Books by Madeleine Zelin

At the periphery of the Chinese empire, a group of innovative entrepreneurs built companies that dominated the Chinese salt trade and created thousands of jobs in the Sichuan region. This book challenges long-held beliefs that social structure, absence of modern banking, and cultural bias against business precluded industrial development in China.

This book is the first to use local primary sources to explore the interaction between foreign and native merchants in Asian countries. Contributors discuss the different economic, political and cultural conditions that gave rise to a variety of merchant communities in Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore and India.