Study On Regional Society Of Zhenjiang During Late Qing Dynasty

In China's modern history, the opening up of commercial ports was closely linked with the development of cities and economic modernization. Commercial ports opened up in two ways: one was forced by foreign powers through signing unequal treaties with China's rulers; the other was China's rulers opened up on their own initiatives. At present, domestic and foreign researchers mostly concentrate on commercial ports of large or medium-sized cities, and research achievements are mainly embodied in works on China's modern history, China's modern economic history and China's modern trade history, but researches concerning commercial ports in small cities and their trade contacts are still rare, which is a weaker link compared with abundant achievements in regional society's researches on the southern region of Yangtze River, and such situation needs to be improved.Zhenjiang, a small traditional commercial city on lower reach of the Yangtze River, has been famous for its commerce for a long history, and it has been a key position of traffic, politics, economics and military affairs since ancient times. After the Second Opium War, Zhenjiang opened up as a commercial port and started trades officially in 1861. Setting regional society in Zhenjiang as the theme and concentrating on the period of Wang Renkan's being regional magistrate, this thesis analyses the causes of the development of regional society in Zhenjiang and its decline afterwards during the late Qing Dynasty, and then expounds the external and internal factors that Zhenjiang missed the historic opportunities on development: the external factors are loss of regional superiority, lack of leading industries and oppression of colonial economics from imperialists; the internal factors are people's initiative and leaders' governance.In the 17th year of Guangxu period, Wang Renkan held the post of regional magistrate, Zhenjiang Zhifu, yet he was in office just two years and then died of tiredness and accumulative illness. When in office, Wang Renkan contributed a lot to local construction of water conservancy works, public utilities and defensive systems; meanwhile, he fully exploited advantages of local literati and officialdom, gentry- merchants, big clans and local primary organizations. As orthodox literati, what Wang Renkan had done in office had typical significance, which reflected functions as well as limitations of traditional ideology in China's modern times. Wang Renkan was a literati educated under traditional imperial examination system, also an honest and upright official, facing the new situation of modern times, he still adhered to traditional principles and failed to "keep pace with the times", which had certain influence on further development of Zhenjiang region.Starting with the 17th year of Guangxu period, this thesis probes Wang Renkan's governance during calamity of Zhenjiang, and then analyses the social base of his governance, namely: gentry- merchants——major undertakers of the public utilities; rural gentries——leading roles of local construction of water conservancy works and defense; clans and organizations of Bao-jia——major primary organizations of maintaining social stability. Finally, this thesis researches the historic tendency in Zhenjiang region during late Qing Dynasty in order to afford Zhenjiang lessons that merit attention for development of modernization.