Lecture Outline

From the 16th to the 18th century, the Yellow Sea and the South China Sea formed an immense maritime region that prospered outside the limits of imperial jurisdiction, and where several port cities (Nagasaki, Canton, Macao, Sakai, and later, Manila and Batavia) were to assert themselves as the real centres of accumulation of wealth and knowledge. The influence of this maritime space expanded or contracted according to the power or weakness of the merchant networks that crisscrossed it. The conditions under which ultra-marine trade was undertaken – tributary trade, and long periods of prohibition of maritime activities – led to a situation in which merchants, smugglers and pirates cohabited for a long time. Did these trade relations formed a ‘Mediterranean’ pattern of exchanges between Manila, Batavia, Nagasaki, Taiwan and Macao, Hoi An and Malacca? During the Ming and Qing periods, maritime trade was a very lucrative though high-risk and capital-intensive business. Maritime trade in the 16th-18th century period was characterized by merchants’ ability to transform products imported from faraway lands into exotic items for the domestic market. This evolution in the composition of foreign trade suggest a break with the Song model, for which foreign trade was almost exclusively concerned with luxury goods.

Biography

François Gipouloux is Director of Research (Emeritus) at the CNRS (since 2015) and holds a doctorate from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (1981). He has worked in Asia for almost 20 years (Peking,Tokyo and Hong Kong). His research focuses on urbanisation in China, the rivalry between the major Asian metropolises (Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai) in the East Asian maritime corridor, and a long-term comparison of the dynamics of capitalism in Europe and Asia. He coordinated the research project for the European Union: “Sustainable urbanisation in China-Historical and comparative perspectives, mega-trends towards 2050” (2011-2015). He was also the coordinator of the International Research Network (CNRS) “At the origins of globalisation and Europe-Asia ‘divergence’: trade networks and the trajectory of economic institutions, 1000-2000” and of the international research programme (CNRS-FMSH) “Maritime Empires, Continental Empires 1500-2000”. He is the author of some sixty articles and chapters in scientific volumes, as well as the following books (author and editor):

1. Elusive Capital, Merchant Networks, Economic Institutions and Business Practices in Late Imperial China, Cheltenham, Eddard Elgar, 2022
2. The Asian Mediterranean: Port Cities and Trading Networks in China, Japan and South Asia, 13th-21st Century, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2011, (also translated into Chinese and Korean).
3. China’s Urban Century Governance, Environment and Socio-Economic Imperatives, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2015, (ed.).
4. Gateways to Globalisation: Asia’s International Trading and Finance Hubs, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2011, (ed.).

Lecture Outline

Collecting savings and making them available to entrepreneurs in the form of long-term capital is traditionally the task of banks. The generalization of credit at the end of the European Middle Ages, thanks to the spread of the use of the bill of exchange, had been a powerful stimulus for the development of merchant capitalism. The need for credit in China does not seem to have arisen in the same way. Credit was mobilized through more complex institutional channels. How did it circulate? Where were capital markets developing credit instruments, allowing a wide exchange of information and the diffusion of financial innovations? If very few of the Chinese financial institutions that handled these operations was like a bank, in the sense of the term as used in the Middle Ages in Europe, did they nevertheless fulfil, its functions, even partially? This presentation focuses on the analysis of China’s financial institutions and investments outcomes. It finally raises the issue of capital sterilization, due to the fragmentation of financial institutions and high interest rates.

Biography

François Gipouloux is Director of Research (Emeritus) at the CNRS (since 2015) and holds a doctorate from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (1981). He has worked in Asia for almost 20 years (Peking,Tokyo and Hong Kong). His research focuses on urbanisation in China, the rivalry between the major Asian metropolises (Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai) in the East Asian maritime corridor, and a long-term comparison of the dynamics of capitalism in Europe and Asia. He coordinated the research project for the European Union: “Sustainable urbanisation in China-Historical and comparative perspectives, mega-trends towards 2050” (2011-2015). He was also the coordinator of the International Research Network (CNRS) “At the origins of globalisation and Europe-Asia ‘divergence’: trade networks and the trajectory of economic institutions, 1000-2000” and of the international research programme (CNRS-FMSH) “Maritime Empires, Continental Empires 1500-2000”. He is the author of some sixty articles and chapters in scientific volumes, as well as the following books (author and editor):

1. Elusive Capital, Merchant Networks, Economic Institutions and Business Practices in Late Imperial China, Cheltenham, Eddard Elgar, 2022.

2. The Asian Mediterranean: Port Cities and Trading Networks in China, Japan and South Asia, 13th-21st Century, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2011, (also translated into Chinese and Korean).

3. China’s Urban Century Governance, Environment and Socio-Economic Imperatives, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2015, (ed.).

4. Gateways to Globalisation: Asia’s International Trading and Finance Hubs, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2011, (ed.).