Page 252 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 7. Porcelain Dealers and their Role in Trade

7.1. Introduction

1
In his recent research, Paul A. Van Dyke has shed light on porcelain dealers. His

archival research of the American, Dutch, Danish, French and Swedish Companies

reveals thirteen prominent porcelain dealers and some other miscellaneous porcelain

dealers of the eighteenth century. As I have shown in previous chapters, most

porcelain dealers were non-Hong merchants, and thus, only fragmental information

survived about them. For EEIC, they were only mentioned in regards to their names

and business transactions. It is extremely difficult to trace them individually in great

detail. From this point of view, Van Dyke’s archival research is of great significance.

He assembled enough information to illustrate them individually which enables us to

have a more detailed image of porcelain dealers. However, as his focus was on these

individual dealers and their trading history, he did not show how trade was influenced

by these dealers. In other words, the exact roles that porcelain dealers played in trade

is not demonstrated. However, based on his archival studies and my own research, it

is now possible to demonstrate the porcelain dealers’ roles in this trade.

This chapter is organised into three sections. The first part surveys the porcelain

shops of the eighteenth century. The porcelain shop was the main place where most

of the transactions were conducted, and created a space and network for sharing

knowledge of selling techniques. An examination of the development of porcelain

1 Paul A. Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macao: Success and Failure in Eighteenth-
Century Chinese Trade (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016).
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