Issues in the History of Transport Systems, the Environment and Mint Metal Shipments in Quing China
Final Report Abstract
New findings modify perspectives on Qing China in the following fields: Mobility history: Comparisons in transport efficiency demonstrate the need of regional comparisons of natural conditions in terms of energy requirements due to terrain, the availability and conditions of waterways, and engineering (including challenges of transportation for engineering projects). The mobility across Southwestern China can be shown to be driven by “pull-factors,” namely the hope for high cash incomes. This aspect revises simplifying earlier views of Chinese migration as driven by the “push-factor” of overpopulation and poverty. History of technology: The history of Upper Changjiang shipping could be shown to involve important innovations in the 18th and with high probability in the 19th century, contradicting received views of late imperial China as a period of technological stagnation. Social history: Systematic research on the roles state agents and private philanthropists in the construction and maintenance of infrastructure demonstrated a higher involvement of both actors than previously assumed. In addition, the frequency and scope of private projects could be shown to have been far more important than known so far. The importance of transport systems in the field of philanthropy, which has been overlooked in Western research, throws a new light on cultural, social and economic structures of Qing society. In depth analysis of cash incomes of boatmen and other transporters has shown that wages were only part of the income. To these a total of at least half of the wage income has to be added in the form of regularized remunerations and tipping as well as small-time trading. This finding modifies received views on low Chinese wage rates. Some aspects in the hierarchies within the transport trade and in the social standing of transporters could be made visible. The findings reveal an unknown diversity and considerable wealth and social recognition for skippers and transport brokers in local society. These modify generalizing views of the low status of the laboring population in premodern China. Environmental history: Findings for the researched transport arteries confirmed the deterioration caused primarily by deforestation and the spread of intensive agriculture, although blanket attributions of present-day denudation to Qing period mining could be rejected. Into the 19th century, however, infrastructure projects could be shown to have achieved partial improvements in roads and waterways against the trend. Economic history: The findings on incomes in the transport trade and the construction and maintenance of infrastructure support the interpretation of Qing economic history as a success story into the 19th century and the situation of widespread poverty and dilapidation as a result of the devastation suffered during the mid 19th century civil wars. Cultural history: The importance of transport infrastructure in the socio-cultural sphere of charity, upward social mobility and visibility allow a new reading of historic remains and artistic representations of landscape. Inter-disciplinarity between history and geography developed a surprising dynamic beyond the intended joint fieldwork and the exchange of data for mapmaking and spatial analysis. The cooperation of this project with the geography team of Hans-Joachim Rosner developed Nanny Kim’s interest in maps to employ spatial analysis as a new and effective method to analyse often scattered data and to test interpretations. At the same time, the historian’s perspective introduced historical depth and a critical perspective on data to geographic models.
Publications
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"Copper transports out of Yunnan, ca. 1750 - 1850: Preliminary findings ...," in: Hirzel, Thomas and Nanny Kim (eds.): Metals, Monies, and Markets in Early 67 Modern Societies: East Asian and Global Perspectives (Berlin: LIT, 2008) (Monies, Markets and Finance in China and East Asia, 1600-1900, vol. 1): 191-220. 2008
Nanny Kim
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“ ‘Traue nicht den Nachwächtern, halte dich bei Tempelfeiern zu Ehren des Stroms zurück’: Zu praktischen Bedenken von Kupfertransportbeamten ...”, in: Mechthild Leutner and Klaus Mühlhahn (eds.): Reisen: Tagungsband der Deutschen Vereinigung für Chinastudien 4: 293-311. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008
Nanny Kim
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"River Control, Merchant Philanthropy and Environmental Change in Nineteenth-Century China, 1805-1840," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 52.4-5: 660-694. 2009
Nanny Kim
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“Transport in China before the industrial age: Comparative research issues”. In: Mobility in History: The State of the art in the history of transport, traffic and mobility. Neuchâtel: Éditions Alphil – Presses universitaires suisses, 141-147, 2009
Nanny Kim
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蓝勇. “清乾隆《金沙江全图》考” (An investigation of the Qianlong roll ‘A complete map of the Jinshajiang’), in: Lishi yanjiu 历史研究,5: 166-177, 2010
Nanny Kim and Lan Yong
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"Privatising the network: Private contributions and road infrastructure in late imperial China, " in: Susan Alcock, John Bodel and Richard Talbert (eds.): Highways, Byways and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World. 66-89. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011
Nanny Kim
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“Modern Mobilities in Mainland China: A Review of the Academic Field.” Transfers 2.3: 157-162. 2012
Nanny Kim and Xu Tao
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Mining, Monies, and Culture in Early Modern Societies: East Asian and Global Perspectives. (Monies, Markets and Finance in China and East Asia, 1600–1900, 2). Leiden: Brill, 2013
Nanny Kim and Keiko Nagase-Reimer (eds.)
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“Keeping books and managing a state transport: Li Bolong’s copper convoy of 1807.” In: Mining, Monies, and Culture, Leiden 2013, 133–184
Nanny Kim
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(2015): The Tangdan Copper Mines and the 1733 Earthquake: A Mining Community before the Boom in the Far Southwest of Qing China. In: Cross-Currents 4 (1), S. 285–308
Nanny Kim
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Mountain Rivers, Mountain Roads: Transport in Southwest China, 1700-1850. Leiden: Brill. (Monies, Markets and Finance in China and East Asia, 1600-1900)
Nanny Kim
