A Comparative Study On City's Development Of Chongqing And Chengdu Of Qing Dynasty

Chengdu, Chongqing of Qing Dynasty represented two kinds of totally different urban types.The former, with strong function of politics, was the traditional political key city inland; but the latter was the riverine economic key city with strong economic function developed rapidly after opening port in modern times. Particularity and indentity that they had on their development track was typical in that period. So, this article tried to analyze different development course of two cities in Qing Dynasty in terms of motive force mechanism of city's development, with the hope that through the comparison of Chengdu and Chongqing to see the interreaction between two cities and distinct their advantages and deficiencies clearly.Considered the above, the author divided this article into three chapters in order of time, namely, the comparative research of Chengdu and Chongqing before Qing Dynasty, in the earlier stage of Qing Dynasty and in Qing Dynasty.Chapter one compared city's development of Chengdu and Chongqing under the influence of geographical change before Qing Dynasty. This chapter expounded the relation between geographical environment and city's development, the similarities and differences of geographical environment between Chengdu and Chongqing and the geographical environment and the comparison of the growth course between Chengdu and Chongqing before Qing dynasty. The author mainly analyzed the geographical foundations and the constant change in traffic conditions which brought different influence on Chengdu and Chongqing from the initial forming reason of cities-geographical factors before Qing Dynasty, and then the author found that two cities of Chengdu and Chongqing had different historical starting points, so, before Yuan and Ming dynasty, they were far from each other. During Yuan and Ming dynasty, for the sake of the development of geographical condition and commodity economy, the disparity before became narrow, this made a hint to the separation of development path and development direction of Chengdu and Chongqing later on.Chapter two compared the similarities and differences of city's development track between Chengdu and Chongqing in earlier stage of Qing Dynasty. During the last time of Ming Dynasty and the earlier time of Qing Dynasty, Chengdu and Chongqing were destroyed greatly by the decades-long war, and then, the immigration policy promoted two cities to resume developing rapidly. But, two cities had different destroy intensity and immigration result. In reconstruction of the two cities, development power differed obviously, on one hand political strength influenced Chengdu deeply, on the other hand economic force led Chongqing to rise fast. By this reason, the cities differed power in political, economic and cultural functions.In chapter three, the author compared the developing history of Chengdu and Chongqing in term of motive force mechanism in the later time of Qing Dynasty. In this period, Chongqing developed rapidly but Chengdu slowly and even stagnantly. Tracing to the cause, the author thought in the later stage of Qing Dynasty, the change of era theme caused the change of motive force mechanism of the city, therefore, the development path of two cities was separated, in this course, external force system relying mainly on economy led Chongqing to develop, which demonstrated colony color. The development of Chengdu was dominated by the internal force system relying mainly on political respect, which limited by feudalism unavoidably. So, in later stage of Qing Dynasty, Chengdu and Chongqing had different developing paths and developing directions and this kind of difference had a far-reaching impact on development of two cities during the middle and later period of 20^th century.