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E-book Private Enterprise and the China Trade : Merchants and Markets in Europe, 1700-1750

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Penilaian

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When Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to reach India in 1497–1498, he had not only discovered a new sea route between Europe and Asia but also opened up a new world of commerce that would shape European consumption, manufacturing, and ultimately industrial production over the following centuries. While goods from the East had reached Europe much ear-lier via the continental ‘silk roads’, the direct maritime trade of European pow-ers with the East Indies began at the end of the fifteenth century. At first, the Spanish and Portuguese crowns established a monopoly for the lucrative mar-itime spice trade with the Far East. Soon other powers, including the French, Dutch, and English, aspired to secure a share of the immense profits that the imports of eastern consumer goods promised to any trading nation in Europe.1Several European countries organised the commercial exchange through the establishment of East India Companies, first founded by the British in 1600 and followed by the Dutch in 1602 with the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (voc).2 Private merchants were responsible for launching these enterprises, and sought royal protection and national monopolies for all direct trade between their respective states and the whole of Asia.3In contrast to the trade that developed between the North American colo-nies and the old-world centres of commerce, chief among them Amsterdam and London, Europe’s maritime trade to the East was arguably more regulated, exclusive, and hierarchical.4 However, the chartered trading Companies suc-ceeded in keeping outsiders from accessing their overseas infrastructure and home markets with only very limited success.5 Individual East India Company directors may have sought to defend their national monopolies for trade in Asian goods in public, not least by adopting a uniform mercantil-ist rhetoric and sometimes through robust intervention. Yet, such national monopolies always remained incomplete and, as this book demonstrates, even deliberately so. One key defect or asset, depending on the viewpoint, of the East India trading Companies, which proliferated in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was that they extended and partially ceded their monopoly privileges to their own employees.6 Private trade, a portmanteau term for a large, but also largely invisible commerce of Company employ-ees and their allies in Europe and Asia, both undermined and underpinned Company fortunes.This book offers original reflections on the phenomenon of private trade by investigating its practices, reach, and impact for the development of European consumer markets and for the overall expansion of the China trade in the first half of the eighteenth century. With a group of influential actors in view, act-ing as gatekeepers and mobile facilitators for the acquisition and distribution of Chinese goods, this book presents a history of economic life populated by individuals rather than by competing states or empires. The picture that emerges from the scrutiny and comparison of merchant letters, bills, packing lists, and ledgers exposes significant blind spots at the intersection of mar-itime and landlocked historiographies of commerce. European trade with China, traditionally characterised as the most heavily regulated trade of the Asian trading system, lends itself to a revisionary investigation of informal commerce and Company interests. Indeed, this book shows how competition and collusion within and from outside Company structures played a signifi-cant yet underestimated role for the functioning of individual Companies and for the expansion of trade in Asia by revealing the level of networked entre-preneurship in play. From the early seventeenth century, Europe’s East India Companies increas-ingly strove to establish direct trade with China. Seeking to replace the Portuguese, who had settled in Macao, on the fringes of the middle kingdom, the Dutch voc tried to secure access to this South Chinese port in an ultimately unsuccessful attack in 1622. The English Company, in contrast, aspired to gain a foothold on the South China coast by more peaceful means.8 However, their attempts to establish a regular trade and presence in China proved futile until the late seventeenth century, when Canton emerged as the most open and flex-ible port for foreigners. Initially, the representatives of each foreign ship had to negotiate their terms separately with Chinese officials and merchants. This process required tact, diplomacy, and flexibility on both sides.9 Only after 1700 did Europeans begin a more systematic, yearly trade with the Middle Kingdom via Canton, which eventually became the only trading place open to foreigners.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

909.7 VON p

Penerbit

Netherlands : BRILL., 2022

Deskripsi Fisik

276 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9789004504745

Klasifikasi

909.7

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

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Edisi

-

Subjek

World History 18th Century, 1700 - 1799

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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