Timber Commodity Chain and the Manchurian Frontier, 1800–1900

Timber emerged as one of the most important natural resources produced in the mountain Manchuria at the turn of twentieth century. The forest provided building materials for growing Manchurian modern cities and Russian and Japanese railways in Manchuria. This paper examines organization of timber production, examining how the industry transformed the mountain frontier’s spatial relations with North Chinese and Japanese metropolises and the Manchurian hinterlands. Utilizing the analytical framework of commodity chain, this paper explores where labor, equipment, and capital for production came from, and how they were recruited and assembled. Through the examination, the paper shows how the global chain of the production reconfigured the timber frontier’s position within the political and economic hierarchy of broader rim region of East China Sea.

One crucial feature of the timber production was the pivotal role of independent organizations of Han Chinese loggers (Ch. muba) in it. Head loggers contracted work from the investors located in regional metropolises such as Tianjin and Yantai. Not only did they recruited “cooli” workers to work in the deep mountains, but they also organized transportation of timber via mountain rivers to the ports of southern Manchurian coast. From there timber were exported to various places in East China Sea on Chinese junks and steamships. The loggers also formed independent political forces, and negotiated with and resisted against the Chinese, Russian, and Japanese states to protect their claim to the forest. They were ultimate repository of local knowledge about the forest and its resources. Examining their role in the organization of the timber production, this paper highlights the pivotal role of the local producers in shaping and reshaping economic and political geography of the Manchurian frontier.