Coastal Trade

The historical circumstances of Guangzhou as a government-designated trading port since the Ming had also encouraged extensive sea-trading networks with Southeast Asia and beyond.^[62] The impact of foreign trade along the coast and in the delta was profound. Not only were local agricultural and handicraft production stimulated by tastes and demands outside of the empire, but foreign silver too

---

entered into daily trading transactions as much as temple contributions.^[63] Even before the massive import of opium from the late eighteenth century on, foreign trade created powerful merchant gangs with armed fleets, culturally ambiguous brokers, and sophisticated marketing networks linked to river ports and market towns.^[64] The tremendous wealth created was quite beyond the government's capacity to supervise. As in the inland rivers, in peaceful times these trading gangs maintained an appearance of respectability as merchants. In times of dynastic closure, they were labeled as crafty barbarians, local bosses, pirates, and smugglers.^[65]

In sum, the political ecology of the sands and the coast allowed (and necessitated) the intertwining of dazzling commercial and landed wealth, the juxtaposition of territorial lineage groups, elaborate rituals, literati pretensions, outlaw imagery, and the blurring of boundaries with unorthodox and overseas interests. These had characterized mercantile life in Guangdong from the Ming through the early twentieth century. Water Margin (All men are brothers), a classic Ming novel about a group of outlaw heroes, was hardly fictional, nor was the idea of an exclusively town-based merchant elite conceivable. Questions remain. What caused the dramatic reversal of fortunes in the first few decades of the Republican era? Why were the merchants no longer able to perform their integrative functions of bridging state, literati, and rural community, which they had done well since the Ming? I would like to use historical materials centering on Huicheng to explore the questions.