ing economic history. I From friends and colleagues Ching and Lo collected the records of 131 landlord families in ?6 counties located throughout western and south central Shantung. They supplemented these survey materials with local gazetteer information to produce a three part study: section one discusses urban and village economic relationships in these areas during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; section two describes the economic behavior of five wealthy landlords , three of whom managed - 33 part of their land and two of whom leased all their land; the final section examines the influence of landlord behavior upon agricultural development with reference to the 131 landlord family sample. During the Ch'ing period Lin-ch'ing, Chinan, and Chou-ts'un cities became important markets for grain, fibers, and oil seed bearing crops. Nearby villages gradually specialized in these crops to exchange for other goods depending upon suitable soil, climate, available labor, managerial skills, and access to market. Villages north of Chou-ts'un produced fibers, oils, silk, and metal products to market in Chou-ts'un; villages around Chi-tung, Po-hsing, and Kao-yuan counties southward produced grain for Chou-ts'un and Chinan. The administrative center and market of Yen shan chen in I-tu county achieved fame for the mineral products received and the ceramics produced, both products being sold throughout western and central Shantung. During the slack fanning periods peasants converged upon these large market towns seeking work as peddlers, coolie laborers, and transport workers. Westward lay Chining which received cereals from nearby 1-shui and Chu counties and then shipped this grain to the Grand Canal for export to the capital. Chi-tung city received cotton from Lin-i county situated just below the Yellow river, Lien-ch'eng country located in the northwest, and Yun-ch'eng county to the southwest. From Chi-tung merchants shipped this cotton to major market towns in the Kiangnang region where local brokers handled its distribution in market towns of counties located in southern Kiangsu. In Chining and Yen-chou counties the farmers cultivated tobacco, and in I county the peanut became an important cash crop. Ching and Lo do not attempt to estimate the volume of trade between countryside and town or between this region and Peking and Kiangsu. As - 34 their descriptive information comes frcm gazetteer materials, the quantitative evidence required to r:a'cc such estimates probably does not exist. They do ,cite some scattered population figures shovring that Lin-ch'ing and Chining cities expanded to huge size by the nineteenth century, and they note the great variety of handicraft activities in these cities which involved skilled and unskilled laborers in food processing and textile making. They fail to...

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