3 - The Working World of Huizhou Merchants

Summary

Chapter 3 will examine Huizhou merchants’ efforts to penetrate major market sites in the Yangzi Valley and along the Grand Canal. It will introduce the problems they encountered, such as brigandry when traveling and local protectionism when marketing, and then consider various merchant countermeasures. Ranging from secret security arrangements and bribery to new financial instruments and hired protection or clientage, these merchant responses appear not to have involved any serious effort to forge public or political institutions that would protect merchant interests. Quite likely, the diversity of Huizhou merchant interests obstructed any collective effort leading to one policy or solution. While its shippers may have desired government protection, Huizhou pawnbrokers strove to thwart all government intrusion (the first tax specifically on pawnbrokering dates from 1623). As their credit operations became increasingly enmeshed in commercial deals, pawnbrokers’ profits and secrecy aroused greater criticism, as did the activities of Huizhou merchants in general in the later half of the Ming.