“The Tea Road”: Shanxi Merchants and the Expansion of Chinese
Trading Network in the Mongolian Steppe”
By Zhijian Qiao, Ph.D. candidate, History, Stanford University
Time: Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m.
Place: Knight Bldg., 521 Memorial Way (behind Memorial
Auditorium), Room 102
Summary:
After the collapse of the central Asian caravan trade in the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the old silk road was never able to
revive its rigor. Yet, in the eighteenth century, the simultaneous expansion of
the Manchu and the Russian empire and their interactions opened a new trade
route to the north that cut through the Mongolian Steppe. With Chinese tea being
the defining commodity, this new trade route is often dubbed the "Tea
Road”. In addition to offering an overview of the history of the tea road, this
talk will examine a number of major historical transformations that made it
possible. At the center of the story lies the Qing conquest and incorporation
of Mongolia, and the northward expansion of the Chinese commercial network,
which was spearheaded by the Shanxi merchants.
Zhijian Qiao is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, Stanford
University. After years of archival research, he is currently writing his
dissertation, which reconstructs the history of the famous Shanxi merchants of
early modern China, arguably the most powerful business network in imperial
Chinese history. His research traces the formation of the Shanxi mercantile
network in the context of the Qing imperial expansion, and also analyzes the
institutional foundation of that network. In his view, Shanxi merchants
effected a series of key institutional changes that radically altered the
outlook of the Chinese economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
