A merchant group was a body of traders from the same home place. Bound by shared home and clan, they trusted one another, pooled their capital and carried goods from where they were produced to sell far away, and in doing so they crossed the barriers between regions' goods. The traders of Huizhou, Shanxi, Fujian and Guangdong are the leading examples.
The merchant groups took shape in the Ming. In the early Hongwu reign the kaizhong system let merchants deliver grain to the nine frontier garrisons in return for salt licences; Shanxi merchants, helped by where they lived, rose first, and regional merchant groups formed from this.
In the middle of the Ming, Huizhou merchants rose through the Lianghuai salt trade and long-distance commerce, ranked alongside the Shanxi merchants, and were held together by ties of home place and lineage.
In the Daoguang reign of the Qing, the salt reforms broke the licensed salt monopoly, and with war and the rise of modern banks the traditional merchant groups went from flourishing to decline.
Merchant Guild Commerce is the class in the chapter on Commerce on the merchant groups: the merchant-group economy from the Ming to the Republican era, represented by the Huizhou, Shanxi, Fujian and Guangdong merchants. Traders from the same home place and clan did business on trust between fellow natives, shared capital and long-distance carrying, crossing the barriers that separated the goods of different regions.
