Commodities, Ports and Asian Maritime Trade Since 1750

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

   PDF

2. Commodities, Ports and Asian Maritime Trade Since 1750: The Foundations of the Modern Asian ‘Economic Miracle’?

   • Ulbe Bosma, Anthony Webster

   Pages 1-16

3. Asia in the Growth of World Trade: A Re-interpretation of the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’

   • Kaoru Sugihara

   Pages 17-58

4. On the Edge of Asia: Maritime Trade in East Indonesia, Early Seventeenth to Mid-twentieth Century

   • Heather Sutherland

   Pages 59-78

5. Semarang, a Colonial Provincial Capital and Port City in Java, c.1775

   • Gerrit Knaap

   Pages 79-94

6. Revisiting the ‘Decline of Surat’: Maritime Trade and the Port Complex of Gujarat in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

   • Ghulam A. Nadri

   Pages 95-111

7. Western Merchants in the Foreign Settlements of Japan (c.1850–1890)

   • Ferry de Goey

   Pages 112-126

8. Neglected Orphans and Absent Parents: The European Mercantile Houses of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Java

   • G. Roger Knight

   Pages 127-143

9. Building Intra-Asian and Transcontinental Mercantile Networks in the Age of the British East India Company: The Rise and Fall of the House of John Palmer

   • Anthony Webster

   Pages 144-164

10. Linking Global and Local Networks of Credit and Remittances: Ma Tsui Chiu’s Financial Operations in Hong Kong, 1900s–1950s

    • Pui-Tak Lee

    Pages 165-178

11. British Exchange Banks in the International Trade of Asia from 1850 to 1890

    • Tomotaka Kawamura

    Pages 179-197

12. Transcending the Empire: Western Merchant Houses and Local Capital in the Indian Cotton Trade (1850s–1930s)

    • Christof Dejung

    Pages 198-217

13. Holding Back the Tide: Liverpool Shipping, Gentlemanly Capitalism and Intra-Asian Trade in the Twentieth Century

    • Nicholas J. White, Catherine Evans

    Pages 218-240

14. Pursuit of Profit in the Shadow of Decolonisation: Indonesia in the 1950s

    • J. Thomas Lindblad

    Pages 241-257

15. The Chinese and Indian Corporate Economy: A Radical Construction of Law, the State and Corporations

    • Rajeswary Ampalavanar Brown

    Pages 258-285

16. Back Matter

    Pages 286-318

    PDF

This book examines the role of mercantile networks in linking Asian economies to the global economy. It contains fourteen contributions on East, Southeast and South Asia covering the period from 1750 to the present.

• capitalism
• colonization
• decolonization
• India
• Indonesia
• trade

“The essays constituting this volume offer fresh perspectives on Asian maritime trade, which may urge both current and historical debates forward. One of the most valuable contributions of the volume towards global and Asian economic history is its chronology … . opens the field for a wider study of multiple historical interactions that have helped form the Asian maritime economy up to the present day.” (Wim De Winter, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 90 (1), December, 2017)

• International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

  Ulbe Bosma

• VU University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

  Ulbe Bosma

• Northumbria University, UK

  Anthony Webster

Ulbe Bosma is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History, the Netherlands, and Professor of International Comparative Social History at VU University, the Netherlands. His main fields of interest are the histories of labour and commodity production and international labour migration. His most recent monograph is The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia: Industrial Production, 1770-2010 (2013).

Anthony Webster is Professor in History at Northumbria University, UK. His main fields of interest are British business history in Asia in the 19th century, and the history of the British and global co-operative movements. His most recent publications are The Twilight of the East India Company (2009) and Building Co-operation (2013) with John Wilson and Rachael Vorberg-Rugh.

Policies and ethics