A Research On Cultivation And Marketing Of Cotton In Qing Dynasty Henan

Cotton was originally planted in India.It was transmitted to China between Song and Yuan Dynasty by two path.One was from Burma to Vietnam,then to China,which one was called the southern one.The other was from north India to Afghanistan,then to Xing Jiang,Gan Su.The government in Ming and Qing Dynasty realized that cotton was useful,so they encouraged people to grow cotton.The planting area of cotton was expended then.There were more than 30 counties in He Nan grew cotton on their land in Ming dynasty,according to the annals.In Qing dynasty,there were more the 90 counties do such thing.So we can know which county started to grow cotton in Qing dynasty.The ancient people had systematically experience and knowledge about cotton.Choosing right land to grow cotton,choosing right seed,weeding,these were all ancient people's wisdom.In the last of Qing dynasty,which were industrial age,some people imported highly productive cotton from other countries and tried to make it to be acclimatization.In this paper,the spatial distribution of the cotton cultivation in Qing dynasty Henan was analyzed,how the cotton cultivation spread in Henan and the proportion of cotton cultivation counties were found out.Meanwhile,the cotton cultivation technology in Qing dynasty was discussed in this paper.The selection of cotton cultivation land,the selection of cotton seeds,cultivate and weeding,our ancients have formed a series of knowledge and experiences.Accepting the good and rejecting the bad,this paper can be an important reference to the cotton cultivation nowadays.Furthermore,this paper reviews the cotton marketing traditional route in Qing Dynasty Henan,pointing out its basic marketing direction is west.After the development of the moderm railway transport,cotton marketing route immediately went east,it was a big tuning point for cotton cultivation,the cotton industry went from traditional to modem times.It had ignificance for how traditional economy change to modern.Through the research of cotton cultivation,transporting and selling in Qing Dynasty,we have found out,it would be a quit long history from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture,it needed affects from every sapect.We may make a bold conjecture:textile industry can absorb lots of labor force beacause of the cotton cultivation industry,it may help China breakthrough from the traditional agricultural economy,and devolep into a new economic form.