Miao Liu and Chunming Wu
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780813054766
- eISBN:
- 9780813053493
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813054766.003.0007
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Historical Archaeology
The southeast coast of China played a key role in the ancient maritime history of East Asia. During the tenth to sixteenth centuries there was a common local maritime cultural community inside the ...
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The southeast coast of China played a key role in the ancient maritime history of East Asia. During the tenth to sixteenth centuries there was a common local maritime cultural community inside the South China Sea. Since the beginning of the sixteenth century, the maritime trading contact with Europeans had emerged, with Portuguese and Spanish navigation to eastern Asia, showing the new era of maritime history of early globalization. Since the Spanish conquest of America, European settlers mined and transported silver abundantly into Asia for trade. In the last 50 years, Chinese archaeologists have discovered hundreds of historical silver coins—which were originally from Spain and Spanish colonial settlements in the Americas and thus related to this globalizing trade—in the southeast coast of China. This chapter puts together a description of these materials, and so, for the first time, sheds a light to the early maritime trade between East and West.Less
The southeast coast of China played a key role in the ancient maritime history of East Asia. During the tenth to sixteenth centuries there was a common local maritime cultural community inside the South China Sea. Since the beginning of the sixteenth century, the maritime trading contact with Europeans had emerged, with Portuguese and Spanish navigation to eastern Asia, showing the new era of maritime history of early globalization. Since the Spanish conquest of America, European settlers mined and transported silver abundantly into Asia for trade. In the last 50 years, Chinese archaeologists have discovered hundreds of historical silver coins—which were originally from Spain and Spanish colonial settlements in the Americas and thus related to this globalizing trade—in the southeast coast of China. This chapter puts together a description of these materials, and so, for the first time, sheds a light to the early maritime trade between East and West.
Francesca Trivellato, Leor Halevi, and Catia Antunes (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199379187
- eISBN:
- 9780199379224
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199379187.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History, History of Religion
This book focuses on trade across religious boundaries around the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans during the second millennium, when transportation technology was fragile and ...
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This book focuses on trade across religious boundaries around the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans during the second millennium, when transportation technology was fragile and religion often a primary marker of identity. It examines a wide range of commercial exchanges from first encounters between strangers who worshipped different gods and originated in different continents to everyday transactions between merchants who lived in the same city yet belonged to diverse confessional groups. Risk and uncertainty often characterized cross-cultural ventures. The threat of violence frequently accompanied such exchanges, too, particularly in places where states lacked institutions to enforce contracts. Still, through gift-giving ceremonies, with the assistance of merchants’ networks, or as a consequence of piracy or pilgrimage, cross-cultural trade took place. The volume’s chapters, written by an international team of historians, shed light on the very mechanisms that facilitated these extraordinary exchanges between members of different religions. They point, for example, to methods for calculating the degree of risk associated with different kinds of economic transactions, the minting of local coins to conform to foreign currency standards, and a pragmatic legalistic approach to religious constraints. They reveal the political, economic, and juridical underpinnings of cross-cultural trade as it emerged or developed at various times and places. They also reflect on the cultural and religious significance of the passage of strange persons and exotic objects—from “infidel” captives to ivory salt cellars—across the many frontiers that separated humankind in the early phase of globalization.Less
This book focuses on trade across religious boundaries around the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans during the second millennium, when transportation technology was fragile and religion often a primary marker of identity. It examines a wide range of commercial exchanges from first encounters between strangers who worshipped different gods and originated in different continents to everyday transactions between merchants who lived in the same city yet belonged to diverse confessional groups. Risk and uncertainty often characterized cross-cultural ventures. The threat of violence frequently accompanied such exchanges, too, particularly in places where states lacked institutions to enforce contracts. Still, through gift-giving ceremonies, with the assistance of merchants’ networks, or as a consequence of piracy or pilgrimage, cross-cultural trade took place. The volume’s chapters, written by an international team of historians, shed light on the very mechanisms that facilitated these extraordinary exchanges between members of different religions. They point, for example, to methods for calculating the degree of risk associated with different kinds of economic transactions, the minting of local coins to conform to foreign currency standards, and a pragmatic legalistic approach to religious constraints. They reveal the political, economic, and juridical underpinnings of cross-cultural trade as it emerged or developed at various times and places. They also reflect on the cultural and religious significance of the passage of strange persons and exotic objects—from “infidel” captives to ivory salt cellars—across the many frontiers that separated humankind in the early phase of globalization.
Susan E. Schopp
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528509
- eISBN:
- 9789888180110
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528509.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
In the era of the Canton Trade (c. 1700–1842), China was the source of products and commodities that were avidly sought after by international traders and consumers alike. France, which was home to ...
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In the era of the Canton Trade (c. 1700–1842), China was the source of products and commodities that were avidly sought after by international traders and consumers alike. France, which was home to one of the three major East India companies, was a key participant in this trade, as well as one of the the eighteenth century’s two most important Western powers. Yet the French remain surprisingly underrepresented in Canton Trade scholarship. To ignore the French, or to dismiss them as simply “also-rans,” results in a skewed perception of the Canton System, a full and accurate understanding of which requires that all participating nations and ethnicities be included. Drawing on sources from other East India companies and archives as well as from those of France, Sino-French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842 rescues the French from the shadows, presents considerable new findings and corrects a number of misconceptions, and also makes available in English a wealth of information that was previously accessible only in French.Less
In the era of the Canton Trade (c. 1700–1842), China was the source of products and commodities that were avidly sought after by international traders and consumers alike. France, which was home to one of the three major East India companies, was a key participant in this trade, as well as one of the the eighteenth century’s two most important Western powers. Yet the French remain surprisingly underrepresented in Canton Trade scholarship. To ignore the French, or to dismiss them as simply “also-rans,” results in a skewed perception of the Canton System, a full and accurate understanding of which requires that all participating nations and ethnicities be included. Drawing on sources from other East India companies and archives as well as from those of France, Sino-French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842 rescues the French from the shadows, presents considerable new findings and corrects a number of misconceptions, and also makes available in English a wealth of information that was previously accessible only in French.
