ncrease; in
Europe at almost the same time as in China. But before population
pressure became too serious in Europe or Japan, industry developed and
absorbed the excess population. Thus, farms did not decrease too much in
size. Too small farms are always and in many ways uneconomical. With the
development of industries, the percentage of farm population decreased.
In China, however, the farm population was still as high as 73.3 per
cent of the total population in 1932 and the percentage rose to 81 per
cent in 1950.

From the middle of the seventeenth century on, commercial activities,
especially along the coast, continued to increase and we find gentry
families who equip sons who were unwilling or not capable to study and
to enter the ranks of the officials, but who were too unruly to sit in
villages and collect the rent from the tenants of the family, with money
to enter business. The newly settled areas of Kwangtung and Kwangsi were
ideal places for them: here they could sell Chinese products to the
native tribes or to the new settlers at high prices. Some of these men
introduced new techniques from the old provinces of China into the
"colonial" areas and set up dye factories, textile factories, etc., in
the new towns of the south. But the greatest stimulus for these
commercial activities was foreign, European trade. American silver which
had flooded Europe in the sixteenth century, began to flow into China
from the beginning of the seventeenth century on. The influx was stopped
not until between 1661 and 1684 when the government again prohibited
coastal shipping and removed coastal settlements into the interior in
order to stop piracy along the coasts of Fukien and independence
movements on Formosa. But even during these twenty-three years, the
price of silver was so low that home production was given up because it
did not pay off. In the eighteenth century, silver again continued to
enter China, while silk and tea were exported. This demand led to a
strong rise in the prices of silk and tea, and benefited the merchants.
When, from the late eighteenth century on, opium began to be imported,
the silver left China again. The merchants profited this time from the
opium trade, but farmers had to suffer: the price of silver went up, and
taxes had to be paid in silver, while farm products were sold for
copper. By 1835, the ounce of silver had a value of 2,000 copper coins
instead of one thousand before 1800. High gains in