| Historical Commercial Geography is one important branch of Historical Geography.In geographical studies,region serves not only as an approach to determine the research scope,but also as a significant methodology.Most of the modern geographical researches approach to.their themes with a focus on specific regions,therefore region should not be left behind by Historical Geography.Previous case studies of region within Historical Commercial Geography mainly encompass administrative districts and topographic units,which share either natural or humanistichomogeneity.There have been relatively less devotionto the characteristics and changing patterns of the historical commercial activities in special geographic regions,such as the farming-pastoral zones,multi-ethnic zones,topography transition zones and frontier zones.This thesis focuses on the border area between Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia in Ming and Qing dynasties,which manifest the characteristics of frontier and transition regions.It starts with the basic elements of Historical Commercial Geography,respectively investigating the temporal-spatial changing patterns of goods' production,commercial routes,markets and goods' sale,and further revealing the complicated relationship between commercial activities and geography in special regions.The border area between Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia is located at the farming-pastoral zone,available for agriculture and pasturing.During the Ming and Qing dynasties,the commercial production and demands in this region had eminent temporal-spatial discrepancy.This thesis attempts to analyze the temporal-spatial characteristics of commercial production of the border area between Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia in Ming and Qing dynasties from the viewpoints of foods,coals and animal husbandry production.In terms of regional distribution,the frontier wall served as a remarked boundary forcommercial production in the south and north.In specific,inthe south of the frontier wall foods and coals were the focus while in the north the animal husbandry took dominant place.This situation encountered little changes in Qing dynasty,although the Han migration from the south to the north added more agricultural production to the north plain regions.In terms of temporal characteristics,as the economic and political environment changed over the Ming and Qing dynasties,food production increased,commercialization of animal husbandry production was strengthened,and the commercialization of coal products was intensified as well,in line with the administrative strategies alterations.Military and economic conditions changed tremendously in the border area between Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia,transferring it from a frontier to inland area.The frontier wall in this area separated the south from the north.At the south of the wall was military agricultural economic society,while at the northern side it was based on extensive animal husbandry economy.The Qing dynasty unified the southern and northern parts of the frontier wall,which not only led to the extinction of military economy along the wall,but also encouraged a wave of migration and consequently a great economic and social development.Alterations in its commercial routes were subject to these changes.In Ming dynasty,the commercial routes network was largely influenced by official routes network because of the military defense institutions.In Qing dynasty,as the agricultural economy of Guihua city in Tumote plain developed,utilization of Yellow River became an obvious feature of the commercial routes.Additionally,this thesis reconstructs the main commercial route in the border area between Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia in Ming and Qing dynasties,combined with verification of historical sources and earth image restoration.Furthermore,by means of ArcGIS spatial analysis,this thesis demonstrates that it was the humanistic conditions,rather than the natural conditions,that played the dominating role in the direction of commercial routes.Changes of political,economic and military geography in the border area between Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia imposed tremendous effect on commercial markets.This thesis studies the relationship between commercial markets' development and the regional environments from the aspects of ethnic-trade-centered Horse markets,military castle markets and political city markets.Under the confrontation between Mongolian and Han reigns in Ming dynasty,there appeared three main types of commercial centers,namely,horse market,garrison-city-town market,and Zhou-county-city-town market.These markets presented different developmental patterns under the influence of geographical changes.Horse markets once enjoyed prosperity,but later disappeared.Garrison-city-town markets and Zhou-county-city-town markets were also depressed by wars at the beginning of Qing dynasty.On the contrary,numbers of markets outside the frontier gradually prospered.With the multi influences of economy,politics and religion,Guihua city developed quickly to the biggest commercial center outside the frontier.Even though Guihua city and Datong city played a role in motivating other markets in the region,their powerfulness also impeded the further development of those smaller markets.The transmission directions of large-size products in the border area between Shanxi and Inner Mongolia in Ming and Qing dynasties were divergent.In Ming dynasties,products were sold in the north-south direction while in Qing dynasty the east-west one.This was attributed to both geographical transformation and the structural variations in commerce from overseas.From above,the elements of commercial geography changed to a great extentin the border area between Shanxi and Inner Mongolia in Ming and Qing dynasties,which was completely different from the homogeneous regions.This characteristic is called mutability in commercial activities,representing the uncertainty in commercial geographical regions.Such uncertainty stemmed largely from the special regional environment in the border area between Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia.In Ming and Qing dynasties,the general temperature in the border area between Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia was low,at the same time its precipitation was little.Thus its crop farming was very limited.Additionally,its handicraft industry developed late,so its commercial productivity was weak.The production and consumption of large-size products,such as tea,clothes and fur relied greatly on other regions,which prevented this region from forming a commercial geographical district.Therefore,the formation of the commercial geographical district in this region was considerably affected by the changes of trading structure in the country.Due to the geographical limitation,the border area between Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia was weak in producing and consuming products,which led to an uncertainty of commercial geographical district.Because of the drastic transitions of political economic environment and the mutability of commercial geographical district in this region,this region had formed special characteristics.The border area between Shanxi and Inner Mongolia was frontier region in Ming dynasty,with its regional economy and society coming into being under the military system,which strongly affected its commercial activities.But as a border area,it was also loaded with immense volume of transferring products,which became an advantage of shaping a commercial market.The dramatic transitions of humanistic environment took place in Ming and Qing dynasties had great impacts on the commodity production,commercial routes,commercial markets and commercial circulation.Elaborating on the Historical Commercial Geography in special regions could not only supplement the Historical Commercial Geography study,but also benefit its development.This thesis is an attempt to inspect into the border area between Shanxi and Inner Mongolia,with a hope of providing new insights of this region.Conclusions of this thesis wait further examination. |
PDF Full Text Request