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Sectoral Agglomeration and Urban Development: The History of Tunxi—The Tea Business Centre in Huizhou

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Abstract

From the perspective of historical geography, Tunxi as the chosen centre for tea production in the Qing could not be explained geographically alone by the river system of Huizhou, in which stead this article attempts a historicogeographical analysis by shifting our attention towards the sector-specific agglomeration of relevant industries and urbanisation. Due to the restrictions by the imperial government on using sea ports (e.g. Shanghai) for the transportation of tea southwards for sale and export, Tunxi was made the centre for tea trade, not only due to its geographical convenience to tax clearance, but also because of the agglomeration of tea-related industries in the City, such as tin-can, box and bamboo-crate warehouses. There also had emerged in this process a conglomeration of daily life services, making Tunxi a place of convenience-cum-prosperity. Thus, a combination of both historical and geographical factors can help in no small way to offer a better explanation of the urban development of Tunxi as a tea trade centre in imperial China.

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Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by Program of the National Social Science Fund of China (Research Grant No. 16BZS125). The authors would like to thank Prof. Hsiu-Ling Kuo, Dr. Yannan Ding, Prof. Maurizio Marinelli and other participants at the international workshop “Urban Historical Geography of China” for their constructive suggestions on a previous version of this paper. The authors also wish to thank “La Pour Société” (为社 Weishe), an interdisciplinary scholarly forum for early-career social scientists at Fudan University, for the constructive remarks and suggestions made by the members thereof when this paper was presented in its draft forms.

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  1. Centre for Historical Geographical Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Yi Zou

  2. Political Philosophy, Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Xi Lin

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Correspondence to Xi Lin.

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Zou, Y., Lin, X. Sectoral Agglomeration and Urban Development: The History of Tunxi—The Tea Business Centre in Huizhou. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 9, 643–661 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-016-0148-5

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