Water Frontier Commerce and the Chinese in the Lower Mekong Region, 1750-1880

by Cooke, Nola; Tana, Li; Byung-wook, Choi; Chin, James Cong; Reid, Anthony; Rungswasdisab, Puangthong; Sakurai, Yumio; Trocki, Carl A.; Wade, Geoff

• ISBN13: 9780742530836
• ISBN10: 0742530833
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-09-01
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

This innovative book rethinks the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century history of coastal and riverine southwest Indochina, the water frontier of the title. It repositions old state-centered histories to reveal the region as a single, multiethnic economic zone knit together by the itineraries of junk traders and by the activities of many southern Chinese, settlers, sojourners, and merchants, whose local significance it explores. In so doing, it pioneers a new, nationally-neutral way of perceiving this dynamic region.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	ix
Preface	xi
The Water Frontier: An Introduction	1	(20)
Li Tana
Part I: Permeable Frontiers: Chinese Trade and Traders in the Region
Chinese Trade and Southeast Asian Economic Expansion in the Later Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: An Overview	21	(14)
Anthony Reid
Eighteenth-Century Chinese Pioneers on the Water Frontier of Indochina	35	(18)
Yumio Sakurai
The Junk Trade between South China and Nguyen Vietnam in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries	53	(18)
James Kong Chin
Part II: Commercial Eddies and Flows
The Late-Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century Mekong Delta in the Regional Trade System	71	(14)
Li Tana
The Nguyen Dynasty's Policy toward Chinese on the Water Frontier in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century	85	(16)
Choi Byung Wook
Siam and the Contest for Control of the Trans-Mekong Trading Networks from the Late Eighteenth to the Mid-Nineteenth Centuries	101	(18)
Puangthong Rungswasdisab
Ships and Shipbuilding in the Mekong Delta, c. 1750--1840	119	(20)
Li Tana
Part III: Beyond the Water Frontier
Water World: Chinese and Vietnamese on the Riverine Water Frontier, from Ca Mau to Tonle Sap (c. 1850--1884)	139	(20)
Nola Cooke
The Internationalization of Chinese Revenue Farming Networks	159	(16)
Carl A. Trocki
Appendix A: A ``Coastal Route'' from the Lower Mekong Delta to Terengganu	175	(16)
Geoff Wade
Appendix B: Glossary	191	(4)
Index	195	(6)
About the Contributors	201