The Growth of Hangzhou and the Geopolitical Context in East
Asia
Schematic map of Hangzhou during the Ming dynasty
Chris
Chase-Dunn, Hiroko Inoue and E.N. Anderson
Institute
for Research on World-Systems
University
of California-Riverside
This is IROWS Working
Paper #111 available at https://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows111/irows111.htm
v. 8/16/16 1766 words
Hangzhou is
a large Chinese city at the southern terminal of the Grand Canal and connected
by river with the East China Sea near the mouth of the Yangtze River. Hangzhou was called Linan when it was
the capital of the Southern Sung dynasty. We are comparing changes
in the sizes of largest polities with changes in the sizes of largest cities in
the East Asian interstate system. We utilize three compendia of city size
estimates – those by Ian Morris (2013), Tertius
Chandler (1987) and George Modelski (2003). At first we had used
George Modelski’s (2003:63) estimate of 1.5 million
for the population size of Hangzhou in 1300 CE. We then discovered an
inconsistency in Modelski’s compilation. His Table 12
on page 63 shows 1.5 million for 1300 CE, but his note about Hangzhou on p 65
says it was 1.5 million in 1250 CE.
Like Baghdad, Kaifeng
was besieged by the Mongols and captured by them in 1232-3, reportedly with
great loss of life. In the meantime the Song dynasty had moved south and, after
a brief sojourn in Nanjing, selected Hangzhou as their capital. This then served
as the second base for economic growth that produced a powerful expansion of
maritime trade. Even after the Southern Song were finally conquered by the
Mongols (1279), Hangzhou continued to impress contemporary travelers including
Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo. The Venetian in particular left behind a
superlative account of that city that prompted many a trader and traveler from
Europe to reach out to Chinese markets. Once again, population estimates are
uncertain, and range as high as 2.5 m (Elvin 176) but a household enumeration
of the Linan capital commandery
(fu) (reported in Bielenstein
1987:50-1) suggests a figure of 1.5 million for about 1250. That is impressive but it did not
last long for as its port silted up and as the city lost its capital status, it
also abandoned its world position.”[1] Check bielenstein
Modelski’s estimate of 1.5 million for 1300 CE in
Table 12 must be a typographical error because Linan
was no longer the capital by then. It had been conquered by the Mongols in 1279
and the river had silted up. The estimated sizes of Hangzhou in the 13th
and 14th centuries vary from Chandler’s low ones (see Table 1) to
very high ones based on Mark Elvin’s(1973) belief in the reports of Marco Polo
(1992).
|
|
|
|
Size
(thousands) |
|
622 CE |
21 |
Hangchow |
60 |
|
800 |
23 |
Hangchow |
70 |
|
900 |
20 |
Hangchow |
75 |
|
1000 |
19 |
Hangchow |
80 |
|
1100 |
18 |
Hangchow |
90 |
|
1150 |
9 |
Hangchow |
145 |
|
1200 |
1 |
Hangchow |
255 |
|
1250 |
1 |
Hangchow |
320 |
|
1300 |
1 |
Hangchow |
432 |
|
1350 |
1 |
Hangchow |
432 |
|
1400 |
5 |
Hangchow |
235 |
|
1450 |
4 |
Hangchow |
250 |
Table 1: Population size estimates for Hangzhou made by Tertius Chandler (1987)
|
|
|
Size (thousands) |
|
1200 CE |
Hangzhou |
1000 |
|
1300 |
Hangzhou |
1500 |
Table 2: George Modelski (2003: 63 Table 12) (but see discussion above)
|
year |
Size (thousands) |
|
|
1200 CE |
1000 |
Hangzhou |
|
1300 |
800 |
Hangzhou |
Table 3: Ian Morris (2010: 118) estimates of the populations of Hangzhou
The Wikipedia
article on Hangzhou says:
During the Southern Song dynasty, commercial expansion, an influx of refugees from the conquered north, and the growth of the official and military establishments, led to a corresponding population increase and the city developed well outside its 9th-century ramparts. According to the Encyclopćdia Britannica
, Hangzhou had a population of over 2 million at that time, while historian Jacques Gernet has estimated that the population of Hangzhou numbered well over one million by 1276. (Official Chinese census figures from the year 1270 listed some 186,330 families in residence and probably failed to count non-residents and soldiers.) It is believed that Hangzhou was the largest city in the world from 1180 to 1315 and from 1348 to 1358.And:
Hangzhou was chosen as the new
capital of the Southern Song dynasty in 1132, when most of northern China had
been conquered by the Jurchens in the Jin–Song wars. The Song court had retreated south to the
city in 1129 from its original capital in Kaifeng, after it was captured by the
Jurchens in the Jingkang
Incident of 1127. From Kaifeng they moved to Nanjing, modern Shangqiu, then to Yangzhou in 1128. The government of the
Song intended it to be a temporary capital. However, over the decades Hangzhou
grew into a major commercial and cultural center of the Song dynasty. It rose
from a middling city of no special importance to one of the world's largest and
most prosperous. Once the prospect of retaking northern China had diminished,
government buildings in Hangzhou were extended and renovated to better befit
its status as an imperial capital and not just a temporary one. The imperial
palace in Hangzhou, modest in size, was expanded in 1133 with new roofed
alleyways, and in 1148 with an extension of the palace walls. From the early
12th century until the Mongol invasion of 1276, Hangzhou remained the capital
and was known as Lin'an. It served as the seat of the
imperial government, a center of trade and entertainment, and the nexus of the
main branches of the civil service. During that time the city was a
gravitational center of Chinese civilization: what used to be considered
"central China" in the north was taken by the Jin,
an ethnic minority dynasty ruled by Jurchens.
We end up using Ian Morris’s estimates. Morris’s note about
Hangzhou says:
1300 CE: Hangzhou, 800,000 (Bairoch 1988: 355); 7.5 points. Bairoch
suggests that four other Chinese cities
around 1300 had populations in the
200,000-500,000 range while Hangzhou was
“perhaps considerably larger.”
His calculations from the figures for rice
consumption, however, point more
precisely to 800,000, while Elvin (1973: 177)
calculates 600,000-700,000
from the rice figures. Rozman
(1973: 35) also thought 12th-13th century
Hangzhou’s population was over 500,000, and
could have been as high as 1million. Kuhn (2009: 205) and Christian (2004: 368)
also lean toward 1
million, and Skinner (1977: 30), 1.2 million.
I take the higher figure of
roughly 1 million for 1200 CE, and the lower
figure of 800,000 for 1300 CE,
by which time population was falling across
China as a whole. The city was
certainly the biggest in the world when Marco
Polo visited in the late 13
century (Kuhn 2009: 205-209), but the figure
implied by Marco’s
comments—5-7 million—must be far too high.
There was probably no way
Marco could have known Hangzhou’s population,
beyond the simple fact
that it was enormous compared to European or
Muslim cities of his day.[2]
The large size that Hangzhou reached in the 13th
century is relevant to our study of the ways in which changes in geopolitical
structures impact the sizes of cities. The usual path is that an empire arises
by conquest and then expands an old city or builds a new capital. But the
growth of Hangzhou is less directly a function of empire-building. The invasion
of Northern China by forest (Jurchin) and steppe
nomad (Mongols) marcher states pushed the urban functions that had been located
in the Song capital of Kaifeng toward the south, along with a substantial
migration of former residents of Kaifeng.
And this corresponded with the long-term rise of the Yangtze River valley as an important center of rice cultivation.
The Song Dynasty ruled at first from Kaifeng, well south of
Beijing, and the lower Yangtze was already building up. So when the Song
lost Kaifeng and had to move farther south, they naturally went to the southern end
of the Grand Canal, making Hangzhou the main and most strategically located
city in East Asia and one of the largest cities in the world in the 13th
and 14th centuries CE [3]
Hangzhou
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SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF
PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE
STUDIES (History) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
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