The Remarkable Hybrid Maritime World of Hong Kong and the West River Region in the Late Qing Period

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Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004341161
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis The Remarkable Hybrid Maritime World of Hong Kong and the West River Region in the Late Qing Period by : Sze Hang Choi

Download or read book The Remarkable Hybrid Maritime World of Hong Kong and the West River Region in the Late Qing Period written by Sze Hang Choi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-07-03 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the hybrid maritime world of Hong Kong, Pearl River Delta and West River in the last two decades of the late Qing period, this work tells a vivid trading and competition story of previously unknown private Chinese traders and junk masters. This challenges the prevailing view of the domination of China’s maritime trade by modern foreign steamships. Making use of unpublished Kowloon Maritime Customs and British diplomatic records in the late 19th and early 20th century, Henry Sze Hang Choi convincingly shows how these private Chinese traders flexibly adopted to the foreign-dominated maritime customs agencies and treaty port system in defending their Chinese homeland stronghold against the invasion of foreign economic power.

A Young Englishman in Victorian Hong Kong

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Publisher : ANU Press
ISBN 13 : 1760465925
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (64 download)

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Book Synopsis A Young Englishman in Victorian Hong Kong by : Benjamin Penny

Download or read book A Young Englishman in Victorian Hong Kong written by Benjamin Penny and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2023-10-06 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In August 1855, 16-year-old Chaloner Alabaster left England for Hong Kong, to take up a position as a student interpreter in the China Consular Service. He would stay for almost 40 years, climbing the rungs of the service and eventually becoming consul-general of Canton. When he retired he returned to England and received a knighthood. He died in 1898. Throughout his adult life, Alabaster kept diaries. In the first four volumes of these diaries, collected here by Benjamin Penny, the teenage Alabaster recorded his thoughts and observations, told himself anecdotes, and exploded in outbursts of anger and frustration. He was young and enthusiastic, and the everyday sights, sounds and smells of Hong Kong were novel to him. He describes how the Chinese people around him ironed clothes, dried flour and threshed rice; how they gambled, prepared their food and made bean curd; and what opera, new year festivities and the birthday of the Heavenly Empress were like. Like many a young Victorian, he was also a keen observer of natural history, fascinated by fireflies and ants, corals and sea slugs, and the volcanic origins of the landscape. Alabaster’s diaries are a unique, vibrant and riveting record of life in the young British colony on the cusp of the Second Opium War. With A Young Englishman in Victorian Hong Kong, Penny sheds new light on the history of the region.

Banking in China (1890s–1940s)

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000054454
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Banking in China (1890s–1940s) by : Hubert Bonin

Download or read book Banking in China (1890s–1940s) written by Hubert Bonin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-08 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1890s to the 1940s, French State and entrepreneurial companies were enticed to promote French interests, beyond mere colonial targets, for the sake of economic patriotism. Chinese concessions, not including Hong Kong, were thus inserted into geo-economic moves, and French stakeholders asserted their philosophy of competition, and displayed their means of influence and investment. In this book, the author assesses the challenges which confronted French actors in the face of powerful British imperial action overseas, all the more so because German Belgian, Japanese, and then also North-American competitors joined the fray. The book targets three concessions: Canton/Guangzhou, Tientsin/Tianjin, and Hankeou/Wuhan because of their significance in the emergence of a modern economy in the country. The three main sections of the book explore the position of French stakeholders, mainly businessmen, merchant houses, bankers, and a few industrialists, in these three port-cities and China overall. The chapters gauge their capital of influence and networking, commercial tools, and banking skills in the face of competition, the hardships of crossing the changes in economic productive systems or clusters in the various port-cities and their areas, rich with commercial offshoots. Also, several chapters underscore the uncertainties caused by geopolitical and military events in China. For each of the three concessions, commercial and banking systems, assessments of the successes and limits of the French bankers and merchants are investigated, with the aim of evaluating the reality of French entrepreneurialism and power in the regions prospected by the offshoots of French capitalism. The book will be an invaluable resource for academics interested in the history of banking and finance, business, entrepreneurship, colonialism and "economic patriotism" in Chinese history, in geo-economics and in connected history.

The Hong Kong-China Nexus

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108899501
Total Pages : 151 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (88 download)

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Book Synopsis The Hong Kong-China Nexus by : John M Carroll

Download or read book The Hong Kong-China Nexus written by John M Carroll and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-05 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Occupy Central/Umbrella Movement of 2014 and the anti-extradition protests of 2019 revealed how much Hong Kong's relationship with mainland China has deteriorated since the former British colony returned to Chinese sovereignty in July 1997. With mutual distrust and suspicion at an all-time high, many Hong Kong people have become increasingly hostile toward the Chinese government and the mainland in general, identifying themselves as Hongkongers rather than as Chinese. Yet, as John Carroll shows, for more than 150 years, colonial Hong Kong and China not only coexisted with but benefited each other, even during the anti-imperialist campaigns of the Republican and Communist eras. The porous boundary between Hong Kong and China enabled the two to use each other economically, politically, socially, and culturally. The Hong Kong–China nexus, although firmly embedded in global dynamics of colonialism, Cold War politics, and capitalist expansion, defies many common assumptions about nationalism, colonialism, and decolonization.

Opportunity in Crisis

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Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 168417631X
Total Pages : 375 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (841 download)

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Book Synopsis Opportunity in Crisis by : Steven B. Miles

Download or read book Opportunity in Crisis written by Steven B. Miles and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-03-07 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opportunity in Crisis explores the history of late Qing Cantonese migration along the West River basin during war and reconstruction and the impact of those developments on the relationship between state and local elites on the Guangxi frontier. By situating Cantonese upriver and overseas migration within the same framework, Steven Miles reconceives the late Qing as an age of Cantonese diasporic expansion rather than one of state decline. The book opens with crisis: rising levels of violence targeting Cantonese riverine commerce, much of it fomented by a geographically mobile Cantonese underclass. Miles then narrates the ensuing history of a Cantonese rebel regime established in Guangxi in the wake of the Taiping uprising. Subsequent chapters discuss opportunities created by this crisis and its aftermath and demonstrate important continuities and changes across the mid-century divide. With the reassertion of Qing control, Cantonese commercial networks in Guangxi expanded dramatically and became an increasingly important source of state revenue. Through its reliance on Hunanese and Cantonese to reconquer Guangxi, the Qing state allowed these diasporic cohorts more flexibility in colonizing the provincial administration and examination apparatus, helping to recreate a single polity on the eve of China’s transition from empire to nation-state.

French Banking and Entrepreneurialism in China and Hong Kong

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429560095
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (295 download)

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Book Synopsis French Banking and Entrepreneurialism in China and Hong Kong by : Hubert Bonin

Download or read book French Banking and Entrepreneurialism in China and Hong Kong written by Hubert Bonin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-07 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many books have addressed the economic and financial history of Hong Kong, and the imperialist conflicts in the key Chinese port-cities but very few books have explored French initiatives and performance in this area, beyond diplomacy, geopolitics or cultural issues. In this book, Hubert Bonin confronts arguments about "the great divergence", "the first globalisation", and forms of "economic patriotism". He gauges the competitive edge of French companies and banks, their struggle with British domination (HBSC, Chartered, shipping, trade houses/hongs) and their resistance against competitors from other countries (Japan, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, USA, or Russia). The book delves into studies of management abroad, therefore mixing broad geo-economic issues with precise business history and deep banking history. The connections between French interests in China and Hong Kong and the colony of Indochina are established too. A second part of the book is dedicated to the case study of Hong Kong, as the British colony acted as a hub for Asian and European interests at the heart of connections with mainland China and some neighbouring territories (Indochina, etc.). This is essential reading for academics interested in banking and business history, the history of entrepreneurship, as well as, those involved in the contemporary history of China and Hong Kong, in the assessment of world-wide geo-economic competition between European powers in Asia (Great-Britain, and France), and in the first stages of economic "modernity", along European models, in emerging modern China.

Mass Capture

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Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0228009324
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Mass Capture by : Lily Cho

Download or read book Mass Capture written by Lily Cho and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the terms of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, Canada implemented a vast protocol for acquiring detailed personal information about Chinese migrants. Among the bewildering array of state documents used in this effort were CI 9s: issued from 1885 to 1953, they included date of birth, place of residence, occupation, identifying marks, known associates, and, significantly, identification photographs. The originals were transferred to microfilm and destroyed in 1963; more than 41,000 grainy reproductions of CI 9s remain. Lily Cho explores how the CI 9s functioned as a form of surveillance and a process of mass capture that produced non-citizens, revealing the surprising dynamism of non-citizenship constantly regulated and monitored, made and remade, by an anxious state. The first mass use of identification photography in Canada, they make up the largest archive of images of Chinese migrants in the country, including people who stood no chance of being photographed otherwise. But CI 9s generated far more information than could be processed, and there is nothing straightforward about the knowledge that they purported to contain. Cho finds traces of alternate forms of kinship in the archive as well as evidence of the ways that families were separated. In attending to the particularities of these images and documents, Mass Capture uncovers the alternative story that lies in the refusals and resistances enacted by the mass captured. Illustrated with painstakingly reconstituted digital reproductions of the microfilm record, Mass Capture reclaims the CI 9s as more than documents of racist repression, suggesting the possibilities for beauty and dignity in the archive, for captivation as well as capture.

The Deep Roots of Modern Democracy

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009100378
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Deep Roots of Modern Democracy by : John Gerring

Download or read book The Deep Roots of Modern Democracy written by John Gerring and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-25 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the deep roots of modern democracy, focusing on geography and long-term patterns of global diffusion.

One Country, Two Systems

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Publisher : Open Dissertation Press
ISBN 13 : 9781361031933
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (319 download)

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Book Synopsis One Country, Two Systems by : Sixing Cai

Download or read book One Country, Two Systems written by Sixing Cai and published by Open Dissertation Press. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation, "One Country, Two Systems: Shipping and Maritime Customs Affairs in Hong Kong and Guangdong Province (1897-1910)" by Sixing, Cai, 蔡思行, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Ever since the establishment of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs (CIMC) in Shanghai in 1853, the CIMC had operated different foreign-controlled custom stations at treaty ports which existed alongside the native customs and Likin stations controlled by the Qing government at non-treaty ports. Foreign steamships and Chinese junks were under the jurisdiction of the foreign and native customs respectively. This created the norm of a dual maritime customs system in China in the late Qing period, when foreign economic influences penetrated almost every sector of the Chinese economy. By adding in the context of high imperialism in China, this dissertation studies both competitive and co-operative interaction between different players in the maritime affairs of Hong Kong and Guangdong province during the turning points of the opening of the West River in 1897 and the signing of the Mackay Treaty in 1902. Through case studies of foreign-flagged Chinese junks, inland steam navigation and piracy on the West River, this dissertation provides concrete insights into daily dealings between Chinese and foreigners in the scattered streams and creeks of the Canton River and the West River deltas, and the native-foreign water borderline near Hong Kong. This demonstrates the importance of the customs system in China, which affected both Chinese and foreign patterns of shipping, with only vessels of a hybrid character, namely foreign-flagged Chinese junks and Chinese steam tugs, being able to win in the competition for coastal and inland river trade with Chinese junks and foreign steamers possessing only a single identity. Since there are no records of private Chinese junks and Chinese steam tugs that survive today, by chiefly analysing the unpublished and under-researched correspondence of the Kowloon Customs during the period under review, this dissertation fills a research gap in maritime history that demonstrates the evolving development of Chinese shipping, from Chinese junks to Chinese steam tugs, in Southern China during the last decade of the Qing dynasty. DOI: 10.5353/th_b5043416 Subjects: Customs administration - China - Guangdong Sheng - History Customs administration - China - Hong Kong - History

The Blue Frontier

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108424619
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis The Blue Frontier by : Ronald C. Po

Download or read book The Blue Frontier written by Ronald C. Po and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-23 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that Qing China was not just a continental empire, but a maritime power protecting its interests at sea.

The Qing Opening to the Ocean

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Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824837924
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis The Qing Opening to the Ocean by : Gang Zhao

Download or read book The Qing Opening to the Ocean written by Gang Zhao and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2013-02-28 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did China drive or resist the early wave of globalization? Some scholars insist that China contributed nothing to the rise of the global economy that began around 1500. Others have placed China at the center of global integration. Neither side, though, has paid attention to the complex story of China’s maritime policies. Drawing on sources from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the West, this important new work systematically explores the evolution of imperial Qing maritime policy from 1684 to 1757 and sets its findings in the context of early globalization. Gang Zhao argues that rather than constrain private maritime trade, globalization drove it forward, linking the Song and Yuan dynasties to a dynamic world system. As bold Chinese merchants began to dominate East Asian trade, officials and emperors came to see private trade as the solution to the daunting economic and social challenges of the day. The ascent of maritime business convinced the Kangzi emperor to open the coast to international trade, putting an end to the tribute trade system. Zhao’s study details China’s unique contribution to early globalization, the pattern of which differs significantly from the European experience. It offers impressive insights into the rise of the Asian trade network, the emergence of Shanghai as Asia’s commercial hub, and the spread of a regional Chinese diaspora. To understand the place of China in the early modern world, how modernity came to China, and early globalization and the rise of the Asian trade network, The Qing Opening to the Ocean is essential reading.

Wei Yuan and China's Rediscovery of the Maritime World

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Publisher : Harvard Univ Asia Center
ISBN 13 : 9780674948556
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (485 download)

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Book Synopsis Wei Yuan and China's Rediscovery of the Maritime World by : Jane Kate Leonard

Download or read book Wei Yuan and China's Rediscovery of the Maritime World written by Jane Kate Leonard and published by Harvard Univ Asia Center. This book was released on 1984 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Strong to Save: Maritime Mission in Hong Kong from Whampoa Reach to the Mariners' Club

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Author :
Publisher : City University of HK Press
ISBN 13 : 962937305X
Total Pages : 672 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (293 download)

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Book Synopsis Strong to Save: Maritime Mission in Hong Kong from Whampoa Reach to the Mariners' Club by : Stephen Davies

Download or read book Strong to Save: Maritime Mission in Hong Kong from Whampoa Reach to the Mariners' Club written by Stephen Davies and published by City University of HK Press. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing its origins back to 1822 in Whampoa, the Mariners’ Club in Hong Kong was established to meet a specific need for an Anglo-Chinese society defined by that most dubious of activities, seafaring. Its creation was anything but straightforward, and in this can be seen the mutable and often tortuous relations between the various religious bodies, the local population, the transient sailors, the emerging captains of industry, and the growing regulatory reach of the colonial government. The club evolved through many embodiments and witnessed the growth of Hong Kong from a collection of mat-sheds on the foreshore, through colony to its current status. Throughout its turbulent past it has been occasionally marginalized but has always served as an important base for the key actors in the main commercial activity in Hong Kong: seafarers. This is a history of one of the most enduring institutions of Hong Kong, and the first of its kind. Using the Club’s own records as well as a wide range of sources both from within Hong Kong and from the seafaring world at large, this is a comprehensive account of the life of the Missions, the tenancy of the different chaplains, managers, and stewards, the changes in seafaring practices and shipping, and the transformation of Hong Kong itself.

Whampoa and the Canton Trade

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Publisher : Hong Kong University Press
ISBN 13 : 9888528351
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (885 download)

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Book Synopsis Whampoa and the Canton Trade by : Paul A. Van Dyke

Download or read book Whampoa and the Canton Trade written by Paul A. Van Dyke and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-20 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul A. Van Dyke’s new book, Whampoa and the Canton Trade: Life and Death in a Chinese Port, 1700–1842, authoritatively corrects misconceptions about how the Qing government treated foreigners when it controlled all trade in the Guangzhou port. Van Dyke reappraises the role of Whampoa in the system—a port twenty kilometres away from Guangzhou—and reassesses the government’s attitude towards foreigners, which was much more accommodating than previous research suggested. In fact, Van Dyke shows that foreigners were not bound by local laws and were given freedom of movement around Whampoa and Canton to the extent that they were treated with leniency even when found in off-limit places. Whampoa and the Canton Trade recounts the lives of seamen who travelled half-way around the globe at great risk and lived through a historic period that would become the framework for subsequent encounters between China and the rest of the world. Were it not for the exchanges between the major powers and the Qing empire, the world—as we know it—would be a rather different place. Hence, Van Dyke’s command of data mining shows that Whampoa was a key pillar in the Canton System and, thus, in the making of the modern world economy. ‘Paul Van Dyke has transformed our understanding of the Canton trade. In this book, he brings his enormous knowledge of the primary sources to this study of Whampoa, the anchorage on the Pearl River used by all foreign ships when that trade was confined to the port of Canton, presenting “a view of the trade from the common seaman’s perspective.”’ —Evelyn S. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh ‘Paul A. Van Dyke wonderfully brings to life the drudgery and danger faced by the diverse men who worked the ships of the Canton trade. He skilfully fashions vivid images of the texture of their lives from danger to boredom, from illnesses and accidents to drinking and whoring.’ —R. Bin Wong, UCLA

The Dragon and the Crown

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Publisher : Hong Kong University Press
ISBN 13 : 9622099556
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis The Dragon and the Crown by : Stanley S.K. Kwan

Download or read book The Dragon and the Crown written by Stanley S.K. Kwan and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his autobiography Stanley S.K. Kwan discusses his roots, Hong Kong after the War, Hang Seng Bank, the new China and home and country.

Zheng He’s Maritime Voyages (1405-1433) and China’s Relations with the Indian Ocean World

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Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004281045
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Zheng He’s Maritime Voyages (1405-1433) and China’s Relations with the Indian Ocean World by :

Download or read book Zheng He’s Maritime Voyages (1405-1433) and China’s Relations with the Indian Ocean World written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zheng He’s Maritime Voyages (1405-1433) and China’s Relations with the Indian Ocean World: A Multilingual Bibliography provides a multidisciplinary guide to publications on this great navigator’s activities and their impact on Chinese and world history. Admiral Zheng He commanded the fifteenth-century world’s largest fleet. In the course of seven voyages made between 1405 and 1433, his massive ships visited over thirty present-day countries in Asia and Africa. Those voyages reflected and reinforced the development of complex networks of trade, migration, cultural exchange, and political interactions between China and the Indian Ocean world. This bibliography lists sources in thirteen languages, including both scholarly studies and popular works like Gavin Menzies’s controversial bestsellers claiming the Chinese sailed around the world before Columbus. Relevant translations, transliterations and annotations are provided to aid the reader.

Chinese Middlemen in Hong Kong's Colonial Economy, 1830-1890

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134846819
Total Pages : 189 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (348 download)

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Book Synopsis Chinese Middlemen in Hong Kong's Colonial Economy, 1830-1890 by : Kaori Abe

Download or read book Chinese Middlemen in Hong Kong's Colonial Economy, 1830-1890 written by Kaori Abe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-14 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The traditional view of the Hong Kong colonial economy is that it was dominated by Western companies, notably the great British merchant houses, and that these firms enlisted support from Chinese middlemen – the compradors – who were effectively agents working for the Western firms. This book, which presents a comprehensive overview of the compradors and their economic and social functions over the full period of colonial rule in Hong Kong, puts forward a different view. It shows that compradors existed before the beginning of British rule in 1842, discusses their economic and social roles in the colonial economy, roles which included activities for Western firms, for the government and to support compradors’ own commercial activities, and outlines how the comprador system evolved. Overall, the book demonstrates that the compradors played a key role in the formation and development of Hong Kong’s economy and society, that they were active participants, not just passive servants of Western companies.