Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T23:32:50.878Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Chinese Economic Dominance in Southeast Asia: A Longue Duree Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2013

Kwee Hui Kian
Kwee Hui Kian*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Toronto
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

As the industrialization process in Western European countries took off in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they largely turned to Asia and Africa for raw materials and other resources, as well as for markets of their manufactures. Various entrepreneurial diasporas, including the Indians, Lebanese and Chinese, were at the forefront to exploit these burgeoning economic possibilities, particularly in gathering local mineral and agricultural commodities and marketing European goods in the Afro-Asian regions. The Chinese activities in Southeast Asia stood out: they not only presided over the commercial realm but also organized mining production and cash crop agriculture in ways largely autonomous of the colonial regimes and Western entrepreneurs. How can we explain the dominance of the Chinese migrants and sojourners in the Southeast Asian economy from the 1850s to the 1930s? This paper repudiates the existing literature, which largely credits their economic presence to conscious immigration policies of the colonial authorities, and instead highlights the effects of a confluence of developments in the early modern period (ca. 1450–1800), including the sidelining of South Asians, West Asians, and regional trading communities in favor of the Chinese. A particular focus is the roles played by symbolic capital and mechanisms of advanced credit and spiral marketing, and how these gave the Chinese a comparative advantage over other trading groups.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 5 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alam, Muzaffar and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 2012. Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Allen, G. C. and Donnithorne, Audrey. 1957. Western Enterprise in Indonesia and Malaya. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Amyot, Jacques. 1973. The Manila Chinese. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University.Google Scholar
Andaya, Barbara. 1979. Perak, the Abode of Grace: A Study of an Eighteenth-Century Malay State. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Andaya, Barbara. 1993. To Live as Brothers: Southeast Sumatra in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Honolulu: University of Hawaìi Press.Google Scholar
Andaya, Barbara and Andaya, Leonard. 2001. A History of Malaysia. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Arasaratnam, Sinnappah. 1986. Merchants, Companies, and Commerce on the Coromandel Coast, 1650–1740. Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bassett, D. K. 1989. British “Country” Trade and Local Trade Networks in the Thai and Malay States, c. 1680–1770. Modern Asian Studies 23, 4: 625–43.Google Scholar
Blusse, Leonard. 1986. Strange Company: Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women, and the Dutch in VOC Batavia. Dordrecht-Holland: Foris Publications.Google Scholar
Blusse, Leonard. 1996. No Boats to China: The Dutch East India Company and the Changing Patterns of the China Sea Trade, 1635–1690. Modern Asian Studies 30, 1: 51–76.Google Scholar
Blusse, Leonard. 1999. Chinese Century: The Eighteenth Century in the China Sea Region. Archipel 58: 107–29.Google Scholar
Blythe, Wilfred. 1969. The Impact of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Breman, Jan. 1987. Koelies, planters en koloniale politiek. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Brocheux, Pierre and Hemery, Daniel. 2009. Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Butcher, John and Dick, Howard, eds. 1993. The Rise and Fall of Revenue Farming. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Cameron, John. 1865. Our Tropical Possessions in Malayan India. London: Smith.Google Scholar
Cator, W. J. 1936. The Economic Position of the Chinese in the Netherlands Indies. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Chew, Daniel. 1990. Chinese Pioneers on the Sarawak Frontier, 1841–1941. Singapore: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Christie, Jan. 1998. Javanese Markets and the Asian Sea Trade Boom of the Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries A.D. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41, 3: 344–81.Google Scholar
Claver, Alexander. 2009. A Colonial Debt Crisis: Surabaya in the Late 1890s. In Henley, David and Boomgaard, Peter, eds., Credit and Debt in Indonesia, 860–1930. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Press, 143–59.Google Scholar
Cooke, Nola and Tana, Li, eds. 2004. Water Frontier: Commerce and the Chinese in the Lower Mekong Region, 1750–1880. Singapore and Oxford: Singapore University Press and Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Cushman, Jennifer. 1993. Fields from the Sea. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Davenport-Hines, R.P.T. and Jones, Geoffrey, eds. 1989. British Business in Asia since 1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dirlik, Arif. 1997. Critical Reflections on Chinese Capitalism as Paradigm. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 3: 303–30.Google Scholar
Dobbin, Christine. 1983. Islamic Revivalism in a Changing Peasant Economy. London: Curzon Press.Google Scholar
Drabble, John. 1973. Rubber in Malaya, 1876–1922. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dyke, Paul van. 2005. The Canton Trade. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Eder, James and Fernandez, Janet, eds. 1996. Palawan at the Crossroads: Development and the Environment on a Philippine Frontier. Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University Press.Google Scholar
Ellen, R. F. 2003. On the Edge of the Banda Zone. Honolulu: University of Hawaìi Press.Google Scholar
Franke, Wolfgang. 1997. Chinese Epigraphic Materials in Indonesia, Part 2. Singapore: South Seas Society.Google Scholar
Freedman, Maurice. 1960. Immigrants and Associations: Chinese in Nineteenth-Century Singapore. Comparative Studies in Society and History 3, 1: 25–48.Google Scholar
Furnivall, J. S. 1939. Netherlands India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gaastra, F. S. 2003. The Dutch East India Company. Zutphen: Walburg.Google Scholar
Golay, Frank. 1969. Underdevelopment and Economic Nationalism in Southeast Asia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gomez, Edmund and Hsin-Huang, Hsiao, eds. 2001. Chinese Business in Southeast Asia. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon.Google Scholar
Gong'an bu. 2002–2010. The Chinese Council of Batavia Archives Series, vols. 1–9. Blussé, J. L. et al. , eds. Xiamen: Xiamen University Press. (Cited by issue number and year.)Google Scholar
Bingdi, He. 1966. Zhongguo huiguan shilun. Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju.Google Scholar
Heersink, Christiaan. 1999. Dependence on Green Gold: A Socio-Economic History of the Indonesian Coconut Island Selayar. Leiden: KITLV.Google Scholar
Heidhues, Mary. 1992. Bangka Tin and Mentok Pepper: Chinese Settlement on an Indonesian Island. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Press.Google Scholar
Heidhues, Mary. 2003. Golddiggers, Farmers, and Traders in the “Chinese Districts” of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Ho, Engseng. 2006. The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Inalcik, Halil and Quataert, Donald, eds. 1997. An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ingram, James. 1971. Economic Change in Thailand, 1850–1970. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ishii, Yoneo. 1998. The Junk Trade from Southeast Asia. Singapore and Canberra: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Press and Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Jackson, James. 1968. Planters and Speculators; Chinese and European Agricultural Enterprise in Malaya, 1786–1921. Singapore: University of Malaya Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, James. 1970. Chinese in the West Borneo Goldfields. Hull: University of Hull.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Els. 2006. Merchant in Asia: The Trade of the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century. Leiden: CNWS.Google Scholar
Jomo, K. S. and Folk, Brian, eds. 2003. Ethnic Business: Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia. London: RoutledgeCurzon.Google Scholar
Kathirithamby-Wells, J. 1993. Restraints on the Development of Merchant Capitalism in Southeast Asia before c. 1800. In Reid, Anthony, ed., Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 123–48.Google Scholar
Knaap, G. J. 1996. Shallow Waters, Rising Tide: Shipping and Trade in Java around 1775. Leiden: KITLV.Google Scholar
Knaap, G. J. 2004. Kruidnagelen en Christenen: de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie en de bevolking van Ambon 1656–1696. Leiden: KITLV.Google Scholar
Knaap, G. J. and Sutherland, Heather. 2004. Monsoon Traders: Ships, Skippers and Commodities in Eighteenth-Century Makassar. Leiden: KITLV.Google Scholar
Knapen, Han. 2001. Forests of Fortune? The Environmental History of Southeast Borneo, 1600–1880. Leiden: KITLV.Google Scholar
Kwee Hui Kian. 2006. The Political Economy of Java's Northeast Coast, c. 1740–1800. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Kwee Hui Kian. 2007. Pockets of Empire: Integrating the Studies on Social Organizations in Southeast China and Southeast Asia. Journal of Contemporary Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 27, 3: 616–32.Google Scholar
Kwee Hui Kian. 2009. Money and Credit in Chinese Mercantile Operations in Colonial and Precolonial Southeast Asia. In Henley, David and Boomgaard, Peter, eds., Credit and Debt in Indonesia, 860–1930. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Press, 126–44.Google Scholar
Kwee Hui Kian. 2011. Persisting Ties, Binding Rituals: Chinese Diaspora and Socio-Cultural Institutions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Batavia. Paper for the workshop “Merchant Communities in Early Modern Asia,” Academia Sinica, Taipei.Google Scholar
Laarhoven, Ruurdje. 1987. The Chinese at Maguindanao in the Seventeenth Century. Philippine Studies 35: 31–50.Google Scholar
Laarhoven, Ruurdje. 1994. The Power of Cloth: The Textile Trade of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) 1600–1780. PhD diss., Australian National University.Google Scholar
Liem Thian Joe. 1933. Riwayat Semarang. Semarang: Ho Kiem Joe.Google Scholar
Lim, Irene. Ed. 1999. Secret Societies in Singapore. Singapore: National Heritage Board.Google Scholar
Lim, Linda and Gosling, Peter. 1997. Strengths and Weaknesses of Minority Status for Southeast Asian Chinese at a Time of Economic Growth. In Chirot, Daniel and Reid, Anthony, eds., Essential Outsiders. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 285–317.Google Scholar
Lin Yuru. 2007. Shangye wangluo yu weituo shidu de xingcheng: shijiu shiji mo Lugang Quanjiao shangren yu Zhongguo neidi de fanchuan maoyi. Xin shixue 18, 2: 61–102.Google Scholar
Li Tana. 1998. Nguyen Cochinchina: Southern Vietnam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Liu Hong. 1998. Old Linkages, New Networks: The Globalization of Overseas Chinese Voluntary Associations and Its Implications. China Quarterly 155: 582–609.Google Scholar
Markovits, Claude. 2000. The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750–1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McKeown, Adam. 2004. Global Migration, 1846–1940. Journal of World History 15, 2: 155–89.Google Scholar
McVey, Ruth, ed. 1992. Southeast Asian Capitalists. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Meilink-Roelofsz, M.A.P. 1962. Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Nagtegaal, Luc. 1996. Riding the Dutch Tiger: The Dutch East Indies Company and the Northeast Coast of Java, 1680–1743. Leiden: KITLV.Google Scholar
Ng Chin Keong. 1983. Trade and Society: The Amoy Network on the China Coast, 1683–1735. Singapore: Singapore University Press.Google Scholar
Ota, Atsushi. 2006. Changes of Regime and Social Dynamics in West Java: Society, State, and the Outer World of Banten, 1750–1830. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Owen, Norman. 1984. Prosperity without Progress: Manila Hemp and Material Life in the Colonial Philippines. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pelzer, Karl. 1978. Planter and Peasant: Colonial Policy and the Agrarian Struggle in East Sumatra 1863–1947. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Pickering, W. A. 1876. Chinese in the Straits of Malacca. Fraser's Magazine 16: 438–45.Google Scholar
Pombejra, Dhiravat na. 1993. Ayutthaya at the End of the Seventeenth Century: Was There a Shift to Isolation? In Reid, Anthony, ed., Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 250–72.Google Scholar
Purcell, Victor. 1965. The Chinese in Southeast Asia. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Raffles, Thomas. 1817. The History of Java. London: Printed for Black, Parbury, and Allen.Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony. 1970. Early Chinese Migration into North Sumatra. In Ch'en, J. and Tarling, N., eds., Studies in the Social History of China and Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 289–320.Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony. 1993. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony. 1997. A New Phase of Commercial Expansion in Southeast Asia, 1760–1850. In Reid, Anthony, ed., The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies. London and New York: Macmillan Press and St Martin's Press, 57–81.Google Scholar
Robequain, Charles. 1944. The Economic Development of French Indo-China. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rudner, David. 1994. Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India: The Nattukottai Chettiars. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sandhu, K. S. 1969. Indians in Malaya. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schrieke, B. 1955. Indonesian Sociological Studies. The Hague: Van Hoeve.Google Scholar
Sinn, Elizabeth. 1997. Xin Xi Guxiang: A Study of Regional Associations as a Bonding Mechanism in the Chinese Diaspora. Modern Asian Studies 31, 2: 375–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skinner, G. W. 1957. Chinese Society in Thailand. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Sutherland, Heather. 2000. Trepang and Wangkang: The China Trade of Eighteenth-Century Makassar, c. 1720s–1840s. In Tol, Roger, van Dijk, Kees, and Acciaioli, Gregory, eds., Authority and Enterprise among the Peoples of South Sulawesi. Leiden: KITLV, 73–94.Google Scholar
Trocki, Carl. 1979. Prince of Pirates: The Temenggongs and the Development of Johor and Singapore 1784–1885. Singapore: Singapore University Press.Google Scholar
Trocki, Carl. 1993. The Rise and Fall of the Ngee Heng Kongsi in Singapore. In Ownby, D. and Heidhues, M., eds., Secret Societies Reconsidered. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 89–119.Google Scholar
Vermeer, Eduard. 1999. Up the Mountain and Out to the Sea: The Expansion of the Fukienese in the Late Ming period. In Rubinstein, M. A., ed., Taiwan: A New History. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 45–83.Google Scholar
Villiers, John. 1981. Trade and Society in the Banda Islands in the Sixteenth Century. Modern Asian Studies 15, 4: 723–50.Google Scholar
Viraphol, Sarasin. 1977. Tribute and Profit: Sino-Siamese Trade, 1652–1853. Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Wickberg, Edgar. 1965. The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850–1898. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Willmott, W. E. 1967. The Chinese in Cambodia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia.Google Scholar
Wong Lin Ken. 1965. The Malayan Tin Industry to 1914. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Wong Lin Ken. 1978. Singapore: Its Growth as an Entrepot Port, 1819–1941. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 9, 1: 50–84.Google Scholar
Woodside, Alexander. 1997. The Relationship between Political Theory and Economic Growth in Vietnam, 1750–1840. In Reid, Anthony, ed., The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies. London and New York: Macmillan Press and St Martin's Press, 245–68.Google Scholar
Wu Hua. 1975. Xinjiapo huazu huiguan zhi. 3 vols. Singapore: South Seas Society.Google Scholar
Wu, Yuan-li and Wu, Chun-hsi. 1980. Economic Development in Southeast Asia: The Chinese Dimension. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press.Google Scholar
Yen Ching-Hwang. 1981. Early Chinese Clan Organizations in Singapore and Malaya, 1819–1911. Modern Asian Studies 12, 1: 62–92.Google Scholar
Yeung, Henry. 2004. Chinese Capitalism in a Global Era. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Yong Ching Fatt. 1989. Tan Kah Kee. Singapore: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bingling, Yuan. 2000. Chinese Democracies: A Study of the Kongsis of West Borneo (1776–1884). Leiden: CNWS.Google Scholar