Reading Late-Imperial Chinese Merchant Handbooks in Global and Micro-History

Abstract

In late imperial China, handbooks were key tools for merchants who negotiated the challenges of the land and water routes along which they traveled with their goods. Such handbooks provided invaluable information. The knowledge contained within such itineraries pertained to the minutiae of individual places, but it helped create and maintain the global connectedness of the late imperial empire. Porcelain and tea, produced in the inland provinces of southeast China, could be delivered safely to the port of Canton, and from there to consumers all over the world because these merchants had created, preserved, and transmitted this knowledge. The micro-global lens, thus, is a key tool for understanding such merchant handbooks: it makes it possible to see how micro-level knowledge sustained the agency of the merchants who shaped the global trading world surrounding Canton. Reading late-imperial merchant handbooks from Huizhou makes visible the connections between Huizhou and the wider world.