The Jiangnan Pawnbroking Study

Thanks to the previous study and new materials, this dissertation rebuilds the development trend of the pawnshop in Jiangnan since the rebellion of Taiping tianguo. This dissertation also analyses the character of the geographic distributing of pawnshop through the way of historical geography and CHGIS, After analyzing the capital, turnover and profit margin of the pawnshop in modem Jiangnan, we find out that the pawnshop's profit margin had a descending though the turnover ascends remarkably. For striving for survival, the pawnshop trade had to reduce the expiration of pawn and increase the interest on pawn to get more profits. Their behavior was severely criticized by the sociality and government. This trade got in a dilemma between the trade morality and the trade profit. At last, the pawnshop had to chase after profits more and more because of the deteriorating of socioeconomic conditions. At the same time, the image of pawnshop in public got worse increasingly.Build on the business calculation of the pawnshop, this dissertation compares the turnover of pawnshop with other small credit. The result indicates that the pawnshop have a important role to the plebeian. This article makes a particular description on this role.With the rapid rising up of business organization in modern China, the pawnshops build up their guild to harmonize their conflict of interest and to protect their trade's common interest. It also turns to an implement to strive with the local government. The republic government designed and set up some public-operated pawnshops to suppress the exorbitant usury and the exploitation of the pawnshop. After 1949 the pawnshop was still reserved because of its importance to the populace. The name of pawnshop was disappeared after the socialistic alteration on pawnshop in 1956. But its operation was reserved until 1966.This dissertation tells us that the truth of the history is more complex than the surface impression in our mind. There is much space in the socioeconomic study on the modern Jiangnan.