The Gentleman's Speculation: Merchants, Opium, and the Birth of Capitalism in Asia (original) (raw)
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Your beggarly commerce! Enlightenment European views of the China trade
This article studies the European confrontation with and conceptualization of the China trade in the early-modern world, and in particular during the Enlightenment. International trade was of central importance to Enlightenment European conceptions of wealth and European intellectuals and a broader audience of popular authors, merchants and interested parties hotly debated international trade policies. In these debates, China was largely portrayed as having a more cautious, restricted approach to foreign trade. This contrast between the optimism for trade and rejection from the Chinese led to a consistent expression of frustration in many European sources. The narrative of Chinese isolation, however, should not be removed from the wider context of eighteenth-century views on the China trade. Recent scholarship has questioned the dominance of the idea of an isolated Chinese state. Revisiting eighteenth-century sources in light of these new perspectives, it is clear that early-modern European discussion of the China trade reflected a wider variety of views than simple frustration with Chinese restrictions on trade. The paper concludes that the narrative of China’s isolation should be seen as only one part of a wider picture of the China trade and eighteenth -century observers were very much aware of the complex dynamics involved in the China trade.
2016
Access to China and its wealth of manufactured goods was long sought by the European ‘monopoly Companies’, yet a direct and regular trade between Europe and the South China coast was only established around the turn of the eighteenth century. By focusing on the private trade and interloping activities of British-born China traders, this thesis shows how this branch of commerce took root and expanded within a transnational European trading arena between c.1720 to 1750. Interlopers, or free agents, I argue, played a highly integrative role for the development of European markets for Chinese goods and the networks of supply and capital that underpinned the trade. British-born Canton traders, who were operating in the smaller interloping East India Companies established close connections between Britain and the continent and between the different ‘national’ East India Companies. Private trade records, merchant letters, and East India Company materials form the large source base of this ...
Private Enterprise and the China Trade
2022
This book has developed out of a PhD thesis which I submitted to the University of Warwick, UK, in January 2016. In the process of revising and extending the thesis, I have incurred countless additional debts, the lion's share of which, however, fell onto the members of my family, whose patience, love, precious time, and support, helped to make it happen. Even though a great deal more work than planned has now gone into the process of preparing the book for publication, I believe that the intellectual settings in which I developed its core arguments, the Global History Centre at Warwick and the European University Institute in Florence, are still very much alive on these pages-as its people and past events have irrevocably shaped my outlook as a historian of global culture and commerce. Critical for this book's genesis was my privilege to participate in the ercfunded project Europe's Asian Centuries: Trading Eurasia 1600-1830 led by Maxine Berg (2010-2014), under whose supervision I conducted my research and learnt to think ambitiously and independently. Arguing the centrality of continental Europe for Britain's success in the China trade is all the more timely as present-day Britain is breaking away from the European Union in a move that is certainly sustained by a flawed understanding of its historical independence in commerce. The close exchange with Maxine, the post-docs on the erc project, Hanna Hodacs, Felicia Gottmann, Chris Nierstrasz, our museum consultant Helen Clifford (who was so much more than this for all of us), and associate Tim Davies was inspiring and reassuring. I thank each and every one of them for our discussions, their comments on early chapter drafts, and their kind support and encouragement. I also look back with fond memories to the conferences we organised or went to together, at Oxford, Leiden, Venice, and Yale, and fondly remember all the great historians we were able to meet through Maxine's support and activity. We definitely had the most wonderful and competent administrators: Anna Boneham and Sheilagh Holmes. Sheilagh in particular was of enormous help in the last stages of the PhD. Thank you all! The Warwick History Department and its associated Global History and Culture Centre offered an exciting programme of lectures and seminars that stimulated my thinking and brought me into contact with people I greatly admire, first and foremost David Arnold, Anne Gerritsen, Rebecca Earle, Giorgio Riello, and Margot Finn. The latter two acted as examiners and through their reports and our discussions played a key role in the preparation of this manuscript for publication. I am also happy to acknowledge the generous Meike von Brescius-978-90-04-50474-5
Private Enterprise and the China Trade: Merchants and Markets in Europe, 1700-1750 (2022)
Private Enterprise and the China Trade: Merchants and Markets in Europe, 1700-1750, 2022
This book examines the European commercial landscape of the early China trade, c.1700–1750. It looks at the foundational period of Sino-European commerce and explores a world of private enterprise beneath the surface of the official East India Company structures. Using rich private trade records, it analyses the making of pan-European markets, distribution networks and patterns of investment that together reveal a new geography of a trading system previously studied mostly at Canton. By considering the interloping activities of British-born merchants working for the smaller East India Companies, the book uncovers the commercial practices and cross-Company collaborations, both legal and illicit, that sustained the growth of the China trade: smuggling, wholesale trading, private commissions and the manipulation of Company auctions.
The Evil Trade that Opened China to the West
This paper examines the effects of the Opium Wars on the opening of trade with China during the mid 1800s. Also examined are the economic, social and political consequences of these wars. The lessons learned from the opium trade still shapes China's world view and dealings with the West.
The Colonization of Hong Kong: Establishing the Pearl of Britain-China Trade
2011
We construct a staged development framework with multi-period discrete choices to study the colonization of Hong Kong, which facilitated the trade of several agricultural and manufactured products, including opium, between Britain and China. The model is particularly designed based on historical data and documentation collected from various sources. We show theoretically how institutions changed in response to the underlying key primitives and lead to the transition from the pre-Opium War era, to the post-Opium War era and then to the post-opium trade era, which span the period 1773-1933. Finally, we support our theoretical ndings with historical evidence. JEL Classi cation: D78, E65, N40, O53.