조선후기 국용 목재 유통업자들의 관계망 = The Multiplex Relationship between Distributors of Timber for Dynastic usage during the latter half of the Joseon period

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In order to truly understand the Joseon society’s commerce in its latter half period, we should examine the relationships that existed between individual merchants and manifested themselves in the merchants’ actual transactions, instead of just discussing the merchants’ activities as a group, or certain institutional regulations that would have dictated their actions. In this article, the timber business is chosen for examination, as it seems like a good place where we could start trying to reconstruct the network which would have formed amongst commercial distributors.
Previous studies concentrated on examining specific groups of merchants or distributors like Shijeon(市廛, licensed central marketplace) merchants or Gong’in(貢人, government tribute agents) groups. But they never sufficiently identified the individual merchants’ or distributors’ relationship itself, which would have gone beyond obvious borders between them and developed a vast and intricate network. Examined in this article, are all the disputes that arose between merchants or distributors over issues involving timber, either used for construction, ship building, funerals or fuels. At the time there were over 18 organizations which were tasked of delivering timber for dynastic usage, and we can find certain distinct characteristics from their operations, in terms of their relationship with the government, their relationship with each other, and their relationship with other local merchants.
First, the amount of timber the government required was massive, so enlisting as a governmental purveyor was not really an attractive task to begin with. Liquidation of purveyor groups was also frequent. But the projected profit was also big, so volunteers kept turning up nonetheless. Second, all the conflicts’ nature were never simple but rather complicated, with interests overlapping. In case of large-scale timber businesses, there were less conflicts amongst merchants and more appeals made to (or frustrations toward) the government. Third, gaining licenses from the government was necessarily demanded to deal in timber, so the private transactions for private needs used to be interposed in the process of procuring timber for governmental usage. All these characteristics were very much due to the special nature of timber-related products. With this study, which tries to go beyond an institutional approach, hopefully the reality of Joseon commerce and the intricate nature of relationships amongst individuals involved in the business would be better understood.