Global Powers in South China Sea

This book examines the dynamic interplay of consumer behaviour, trade networks, and long-distance alliances in driving economic growth across Qing China, Western Europe, and the Spanish American colonies from 1680 to 1840. Employing a reciprocal comparative framework, it illuminates the deep structural interconnections between Western and Chinese market systems. By utilising the innovative GECEM Database, which cross-references Western and Chinese primary sources to mine new archival data, the study constitutes a methodological advance that offers fresh insights into the Great Divergence debate. Moving beyond an analysis of large-scale structures, this work emphasises the decisive agency of traders. By facilitating the bidirectional flow of Chinese goods to the West and European commodities to China, merchants catalysed a transformation: they reconfigured consumption, spawned new demand, and reshaped transcontinental socioeconomic relations. The study situates these dynamics within critical geopolitical junctures: the establishment of maritime customs under the Kangxi emperor in 1680, the closure of trade and rise of the Canton system under Qianlong in 1756, and the outbreak of the Opium Wars in 1840. These turning points illuminate transformations in trade strategies, local economies, state capacity, and relations between merchants and officials across the Ming–Qing transition. Engaging with recent scholarship, Global Powers offers a new perspective on Qing economic and political practices, as well as the dynasty’s geopolitical tensions, through a local lens on foreign trade networks. It is an essential reading for specialists in global and economic history, sinology, East Asian studies, early modern history, as well as for economists and scholars of Sino-European relations.