Research On The Rise And Fall Of Linqing City Since The Ming And Qing Dynasties

Before the Yuan Dynasty,Linqing was a small town of little-known.After the Hui-Tong River’s excavation,the economy of Linqing began developing.The Ming Dynasty dredged the Grand Canal and moved the capital to Beijing,therefore Linqing guarded the throat of the thoroughfare for tribute rice being transported to the imperial capital.In the peaceful social environment of then,Linqing turned into a famous metropolis rapidly.Except for the advantageous geographical position—on the bank of the Grand Canal,the reasons for Linqin’s boom also related to the empire’s policies,the contemporary total ecnomical situation,and the local cultural customs.As for the empire’s policies,Emperor Yongle’s moving the capital to Beijing made Linqing located in the middle of the capital and the fertile region south of the Yangtze River,and,if the two places want to contact with each other,they can’t bypass Linqing;the ban on maritime trade supressed the developing of maritime commerce and made commerce on the land(especially along the Grand Canal)abnormally flourishing;certain special stipulations—for instance,the soldiers on the official grain carriers were permitted to carry a certain amount of smuggled goods to sell along the canal—were great stimulations to the boom of the economies of the Great Canal;the loosening of the controls on industries and commerces,and,on the population mobility,made transporting for sale over a long distance came out into the open,greatly diminished the barriers among regions;the Qing Government’s endeavor on carrying out policies of benevolent,effectively practiced the Confucian political idea of “leaving wealth with the people”,that laid the foundation of the developing of industries and commerces in folk.As for contemporary total economical situation,the regionalization of commodities’ s production greatly improved the productivity and the commodities’ quality,meanwhile,it also made the interflow of commodities among regions necessitated.In the course of long-term and large-scale transregional interflow,forvarious reasons,some cities gradually became certain regions’ gathering places for trade,and Linqin,for the reason of its superior location and the convenient traffic condition given by the Great Canal,grew into a commodity exchange center of the expansive region—south to Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces,north to the land beyond the Great Wall,east to the sea,west to Shannxi and Gansu provinces.As for local cultural customs,Linqinese were different from those of other people in Shandong,who lived a life of farming,weaving,reading and taking the civil examination,instead,they were enthusiastic about doing business and making profits.In the Ming and Qing period,so few people passed the civil examination,the remaining overwhelming majority read from their young to their old but accomplished nothing.Taking into consideration that most of those intellectuals were local elites,we can say that,for certain regions,the civil examination were an extensive operation of high input with low output.Linqinese’s giving up taking the civil examination and devoting to the industries and commerces to some extent made Linqing avoided the waste of manpower and the brain drain.The late Ming Dynasty was inundated with corruptions and wars,as a result,Linqing declined for a time.Then,the Qing Dynasty was established,as the advantages of Linqing still existed,it recovered promptly,Emperor Qianlong said:“Linqing is located along the Grand Canal,and it is the richeset and most populous city of Shandong.”Since the late Qianlong period,due to the population’s explosion and the government’s corruption,society began roiling,Wanglun Uprising,Taiping Rebellion,Song Jingshi Uprising and many other turmoils all caused severe destructions to Linqing.Among them,especially the Taiping Rebellion,was regarded as “the unprecedented catastrophe since the city’s building”,it turned Lingqing from a metropolis to a heap of rubble,Linqing “did’t recuperate for a hundred years”.Confronted with the unceasing domestic strifes and foreign agressions,the Qing Regime was under great pressure of fiscal,it had no spare money for the Grand Canal’s repairing,so the advantages of Linqing brought by the river disappeared slowly.Meanwhile,the traditional vehicles were on the road of modernizing,trainsand steamships began to be used in the old Chinese empire,they become people’s first choices for travling and transporting.Cities along the railways and coastline rised rapidly,but Linqing,who was far from both the railways and the coastline,was pushed out of business.Besides,there were critical defects in Linqing’s structure of business,its business relied so heavily on nonlocal merchants that once those merchants pulled the plug for the reason of the decline of the locational conditions,Linqing’s economic base was immediately emptied.The developed transshipment trade was a reflection of the weakness of Linqing’s manufecturing,when the transshipment trade gone with the superior traffic,then the unsubstantial manufecturing could not delay the speed of Linqing’s decline.Linqing’s economic hinterland was confined,it had little economic relation with Linqing,and,it was divided by nearby large cities such as Dezhou,Dongchangfu,and Jinan,so,it had no ability to support Linqing’s urban economy.Finally,linqin’s administrative identity was humble,its most celebrated identity was only a Zhili State,and the maximum of the number of its subordinate counties was only three,that made it couldn’t control enough economic resourses like Dongchangfu to avoid excessive decline.Hence,under the influence of the reasons above,Linqin,the previous most magnificent jewel,the previous merchants-collected and splendid metroplis,sank into a temporary degradation while the old empire staggered towards modernizing.There is experiences behind Linqing’s progress,and lessons behind its decline,we should refer to the experiences and learn the lessons,fighting for the prosperity of Linqing,and constructing a beautiful and prosperous new Linqing.