At the Brink of Imperialism
Circa 1840, the period of our global focus on the silk industry, no country was undergoing as vast of an economic and political transformation as China. A war against the powerful countries of the West was impending, and China struggled to maintain its economic and political autonomy. The resulting Opium War (1839-1842) was the West's response to the Qing dynasty's banishment of the illegal importation of opium from the West, most notably from Britain. China's subsequent defeat allowed for the West's penetration and exploitation of the country, later labeled imperialism. China was forced to open its ports to Western trade, relinquish tariff sovereignty and concede to jurisdiction from outside its territory, known as extraterritoriality. In effect, China lost all control over her economic and political affairs. The era ensuing, marked by China's continued incorporation into the capitalist worldwide system, was sixty years of drastic transformations over China's industrial landscape. A study of the events leading up to the Opium War, the Western imperialism in China that followed, and its effect on China's most valuable commodity and trade - silk production - provides the reader with an increased understanding of the workings of the process of incorporation during the Imperialist Movement.
Imperialism
Before focusing on the introduction of imperialism over China's economy and, specifically, its silk trade, it is first essential to define what this Western movement entailed. Imperialism, also referred to as incorporation, embodies two realms, economic and political. While the focus of this particular paper is on the former, a definition is provided for both because it only acts to further the reader's comprehension of the subject. Economic imperialism over a particular country is the "restructuring of the production and market processes in such a way that an area (that country) is increasingly tied to the worldwide division of labor". Similarly, political imperialism is when a country is subject to a "transformation of its rules so that its decision-making process is increasingly shaped by the states in the core region, and the area is coerced to participate in the capitalist world-system's interstate as a junior partner or colony". The significance of imperialism is fairly obvious; the affected country (here, China) loses not only its economic and political autonomy to states in "the core region," presumably the Western great powers of Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, but the country is also debased to a second-class participant in a system that it has been forced to join! So how did China - a country that remained largely closed to the Western worldwide system for centuries - find itself as a "junior partner" in this system? The answer, rather surprisingly, lies in the introduction of opium in the major industrial regions of southern China.
Silk Moves South
Since the Opium War was greatly motivated by economic ends, the major effects of imperialism on China's economy are concentrated in the southern regions of China where silk production has dominated since the fourth to sixth centuries. While the earliest domestication of the silkworm and the production of raw silk (known as sericulture) date back to the Zhang dynasty in North China, it is believed that, with the advent of cotton during the later Han dynasty, China's northern inhabitants preferred the superior warmth and durability of cotton. On the contrary, the milder conditions of South China were ideal for the development of sericulture throughout the region. By the founding of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127), the official centers of silk production had shifted completely from the north to south, most notably in the region known today as Jiangsu-Zhejiang. The southern silk industry thrived in this region and remained the area's leading export throughout the early twentieth century. Statistically speaking, as of 1920, the three major counties of South China's silk district, located in the Pearl River Delta at Shun-te, Nanhai, and Hsiangshan (Map 1), provided the world's silk industry with:
1,293,000 mows;
408 square miles of mulberry tree farms;
2 million sericulturists;
Over 31 million piculs of mulberry leaves;
444,000 piculs of cocoons;
And 88,000 piculs of raw silk per year.
where 1 mow=1/6 acre and 1 picul=133.3 pounds. At its height, it is estimated that these three counties of South China "possessed 45 silkworm egg markets, 36 cocoon markets, 160 steam filatures (factory where silk is reeled), and 18 raw silk market." Yet, despite the southern region's apparent opulence of silk, the Chinese, from early in the region's sericultural history up through the Opium War, were very circumspect towards foreign trade.
A Long History of Limited Foreign Trade
From even the briefest of overviews on Sino-Western trade throughout China's history, one fact is undeniable; China took great pains to isolate herself from the worldwide system of commerce. And even though the history of Chinese exportation of silk and tea dates back as far as the Western Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 8) via the Silk Road, the degree of these exports was very limited considering the demand that the foreign markets placed on these particular goods. China's closed system of trade expressed the country's disdain for outsiders. Foreigners were viewed as barbarous and referred to as "fan-wae," Chinese for foreign devil. The countries of the West recognized early China's rejection of a worldwide system of trade and introduced the one thing that China could not resist: silver.
The introduction of silver to China permitted the countries of the West to receive very regulated amounts of Chinese silk and tea. Replacing China's depreciated copper cash, silver opened China's door to the foreign market, however narrow its entrance. From the mid-sixteenth century through the early nineteenth century, the Chinese continued to practice an almost exclusionary stance towards outside trade. Chinese silk and tea in exchange for Western silver from the mines of the Americas began around the 1550s and was primarily focused on Sino-Spanish trade, notably in the Phillippines. By the end of the sixteenth century, Japan had also joined the countries providing China with silver, and even this small degree that China was now participating on a worldwide scale acted to "stimulate the whole economy and encouraged regional specialization and the expansion of interregional trade". Yet, as a result of a fall in silver at the turn of the century, the interchanges did not last long, for the Chinese revoked many of these arrangements. Without silver, the Chinese had little incentive to trade, and major silk industries faltered during this period. The remaining Sino-Western trade was concentrated between China and the countries of Western Europe, most notably Britain.
During the early seventeenth century, Europe's own silk weaving began to flourish. This advancement had a two-fold effect in China. First, Chinese exportation of silk piece work fell substantially as the countries of Europe produced their own while, at the same time, the demand for Chinese raw silk was unprecedented. Britain's Thomas Lombe had just introduced his silk-throwing mill at Derby, supposedly from plans smuggled from Italy to Britain by his brother, and the people of England could not import enough Chinese raw silk. Concurrently, Britain established the British India Colony that produced opium in India and introduced it as a form of currency to the Chinese in exchange for more silk.
Surely, no one could have predicted the incredible impact that the East India Company's opium would later have over China's future as an independent sovereignty. Rather, the Chinese had valued opium as a medical remedy since the T'ang dynasty, and it was highly prized throughout the country. The use of opium as an exchange medium soon replaced the flow of silver into the country. Obviously, though, this was not good for the value of silver in China. Eventually the country was over-flooded with opium, and the southern silk merchants were facing price increases and bankruptcy simultaneously. The Chinese government intervened, and under Commissioner Anning of the Imperial Silk Manufactory, a ban was placed on raw silk exports in 1759 to Europe's dismay. Although the ban lasted only two years, once it was lifted, the Chinese imposed even stricter regulations over the type and quantity of silk permitted for exportation. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, strict trade practices kept the total exports of China's raw silk steady around four thousand piculs annually (Table 1). Likewise, because exports were kept relatively low, production was able to be maintained at a local level. Up to this point, China had been relatively successful in rejecting the Western capitalist model of a worldwide system of trade. Silk exports were controlled, and production was small-scale. This would all change in the century to come, though. With the introduction of imperialism in China in the early years of the nineteenth century, both the quantity of Chinese silk exported West and the production process were to grossly expand.
The Incorporation of China
As we have seen, from the sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century, China protected its foreign trade scrupulously. In fact, as early as the 1500s, an exclusive guild of merchants, the Co-Hongs, was established at the country's only port in Canton to see that all trade policies were adhered to:" This body (the Co-Hongs) laid down certain laws to govern the behavior of visiting foreigners: never to enter the bay with warships; never to go ashore with side-arms, guns or European women! not to sail up the Pearl River.
Trade remained limited until the Chinese committed its one great flaw; at the founding of the British India colony in the mid-eighteenth century, China permitted its silver currency to be replaced by the colony's opium. As mentioned earlier, the Chinese began to exchange its silk and tea in return for opium. Commissioner Anning's 1759 ban on exports and the subsequent trade restrictions were all acts on behalf of the Chinese government to mitigate the exchange of opium for valuable commodities. Yet, despite these precautions, the use of opium as a medium of trade only escalated. In 1760, only two hundred chests of opium had passed into China via merchant interchanges. By 1800, 4,000 chests had entered, and finally, in 1830, over 30,000 chests of opium were in circulation in the southern silk regions! The consequence of the opium proliferation in China was multi-fold. Above all, opium made China increasingly dependent on the world-wide market: (it) served to trigger the economic incorporation of certain regions of China into the capitalist world-system, and provided the impetus to start the political incorporation process.
Hardships that resulted from a system drained of its silver supply only compounded China's dependency. A growing trade deficit that accompanied the opium levels made the threat of foreign conquest impending. Together, a strong southern gentry class along with a nationalistic peasantry of silk workers waged a war against the West and banned the importation of opium into the country's ports. The war was futile, though.
The Western powers simply changed their tactics. By moving North and overtaking Nanking, the West overpowered China and eventually won the Opium War. After the war and the signing of the Nanking Treaty, the southern Nationalists continued to defend the region and Chinese control over the silk trade, but internal divisions that arose only compounded ''s fight with the outside powers and weakened the overall structure of the country. The country was so weak by this point that its only choice was to allow for the economic and political exploitation of the country by the Western powers. Hence, imperialism came to China that "marked the start of a sixty-year period during which China struggled to maintain her rigid control of trade and keep foreigners off her territory, and the Western powers did all they could to force the Chinese markets and obtain favorable tariffs and trade facilities". In this ongoing struggle, China was indeed the persistent loser against the Western world superpowers. As a consequence of China's servitude to the rule of imperialism, the production of the country's most prized commodity - its silk- was completely transformed in order to meet the demands placed on it by the West.
China's Silk Industry under Imperialism
Once imperialism controlled China, major structural changes occurred in the production and trade of silk. Illegal ports were opened throughout the southern region's shores, and tariffs were controlled exclusively by the Western powers. These economic changes, naturally, only acted as a further impetus of the demand for raw silk. Unprecedented levels of silk were exported out of the newly-constructed ports. Table Two illustrates the extraordinary exportation that accompanied the West's economic control over China. Likewise, in order to meet the demands of the West, the Chinese silk producers had to develop technology modeling the West's to keep up with the capitalist markets. Specialization was introduced to the silk industry of the regions, and sericulture was introduced to the alienating world of mass production. The local, small-scale silk industry was officially replaced by centralized, large factories. China hardly resembled the country that had once practiced a closed, exclusionary policy of trade.
Conclusion
Extraordinary cultural and social changes undoubtedly accompanied the demands imposed by imperialism over China's silk trade. The human conditions that the Chinese workers must have endured in order to appease the Western world were surely undesired by the people of South China. Surely, the "great" Western World committed a crime against the people of the countries affected by imperialism, but what about the crime committed to a trade - the art of silk production - that has its history in ancient China? One is struck by a genuine sense of loss that China's art of sericulture was forced to conform to the capitalist model of over-production at an ever-increasing pace.
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