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The salt merchants of Tianjin : state-making and civil society in late Imperial China /
"In this the first detailed study in English of the mercantile activities and social role of Tianjin's salt merchants, Kwan Man Bun reveals how they helped stabilize the city and assumed many civic responsibilities, providing relief, charities, and other services to their fellow citizenry....
| Clasificación: | Libro Electrónico |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Electrónico eBook |
| Idioma: | Inglés |
| Publicado: |
Honolulu :
University of Hawai'i Press,
[2001]
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| Temas: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Texto completo |
| Sumario: | "In this the first detailed study in English of the mercantile activities and social role of Tianjin's salt merchants, Kwan Man Bun reveals how they helped stabilize the city and assumed many civic responsibilities, providing relief, charities, and other services to their fellow citizenry. Although these developments resemble the emergence of an idealized "public sphere" as in Europe, Kwan makes clear that Tianjin's social changes were not grounded on "rational discourse" but rather drew their strength and continuity from merchant networks based on exclusivity, wealth, education, and kinship. Modernity, moreover, was not kind to this local articulation of Chinese "civil society." While the city endured the ravages of civil war and foreign invasions in the late Qing, both officials and intellectuals advocated the reassertion of state authority to re-create a strong and corporatist state capable of revitalizing the country. The forced bankruptcy of several leading salt merchants and the re-nationalization of their monopolies in 1911 signaled a fundamental shift in state-society relations, abrogating in the process centuries of "useful compromises" that had once integrated the two."--Jacket |
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| Descripción Física: | 1 online resource (viii, 239 pages) : illustrations, maps |
| Bibliografía: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-227) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780824865009 0824865006 |