Modern Global Trade and the Asian Regional Economy [Hardcover]

This volume undertakes the important task of envisioning a regional history of Asia based on its unique internal characteristics, going beyond the usual West/non-West dichotomy. The regional trade zone of modern Asia was debated in the 1980s. Since then, Japanese historians of the socioeconomic history of Asia have explored how the traditional trade relations that had developed over the centuries in Asia responded to the so-called Western impacts in the mid-nineteenth century, including the opening of ports and tariff reduction under free trade regimes and the advance in transportation technology. Against this academic background, the four chapters in this volume examine how overseas Chinese, some of the key actors in regional and local trade, dealt with their Western counterparts, and how Asian commodities penetrated other parts of the world through the newly created web of global commerce. The book reviews discuss theoretical issues to explore various connections among and comparisons of the economies in the region. This volume provides readers with critical insights into the Asian region in the past and present by investigating the long-term trajectory of its linkages to the global economy.

Part I Asian Merchants and Commodities in the Global Trade of the Modern Era.- 1 Dutch Bank Transactions with Chinese Traders in the Dutch East Indies:The Java Sugar Trade and the 1917 Sugar Crisis (Yuko Kudo).- 2 The Growth of Intra-Southeast Asian Trade in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Role of Middlemen in Singapore (Atsushi Kobayashi).- 3 The British Atlantic Slave Trade and Indian Cotton Textiles: The Case of Thomas Lumley & Co.(Kazuo Kobayashi).- 4 The Export of Indian guin?e to Senegal via France: Inter-colonial trade in the long nineteenth century (Toyomu Masaki).- Part II Book Reviews.- 5 Review of Osamu SaitM, Hikaku Keizai Hattenron: Rekishiteki ApurMchi (Comparative Economic DevellS�