Trading on Chinese shores: The Indo-China Steam Navigation Company and change in the China coastal shipping market, 1880–1900

Abstract

Using the records of the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company (ICSN) from the Jardine Matheson archive, this article shows that the performance of foreign steamships on the China coast at the end of the nineteenth century was characterised by instability and weakness. Poor market performance is then placed in the context of regionalisation using Imperial Maritime Customs data and the price and market information produced by contemporary British brokering houses and statistics institutions. This article argues that the nature of developments in international shipping meant that the regionalisation of China’s trade did not prevent its incorporation into the global shipping market. Further, market weakness is linked to the failure of ICSN and other Western firms to adapt to a changing paradigm in shipping practice in East Asia. This paradigm is discussed in terms of a development towards a modern and open shipping market on the China coast.