Broker And Broker-house In Jiangnan Area Of Ming And Qing Dynasty

As the trading intermediary, the broker and the broker-house presenced since the exchange existed and became more and more important with the economic development. At Ming and Qing Dynasty, the South Yangtze River Region was recognized as highly developed region of commodity economy, where there were unprecedentedly active brokers and broker-houses. It is of import academic value and practical significance to make a systematic research on the development situation, management characteristics and effect of the broker and the broker-house in this region during this period. The thesis is divided into seven chapters:The first chapter is a systemic collation about the research results of Broker and Broker-house in 20th century. These research results mainly involved the broker' s history, action of broker and broker-house in the commodity economy, and the organization and the operation of the broker and the broker-house. However, for a long time, the broker and the broker-house problems did not cause sufficient academic attention, So far there have been no monographs or papers about this problem, and many researches are from the perspective of economic history, lacking of history of cultural and regional society yet.The second chapter is mainly on the retrospective history of the broker and the broker-house. In China, the broker had a long history, during the Spring and Autumn Period it had been in related records, as an intermediary business firms set up by brokers, the broker-house had been existed in the Five Dynasties at latest. In pre-modern Chinese society, the broker and the broker-house were very general, involving almost all fields of commodity exchanges. However, generally speaking, looking from the literature recording, comparing to the Ming and Qing Dynasty where the broker-house had prosperous development, in the Song and Yuan Dynasties and before, the action of broker-house in trading intermediation was obviously not enough, and there still had been possibility for further development.The third chapter is to explore the organization and management of the broker and the broker-house in the South Yangtze River Region in Ming and Qing Dynasty. At this period, comparing with previous generations, the broker and the broker-house became more prosperous, with more wide scope of trade involved in and the strengthening of the accumulation of capital. It penetrated into other industries, with significant increasingly employees and commercial credit, and formed a commodity circulation network system. There were clear requisitions for being a broker, the internal operation and external trade of the broker-house was also quite mature and standardized.The management of the broker and the broker-house by government is discussed in the fourth chapter,first, through laws and regulations, second, through tax. Towards the broker-house, governments of each dynasty took different lines of management measures, which were more complete in the Ming and Qing Dynasty. The most important role played by the broker and the broker-house was to act as the assistant of the government on managing businessmen. All of these measure regulations, not only to strengthen the management of the businessman and commercial tax levy, but also benefit handing commercial disputes and commercial litigation smoothly.The fifth chapter investigated the social status of the broker and the broker-house in the eyes of the literati, businessmen and general people. The literati despised them, businessmen opposited while cooperated with them, and general people needed them.The sixth chapter explores the female world of the broker and the broker house. Female brokers were usually called Yapo, who always criticized by the layfolk, and often appeared as negative roles in the literature. But in fact, Yapo is just a profession, and the phenomenon that women took a certain occupations, with some economic independence, was the prerequisite and performance for the improvement of women' position itself.The seventh chapter demonstrated the impact of the broker and the broker-house on commercial activities. In positive aspect, they promoted the prosperity of merchandise economy and increased the country's fiscal revenue. The negative aspect was also obvious, that the presence of the system of the broker-house caused monopoly, restricted free competition. In cases of money owed, credit transaction guaranteed by the broker and the broker-house would impede the commodity economy; and promoted luxury social ethos which occurred since mid-Ming Dynasty in the South Yangtze River Region.The eighth chapter analyzed the causes of the prosperity of broker-house and how it declined in modern times. The main reasons of prosperity were the national unity and the social stability, the developed long-distance transport,and the large-scale developed domestic market; with the development of commodity economy, a lot of commodity production bases and professional towns were formed all over the country. The decline of the broker-house was first related to some of its own inherent disadvantages, and these shortcomings had not been solved but became more and more serious. As for the late Qing Dynasty, because of the powerful impact caused by the enter of western capital into China, the occurrence of new businesses, companies, and shops, the broker-house had became a part of the history.