Drawing on evidence from the uniquely rich archives of Ba County, this article proposes a revision of the widely shared assumption that the disastrous effects of the Taiping Rebellion led first to the flourishing and then to the fall of merchant involvement in local municipal initiatives throughout the Qing Empire. The article illustrates how the history of merchant and craftsmen participation in administrative projects can be dated to a century before the Taiping Rebellion of the mid-nineteenth century. Tracing this history back to the middle of the eighteenth century, the article represents the flourishing of merchant initiatives in the nineteenth century as the culmination of a longer trajectory of state-merchant collaboration and negotiation.

本文从巴县独特的丰富档案中汲取证据，提出了对普遍认为的假设的修正帝国。这篇文章说明了商人和工匠参与行政项目的历史如何可以追溯到 19 世纪中叶太平天国起义之前的一个世纪。将这段历史追溯到 18 世纪中叶，这篇文章将 19 世纪商人倡议的蓬勃发展作为国商合作和谈判的长期轨迹的高潮。