Location Is (Not) Everything: Re-Assessing Shanghai’s Rise, 1840s -1860s

While Shanghai’s pre-war history (1842-1937) is thought to be already ‘quite well understood’ thanks to an inordinately large number of studies, other Chinese urban centres received less attention. Consequently, a number of Western scholars have recently shifted their gaze elsewhere in search of other Chinese articulations of modernity. Yet a thorough examination of the history of other Chinese cities cannot replace a continual robust engagement with Shanghai. This is not least because the vast array of materials available at the Shanghai Municipal Archives and Zikawei Library has been systematically catalogued only over the last few years. They are indispensable to understanding the city’s rise to prominence and its preponderant position within China’s economic modernisation process. Mainly drawing on rare early editions of the North-China Herald held at the Zikawei Library, this article highlights one aspect of Shanghai’s early treaty-port development; it reprises the conventional wisdom positing that, because of its perceived advantageous location, Shanghai had been almost deterministically poised to become China’s gateway to the outside world following the First Opium War (1839-1842). Instead, it argues that location was significant but not sufficient of itself in delivering Shanghai’s economic take-off

From Chengdu to Stockholm: A Comparative Study of the Emergence of Paper Money in East and West

It is widely recognised that monetary paper instruments appeared in China earlier than in the West, paper itself having been invented there during the Han era. However, there have been to date few direct scholarly attempts to place the early-modern Western and pre-modern Chinese formative experiences with paper money in detailed comparison by way of attaining a better understanding of the evolution of money as a whole. This article aims to make a tentative first step toward bridging this scholarly gap. It will survey in particular the extent to which the inception of Chinese paper money in 11th-century Chengdu differed from the circumstances in which European paper money emerged. Whilst some similarity between 17th-century Stockholm and 11th-century Chengdu might arguably be traced back insofar as the emergence of paper money is concerned, British banknote issuance subsequently took on new important functions. These, in turn, ushered in our modern "national-debt" economy

Shanghai Studies: An Analysis of Principal Trends in the Field

This article is aimed at critically reviewing recent principal trends in the study of pre-war Shanghai (1843-1937). It will point in passing to attitudinal changes with regard to the city's past in the PRC academic discourse, but will critique in the main influential English-language monographs that have appeared in the last two decades. Cognizant of social realities in present-day Shanghai, the following passages re-visit themes such as sub-ethnicity, networking, nationalism, urban governance, institutions and the public sphere before 1937. Throughout, gaps in the existing literature will be systematically underscored with a view toward setting forth a research agenda for the future

China and Morocco: Improbable Partners?

If Chinese foreign policy acumen in the Middle East is manifest in China’s ability to bypass Shi'a-Sunni rivalries between Iran and Saudi Arabia, then in North Africa this policy is surely paralleled by China’s ability to remain neutral in the Western Sahara conflict, with a slight tilt in favour of Morocoo1. Moreover, China has always kept a balanced foreign policy between rivals Algeria and more pro-Western Morocco even though the latter did not possess large oil reserves and had less of an anti-colonial legacy to boast. Morocco despite its deep seated ties with France, and more recently with the US, established diplomatic ties with China at the height of the Cold War, as early as 1958. It was only second to Egypt in doing so within Africa as a whole, yet Egypt challenged the West, fostering a strategic alliance with Moscow under Gamal ‘Abdel Nasse

Foreign banks of issue in prewar China : the notes of the Netherlands Trading Society, Deutsch-Asiatische Bank and the International Banking Corporation

To date, much of the scholarly literature on anti-foreign boycotts in prewar China focused on cigarettes. However, foreign banks were also targeted, particularly regarding their most visible infringement of Chinese sovereignty: banknotes. Piecing together note circulation data on the smaller European and American banks operating in Shanghai is a work in progress. In this research note, I present provisional data about three of the most important second-tier foreign banks in Shanghai: the Netherlands Trading Society, the German Deutsch-Asiatische Bank and the International Banking Corporation. Tentative conclusions can already be drawn. These banks by and large lost traction in the 1930s insofar as banknote circulation volumes were concerned. On the other hand, the political vacuum that befell the Chinese market following the downfall of the Qing was the single biggest boon of the banks under review. The redemption freeze on Chinese bank notes of 1916 seems to have had a partial effect in terms of regaining Chinese trust in Chinese banknotes at the expense of foreign ones. Unlike British banks, Netherlands Trading Society circulation figures never recovered in the early 1920s. Needless to say, much more work can be carried out in that regard as the pertinent archives are situated right around the world

Towards a world history of economic thought : a China monetary perspective

The history of economic thought was arguably the most Eurocentric and Modernocentric subfield of economics. Most primers and readers in the English language used to deal with early modern Europe to the exclusion of other regions. The purpose of this research note is therefore to tentatively revisit famous and lesser-known thinkers across Eurasia, by way of encouraging more inclusive comprehensive accounts of economic thought in pre-modern and early modern times. The issues covered will be mercantile policy; usury and interest rates; taxation; and finally and most importantly monetary thought. The conclusions show that monetary nominalism was pervasive around the world; and that Islamic thinkers were the least anti-mercantile

Coin debasement and the “Great Divergence” : a research note

Coin debasement as an omnipresent premodern monetary phenomenon has long been recognized. Yet, until recently, debasement was dealt with on a national or at-best continental level. To be precise, it was not sufficiently understood what role seigniorage played in financing early modern polities in comparative terms across Eurasia. Centering on China, particularly at times of war, this research note is the first step toward such an endeavor. It finds that seigniorage was generally lower in China than in early-modern Europe. It also finds greater tolerance for the concurrent circulation of old and new coinage in China. In China, coinage was conceived of in imperial nomenclature as a “public good” of sorts; one that the central government must provide largely at its own expense and even at a net loss in order to facilitate commoners’ livelihood

Chinese-Iranian Mutual Strategic Perceptions

This article analyzes Sino-Iranian relations and mutual strategic perceptions, highlighting several types of tension in Sino-Iranian ties alongside areas of deeper cooperation. We examine in particular the policy debates about China between conservatives and reformists within Iran, and we compare their views of China to the views of Iran held by Chinese commentators. To that end, we extensively survey both the official media and scholarly literature in Farsi and in Chinese, since each strand reveals different sentiments and is accorded a different degree of openness