COMPTES RENDUS - AFEC

Comptes rendus
came about that in the sixteenth century "Suzhou's traditional markets
were saturated, its traditional specialties faced increasing compétition, its
merchant networks were decaying, and a hungrier, more agile group of
competitors was better placed to exploit emerging opportunities" (p. 198),
even while Suzhou presumably remained the center of the Chinese world
System.
Thus, I don't think that Marmé convincingly demonstrates that
Suzhou was the undisputed center of a "world system." And in fact, comparisons
with other candidate cities are conspicuously lacking. To some
extent, Marmé shows only how, against the spécifie background of the
Ming financial structure, a commercial city could develop in Jiangnan, but
what made Suzhou différent from other cities such as Jiading, Songjiang,
or even Nanjing, remains undiscussed.
Now, Suzhou is, of course, much more than just an économie center,
as Marmé himself acknowledges: Suzhou is and was traditionally also
seen as either "the epitome of sophistication or as the nadir of décadence."
However, the history of the cultural and social dominance of Suzhou and
its urban society (and hère the word "dominance" is, I think, not too strong
to use), is not at the center of Marmé's book; it should be the subject of a
book another author should write. Yet, I am not sure that Marmé is as fully
aware as he could hâve been of the implications of this cultural and social
dominance of Suzhou on other parts of China, not in the least on the capital,
including its politicians. It seems that for Marmé the opposition between
on the one hand the state and on the other hand Suzhou society is
almost absolute. We do not find in this book the local Suzhou élite, including
current and ex-officials, influencing officiais at court on behalf of their
own group, such as we know was fréquent from other sources: Marmé
does not really look for such links between court and local society, even
not when at one instance he points out that a leading Suzhou scholaroffïcial
played a prominent rôle in the restoration of Zhu Qizhen (i.e.
Yingzong). Mirroring the lack of detailed discussion of Suzhou merchants
outside Suzhou, there is hardly any mention of the présence of Suzhou
people at the capital, in the government, or as magistrates elsewhere.
(There is one particularly deliciously put sentence, though, in one of
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