The Merchants of Zigong: Industrial Entrepreneurship in Early Modern China

The Merchants of Zigong: Industrial Entrepreneurship in Early Modern China
ISBN-10
0231135963
ISBN-13
9780231135962
Category
Business & Economics
Pages
440
Language
English
Published
2005
Publisher
Columbia University Press
Author
Madeleine Zelin

Description

From its dramatic expansion in the early nineteenth century to its decline in the late 1930s, salt production in Zigong was one of the largest and only indigenous large-scale industries in China. Madeleine Zelin's history details the novel ways in which Zigong merchants mobilized capital through financial-industrial networks and spurred growth by developing new technologies, capturing markets, and building integrated business organizations. She provides new insight into the forces and institutions that shaped Chinese economic and social development (independent of Western or Japanese influence) and challenges long-held beliefs that social structure, state extraction, the absence of modern banking, and cultural bias against business precluded industrial development in China.

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