This panel explores the emergence and expansion of global commodity chains from the late 18th century to the early 20th century by juxtaposing two interconnected topics: the contested evolution of key commodity trades and the economic roots of popular rebellions and revolutions in late Qing and Republican China. The significant growth of agricultural production, new long-distance trade networks, and increasing commercialization during the High Qing period spurred environmental depletion, ethnic conflicts, and innovations in business and financial practices in China and its borderlands. In the 18th century, this process was further accelerated by expansion of European empires and commercial networks that connected the globe on an unprecedented scale. In the wake of North Atlantic industrialization, rapid urbanization and expanding markets created new global demands, ushering in another round of global commodity expansion, as tropical goods were gradually replaced by industrial ingredients, manufactured products, and narcotics. New sites of production were incorporated into global networks of commodities, capital, and labor, and China was no exception. Unlike their Western counterparts, the Qing and Republican Chinese states lacked the technological sophistication, fiscal resources, and infrastructural systems to manage the escalating scale and complexity of challenges they faced, which gave rise to several political and social upheavals during the 19th and early 20^th centuries. Nonetheless, the Chinese economy displayed a significant degree of resilience, and by the end of this period started to achieve slow but steady growth. This panel addresses how different actors negotiated and transformed themselves in response to these ensuing crises and their global entanglements.

The presentations in this panel are arranged chronologically. Zhang’s paper examines the transnational practices of measuring and determining the value of silver during the High Qing period. The materiality of silver—ingots in China and coins in the West—reflected the long-standing commercial practices of the different countries involved in global trade. While the Qing government allowed merchants to dominate the production and circulation of silver, the British and Spanish standardized currency through the power of the state. Fang’s paper takes a fresh look at the “Daoguang Depression,” a widespread commercial and financial crisis taking place before the Opium War, and he points to changing liquidity preferences by merchants and landed elites as an alternative explanation for this period of economic volatility and decline. Kubler’s paper examines the rise of the so-called “coolie trade” or trafficking of Chinese indentured laborers in the second half of the nineteenth century and shows how preexisting opium smuggling networks adapted for new purposes as China became increasingly connected to a global labor market. Cao’s paper investigates land reclamation practices by corporations during late Qing and Republican China. When Chinese businessman Zhang Jian became the minister of agriculture, commerce and industry in 1913, the Beiyang government issued national developmental plans on coastal land, which led to the expansion and founding of numerous land reclamation corporations and sparking conflicts among the state, merchants and local communities.