Research In The Guild Regulations Of Qing Dynasty

With the rapid development of commercial economy and the social vicissitude in the politics and culture, the guild was growing up gradually, which initial function was as the place where the native person could meet together, sacrificed, etc. With the progress of commercial economy, the guild became the important place where the merchants dwelled, deposited their goods and consulted with each other about their mattered concerned, then the merchants or craftsmen who came from the same place or engaged the same business building the merchant guild or the craft guild. At the same time of increasing diversification of the guilds, the guilds established relevant regulations themselves, increasingly perfect with the time changing. They definitely regulated the outlay resources, the guild's expenditure, the inner operation, overcoming the uncertainty that they had depended upon the occasional endowment by officials in the past, maintaining the ordinary running of the guild.The guild regulations, supervising the behavior of the merchants or craftsmen in the guild on the one hand, adjusting the relations between the guild and the feudal official, remedying the deficient market of the feudal society, even organizing fighting for the national survive and resisting the foreign aggression in the late Qing dynast, displayed huge effect itself. The guild regulations, serving the merchants information about market transactions and regional customs, safeguarded the profits of its members and avoided the ill market competition to a great extent. Meanwhile, the regulations, demanding legal management, forbidding raising up the rise, prohibiting forestalling and monopolization, helped to found normative market moral.In the old system of the feudal society, as the self-regulated social institute outside the official administration, the guild regulations had the same effect as the countryside customs and familial bylaw, making up the defect of the national legal system which could not effectively protect property right and commercial dealings.