Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T12:05:02.790Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Guarding Beijing's Food Security in the Qing Dynasty: State, Market, and Police

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2010

Lillian M. Li  and
Alison Dray-Novey
Get access

Extract

An essential feature of beijing's long history as China's imperial capital was the ability to feed its population despite a geographical location distinctly unfavorable to agricultute. For all ancient and modern states, provisioning the capital is not only a matter of pride and prestige but a question of survival. The failure to feed civil officials, military supporters, and the urban population that serves them is a visible sign of a government's inadequacy and easily leads to political unrest. For these reasons, all states have tended to favor the food security of their cities, and especially their capital cities. In this China has no claim to uniqueness.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , November 1999 , pp. 992 - 1032
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

BCSX Bachao shengxun [Sacred instructions of the eight reigns]. Guangxu ed.Google Scholar
CYQS Caoyun quanshu [Complete documents of the grain tribute]. 1875Google Scholar
GZD Gongzhongdang [Palace Memorial Archives], National Palace Museum, Taibei.Google Scholar
GZJS (Qinding) Xinyou gongzhen jishi [Imperially commissioned record of famine relief in 1801]. 1802.Google Scholar
HCSHZ Huangcbao shihuo zhi [Essays on Food and Commodities of the Qing Period]. Draft manuscript held at Ming-Qing Archives, National Palace Museum, Taibei.Google Scholar
HBZL Hu bu zeli [Regulations and precedents of the Board of Revenue]. 1874.Google Scholar
HDSL Da Qing huidian shili [Collected statutes and precedents of the Qing dynasty]. 1886 (1899).Google Scholar
JFTZ Jifu tongzhi [Gazetteer of the capital region]. 1871.Google Scholar
JWSL Jinwu sbili [Gendarmerie regulations and cases]. 1851.Google Scholar
WSSD Wanshou shengdian [The Imperial Birthday Celebration]. 1713, 1717.Google Scholar
ZPZZ NZZJ Gongzhongdang zhupizouzhe, Neizheng zhenji. [Palace Memorial Archives, Internal affairs, Relief]. First Historical Archives, Beijing.Google Scholar

Other Works Cited

Anderson, Aeneas. 1795. A Narrative ofthe British Embassy to China, in the Years 1792, 1793, and 1794. London: Debrett.Google Scholar
Bell, John (of Antermony). 1966. A Journey from St. Petersburg to Pekin, 1719–22. Edited by Stevenson, J. L.. Edinburgh: University Press.Google Scholar
Bray, Francesca. 1984. Agriculture. Vol. 6:11 of Science, and Civilization in China. Edited by Needham, Joseph. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bredon, Juliet. 1922. Peking: A Historical and Intimate Description of its Chief Places of Interest. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh.Google Scholar
jiahua, Chen. 1985. “Baqi bingxiang shixi ” [Preliminary analysis of the Banner stipends]. Minzu yanjiu 1985.5: 63–71.Google Scholar
Chen, Jinling 1988. “Qingdai Jingshi liangjia ji qita ” [Grain prices in Qing-dynasty Beijing]. In Qingshi yanjiu ji [Collected research on Qing history]. Ed. Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Qingshi So. Guangming ribao chubanshe. Vol. 3: 228–64.Google Scholar
Chuan, Han-Sheng, and Kraus, Richard A.. 1975. Mid-Ch’ing Rice Markets and Trade: An Essay in Price History. Cambridge: Harvard University, East Asian Reseach Center.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croll, Elisabeth. 1983. The Family Rice Bowl: Food and Domestic Economy in China. Geneva and London: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and Zed Press.Google Scholar
Crossley, Pamela Kyle. 1990. Orphan Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and the End of the Qing World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, John F. 1836. The Chinese: A General Description of the Empire of China and Its Inhabitants. 2 vols. London: C. Knight.Google Scholar
Dray-Novey, Alison. 1981. “Policing Imperial Peking: the Ch’ing Gendarmerie, 1650–1850.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University.Google Scholar
Dray-Novey, Alison. 1993. “Spatial Order and Police in Imperial Beijing.” Journal of Asian Studies 52.4: 885–922.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunstan, Helen. 1988. “An Anthology of Chinese Economic Statecraft, or the Sprouts of Liberalism.” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Dunstan, Helen. 1996. Conflicting Counsels to Confuse the Age: A Documentary Study of Political Economy Qing China, 1644–1840. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Dunstan, Helen. Forthcoming. State or Merchant? Political Economy and Political Process in 1740s China.Google Scholar
Elliott, Mark Christopher. 1993. “Resident Aliens: The Manchu Experience in China, 1644–1760.” Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley.Google Scholar
Ellis, Henry. 1818. Journal of the Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China. Philadelphia: Small.Google Scholar
Fortune, Robert. 1863. Yedo and Peking. London: J. Murray.Google Scholar
Freeman-Mltford, A. B. (Baron Redesdale). 1900. The Attaché at Peking. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Gamble, Sidney D., and Burgess, John Stewart. 1921. Peking: A Social Survey. New York: George H. Doran.Google Scholar
Gongzhongdang Qianlongchao zouzhe [Palace memorials of the Qianlong reign]. 1979–1989. Taibei: National Palace Museum.Google Scholar
Han, Guanghui 1993. “Jin Yuan Ming Qing Beijing liangshi gongxu yu xiaofei yanjiu ” [Study of the supply and consumption of grain in Beijing during the Jin, Yuan, Ming, and Qing]. Zhongguo nongshi 13.3, 11–21.Google Scholar
Han, Guanghui 1996a. “Qingdai Beijing zhenxu jigou shikong fenbu yanjiu ” [Study of the temporal and spatial distribution of relief organizations in Qing dynasty Beijing]. Qingshi yanjiu 96.4, 20–31.Google Scholar
Han, Guanghui 1996b. Beijing lishi renkou dili [The historical population and geography of Beijing]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe.Google Scholar
Reiko, Hayashi. 1994. “Provisioning Edo in the Early Eighteenth Century: The Pricing Policies of the Shogunate and the Crisis of 1733.” In Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era, edited by McClain, James L., Merriman, John M., and Kaoru, Ugawa. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hanwei, He 1980. Guangxu chunian (1876–1879) Huabei de da hanzai (1876–1879) [The great north China drought of the early Guangxu reign]. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.Google Scholar
Hinton, Harold C. 1956. The Grain Tribute System of China (1845–1911). Cambridge: Harvard University, East Asian Research Center.Google Scholar
Ho, Ping-Ti. 1959. Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hosoya, Yoshio 1974. “Hakki beiyokuko shinchō chūki no hakki keizai o megutte ” [Investigation of the Eight Banners grain bureaus: looking at the economy of the Eight Banners in the mid-Qing period]. Shūkan Tōyōgaku 31 (June): 181–208.Google Scholar
Hou, Renzhied. Beijing lishi dituji [Historical atlas of Beijing]. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1985.Google Scholar
Ikegami, Eiko, and Tilly, Charles. 1994. “State Formation and Contention in Japan and France.” In Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modem Era, edited by McClain, James L., Merriman, John M., and Kaoru, Ugawa. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
“Jiaqing shisinian Tongzhou liangcang lixu wubi an ” [Cases of malfeasance by Tongzhou granary clerks in Jiaqing 14]. 1990. Lishi dang’an 1: 44–55.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Steven L. 1976. Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV. 2 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, Steven L. 1982. The Famine Plot Persuasion in Eighteenth-Century France. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, Steven L. 1984. Provisioning Paris: Merchants and Millers in the Grain and Flour Trade during the Eighteenth Century. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kato, Takashi. 1994. “Governing Edo.” In Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era, edited by McClain, James L., Merriman, John M., and Kaoru, Ugawa. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kovalevsky, Egor P. 1853. Puteshestvie v Kitai ]Journey to China]. St. Petersburg: Korolev. Translated in part by Alison J. Dray in “Excerpts from E. P. Kovalevsky’s Journey to China.” Papers on China 22A:53–88. Harvard University, May 1969.Google Scholar
Li, Lillian M. 1992. “Grain Prices in Zhili Province, 1736–1911: A Preliminary Study.” In Chinese History in Economic Perspective, edited by Rawski, Thomas G. and Li, Lillian M.Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Li, Lillian M. Forthcoming. “Grain Prices and Markets in North China in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Journal of Economic History.Google Scholar
Li, Lillian M. In preparation. Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Ecological Crisis, 1698–1998.Google Scholar
Li Wenzhi and Jiang Taixin 1995. Qingdai caoyun [Grain tribute of the Qing period]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju.Google Scholar
MaCartney, George (Earl of Macartney). 1963. An Embassy to China; being the Journal kept by Lord Macartney during his embassy to the Emperor Ch’ien-lung, 1793—1794. Edited by Byng, J. L. Cranmer. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books.Google Scholar
Mayers, William F., Dennys, Nicholas B., and King, Charles, eds. 1867. Treaty Ports of China and Japan. London: Trübner and Co.Google Scholar
McClain, James, and Kaoru, Ugawa. 1994. “Visions of the City.” In Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era, edited by McClain, James L., Merriman, John M., and Kaoru, Ugawa. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Nakai, Nobuhiko, and McClain, James. 1991. “Commercial Change and Urban Growth in Early Modern Japan.” Cambridge History of Japan. Vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Naquin, Susan. 1976. Millenarian Rebellion in China: the Eight Trigrams Uprising of 1813. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Naquin, Susan. Forthcoming. Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400–1900. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ormrod, David. 1985. English Grain Exports and the Structure of Agrarian Capitalism, 1700–1760. Hull, England: Hull University Press.Google Scholar
Perdue, Peter C. 1987. Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan, 1500–1850. Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Playfair, George. 1875. “The Grain Transport System of China: Notes and Statistics taken from the Ta Ch’ing Hui Tien.” China Review 3.6 (May—June): 354—64.Google Scholar
Qing Neiwufu cang Jingcheng quantu [Complete map of the capital kept in the Imperial Household Department]. 1940. Beiping.Google Scholar
Qingmo Beijing zhi ziliao [Historica l materials from Late Qing Beijing]. 1994. Tr. Zhang Zongping and Lü Yonghe . Beijing Yanshan chuban-she. Translated selections from Yamamoto Chūsei, Pekin shi (1904).Google Scholar
Rankin, Mary Backus. 1986. Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province, 1865–1911. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rawski, Evelyn S. 1998. The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rawski, Thomas G., and Li, Lillian M., eds. 1992. Chinese History in Economic Perspective. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rennie, David F. 1865. Peking and the Pekingese During the First Year of the British Embassy at Peking. 2 vols. London: J. Murray.Google Scholar
Ripa, Matteo. 1846. Memoirs of Father Ripa during Thirteen Years’ Residence at the Court of Peking in the Service of the Emperor of China. Trans. Prandi, Fortunato. New York: Wiley and Putnam.Google Scholar
Rowe, William T. 1993. “State and Market in Mid-Qing Economic Thought: The Case of Chen Hongmou(1696–1771).” Études chinoises XII.1 (spring): 7–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rozman, Gilbert. 1973. Urban Networks in Ch’ing China and Tokugawa Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Shuntian fuzhi [Gazetteer of Shuntian prefecture]. 1885.Google Scholar
Strand, David. 1989. Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tianjin fuzhi [Gazetteer of Tianjin prefecture]. 1898.Google Scholar
Tianjin wenshi ziliao xuanji [Selection of materials on Tianjin’s culture and history]. 1982. Edited by Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi Tianjin shi wei-yuanhui. Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 1975. “Food Supply and Public Order in Modern Europe.” In The Formation of National States in Western Europe, edited by Tilly, Charles. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Timkovsky, Egor F. (George Timkowski). 1827. Travels of the Russian Mission Through Mongolia to China, and Residence in Peking, in the Years 1820–21. Translated from the Russian by Lloyd, H.E.. 2 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green.Google Scholar
Wade, Thomas F. 1851. “The Army of the Chinese Empire: Its Two Great Divisions, the Bannermen or National Guard, and the Green Standard or Provincial Troops: Their Organization, Locations, Pay, & c.” The Chinese Repository XX:250–80, 300–340, 363–422 (May, June, July). Canton: Printed for the Proprietors.Google Scholar
Walthall, Anne. 1994. “Edo Riots.” In Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era, edited by McClain, James L., Merriman, John M., and Kaoru, Ugawa. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Qingyun. [1890] 1967. Shiqu yuji [Surplus notes from stone canal]. Taibei: Wenhai.Google Scholar
Will, Pierre-Étienne. 1990. Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth-Century China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Will, Pierre-Étienne. 1999. “Discussions on the Market-Place and the Market Principle in Eighteenth-Century Guangdong.” Zhongguo haiyang fazhan shi lunwen ji. Vol. 7. Taibei: Academia Sinica, Sun Yat-sen Institute of Social Sciences and Philosophy.Google Scholar
Will, Pierre-Étienne, and Wong, R. Bin. 1991. Nourish the People: The State Civilian Granary System in China, 1650–1850. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies.Google Scholar
Williams, S. Wells. [1848] 1882. The Middle Kingdom. 2 vols. New York: Wiley and Putnam. 2nd ed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.Google Scholar
Wong, R. Bin. 1982. “Food Riots in the Qing Dynasty.” Journal of Asian Studies 41.4:767–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, R. Bin. 1997. China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of the European Experience. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Jianyong, Wu 1989. “Qingdai Beijing de liangshi gongying ” [Grain supply of Qing-dynasty Beijing]. In Beijing lishiyu xianshiyanjiu [Research on Beijing’s past and present]. Beijing: Yanshan chubanshe.Google Scholar
Jianyong, Wu 1994. “Jingshi de liangshi gongying ” [Grain supply of the capital]. Vol. 7, Chap. 3 in Beijing tongshi [History of Beijing], edited by Zixi, Cao. 10 vols. Beijing: Zhongguo shudian.Google Scholar
Jianyong, Wu, et al. 1997. Beijing chengshi shenghuo shi [History of urban life in Beijing]. Beijing: Kaiming chubanshe.Google Scholar