In Chinese and Indian Merchants in Modern Asia, the contributors put together an important and lucid study of overseas Chinese and Indian merchants and their impacts on the emerging global economy from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries. In contrast to the conventional focus on the merchantsâ networks per se, the chapters of this volume uncover their ânetworking,â the process in which they constructed and utilized linkages based on the shared concepts such as caste, kin alliances, and religion. By analyzing the interactions between the merchants and the European and Japanese empires, along with Asian states, this volume provides the critical insights into the configuration of the regional economic order in the past and at present.
Chi-cheung Choi, DLITT of Tokyo University, is Professor at the History Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has published on Chinese festivals and business history, including Continuity and Change: Ethnographies of the Communal Jiao Festivals in Hong Kong (CUHK Press, 2014).
Takashi Oishi is Professor of South Asian Studies at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies. His articles on India and Indian Ocean regions have appeared in international journals including Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (Brill).
Tomoko Shiroyama, Ph.D. (History, 1999), Harvard University, is Professor of Economic History at Graduate School of Economics, the University of Tokyo. She has published monographs and many articles on the Chinese economy and businesses, intra-Asian economic relations, and global economy, including China during the Great Depression (Harvard Asia Center, 2008).
Acknowledgments
List of Figures and Tables
List of Contributors
Introduction
âChi-cheung Choi, Takashi Oishi and Tomoko Shiroyama
Part 1: Businesses and Relationships: Networking by Chinese and Indian Merchants
1 Changing Approaches to Diasporic Chinese Entrepreneurship
âHong Liu and Xin Fan
2 Hometown Connections and Chaozhou Business Networks: A Case Study of Kin Tye Lung, 1850â1950
âChi-cheung Choi
3 Overseas Chinese Remittances in the Mid-Twentieth Century
âTomoko Shiroyama
4 Family, Caste, and Beyond: The Business History of Salt Merchants in Bengal, c. 1780â1840
âSayako Kanda
Part 2: Empires, States, and Networks: The Formation of the Asian Regional Economy
Section 1: The British EmpireSection 1
5 Indian Merchant Networks and the British Empire: Instrumentality and Agency in a Global Imperial Context
âClaude Markovits 6 Bringing a Local Towns into the Global Economy: The Role of Nattukottai Chettiyars on the Malay Peninsula
âTsukasa Mizushima 7 Comparative Perspectives on the Intraregional Networks of Indian Merchants: A Review of the Match Economy from the Perspective of the State and âBig Businessâ
âTakashi Oishi
Section 2: Japan and Its Colonies
8 The Asian Merchantsâ Networks and Japanâs Trade Recovery from the Great Depression in the 1930s
âNaoto Kagotani 9 Culture, Market, and State Power: Taiwanese Investment in Southeast Asia, 1895â1945
âMan-houng Lin
Section 3: The Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China
10 Structure and Flexibility in Chinese Merchant Networks: Chinese Chambers of Commerce Overseas in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
âLaixing Chen 11 Chinese Migration in Northeast Asia, 1860â1945
âTakako Ueda Conclusion
Scholars and students of history; Economists, economics major students, business school professors and students; and Scholars of other disciplines interested in the global economy, migration, and governance, especially in Asia.