State, Peasant, and Merchant in Qing Manchuria, 1644-1862

This study seeks to lay bare the relationship between the sociopolitical structures that shaped peasant lives in Manchuria (northeast China) during the Qing dynasty and the development of that region's economy. The book is written in three parts. It begins with an analysis of the ideological, political, and economic interests of the Qing ruling house in defending its homeland in the northeast against occupation by non-Manchus, and examines how these interests informed state policy and the reconfiguration of the region's social landscape in the first decades of the dynasty. The book then addresses how this agrarian configuration unraveled under challenge from settler peasant communities and gives an account of the resulting property and labor regimes. The study ends with an account of how that social formation configured peasant economic behavior and in so doing established the limits of economic change and trade growth.

Table of Contents:
Preface xiii Measurements and Conventions xv Maps xvii Introduction 1 Part One: Asserting Hegemony over the Homeland: Dynastic Objectives and the Creation of an Agrarian Order, 1644-1700 15 1 Manchuria's Place in the Early Imperial Project 15 2 The Agrarian Order in Late Seventeenth-Century Manchuria 38 3 The State in the Village 54 Part Two: Peasant and State in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries 4 The State and Agrarian Property Relations 111 5 The Social Basis of the Transformation of Agrarian Manchuria 111 6 Wage Labor and Wage Relations in Qing Manchuria 130 Part Three: State, Trade, and Peasant Agriculture: Developments in the Manchurian Economy 7 Household Formation, Property Division, and Agricultural Change in the Peasant Economy 156 8 The Content and Growth of the Manchurian Trade, 1700-1860 182 9 State, Merchant, and the Organization of the Manchurian Trade 182 Conclusion: Critiques and Alternative 217 Appendix A: Population and Cultivated Area in Qing Manchuria 237 Appendix B: Grain Yields in the Qing and Republican Eras 237 Notes 237 References and Sources 271 Chinese Glossary 297 Index 305

About the Author :
Christopher M. Isett is Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Review :
"Isett's description and analysis of developments in Manchuria are detialed, clear, and convincing." - EH-Net "This exemplary monograph... is, first and foremost, a well-crafted, solidly documented analysis of the marked changes in the political economy and social structure of Manchuria during the early to mid-Qing era." - CHOICE