Kobe Seen as Part of the Shanghai Trading Network: The Role of Chinese Merchants in the Re-export of Cotton Manufactures to Japan

This chapter traces the ways in which British cotton textiles were distributed by Chinese merchants through their East Asian trading network centered in Shanghai. Kobe, a major Japanese port, became part of the Shanghai network, just as Tientsin and Inchon did. Local distribution of Western goods provided a good opportunity for Chinese merchants to reassert their commercial authority in East Asian waters. The Japanese historiography on the history of international contacts during this period has been so heavily concentrated on the assessment of Western impact and the Japanese response to it that the theorist Furuta's exposition, when it first appeared in Japanese in 1992, became a source of inspiration for further research into intra-East Asian trade.