In December 2007, our Chinese and Dutch colleagues organised an international conference in Guangzhou and Macao entitled “Canton and Nagasaki Compared, 1730–1830: Dutch, Chinese, Japanese Relations.” I participated with seven Japanese colleagues. With more than twenty-five papers, the conference was a great success and participants were eager to deepen their discussions and to enlarge the scope of their inquiries. And so, stimulated by the co-editor of this special issue of Itinerario, Professor Leonard Blussé of Leiden University, I took up the responsibility of organising the follow-up conference in Japan on the same theme, but placed in a broader temporal context: “Canton and Nagasaki Compared.” Comparing the two port cities Canton in South China (nowadays called Guangzhou) and Nagasaki at the western end of the Japanese archipelago, between 1600 and 1850 would yield new historic insights and reveal new perspectives for further research. The articles presented in this issue bear the fruit of this exclusive intellectual exchange.

The articles deal with wide ranging subjects, from urban fires to the art of translation, and cover the broad period 1600–1850s. All contributors have taken the comparison of the two port cities at heart. We have grouped the thirteen contributions along four major research themes that emerged out of the conference: shipping networks and the state; managing trade flows; mediating trade; and urban and cultural life. The contributions bear witness of what I would call the four major benefits of the comparative history approach, which will be discussed further below.