Abstract
The present paper reports the results of the basic research and study on how the ceramist guilds stood and what guild structure the ceramic merchant had at Town Ching-te-chen in the Ming-Ching Dynasty of China. The origin of ceramic industry at Ching-te-chen is of course very old, and concerning its primitive state, the only thing can safely be said is that it assumed the character of local and domestic industry. At some periods in the Sung-Yuan Dynasty the Government asked such domestic makers to bake and produce what it demanded through its solemn commission. In the succeeding Dynasty of Ming, howevor, government kilns vere already set up at Ching-te-chen, and all ceramists in China were summoned up there. Ceramic masters callod Chang-i worked at the kiln for three months, and coolies were gathered from seven prefectures of the State Jao-chou-fu. Manufacturing expenses were all taxed on those who live in that state. The manufacturing work was done through the division and association of labour system, every labour having its special master (Chang-i) and the master being assisted by several workers or coolies. But ceramists who were assembled established guilds of the same province workers, excluding from each guild foreign folk as strangers. The guild hall was the centre of the guild, and members in the same guild were banded, and helped with each other with strong province consciousness, bearing opposing feelings to members of the other guilds. So it was not seldom that one guild was at variance with some other for their own special profits. From the end of the Ming Dynasty to the beginning of the Ching Dynasty, guild troubles were repeated and riots broke out incessantly at Ching-te-chen. The fact being as it was, the controll of the whole guilds was quite difficult, and the guild unity was powerless against the feudal lord; that is, guild members were too weak to put aside the lord's rights, as in the case of freedom cities of Europe. The result was that the modernization of the town was not progressed and the monarchism continued from dynasty to dynasty. Max Weber remarked that every town in China is the base of political activity, that the self-government of the associative organization can never be seen there, and that not in cities and towns but in small villages did the self-government exist in the shape of the village cooperation. Those remarks are, I think, the precise understandings of the social construction of Chino.
