Zixin Wang

Does losing access to an established trade route stabilize or destabilize society? Economic theory is ambiguous. I examine the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which ended the Canton System and opened four new coastal treaty ports, collapsing demand for transport labor along the old inland routes. Using an original county-year panel of 427 counties from 1830 to 1860, I find that counties on the pre-1842 Canton routes experienced a large rise in rebellion probability after the treaty. Counties in the hinterland of Shanghai, which gained trade access, show no comparable rise. This asymmetry, together with effects concentrated in counties that served as transit hubs, points to an opportunity cost channel through displaced transport workers rather than rapacity. Disaggregating conflict by motive, the effect holds for both anti-social and anti-state violence, and route counties became substantially more susceptible to Taiping mobilization after 1851.