Businessmen and the Social of Modern China's Southwest Frontier (with the Northwest of Yunnan as the Center)

Author: Zhou Zhisheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: In the modern history of China, the northwestern part of Yunnan was not only the birthplace of transnational merchant groups like those in Xizhou, Heqing, and Lijiang, whose business operations spanned China, India, and Myanmar, but also one of the most vibrant and dynamic regions in terms of commercial economic development and social economic transformation in modern Yunnan. It was a distinctive area in the southwestern frontier of modern China. As a multi-ethnic inhabited area with sustained development of commodity economy in the modern Chinese history, the rapid expansion and penetration of commodity economy exerted a series of powerful impacts and profound influences on this ethnic region, which was based on self-sufficient traditional agriculture and animal husbandry and had relatively slower social and economic development. At the same time, it also made the northwestern ethnic region of Yunnan a microcosm of its social and economic transformation. The merchants of northernwestern Yunnan in the modern era were a special social group. In their pursuit of self-development and growth, they consciously or unconsciously brought about impacts and breakthroughs of varying degrees, scopes, and natures on the original social system, exerting a series of profound influences on the social development of northernwestern Yunnan in the modern era. This book takes these multi-ethnic merchants active on the commercial stage of the southwestern frontier of modern China as the main research subjects, exploring the specific interactive relationships between these indigenous ethnic merchants and the social transformation of the multi-ethnic inhabited area of northernwestern Yunnan, as well as the historical impacts they produced.