Supporting Rural Society By Business

There are two modes of rural economy in the Qing dynasty.The first mode is “yigongfunong”,namely Supporting Agriculture by Industry,and the second is “yishangfunong”,namely Supporting Agriculture by Business.Previous researchers have deeply studied the first mode;by contrast,they paid less attention to the latter.This thesis focuses on Wu's Lineage in Bei'an village of She county in Anhui province,and endeavors to study the relationship among lineage,business and land market of this area from Qing to Republic times.The paper studies newlydiscovered local archives such as Gu She Bei'an Zhipu[The Branch Genealogy of Wu's in Bei'an Village in Ancient She County],Bei'an Wu Shendetang Zupu[The Genealogy of Shende Hall of Wu's Lineage in Bei'an village],and Wu Gongsheng Account Book of Haiyan.The paper studies also orginal land contracts newly collected by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in recent years.The thesis states that business played an active role in the development and rebuilding process of Wu's lineage in Bei'an village.Furthermore,it pushed the lineage to explore other places by migration.The profits of business were beneficial to the welfare within villages.Meanwhile,the influx of of profits stimulated also the making of land market in local society.The social history of the Wu's lineage in Bei'an village demonstrates a successful example that people run business to relieve the shortage of resource in rural society in the Qing dynasty.