This engrossing popular history makes many intriguing connections between precious metals like gold and silver as sources of economic wealth and the rise of empires, showing that the forces of globalization have been five centuries in the making.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, relations between China and the West were defined by the Qing dynasty’s strict restrictions on foreign access and by the West’s imperial ambitions. Cultural, political and economic interactions were often fraught, with suspicion and misunderstanding on both sides. Yet trade flourished and there were instances of cultural exchange and friendship, running counter to the official narrative. Tribute and Trade: China and Global Modernity explores encounters between China and the West during this period and beyond, into the early 20th century, through examples drawn from art, literature, science, politics, music, cooking, clothing and more. How did China and the West see each other, how did they influence each other, and what were the lasting legacies of this contact?

From the founding of the Ming dynasty in 1368 to the start of the Opium Wars in 1841, China has engaged in only two large-scale conflicts with its principal neighbors, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. These four territorial and centralized states have otherwise fostered peaceful and long-lasting relationships with one another, and as they have grown more powerful, the atmosphere around them has stabilized. Focusing on the role of the "tribute system" in maintaining stability in East Asia and fostering diplomatic and commercial exchange, Kang contrasts this history against the example of Europe and the East Asian states' skirmishes with nomadic peoples to the north and west. Scholars tend to view Europe's experience as universal, but Kang upends this tradition, emphasizing East Asia's formal hierarchy as an international system with its own history and character. His approach not only recasts common understandings of East Asian relations but also defines a model that applies to other hegemonies outside of the European order.

Tribute and Profit illuminates the conduct and maintenance of maritime trade under Siam’s tributary relationship with imperial China, and scrutinizes the momentous role of the Chinese in Siam’s overseas trade and domestic economy. Based substantially on historical Chinese, Siamese, and European sources, Sarasin Viraphol’s reconstruction of the tributary trade pinpoints the creative subversions, calculated risks, and clever contrivances that kept the wheels of the Siamese economy turning for centuries. Eventually, tribute missions and the junk trade were supplanted by European-style maritime commerce, free trade, and open markets. Nevertheless, the influences of these bygone relations are still present in Thailand today.

Did China drive or resist the early wave of globalization? Some scholars insist that China contributed nothing to the rise of the global economy that began around 1500. Others have placed China at the center of global integration. Neither side, though, has paid attention to the complex story of China’s maritime policies. Drawing on sources from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the West, this important new work systematically explores the evolution of imperial Qing maritime policy from 1684 to 1757 and sets its findings in the context of early globalization. Gang Zhao argues that rather than constrain private maritime trade, globalization drove it forward, linking the Song and Yuan dynasties to a dynamic world system. As bold Chinese merchants began to dominate East Asian trade, officials and emperors came to see private trade as the solution to the daunting economic and social challenges of the day. The ascent of maritime business convinced the Kangzi emperor to open the coast to international trade, putting an end to the tribute trade system. Zhao’s study details China’s unique contribution to early globalization, the pattern of which differs significantly from the European experience. It offers impressive insights into the rise of the Asian trade network, the emergence of Shanghai as Asia’s commercial hub, and the spread of a regional Chinese diaspora. To understand the place of China in the early modern world, how modernity came to China, and early globalization and the rise of the Asian trade network, The Qing Opening to the Ocean is essential reading.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. Rethinking the ways global history is envisioned and conceptualized in diverse countries such as China, Japan, Mexico or Spain, this collections considers how global issues are connected with our local and national communities. It examines how the discipline had evolved in various historiographies, from Anglo Saxon to southern European, and its emergence in Asia with the rapid development of the Chinese economy motivation to legitimate the current uniqueness of the history and economy of the nation. It contributes to the revitalization of the field of global history in Chinese historiography, which have been dominated by national narratives and promotes a debate to open new venues in which important features such as scholarly mobility, diversity and internationalization are firmly rooted, putting aside national specificities. Dealing with new approaches on the use of empirical data by framing the proper questions and hypotheses and connecting western and eastern sources, this text opens a new forum of discussion on how global history has penetrated in western and eastern historiographies, moving the pivotal axis of analysis from national perspectives to open new venues of global history.