The Making of a New Rural Order in South China, Volume II: Merchants, Markets, and Lineages, 1500–1700 by Joseph P. McDermott

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Making of a New Rural Order in South China, Volume II: Merchants, Markets, and Lineages, 1500–1700 by Joseph P. McDermott Steven B. Miles The Making of a New Rural Order in South China, Volume II: Merchants, Markets, and Lineages, 1500–1700 by Joseph P. McDermott. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xii + 468. $135.00 hardcover, $44.99 paper, $36.00 e-book. "Many mountains, few fields" (shanduo tianshao 山多田少). During the mid-Ming, gazetteer editors used this phrase to explain why residents of Huizhou 徽州 Prefecture abandoned agriculture for trade, initially in timber and other mountain products.1 The geographical reality that this phrase describes provides a commonsense explanation for why this mountainous, interior prefecture became the homeland of Ming China's most renowned trade diaspora. This rationale echoes [End Page 174] in even the best work on emigrant communities of overseas Chinese trade and labor diasporas in the modern era.2 Yet most mountainous areas of China did not spawn powerful trade diasporas. Indeed, other mid-Ming writers used this same phrase to explain why residents of mountainous places elsewhere in southern China eschewed commerce for settled agriculture.3 Beyond geographical determinism, institutional innovation offers another explanation for why particular places in late-imperial southern China became homelands of prominent trade diasporas. From the sixteenth century, Huizhou, southern Fujian, and the Pearl River delta were all highly commercialized areas known for the development of patrilineal lineages. This second of Joseph McDermott's ambitious two-volume study is essentially an institutional history of the Huizhou diaspora, an often-fraught term that he avoids, in the mid- and late Ming. The overarching theme linking the two volumes is the creation of a new rural order dominated by lineages. In the first volume, McDermott traces, from the Song through the mid-Ming, the gradual emergence of the trust-based lineage, which outdistanced three rival village institutions, as the premier institution in rural Huizhou.4 More flexible than alternative large kinship organizations, which sought to control members' wealth and residence, this kind of lineage, composed of donated trusts of arable land, timber stands, and other forms of property for either the entire lineage or subgroups, made it possible for members to use lineage property for commercial investments outside Huizhou.5 Though his focus in this second volume remains firmly centered on the lineage, McDermott follows Huizhou migrant merchants to urban markets along the Yangzi River and Grand Canal. In the process, because of the vast influence of this particular trade diaspora, he ventures into the broader economic history of the Ming and the business history of [End Page 175] China. Interwoven in these histories are traces of the author's earlier interests, from bondservants to books, and his deep engagement with Japanese scholarship. Throughout, McDermott implicitly grapples with a key question: To what degree did the lineage as an institution, as opposed to agnatic kinship ties more generally, explain mercantile success? In further exploring this question of the links between the lineage and commerce, toward the end of this second volume, McDermott acknowledges that "the lineage itself was seldom a business, but many of its members were active in establishing, investing in, and running many different businesses with fellow kinsmen" (p. 307). In chapter 2, we get closest to seeing the lineage as at least one kind of business, a bank. More specifically, we see how the ancestral hall performed the function of a bank. Commonly established only from the sixteenth century, ancestral halls were a more exclusive lineage institution in which one became a member by donating for its construction and maintenance in addition to demonstrating descent from the ancestor that it primarily enshrined. For members, the ancestral hall, as well as affiliated associations originally designed to fund construction, maintenance, and rituals, functioned like a bank, a credit association, or a pawnshop "that brought dividends to its member investors and sometimes provided them relatively cheap loans" even for private investments (p. 98). Having shown how lineage institutions in rural Huizhou effectively trained their members for commercial investment, McDermott in subsequent chapters follows Huizhou merchants to urban markets in diaspora. In chapter 3, he describes the challenges that Huizhou merchants...