Editors – S. Sugiyama and Linda Grove Curzon. 2001.
The thirteen essays can be roughly divided into two groups. The first group includes essays that look at the development of large scale networks and plot the competition between competing indigenous and foreign merchant groups in the trade in products such as sugar and cotton yarn in China, cotton goods in Japan, silk in Iran, Japanese manufactures in Dutch Indonesia and rice and cotton in India. The second group pf essays focuses on the activities of specific firms as a way to explore the development of trading networks. The group includes studies that look at the activities of Chinese and Japanese merchants in Korea, at the growth of a commercial empire built on the sale of patent drugs in South East Asia and the activities of European trading firms in Asia
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This
volume brings together an international team of scholars who examine
the development of commercial networks in Asia from the 18th century
to the 20th century on a stage that stretches from Yokohama and
Pusan to Istanbul. The studies, based on extensive archival research,
focus on the trading firms and merchant groups that were the chief
actors in the creation of the commercial networks that criss-crossed
Asia, linking the various Asian economies to each other and to Europe
and the Americas. Whilst some of this work has been available in
Chinese and Dutch, this is the first time that such a broad range
of essays has been made available to an English-speaking audience.| |