research annoyances

[kaigou]

Currently reading Trade And Travel In The Far East, the Cambridge History of China (vols 6-8), The Early Age of Commerce, parts of Cultural Exchanges Between The East Asian Seas Ming And Qing Dynasties, and various articles like High Corruption Income in Ming and Qing China, Networks of Malay Merchants and the Rise of Penang as a Regional Trading Centre, Ryukyu in the Ming Reign Annals, and Sino-Japanese Interaction via Chinese Junks in the Edo Period.

Yes. I'm sure it's a hardly-startling reminder that I really am a total geek.

But anyway, the frustrating thing is I have no baseline for any of these articles. So-and-so was corrupt, making X amount of taels from bribery. Is that a high number? I have no idea. How much was so-and-so supposed to be making as a bureaucrat? No baseline. Or, these four junks did the Siam-Fujian run twice each in a year, carrying Y pikuls of rice. Does that mean all four junks were stuffed to the brim? Or is that just the rice-part of their shipments? Is that an overachiever's number of shipping runs, or was that fleet really lazy? This other shipment made so many catties of silver as profit on silk. Is that before or after paying the broker, the shipping magistrate, the dock fees, and how much of that went to sailors? In other words, is that a reasonable profit, or not much one of all once you count out the rest of the costs (and not just taxes)?

So, like I said: no baseline. I could probably deduce the rest, if I could just figure out how much the average sailor would expect to be paid. Or some sense of the cost of things. What was a reasonable market cost for rice, or silk, or fans, or umbrellas, anyway? No one ever lists these things...

Sheesh, I miss being in DC, where if I got really desperate I could haul myself to the Library of Congress.

Comments

[brainwane]

I hate not having a baseline! My sympathies.

My partner once bought us a September 1945 issue of The American, a monthly general interest magazine, and we read some of it with Wikipedia or Wolfram Alpha at the ready, to help with baselines -- example.

[kaigou]

Interesting! Unfortunately, it has gaps, but that's to be expected. (Just how often does anyone care what a farmer or sailor made, six hundred years ago? Let alone in a country that's not, y'know, European?) I ended up doing some serious searching through the Cambridge editions and finally tracked down a reference to laborers making 1 tael a month on average (but were they more or less valuable/better-paid than sailors? who knows) and a "fine house" in Peking/Beijing being mortgaged for 7K taels. A'course, no idea whether by "mortgaged" they mean "monthly rent" or "purchased". I'm guessing the latter, those crazy Brits.

Still can't figure out what the trip duration would've been for a fair-sized Chinese junk to travel from, oh, the big port in Siam to Fujian, though. Or to Taichung, or the Ryukus. But I'm sure the info's got to be out there, somewhere. A hundred thousand history dissertations out there, someone must've studied this!

[kathmandu]

I suggest re-posting this at Dream's Library. If anyone can recommend a source for baseline info, it would be them.

[kaigou]

I took a look, and it seems like mostly the place to ask for fiction recommendations, plus there weren't any extensive guidelines on the user profile (err, that I recall). Is that really an okay place to list request for nonfiction?

[kathmandu]

I was thinking yes, considering the first post to the community and one of the more recent ones as examples.
But we're not experts over there; you'd be taking pot luck whether anyone else happened to have your same interest. It just seemed like if a long shot is all you have, why not take it?

[kaigou]

Okay, just wanted to make sure, especially with the quick impression of so many fiction requests. It's a pet peeve to be in a community where people ask stupid questions and waste everyone's time, rather than check first and make sure the question's suitable.

But yeah, it's a long shot, but then... this isn't exactly a topic that's way up there in the google rankings, or will ever be!