Defining Chinese Commodities in the Early Modern Era: A Historical and Conceptual Analysis
Defining Chinese Commodities in the Early Modern Era: A Historical and Conceptual Analysis
- Ronald C. PoRonald C. PoDepartment of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science
Summary
China gradually became a major political and economic power, starting from the second half of the 20th century. Today, it is an export factory that manufactures almost every imaginable product, from brass buttons and footware to computer chips and motor vehicles. While one could argue that the label “Made in China” seems to be visible and recognizable everywhere in the 21st century, this is not a recent phenomenon. A few centuries prior to the 1970s, China was already tightly connected to the global market. During the early modern era, the ideas, customs, and habits of Chinese culture were already steadily spreading across the globe through the consumption of a series of highly desirable Chinese items. Although historians have studied the global impact of a wide range of goods exported from China since the Ming dynasty, if not earlier, it remains necessary to obtain a more conceptual definition of the term “Chinese commodity” in studies of consumption and material culture. According to one definition, a “Chinese commodity” is a good that originated in and/or was manufactured in China. Yet at the same time, the idea of Chinese commodities has occasionally said more about how the non-Chinese in a foreign market imagined and conceptualized Chinese culture than the actual cultural meaning that was supposed to be connected to China. In other words, this is a multifaceted concept that requires further elaboration since it offers promising perceptions from which to explore and reflect on the interlacing of China and the world, while some of these correlations continue to generate a certain degree of social impact on our physical surroundings and imagination even to the present day.
Subjects
- China
