Sui And Tang Shipbuilding Research

Sui and Tang dynasties, the most prosperous times in China's ancient history, are also the period of rapid development of shipbuilding industry. During this period of time, the scale of shipbuilding industry was greatly broadened and numerous vessels were produced. These vessels were widely used in the military, political, and economic fields. So Sui and Tang dynasties are always regarded as the important periods in the history of shipbuilding industry. Shipbuilding industry is closely related to the national welfare and the people's livelihood, and also a kind of handicraft industry which can reflect the level of contemporary social economy. The previous academic researches have paid lots of attention on the shipbuilding industry, but most of them just talked in generalities because of the laggard ancient science and technology and the less historical data on the Sui and Tang's shipbuilding industry. So neither economic historians nor shipping-making experts could present us the panorama of its development and the roles it played in the contemporary country's political and economic life.This thesis tries to reveal the development panorama of the temporal shipbuilding industry, and the important roles it played in the country's political and economic fields by trimming the scattered data of ships from the ancient history books, political books, poetries, novels and other archaeological data. This paper regards the development of shipbuilding industry in Sui and Tang dynasties as its research object, and will give us a more comprehensive and complete understanding of it. The thesis includes the following chapters:Through trimming the relevant records of the ancient literature of shipbuilding industry, the first chapter makes a textual research of geographic distribution of the temporal shipbuilding industry, and analyzes the main characteristics of its development. This chapter divides this period of time into three parts: Sui, earlier stage of Tang, and later stage of Tang. Then it gives a respective analyzes on the geographic distribution and the main features of the shipbuilding industry in these three different historical periods.The second chapter discusses the types of the temporal vessels and the development of the shipbuilding technology. According to the use of the vessel, we can divide them into different types, such as: warships, Cao Chuan, pleasure-boat, merchant ships, cargo ships, passenger ships and so on. This chapter not only gives us a detailed introduction on the shape and usage of the vessels, but also describes the main achievements in boat manufacturing technology, for example: watertight bulkhead, screw jointing, mechanical power and other technological craft.Chapter three analyzes the reasons for the rapid development of shipbuilding industry during the Sui and Tang dynasties. This chapter summarizes so many causes in three aspects: the need for political stability, the need for military action, and the need for business development. At the same time, the conditions for the development of the Sui and Tang dynasties shipbuilding industry are also discussed.Chapter four focus on the important roles the shipbuilding industry played in the country's political and economic life as well as external communication. The development of the shipbuilding industry is bound to bring the wide influences on the stabilizing the political situation, enhancing commercial activities, promoting urban prosperity and the circulation of resources and so on. But these influences are always being ignored, so this chapter tries to give a comprehensive discussion of its functions, and it will be helpful to deepen people's understanding of the Sui and Tang shipbuilding industry.