ABSTRACT
During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), one group of merchants gained dominance of the major markets in the Yangzi River Valley. Known since the end of the fifteenth century by the name of their native region of Huizhou 徽州, these Huizhou merchants moved out of their home villages in the mountains of southern Anhui Province to the towns and cities of South China and especially the Yangzi River Valley. There, unlike most rural migrants to Ming cities, they succeeded beyond their fondest dreams. Even while they set up shops, offices, and eventually homes in these thriving lowland centers of trade, back home in Huizhou they set up lineages that stressed the importance of a continuous descent line and tight kinship organization. Contemporaries often noted the stress that Huizhou merchants placed on lineage ties in their trade, but how these two Huizhou concerns, kinship and commerce, were related and how that complex relationship shaped merchant operations in the Yangzi Valley has all too often escaped close examination.
