Commercial Activities of Chinese Merchants in the Late Nineteenth Century Korea : with a Focus on the Documents of Tong Shun Tai Archived at Seoul National University, South Korea
Journal Title: International Journal of Korean History - Year 2009, Vol 13, Issue 1
Abstract
In the late 19th century, treaties of commerce imposed by imperial Western powers compelled East Asian nations to participate in trade. Western merchants brought industrial products to exchange for the raw materials of the East, instigating and intensifying a separation of roles within the East Asian region. Asian merchants, Chinese merchants in particular, who were familiar with the local conditions, played a central role in intraregional trade. Without relying on support from their government, Chinese merchants built a vast pan-Asian commercial network based on territorial hometown connections and blood relations. The activities of Chinese merchants remained under-examined by scholars until the 1980s when Asian industrialization drew attention to the implications of the regional markets established in the late 19th century. This prompted further research into the Chinese merchants who were the major players in the market.
Authors and Affiliations
Ryota Ishikawa
The Dispatch of Central Government Envoys (Pongmyŏng sasin) during Early Chosŏn
The Chosŏn dynasty was born out of the efforts to conduct the reforms needed to overcome the contradictions, which engulfed Koryŏ during its final days, a period marked by deep political, social, and economic chaos. A...
A Critical Review on the Issue of Proto-Nationalism during Late Chosŏn
Much as is the case with the dichotomous expressions ‘modern’ and ‘premodern’, so-called ‘modern people’ have a tendency to identify the short historical period to which they belong as the modern, while referring to t...
The Limits of Decolonization: American Occupiers and the “Korean Problem” in Japan, 1945-1948
Korean and Japanese officials have never engaged in direct negotiations to reach a postcolonial settlement, unlike what followed the breakup of many European colonies. Instead, the problem of how to dissolve Japanese col...
Mongols and Western Asian in the Late Koryŏ Ruling Stratum
The Mongol conquests in the thirteenth century reached far outside the sphere of traditional Chinese influence and provided conditions for unprecedented large‐scale movements of people and ideas. The period also offer...
The Endeavour to Revise Unequal Treaties in East Asia in the Early 1880s
This article aims to identify possible changes in the East Asian unequal treaty system in the early 1880s. In 1880, Korea confirmed that China and Japan had suffered from economic damage due to the loss of 5 percent impo...