This thesis analyses the collaboration between the Chinese merchant elite and the Colonial government of Hong Kong during the 1925-1926 Canton-Hong Kong Strike-Boycott. The Chinese merchants played...Show moreThis thesis analyses the collaboration between the Chinese merchant elite and the Colonial government of Hong Kong during the 1925-1926 Canton-Hong Kong Strike-Boycott. The Chinese merchants played a crucial role in shaping and developing British Hong Kong. At the same time, there was interdependence between the British rulers and the merchants to maintain public order or to recover from instability. This was particularly evident during the 1920s in which China was amid the surge of Chinese nationalism, and anti-foreignism. As the 1925 Nanking Road Incident and the May Thirtieth Movement led to national outbursts against foreign powers, British Hong Kong became the prime example of anti-imperialists protests in South China. From the 1920s onwards, non-violent coercion methods became not only more frequently used but also politicized by the Kuomintang and the communists. To explore the relation between the Hong Kong community and the Colonial government during the sixteen-month long strike, this thesis uses mainly the South China Morning Post as primary resource, and many more secondary resources. At times it will use sources such as newspapers, British archival material, documentation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China. The Colonial government and the Chinese Merchant elite were coping closely to control the outcome and to end of the boycott-strike. In this thesis, I argue that that the emergence of Hongkong identity came in the wake of the Canton-Hongkong Boycott Strike of 1925-1926 by the British.Show less
Before Tokugawa Bakufu collapsed in the 1868, the Dutch was the only European officially permitted by both Tokugawa Japan and Qing China to establish a trading post and settlement in their most...Show moreBefore Tokugawa Bakufu collapsed in the 1868, the Dutch was the only European officially permitted by both Tokugawa Japan and Qing China to establish a trading post and settlement in their most important maritime trading centre: Nagasaki and Canton. Under a series of restrictions implemented by the local authority over maritime trade with foreign countries and interactions between the Europeans and local inhabitants, merely a little amount of local civilians had the opportunity to interact with the Dutch. There were both officially permitted and secretly conducted interactions between the Dutch and local inhabitants in the two cities. The aim of this paper is to explore these seemingly minor and unimportant interactions between the two parties, with three groups of local inhabitants in Nagasaki and Canton, namely boatmen, interpreters, and women being the main focus. In doing so, we will see how both the Dutch and local inhabitants in these two East Asian cities managed to fulfil their needs and benefit from each other under restrictions of the authority and the state power.Show less
This thesis examines the entrepreneurial reasons for establishing the Ostend Company (1722-1727) in the context of socio-political developments in the aftermath of the War of the Spanish Succession...Show moreThis thesis examines the entrepreneurial reasons for establishing the Ostend Company (1722-1727) in the context of socio-political developments in the aftermath of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713). The thesis concludes that the Ostend Company could be established because: internal competition in the Southern Netherlands had to be eliminated to restore profitability of the Chinese tea trade; merchants from the Southern Netherlands could not gain trading concessions in Bengal without the institutional protection of a Company (under the Habsburg Emperor); the Habsburg administration judged that overseas trade was instrumental for the economic development of the Southern Netherlands, in turn strengthening Habsburg authority there; and the Dutch and English threat of waging war against the commercial initiatives in the Southern Netherlands turned out to be a hollow one.Show less
