Over the past two generations a fundamental change has taken place in the scholarly understanding of the commercial world of late imperial China. Lasting from the Song (960–1279) to the end of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), this millennium of Chinese history had long been judged a period of decline, its initial economic breakthroughs never fulfilling their promise. The commercial and technological innovations of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were thought to have given way to economic stagnation and cultural conservatism, as the enterprising peasantry and merchants of south China lost out to the prerogatives of Confucian scholar-officials and their state-sponsored culture in the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing dynasties. Tested by a highly competitive examination regime and thereafter sheltered by a host of privileges, these scholar-officials acquired and retained an unrivalled hegemony that was cultural, political, and, some would add, economic. When China suffered a severe economic downturn during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the once-admired stability of the Qing regime was criticized for its backwardness, and the late imperial economy of these scholar-officials’ rule was condemned for its stagnation.

Chapter 6 provides three case studies of how Huizhou merchant organizations used their lineage and commercial resources to explain how Huizhou merchant lineages might succeed and fall in the world of Ming business. It explores the development of different types and sizes of commercial organization in response to the organizational needs and business opportunities these “house firms,” while also examining the impact of kinship organizations and relationships on their operation as “house firms.” With a greater emphasis on lineage branches and even segments rather than just lineages per se, it shows how a small lineage could launch itself successfully into the commercial world with the aid of kinship organizations larger than the simple nuclear household. Descent-line ties mattered greatly but manipulation of these ties for commercial goals was not at all unusual, even leading to attempts to create extensive non-lineage alliances with purported kinsmen bearing just same surname and fictive descent lies.