近代 中国 上海 帮会의 渊源과 盛衰

Abstract

Economic enterprise in the Modern Shanghai, like a political career or social life generally, was based on the family unit and depended on the cultivation of personal relationships. Thus trade depended on the family firm, in which kinship created the essential bonds of loyalty. Individuals in a family firm bore an unlimited liability but by the same token could expect family backing in a crisis. In the absence of impersonal legal safeguards and institutions of insurance and commercial law, the principal assets of a merchant were his good name and guarantors, but equally important was his personal relationship with official authorities from whom his firm might have to obtain a formal or informal sanction to do business. The chief defence of commercial class against official manipulation and exploitation was merchant group solidarity. From very early times shops or one kind were situated together on a city street. Merchants in the same line flocked together by order, and by the late Tang or Song in their interaction with officialdom, they developed guilds. In modern Shanghai merchant society growth of their personal relations followed same general practices created the patronage networks. In particular, merchants at a distance from home developed strong ties with other traders from native landers. This became the basis for the Landsmannschaften() or regional associations according to native place, likethe Ningpo Guild in Shanghai. The result was a tremendous proliferation of Landsmannschaften, organized sometimes purely by native place and sometimes by line of trade. But until the nineteenth century these voluntary associations had seldom reached the point of consolidating merchant interests and power. Instead the guilds in their various lines of trade and representing various trading places remained fragmented each in their own bailiwick.