Private Enterprise and the China Trade

Meike von Brescius, Ph.D., historian of early modern trade and consumption, University of Basel. Combining business and cultural history with material culture approaches, she has published on the East India Companies, private traders, and markets for Asian goods in Europe.

• AcknowledgementsList of Figures and TablesIntroduction: Contextualising the Early China Trade in Europe1 Commercial Polymaths: Supercargoes and Interlopers in the China Trade2 Trading Conditions in Canton3 Private Trade and Monopoly Structures: A Network Perspective4 The Archives of Private Trade: How to Assess the (In)visible5 Source Material6 Structure of the Study1 British Interlopers in the Canton Trade A Group Portrait1 Charles Irvine: Canton Supercargo, Wholesale Trader, Family Patron2 Irvine’s Wider Network3 Ways into the China Trade4 New Companies and old India Traders: The Demise of the Ostend and the Rise of the Swedish East India Company4.1 Britons Abroad, Interlopers at Home: Transnational Careers in the Making5 Flexible Citizens: Nomads of the Canton Trade2 Forging Markets The European Re-Export Trade in Chinese Goods1 Private Trade: Regulations and Realities2 The Companies’ Profits from Private Trade3 Public Sales, Private Agreements4 The Re-Export Trade3 Treasures in the Cabin Chinese Export Wares and the Special Commissions Trade1 Chinese Export Wares and the Market for Private Commissions2 Typology of Commissioners in the China Trade3 Families and Consumers Associated with the East India Companies4 Commanders and Supercargoes as Consumers, Suppliers and Entrepreneurs5 Designs Made for Maritime Mobility6 Making Room for Private Trade4 European Geographies of Private Trade Cadiz as a Cross-Company Hub1 Port Cities, Merchant Communities and the Study of Networks2 The Vanguards3 Flows of Silver from a Network Perspective4 The Cadiz Merchant Community and the China Trade5 Cadiz as an entrepôt6 Company Recruitments and Passenger Traffic to China7 Financing the Private Trade8 Sea Loans and the Cross-Company Money Market9 Entangled cities of the China trade: Cadiz, Antwerp and AmsterdamConclusionBibliographyIndex