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A Fragile City?

A Fragile City?. Gernet: The impression of order and prosperity given by the South China is illusory. …The edifice was fragile and ready to collapse at the first vigorous push administered by the barbarians. But Quanzhou, before and after the Mongol conquest, seemed anything but “fragile”

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A Fragile City?

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  1. A Fragile City? • Gernet: The impression of order and prosperity given by the South China is illusory. …The edifice was fragile and ready to collapse at the first vigorous push administered by the barbarians. • But Quanzhou, before and after the Mongol conquest, seemed anything but “fragile” • Ibn Batista: Great city, superb indeed • “about one hundred huge junks together” • “it is the greatest [city in the world]” • Friar Odoric Pordenone of Friuli: “All Italy has not the amount of ships that this one city has”

  2. Foreigners in Zaitun (Quanzhou) • Quanzhou was a vast coastal metropolis, with a changing and heterogeneous population • A city in social and cultural flux • Large foreign colonies of merchants, including • Franks (Western Christians),Saracen (Muslims), Jews • Archaeologists found proofs to confirm economic activities of foreign peoples: • Inscriptions of Muslim, Nestorian Christian, Catholic, Manichaean, and Hindu

  3. Free Trade Economy? • The large volume of growth in trade made Quanzhou a teeming metropolis characterized by its intense commercial activity and development • Did this lead the city to become a “free trade zone” similar to certain entrepôt in the modern world? • Gernet: no! because of bureaucratic controls • D’ancona: yes! Based on what he witnessed • Evidenced by the city’s thriving mercantile economy, vigorous manufacture, and lavish consumption • Powerful and freethinking merchants were engaged in a struggle for dominance with the mandarinate and were able to get the mandarinate involved in trade

  4. Merchants and City Life • Merchants and craftsmen organized guilds • The jewelers, pawnshops, food, gilders, apothecaries and doctors… • Guilds too many and fell into confusion—people no longer followed the rule • Many rich merchants became richer and tried to raise themselves to the rank of nobles • They were ready to pay the price to buy the title of nobility • They spent greatly adoring themselves with silks, caps and high shoes of nobles • Merchants and their trade led people to wander about the city at night • They taught “the common people to devour all that comes in their path.”

  5. Products • Silk of all colors • Including “cloth of green and gold silk which was a wonder to behold, the workmanship never before seen in the entire world” (p.141) • “There were also rich satins, of which the world has not seen the like, the richest being sewn with small pearls” (p.141) • Spices • Sugar, saffron, ginger, galingale, cassia and camphor, indigo, and alum • Porcelains • Iben Batista— China made the “most beautiful porcelains in the world”

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