Before the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing, the Qing Dynasty was "one-stop trade" for a long time, and the only foreign trade port was now Guangzhou, Guangdong, and the Qing Dynasty stipulated that Western merchants could only trade in Guangzhou.
With such advantages, Guangzhou has developed rapidly and prospered, and is known as "Tianzi Nanku".
Not only the astonishing scale of various kinds of wealth, many foreign things in the Qing court at that time came from Guangzhou.
Foreign trade is very profitable, even now, international trade is also the economic pillar of so the economic power, and the Qing Dynasty's Guangzhou advantage is obvious, natural prosperity is eye-catching, at its peak, here contributed 40% of the Qing Dynasty's taxes and silver.
Impose a sea ban and retain Guangzhou
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, in fact, there was no sea ban, but with the passage of time, in order to prevent the anti-Qing and Restoration activities of the Zheng clique along the coast, the Qing Dynasty began to impose sea bans intermittently.
Not only that, but the Qing Dynasty moved coastal residents inland on a large scale until the San Francisco Rebellion was put down.
During the Kangxi Period, the Qing Dynasty lifted the sea ban, not partially, but in an all-round way, but it was not thirty years ago, because of the raids of the Westerners and the reappearance of the Wukou, the Qing Dynasty once again imposed a sea ban.
In the fifth year of Yongzheng, the foreign trade between Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangsu was retained, but the four ports here were not four ports, but all the customs ports within the customs territory of the four places.
Originally, it went on like this, but in the twenty-second year of Qianlong, British merchants repeatedly violated the laws of the Qing Dynasty, which made the Qianlong Emperor feel that the British would threaten the Qing Dynasty, so he began to tighten.
Therefore, the Qianlong Emperor issued an edict to close the customs of other places, leaving only one place in Guangdong and concentrating on Guangzhou.
As for what people later said about the Thirteen Lines of Guangzhou, it actually appeared in 1685, and it was the earliest government-run foreign trade agency in China.
With the suspension of customs elsewhere, Guangzhou Thirteen Lines became the only legal foreign trade area of the Qing Dynasty, and before the arrival of the British with warships, it was the only trade center between the Qing Dynasty and the rest of the world.
Flowing gold and silver, Tianzi Nanku
The thirteen lines of Guangzhou were first seen in the early Qing Dynasty minister Qu Dajun's "five silks and eight silks and wide satin, and the silver money is piled up with thirteen lines", not that there are thirteen trades here, but a collective name for local foreign goods stores and foreign foreign companies.
Because of the emperor's "preference" for Guangzhou, Guangzhou also flourished at an alarming rate.
Before industrialization, China's goods were already very popular in the world, so the foreign trade of the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty could be so prosperous, and after the Qing Dynasty left only Guangzhou, foreign merchants gathered here.
The port of Guangzhou became a trade hub of the world at that time, and almost any merchant ship could be found, so Guangzhou also became the most economically developed and most prosperous city in the Qing Dynasty, and it was difficult for other cities to compare with it.
From the shunzhi emperor onwards, the emperors of the Qing Dynasty were very interested in Western things, and Guangzhou also became a distribution center for all kinds of talents, rare treasures and Western goods needed by the court because of its special commercial status.
At that time, Western ships docked, and they were often arranged to learn Chinese, and if they completed their studies, they could go to the court to serve.
The merchants in Guangzhou also became the first large-scale business group in the Qing Dynasty to deal with foreigners on a large scale, and this advantage made Guangzhou rise up a lot of large merchants with amazing wealth, and guangzhou's wealth was also amazing.
In the "Notes on the Rain Leek Box", it is recorded that there was a fire in Guangzhou that year for seven days, and the gold and silver in the merchant house were burned and melted into the ditch for two miles, which was unbreakable, and the fire directly burned away the wealth of forty million taels.
There are many large-scale port cities in the world, but the only one that can prosper for two thousand years is Guangzhou.
During the Qing Dynasty, Guangzhou, with its unique advantages in the field of foreign trade, became a trade hub, and Guangzhou at that time could really be called the wealth of the world.
Not only wealth, Guangzhou also because of a large number of dealings with foreigners, here has also become the center of the spread of Western culture to the Qing Dynasty, Guangzhou merchants began to learn English very early, and Western art and the like are also very prosperous here.
Until modern Times, European countries have started a big war, the number of Western merchant ships in Guangzhou has decreased sharply under their own insecurity, and the merchant houses in Guangzhou have begun to fall into difficulties, and only the Wu family and the Pan family are left with the four major families.
In order to avoid the disputes over The debts between China and foreign countries that often arose at that time, the Qing Dynasty opened its mind and came up with a solution that no ordinary person could think of: Qing merchants strictly prohibited arrears in arrears, and foreign merchants could leave at will.
Such a thunderous method, there is no one, Guangzhou Thirteen Lines in this situation, accelerated decline.
When the British called, Guangzhou was actually much worse than before, but the Qing Dynasty still forced the merchants of the thirteen lines in Guangzhou to hand over the so-called withdrawal fee of two million taels, and at this time, the thirteen lines of Guangzhou were already at dusk and sunset, and they were no longer before.
After the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing, the Qing Dynasty's five ports of commerce, and later more and more ports appeared, no longer the only Guangzhou began to decline slowly, a fire in 1856 burned the thirteen lines to ashes, here also became a microcosm of the Qing Dynasty from prosperity to decline.