inter-Asian Trade Research Articles

Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation 1400–1700; Family Firms and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe: The Business, Bankruptcy and Resilience of the Höchstetters of Augsburg

Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation 1400–1700; Family Firms and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe: The Business, Bankruptcy and Resilience of the Höchstetters of Augsburg

Beyond Bukhara: Trade, identity and interregional exchange across Asia

ABSTRACTThis article explores the nature of inter-Asian trade dynamics through a consideration of the role played by traders from northern Afghanistan’s Central Asian borderlands in the Chinese international trade city of Yiwu. It explores the role that traders from this region have played in commercial exchanges involving China, the Arabian Peninsula and a range of settings in West Asia. In addition to documenting the inter-Asian scope of these traders’ activities, the article also addresses the shifting nature of their identity formations in relationship to successive waves of migration. The traders often identify themselves in relationship to ethno-national identity categories (Turkmen, Uzbek and Tajik) that are politically salient in Central Asia and Afghanistan today. At the same time, the traders also emphasise their being from families that migrated from the territories of the Emirate of Bukhara during the early years of communist rule in the 1920s and 1930s.

Commodity Chains, Mercantile Networks and the Early Years of the Batavia Firm of Maclaine Watson (1820–1840)

This paper discusses the foundational history of a major European mercantile house in colonial South East Asia in the context of commercial developments that had both a regional and global reach. In so doing, it seeks to relate a local and historically particular event to a broader world pattern defined by three rapidly evolving commodity chains, based respectively on the production, distribution and consumption of cotton goods, coffee and opium. In this context, the paper argues that the hard-won commercial success of the firm in question resulted from a significant degree of withdrawal from the bilateral ties between colony and metropolis inherent in the cotton and coffee commodity chains. In their place, the firm had recourse to several varieties of the inter-Asian trade, of which the opium commodity chain constituted the key dimension.

MERCHANTS, MARKETS, AND THE STATE

The end of the cold war witnessed the emergence of a commercial web sprawling from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in western China and extending into Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), Pakistan, and Russia. Running parallel to the state-managed exchange in hydrocarbons, raw materials, technology, and infrastructure, this new Eurasian trade had an informal component as everyday consumer items manufactured in China were imported into neighboring countries, bypassing formal regulatory mechanisms. This inter-Asian trade began as shuttle trading by itinerant merchants for local markets; by the mid 1990s, shuttle trading was overshadowed by largescale export for national markets in neighboring countries without losing its informal character. This informality extending across national boundaries defined the post–cold war commerce in innermost Asia; at the same time, it also signaled a return to pre-cold war trading structures. Moving away from the “retreat of the state” thesis that found traction following the cold war, the author attributes informality in this inter-Asian trade to three factors: (1) a restructuring of state power where informal trade was a new comparative advantage sought in an evolving geopolitical climate; (2) the actors in this inter-Asian trade—party and regional officials in China, along with traders and intermediaries—who found and exercised agency through this exchange; and (3) a chain of inter-locking, commercial macro-regions, which are economically sustainable and which transcended international boundaries. Working in conjunction, these factors constitute a dynamic inter-Asian trade and challenge static state imaginaries of a “New Silk Road” or “Eurasian Continental Bridge.”

The Asian Mediterranean: port cities and trading networks in China, Japan and Southeast Asia, 13th-21st century

Contents: Foreword Introduction: The Mediterraneans of Europe and Asia Part I: Two Models of Expansion Without Borders: The European Mediterraneans 1. The Mediterraneans and Global Expansion 2. Long Distance Trade and Urban Sovereignty: The Competitive Model of the Mediterranean at the Time of the Repubbliche Marinare 3. The Hanseatic League: A Model of Cooperation on the Baltic Sea Part II: Early Outlines of an Asian Mediterranean: The Predominance of Tributary Trade 4. Asian Trading Kingdoms and Independent Urban Entities 5. The Organisation of Trade in Asia: The Weight of Government Monopolies 6. Tributary Trade and Unofficial Trade 7. Japan's Place in Inter-Asian Trade: Resisting Chinese Hegemony 8. The Asian Maritime System Part III: The Overlapping of Western and Asian Trading Networks 9. European Expansion or Asian Force of Attraction? 10. Forced Openings of Treaty Ports 11. The Cosmopolitanism of Asian Trade Networks Part IV: The Arena of Re-globalisation: The Second Birth of the Asian Mediterranean 12. Chinese Coastal Cities Confronting the Challenge of Globalisation 13. The East Asian Manufacturing Belt 14. Hong Kong versus Shanghai: Rivalry between Middlemen 15. Competition between Logistic Hubs in Asia 16. Hong Kong, Shanghai, or Peking: Where Will China's International Financial Centre be Located? Part V: The Asian Mediterranean and the Challenges to State Sovereignty 17. Trans-national Regions and the East Asian Economic Corridor: An Asian Mediterranean 18. The Asian Mediterranean and the Reshaping of China's Economic Space 19. Local Protectionism and Trade Wars: Market Fragmentation in China 20. China's Power Base Shifts Back Towards the Sea Conclusion Bibliography Index

The VOC in Burma: 1634 — 1680

This article is intended to show that the archives of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) at the General State Archives (ARA), The Hague, The Netherlands, are a rich source of information on seventeenth century Burma. Because this unearthed data is mostly about commerce, this paper deals with the VOC s trade with Burma. What has come to light is that the Dutch factories in Burma were an important and integral part of the VOC s network of trade, seeing that the profits helped to fund the purchase of Indian textiles that were the backbone of much of the Dutch inter-Asian trade. The Dutch, moreover, sold Burmese export products profitably from Persia to Japan and Holland. In the end, the VOC s establishment in Burma became the victim of a general change in Dutch fortunes when forces in both Europe and the Far East began working against the Dutch East India Company.

Between Batavia and the Cape: Shipping Patterns of the Dutch East India Company

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) maintained a vast network of shipping connections with Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The extent of these connections was determined by the quantity of goods which was to be transported from Asia to Holland, and through the demand for ships in the inter-Asian trade. The periods of time and the ways in which the Holland-to-Asia connections were maintained did not necessarily depend upon commercial considerations. Considerations of safety, prevention of smuggling and above all the wind and current systems played an equally important role. Only recently has a survey become available of all journeys made to and from Asia during the Company's existence. It takes into account 4,730 outward-bound voyages and 3,358 homeward-bound voyages in the years 1602 to 1795. For the greatest portion of voyages, Batavia was both the destination and the port of departure. Columns I and II in Tables 1 and 2 will give one an overview. The preponderance of journeys from Batavia tapered off in time, mostly because of direct voyages made to Holland from other parts of Asia, such as Ceylon, Bengal, and China. Yet Batavia remained the metropolis, and where, at its zenith from around 1720 to 1740, an average of 33 ships per year arrived and 23 to 24 departed for the mother country. In the years thereafter, only the frequency of the return journeys diminished appreciably.

Monopoly and Free Trade in Dutch-Asian Commercial Policy: Debate and Controversy within the VOC

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) secured in March 1602, by charter from the States General of the Netherlands, a monopoly of eastern trade. Throughout its history of two centuries, it sought zealously to maintain and safeguard this monopoly against all interlopers and against any attempts at private trade by its own officers. With its establishment and expansion in the east the Company extended this concept of monopoly to embrace as much of Asian trade as it could master. It developed early the policy of acquiring a monopoly of certain key commodities of Asian trade by controlling the areas of production and hence the supply. It soon went further and declared a total monopoly of the entire seaborne trade of specific trading areas by virtue of conquest, enforced contracts and naval domination. Thus the close monopoly of the Europe/Asia trade and of large areas of their inter-Asian trade constituted a commercial system to which the Company's Directors and its officers in Asia became closely attached and it formed a major plank in its commercial policy in the two centuries of its existence. Through this period, its energies and exertions were largely directed to the acquisition and maintenance of this many-sided monopoly system. Monopolistic policies and practices in trading dominated the thinking and activities of the Company at all levels of operation. The VOC was held as the archetype of such a trading body.

The Accuracy of International Trade Data: The Case of Southeast Asian Countries

Abstract Among available economic data of less developed countries, foreign trade statistics are known to be most reliable and are used extensively. This paper, concentrating on Southeast Asian countries, examines the extent and variation of discrepancy in export and import recordings of their own and of their trading partners. The ratio of corresponding trade records exhibit varying heights and irregular patterns suggesting a larger degree of inaccuracy than generally assumed. Inter-Asian trade of Southeast Asian countries show a greater discrepancy than that of their trade with developed countries, and the trade ratio variance of the former is significantly larger than that of the latter at the 5% level. The rank coefficient of correlation between the level of discrepancy and the absolute size of trade value is found to be insignificant for most countries. Also the adjustment of trade figures by exchange rate overvaluation does not narrow the inconsistency in the bilateral trade recordings. The recordings of commodity-by-country trade data show a larger discrepancy than that of total trade.

The Accuracy of International Trade Data: The Case of Southeast Asian Countries

Abstract Among available economic data of less developed countries, foreign trade statistics are known to be most reliable and are used extensively. This paper, concentrating on Southeast Asian countries, examines the extent and variation of discrepancy in export and import recordings of their own and of their trading partners. The ratio of corresponding trade records exhibit varying heights and irregular patterns suggesting a larger degree of inaccuracy than generally assumed. Inter-Asian trade of Southeast Asian countries show a greater discrepancy than that of their trade with developed countries, and the trade ratio variance of the former is significantly larger than that of the latter at the 5% level. The rank coefficient of correlation between the level of discrepancy and the absolute size of trade value is found to be insignificant for most countries. Also the adjustment of trade figures by exchange rate overvaluation does not narrow the inconsistency in the bilateral trade recordings. The recordings of commodity-by-country trade data show a larger discrepancy than that of total trade.

European Influence in South-East Asia, c.1500–1630

The more precise definition of the European impact upon South-East Asian trade and society prior to the nineteenth century has become an important pre-occupation of historians of that region in recent years. The hypothesis of J.C. van Leur that “modern capitalism” took shape only after 1820 impelled him to suggest an equality or near-equality between Asian and European commercial organization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A corollary of this view was his negative assessment of the Portuguese achievement in South-East Asia, his refusal to accord them technical or organizational superiority except in a limited military sense, his insistence upon the small and unimportant Portuguese share of inter-Asian trade, and his denunciation of the Portuguese as little better than a band of condottieri who lacked an effective central administration.

The Role of Indian Textiles in Southeast Asian Trade in the Seventeenth Century

The role of Indian textiles in Southeast Asian trade in the seventeenth century was important in three ways. First, there was a great, almost unlimited, demand for these goods in all the Southeast Asian markets; second, they constituted the principal medium of exchange for the trade of Southeast Asia with the outside world; and third, they shaped the pattern of Inter-Asian trade of the European Companies, which laid the foundation of their wealth and commerce and later political power in the eighteenth century. The first two were important for Southeast Asian history only, but the last was of very great importance from the point of view of world history, not less important, in its far-reaching effects, than the voyages of discovery at the beginning of the modern period or the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution in the eighteenth century. The poor Indian weavers shaped the course of world history by unconsciously laying the foundation of British and Dutch colonial empires.