Mr. Smith Goes to China: Three Scots in the Making of Britain's Global Empire

Synopsis

An account of eighteenth-century global commerce as seen through the lives of three Scottish traders, “written with verve and filled with arresting details” (Tonio Andrade, author of The Gunpowder Age).This book delves into the lives of three Scottish private traders—George Smith of Bombay, George Smith of Canton, and George Smith of Madras—and uses them as lenses through which to explore the inner workings of Britain’s imperial expansion and global network of trade, revealing how an unstable credit system and a financial crisis ultimately led to greater British intervention in India and China.“This book is a history of British seafaring and imperialism, written largely from a micro-level perspective, placing the focus on individual traders rather than the East India Company as a whole. But it is not only an imperial history. It also unravels the interwoven financial, political and social relations between Britain, China and India in the eighteenth century . . . Hanser has consulted an impressively wide range of archival sources in different languages and located in various countries, from private letters to periodicals, and from official Chinese documents to East India Company reports. Her work contributes to our understanding of 18th-century British imperial history.” —Reviews in History

Copyright:

2019

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

256 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780300245073

Related ISBNs:

9780300236088

Publisher:

Yale University Press

Date of Addition:

12/28/23

Copyrighted By:

Jessica Hanser

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Business and Finance, Politics and Government

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.