Reading Chinese Australian enterprise through insolvency and bankruptcy files, 1857–1926

Abstract

Historical scholarship on Chinese diasporic enterprise has largely rejected culturalist paradigms in favour of structuralist ones, but the question of culture remains contentious. It has also been addressed primarily via case studies of Southeast Asia’s largest and most prominent Chinese firms. Through examining the collection of 101 Chinese insolvency and bankruptcy files created in Sydney between 1857 and 1926, this paper presents an unseen view of Chinese diasporic enterprise. It argues that Chinese entrepreneurs employed strategies common across business in Australia, coined and used distinctive methods of their own and applied cultural resources imported from China within complex and dynamic Chinese Australian entrepreneurial approaches. That these were so nuanced, I suggest, reveals the considerable scope for balancing different practices in Chinese business overseas that existed beyond the most familiar examples.