WHI.24


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media type="custom" key="29536447" align="right" =**Describe the growth of commerce and towns in China and the importance of agriculture to the development of the Chinese economy to 1800, including the limited role of slavery.**=


 * Topics on the page **
 * Growth of Commerce **
 * ** Historical Biography page for Zheng He and Chinese Treasure Fleets **
 * Growth of Towns **
 * Importance of Agriculture **
 * Development of the Chinese Economy **
 * **Dramatic Event page for The Great Wall and the Grand Canal of China**
 * ** The Opium Trade and Opium Wars **
 * Slavery in China **
 * ** Slave Rebellions **

====** This page explores the Chinese economy through the Song, Ming, and Qing Dynasties. **====

**//Focus Question: How did Chinese commerce, towns and agriculture develop before 1800?//**
Image to the right shows an ink print of a decorative brick depicting a woman cleaning and drying vessels from Northern Song Dynasty (A.D. 960 - 1127)

View this powerpoint presentation for an overview of Chinese agricultural, economic, and cultural developments during this time period.

Interactive website from the British Museum about Early Imperial China.

Article from the London School of Economics about Chinese economic history from 221 BCE to 1800.

Click [|here] for a timeline, explanation of key events, list of rulers, and map of China

I. Growth of commerce in China

 * China's economy grew enormously and allowed a five-fold increase in population to be sustained.
 * Improvements in crops and the availability of new, though inferior, land fed this increase but often at the expense of qualitative growth.
 * China was therefore trapped between a lack of raw materials and productive land and a large and growing population.
 * China's economy thus largely stagnated in per capita terms between the period 1368 and 1800.

To read more about the economy click here, Growth in China.

Qian Long: Letter to George III (1793) intended to resist external influences in China.

[|Key Points in Developments in East Asia]
 * China differs from Europe in that the state has little control over commerce
 * Biggest national commodities: grain, cotton, tea
 * "Asia is the center of the world economy"
 * Portuguese and Chinese feuded over trade and territory in Asia

II. Growth of towns in China

 * Although China had a much slower urban growth, the average size of Chinese towns was bigger than in Europe.
 * As the commerce and agriculture grew, so did the creation of more and more towns in China.
 * Are cities and creating nation-states the best way to advance a civilization?
 * Watch [|Rethinking Civilization] to learn about Hill People and River Valley towns in China!

**III. Importance of agriculture**
China's economy, like most pre-modern economies, was agriculturally based with all other sectors either servicing it or drawing materials from it.
 * During the Song Dynasty the Chinese developed the world's most productive agricultural system.
 * With 20th and now 21st century technology came advanced and new ways of rice cultivation; particularly in the new strains of rice.
 * More Drought Resistant Rice, for more on this click here
 * With improved methods of water control and irrigation, came high rice yields.

With the uprising of the Mongol domination and the Ming Dynasty's seizing of power, economic growth from this low base only required a period of relative stability and semi-competent rule.
 * The introduction of new crops and new varieties was the major qualitative change in late imperial Chinese agriculture.
 * From Indochina came early ripening rice and Champa varieties that allowed rice to be cultivated in drier fields.
 * From the new world China adopted maize, peanuts, sweet and white potatoes, and tobacco.
 * The most significant, sweet potatoes, had become a staple product of the poor in South East and Northern China by 1800.

Apart from food crops and tobacco, the other foreign crop that altered Chinese life was cotton. 
 * A cotton field could yield up to ten times what China's traditional textile crops of ramie and hemp yielded.
 * New crops improved China's level of output, in some cases remarkably, but could not change the rate of output growth for the long term.


 * At the turn of the 15th century China possessed the largest navy and merchant fleet in the world, hence an overseas expansion was a plausible escape from Mark Elvin's high-level equilibrium trap theory about why the Chinese economy did not expand despite technological innovations.
 * China's seafaring folk were instead forced to spend their energy smuggling, avoiding and sometimes fighting government forces.

See //When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433//, Louise Levathes, 1997.


 * For more on the voyages of Zheng He, see **


 * [[image:rotating gif.gif width="43" height="43" link="WHI.23"]]World History I.23 **
 * ** Special Topic Page Zheng He and the Chinese Treasure Fleets **

Check out this worksheet that offers excerpts from __On Farming__ and follows with questions.

Watch this video on rice farming in China.

**IV. Development of the Chinese Economy**

 * See Special Topic Page on The Great Wall and the Grand Canal of China**

Economic History of premodern China from 221 BC to c. 1800 AD
 * The decrease in trade and contacts with foreigners also deprived China of the opportunity to benefit from foreign technological advances.
 * [[image:chinese_junk_1804.jpg width="368" height="269" align="right" caption="Chinese Trade Ship"]]Qing emperors lifted the ban on foreign trade, they continued to see trade as largely a source of revenue and maintained an isolationist stance. Kangxi (see Biography) is the Qing Emperor to whom credit is given for establishing peace and extending Chinese borders to the image of China that we see today.
 * Interactive Map showing China's growth (or decline) in each dynasty from the Neolithic Era in 3000 B.C. up to the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912.
 * <span style="font-family: sans-serif,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Low Chinese demand for European goods, and high European demand for Chinese goods, including tea, silk, and porcelain, forced European merchants to purchase these goods with silver, the only commodity the Chinese would accept.
 * <span style="font-family: sans-serif,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">From the mid-17th century around 28 million kilograms of silver were received by China, principally from European powers in exchange for Chinese goods.
 * <span style="font-family: sans-serif,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the 18th century, despite ardent protest from the Qing government, British traders began importing opium from India.
 * <span style="font-family: sans-serif,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Because of its strong mass appeal and addictive nature, opium was an effective solution to the trade problem. An instant consumer market for the drug was secured by the addiction of thousands of Chinese and the flow of silver was reversed.
 * <span style="font-family: sans-serif,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Recognizing the growing number of addicts, the Yongzheng Emperor prohibited the sale and smoking of opium in 1729 and only allowed a small amount of opium imports for medicinal purposes

Exploring Trade and the World Economy: A City Street and Shops in 18th Century China for a lesson plan by Columbia University on the Qing economy.

<span style="font-family: sans-serif,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Click here for more information from Columbia University about the Chinese economy in the Ming-Qing Dynasties. There is an interactive map portion where students can explore the different areas of a Chinese city.

[|Interactive!]
 * Compare different currencies from countries around the world!

The Opium Trade and Opium Wars

 * China's defeat in the first opium war and the resulting treaty showed foreign powers they could receive consolations in China through military might. This lead to a series of demands of in obtaining rights in China which Chinese critics at the time referred to as China being "carved like a melon." This foreign influence was a major factor in the internal discontent which eventually lead to open rebellion and the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. More from Asia for Educators

Here is a link to information about [|the Opium Trade]


 * Lin Zeu, Catalyster of the First Opium War**
 * 1839 workers under his direction dumped one million kilograms of opium into the ocean

**Lin Zeux Letter to Queen Victoria, 1839**

Lin Zeux and the Opium War, YouTube

Justifiers of the British Opium Trade: Arguments by Parliament, Traders and the Times Leading Up to the Opium War

**V. Slavery in China**

 * [[image:podcast icon.png width="60" height="60" link="@http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/whic/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&prodId=WHIC&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&display-query=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Reference&limiter=&currPage=&disableHighlighting=false&displayGroups=&sortBy=&search_within_results=&p=WHIC&action=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CBT2358201669&source=Bookmark&u=tlc199095657&jsid=24499cf32429497c4ca7d0680307cbce"]]Slavery in China podcast**

Click here for a description of a Booi Aha (Chinese Slave).
 * Booi Aha (Manchu: "booi niyalma" for male, "booi hehe" for female) (Chinese translation:包衣阿哈) is a Manchu word literally translated as "household person" and sometimes rendered as "slaves."
 * The Manchu established a close personal and paternalist relationship between masters and their slaves, as Nurhachi said: " //The Master should love the slaves and eat the same food as him//".
 * Chinese agricultural slaves were employed as early as the 15th century, and by the late 16th century it was observed that all the Manchu military commanders had both field and house slaves.[[image:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Buddhists_As_Slaves_in_Slow-cart_Country.jpg align="right" caption="Slaves in China"]]
 * Between 1645 and 1647, Manchu rulers enslaved large numbers of previously Chinese-owned estates over vast areas all over North China, eastern Mongolia, and neighborhood of Peking, and for land cultivation they were using labor force consisting of slaves which were previous land owners and prisoners of war.
 * Manchu slave masters treated their slaves very harshly, arranged numerous <span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">labor work, and sold and bought their slaves as if they were animals.
 * A short history of slavery in China.

VI. Slave Rebellion

 * Slave rebellion in China at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century was so extensive that owners eventually eschewed male slaves and converted the institution into a female-dominated one.


 * Great E-Book for Learning about the Premodern economy in China **
 * Book Link**


 * References**

Found: February 20, 2011 [].