從《三言》看晚明商人

Merchants of the Late Ming as Presented in the San-Yen Stories

黃仁宇(RAY HUANG)

《中國文化研究所學報》 7卷1期 (1974/12) Pp. 133-154

https://doi.org/10.29708/JCS.CUHK.197412_7(1).0016

並列摘要

The three volumes of short stories edited by Feng Meng-lung and published in the early seventeenth century, known as the San-Yen series, yield much information about merchants of the late Ming. The narratives in the 120 tales can be checked against one another for mutual consistency; their reliability can be further verified by non-fictional writings. A survey of mercantile organizations and practices of the era, made possible through this method, enables us to gauge the level of economic development in China prior to the full force of the Western impact. The picture thus reconstructed does not support the assertion that during the late Ming inland commerce began to show a capitalistic trend. On the contrary, it reveals that credit remained undeveloped and a money market characteristic of modern business transactions did not exist. The lack of corporation laws excluded the possibility of organizing commercial enterprises on the basis of impersonal relationship. Atop all these, business information was not properly disseminated, transportation uncoordinated, and the problem of the security of merchants never effectively dealt with. Under the circumstances itinerant merchants, the mainstay of inter-provincial trade, conducted their transactions almost exclusively through ＂cash-and-carry.＂ Residential intermediaries, who brought the itinerant merchants and small producers together, never matured into wholesale dealers. Manufacture of staple goods was as a rule financed by the small producers themselves, who had a very limited capital outlay. As long as this mode persisted, growth of commercial capital was difficult. The existing capital, denied of proper outlet, tended to return to landholding and usury. No doubt China's economic potential was not fully realized; the mechanism essential to the exploitation of its potentiality had not been in place. The author of this article traces the failure to the fiscal and monetary policies of traditional China, which, committed to political centralization, maintained a national economy which was large but non-competitive. The emphasis was on stability, not on expansion.