Page 272 - 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

39
expanded the range of possibilities to any individuals in the trade. What Erikson’s

work matters to my research is that the visualization of network showing the density

of interconnectedness between ports and various dates. Such visualization is note a

map of the physical network but rather links to the most significance nodes in term of

40
connections. The network I refer to in this chapter, was a similar form of network
that linked EEIC, Hong merchants and porcelain dealers at Canton, such network also

played important roles in porcelain trade. Yet, the network of Chinese porcelain

dealers is not fully investigated in current studies.

Ng Chin-keong, in his remarkable monograph on the Amoy trade network, is by

far the closest to adopt a networked approach to Chinese merchant activities and

41
commercial connections. More recent research conducted by John Wong examined
one particular Canton merchant Houqua and his trade networks. Through Houqua’s

trade, John Wong revealed the dynamics of Houqua’s regional and global networks

42
in the nineteenth century.

In this chapter, I apply the network approach to examine Chinese porcelain

dealers and how their networks have shaped trade. Sources on dealers of porcelain

trade are few, and records of Chinese language only contain information on Hong

merchants because they have been engaged closely with the local government. Except

for local gazetteers which contain fragmental information on the trade, there is no

detailed source on porcelain dealers. However, regulations on shopkeepers in 1755

39 Ibid., p.105.
40 Ibid., pp.118-119.
41 Ng Chin-keong, Trade and Society: The Amoy Network on the China Coast, 1683-1735
(Singapore: NUS Press, first edition 1983, second edn., 2015).
42 John Wong, Global Trade in the Nineteenth Century: The House of Houqua and the Canton
System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). This monograph was originally his Ph.D
thesis, ‘Global Positioning: Houqua and His China Trade Partners in the Nineteenth Century’,
(Ph.D thesis, Harvard University, 2012).
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