The "Landed Farmer" in the Delta of the Yantze during late Ming and early Ch'ing

Abstract

With regard to the period of late Ming and early Ch'ing, there are conflicting opinions about whether a germ of capitalism is recognized or not. However, both opinions, have a common difficulty neglecting the peculiar characteristics in formation of Chinese capitalism, althouhgh they have different understandings about the beginning period of Chinese capitaristic development. In this article, I try to concentrate attention on the peculiar structure of Chinese feudal system. And I try to direct my attention to the most remarkable ways of production of commodities which this peculiar feudalism had, and to categorize it as the "pseudo small industry". The Chinese feudalism had the patrimonial bureaucratic form of powers. Under this form of powers, the relations around the feudal landed property were ones between tenant farmers and landlords who had not the military system in their own hands. Also, there were pursuited policies to maintain certain numbers of landed farmer as a fender pile for the sake of mitigating conflicts between landlords and tenant farmers. Production of commodities stated above was set about by theses landed farmers, not by tenant farmers as serfdom. Before serfs go up to the "petit bourgeois", production of commodities was developed by the landed farmers. This production of commodities, not originated with serfs, shall be called the "pseudo small industry", as distinguished from the intrinsic "small industry" well known in the West. In this article, I conclude that this pseudo small industry checked the growth of intrinsic small industry.