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Reading late-imperial Chinese merchant handbooks in global and micro-history
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Gerritsen, Anne (2023) Reading late-imperial Chinese merchant handbooks in global and micro-history. Journal of Early Modern History, 27 (1-2). pp. 132-155. doi:10.1163/15700658-bja10056 ISSN 1385-3783.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1163/15700658-bja10056
Abstract
In late imperial China, handbooks were key tools for merchants who negotiated the challenges of the land and water routes along which they traveled with their goods. Such handbooks provided invaluable information. The knowledge contained within such itineraries pertained to the minutiae of individual places, but it helped create and maintain the global connectedness of the late imperial empire. Porcelain and tea, produced in the inland provinces of southeast China, could be delivered safely to the port of Canton, and from there to consumers all over the world because these merchants had created, preserved, and transmitted this knowledge. The micro-global lens, thus, is a key tool for understanding such merchant handbooks: it makes it possible to see how micro-level knowledge sustained the agency of the merchants who shaped the global trading world surrounding Canton. Reading late-imperial merchant handbooks from Huizhou makes visible the connections between Huizhou and the wider world.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HF Commerce | ||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | China -- Commerce -- Handbooks, manuals, etc., Merchants -- China -- History, Historiography, Huizhou -- Commerce -- History, China -- Economic conditions, Microhistory, World history | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Early Modern History | ||||||
Publisher: | Brill | ||||||
ISSN: | 1385-3783 | ||||||
Official Date: | 24 March 2023 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 27 | ||||||
Number: | 1-2 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 132-155 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1163/15700658-bja10056 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Free Access (unspecified licence, 'bronze OA') | ||||||
Copyright Holders: | © Anne Gerritsen, 2023 | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 19 October 2022 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 19 October 2022 | ||||||
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