The Impact of "Shixue Philosophy"on the Treaty Port Economy in the Late Qing Dynasty
The existing scholarly literature suggests that China's early modernization began during the late Qing dynasty,with many studies pointing to Western influence as the main driving force behind this trend.While some existing studies recognize that the treaty port economy,established through unequal treaties with the West,was not designed to benefit China,few have thoroughly explored the historical origins of China's internal impetus.Moreover,most existing studies use the treaty port as the deep root of contemporary economic development,ignoring the fact that if a locality was influenced by the Confucian Jingshi thought and/or already had prosperous commercial trade development or convenient transportation conditions prior to the establishment of the treaty port,it would be more likely to be chosen as a treaty port.In this paper,we explore the role of the rise of"Shixue philosophy"in the Ming Dynasty on the choices of treaty ports in the late Qing Dynasty.Specifically,we empirically examine the impact of the"Shixue philosophy"during the Ming period on the choices of treaty ports in the late Qing period,based on hand-collected statistics about"Shixue philosophers"of the Ming era from the Records of Ming Scholarship(Ming Ru Xuean)and the Collected Essays on Statecraft of Ming Dynasty(Huang Ming Jingshi Wenbian).The results show that the emergence and propagation of the"Shixue philosophy"during the middle and late Ming periods was a significant internal factor that promoted the opening of treaty ports in the late Qing Dynasty,which was attributed to the positive role played by the"Shixue philosophy"in promoting the development of the commerce,education,and acceptance of Western learning.This conclusion remains robust after controlling for a range of economic and geographical variables,as well as various robustness tests,including the placebo test,excluding the influence of local economic potential,excluding the interference of Buddhism and Taoism,substituting explanatory variables,and accounting for the issue of model setting bias.In addition,we find that the more prosperous the"Shixue philosophy",the earlier the establishment of treaty ports in the late Qing Dynasty,and the greater the probability of the Qing government taking the initiative to open commercial ports.To address the potential endogenous issue,we exploit the utilitarianism scholars of the Song Dynasty as an instrumental variable of the"Shixue philosophy"during the Ming era for IVProbit regression,and the results are consistent with those in the baseline regression.The marginal contribution of this paper is mainly reflected in that,on the one hand,our cliometric analysis reveals the internal dynamics of China's early modernization and responds to the Fairbankian"impulse-response"paradigm.On the other hand,given that the existing literature views Confucian culture as an immutable whole and its inadequacy in explaining the long-term impact of Confucian tradition on contemporary outcomes,the focus on the emergence of"Shixue philosophy"in the Ming Dynasty sheds light on the growing literature on the persistence of Confucianism.
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