Connecting with the Manchu Court: Han Chinese Salt Merchants and Social Networks in Eighteenth-Century China

How to collect and distribute salt has always been an important political issue in China because of the great amounts of the revenue the business generated. Thus, from the early times in China’s history, imperial governments implemented salt monopolies and the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) were no exception. As the last empire of China, the Qing government inherited its salt monopoly policy from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), in the form of the hereditary franchise system. However, as an ethnic minority, the Manchu ruler made two unique alterations to the salt monopoly policies: The appointment of the emperor’s personal bondservants as leading salt bureau officials and the establishment of a head merchant position. These new institutional changes allowed the complex personal networks of reciprocal favors to infiltrate the government’s monopoly, where both the imperial court and Han Chinese salt merchants manipulated them for their own benefit.

This paper will focus on the salt merchants who came from the Huizhou area in central China and conducted salt business in the urban centers of the lower Yangzi delta, the most prosperous region of Qing China. By examining a case study of the Jiang family, the paper will first explore how the Huizhou salt merchants strategically employed kinship, friendship and coworker networks to connect with emperor’s bondservants and the imperial court under the new salt monopoly policies. While the merchants strove to construct personal connections with the imperial court, this paper will also examine how the imperial court was able to use these connections to extend its own power into inefficient bureaucratic structures in the local society.