| This dissertation reveals that Chinese chambers of commerce in the Lower Yangtze region developed mainly as gentry-merchant elite organizations and altered local elite relationship with the state between 1902 and 1912.; This study traces the origins of the Lower Yangtze chambers of commerce to the rise of gentry-merchant leadership in late Qing guilds and to local elite reaction to Western chambers of commerce. Under Western challenges, the Qing government: also developed a mercantile policy to pursue national wealth and power through government-business cooperation, and successively promoted official-supervised and merchant-managed enterprises, bureaus of commerce, and chambers of commerce. However, between 1902 and 1912, Lower Yangtze gentry-merchants organized approximately 195 general, affiliated and branch chambers of commerce mainly by way of their own initiative and through interaction with local and central authorities.; Quantitative and biographical analyses of chamber members and leaders disclose that they were mostly gentry titleholders. But chamber members included a broad range of gentry-merchants from different regional and occupational merchant groups, and chamber presidents were usually prominent gentry-merchants who had extensive interests and widespread influence in local urban communities. As gentry-merchant organizations, Lower Yangtze chambers of commerce expanded their networks and authority by leading the Anti-American boycott, drafting business laws, and handling merchant disputes and lawsuits. They also extended their influence into self-governing institutions, merchant militias, charitable halls and other community establishments.; Consequently, the Lower Yangtze chambers of commerce became relatively autonomous forces that acted on their gentry-merchant interests and maintained varied relations with the government. They opposed tax increases and official infringements on local railways, but collaborated with the government to organize the Nanyang Industry-Promoting Exhibition and to seek business cooperation with American chambers of commerce. They joined with provincial assemblies to petition for a national parliament, but their conflict with the Qing court over the parliament issue ended in a compromise. During the 1911 Revolution they acted as allies of revolutionaries, collaborators with insurgent Qing officials, or peacekeepers. Through such political maneuvering they helped tilt balance of power from the Qing to the revolutionaries, and finally from the revolutionaries to Yuan Shikai's regime. |
