Guangzhou

The city of Guangzhou in southern China has gone by many different names throughout its history. Whether known as Panyu, Canton, or Guangzhou, the city has acted as a major urban center of trade and global economic development within Imperial China's over two-thousand-year history. Guangzhou's walls lie the histories of Mongol invasion, Islamic travelers, Portuguese exploration, and British imperialism.

Map of Guangzhou

Guangzhou is a massive city in modern-day China, but its historical roots extend to ancient times. Based on the Pearl River in southern China (the fourth largest river in the country), Guangzhou's access to the lush Pearl River Delta offered fertile land for agricultural production and navigable waters for travel. Indeed, the monsoon winds that warmed Guangzhou also made extensive travel outside of the Peral River Delta quite manageable, allowing for a flourishing trade economy in Guangzhou as early as the 3rd century BC, when the city was still known as Panyu.

Fig. 1- Location of Guangzhou on a map depicting modern-day China.

Naturally, Guangzhou's positioning ensured it would remain a flourishing and continually developing urban center throughout its long history. The Guangzhou of the modern-day is very different from the Panyu of old, reflected in the detailed early 20th-century map below. The colors represent different districts: yellow represents the "Old City," red represents "Xiguan," the suburbs of the Old City, and the Shamian trading compound is depicted in orange. Today, Guangzhou lies within the Guangdong province of China.

Fig. 2- Early 20th-century map of Guangzhou.

Population of Guangzhou

The majority population of modern-day and historical Guangzhou has been ethnic Han-Chinese people. As a subgroup of the Han Chinese, the Yue-speaking Cantonese people form a vast majority of historical Guangzhou's population. Cantonese heritage is closely tied with the Guangdong and Guangxi provinces of Southern China, especially with the city of Guangzhou itself. Today, the bustling population of Guangzhou has swelled to almost 20 million due mainly to inter-Han migration.

Guangzhou Language

Throughout its history, the two most popular languages in Guangzhou have been Mandarin (also known as Standard Chinese) and Cantonese (or Yue). Today, Mandarin has largely overtaken Cantonese in popularity, though pockets of Cantonese-speaking peoples and even rarer languages persist in Guangzhou.

Medieval Guangzhou

Guangzhou was a flourishing trade center in Southern China. In its earliest days, when the city was known as Panyu as the capital of Nanyue, Guangzhou merchants traded with Southeast Asian Kingdoms. They took part in the Indian Ocean Trade, bringing African goods back to mainland China.

Fig. 3- Colorized photograph of a Canton marketplace during the Qing Dynasty rule of China.

The Founding of Guangzhou

The earliest settlement resembling Guangzhou may have been founded during the ancient Zhou Dynasty of China, though the city would begin as Punyu under the Qin Dynasty (221 to 206 BC). After the fall of the Qin Dynasty, a Chinese general named Zhao Tuo created the independent state of Nanyue, making Punyu its capital in the 3rd century BC.

Nanyue resisted the conquest of the Han Dynasty for many years but eventually fell and was absorbed into the growing state by 111 BC. Remaining a provincial capital, the province that Punyu resided in would later be renamed the Guang prefecture. The earliest records of Punyu being renamed Guangzhou come from 226 AD.

The History of Guangzhou

Already, Guangzhou was proving itself to be an important commercial center in Imperial China. With land trade routes through the Silk Road directly linking Guangzhou to the mighty cities of India and the Middle East and its open ports, Guangzhou became a melting pot for Hindu and Arabic travelers and influences. Guangzhou contested Quanzhou as the largest port city in China for many years. As the city grew, so did its walls, ports, and population, wildly when Chinese migrants fled south during the Mongol conquests of China.

Guangzhou recovered from conquest, however, and flourished under the Mongol rule of the Yuan Dynasty. Despite feeling homesick in a distinctly non-Muslim nation, medieval world traveler Ibn Battuta remarked on the beauties of China when he visited the city of Guangzhou in the 14th century, making significant note of the ports and shipbuilding that took place within the city.

Guangzhou continued to grow throughout the Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty of China, but not without adversity. The founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, the Hongwu emperor, effectively shut down foreign trade within his country and isolated China from the world.

A century later, Portuguese explorer Rafael Perestrello landed in Guangzhou in 1516. In many instances, Guangzhou acted as the first line of defense against Portuguese intrusions, such as when the Ming fleet defeated a Portuguese fleet at the Battle of Tunmen in 1521. Simultaneously, Guangzhou also acted as one of the last lines of Ming defense against the invading Manchurians of the Qing Dynasty.

Guangzhou Government

The Qing Dynasty led Guangzhou through the last years of imperial dynastic rule within China. Threatened by the economic forces of the West, the Qing government created the Canton System, a policy meant to protect Chinese trade. The Canton System limited European foreign trade to Guangzhou and, in part, allowed for a near monopolistic trading partnership with the British East India Company. As history tells us, the Qing Dynasty was proper to be wary of European intrusion.

Fig. 4- Art depicting a battle in Guangzhou during the Opium Wars.

Guangzhou Significance

Today, Guangzhou ranks as one of the largest cities in the world, hosting numerous Chinese businesses, international sports festivals, and the Canton Fair, China's largest trade fair. From its roots in the kingdom of Nanyue to the city's connection with the Silk Road, Guangzhou has always acted as an epicenter of trade and urban development in world history.

Fig. 5- Photograph of Canton Tower in downtown Guangzhou.