Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870-1919
Finalist, Hagley Prize in Business History, Business History Conference, 2023
Honorable Mention, Ralph Gomory Prize, Business History Conference, 2024
Co-Winner, First Monograph Prize in Economic and/or Social History, Economic History Society, 2024
In this wide-ranging study, Ghassan Moazzin sheds critical new light on the history of foreign banks in late nineteenth and early twentieth century China, a time that saw a substantial influx of foreign financial institutions into China and a rapid increase of both China’s foreign trade and its interactions with international capital markets. Drawing on a broad range of German, English, Japanese and Chinese primary sources, including business records, government documents and personal papers, Moazzin reconstructs how during this period foreign banks facilitated China’s financial integration into the first global economy and provided the financial infrastructure required for modern economic globalization in China. Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China shows the key role international finance and foreign banks and capital markets played at important turning points in modern Chinese history.
Cambridge University Press
Hardback | ISBN: 9781316517031 | July 2022
Paperback | ISBN: 9781009016940 | January 2024
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‘Moazzin’s study shows the ambiguities of negotiating financial and political interests with great nuance and objectivity. Based on a mountain of qualitative and quantitative archival data, Moazzin manages to unearth the complex nature of transnational financial flows, networks, and their institutional constraints before WWI. Most importantly, he reminds us that the impact of financial globalization failed to produce clear winners and losers in the process.’
Elisabeth Köll, The University of Notre Dame
‘Moazzin’s history of foreign banks and global finance in turn of the 20th century China opens a new chapter in the global history of capitalism. Readers will find in its pages an illuminating engrossing story of the roles of European economic actors in a Chinese history of globalization, and a crucial contextualization of the modern global economic order that takes into account the Chinese view.’
Glenda Sluga, University of Sydney
‘Foreign Banks’ key contributions have less to do with offering alternative models of imperial power and more to do with examining the gritty mechanics of banking. On this front, the analysis is masterful.’
Mary Bridges, Business History
‘An original and important book.’
Hubert Bonin, EH.Net
‘Deeply researched and thoroughly engaging.’
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham, #AsiaNow Blog, Association for Asian Studies
‘It is a captivating read, accessible to most audiences, and would make an excellent undergraduate textbook for courses on Chinese economic history…. Highly recommended. All readership levels.’
D. Li, Choice (February 2023)
‘Foreign Banks and Global Finance makes major empirical and conceptual contributions to the field of Chinese history and is a superb specimen of archival scholarship and artful storytelling’
Matthew Lowenstein, The Journal of Asian Studies
Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China was also reviewed in: Journal of Chinese History, Enterprise & Society, Economic History Review, the IBF Paper Series, H-Asia, Twentieth-Century China, Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte (Journal of Business History), Chinese Studies International: A Scholarly Review Journal and the LSE Review of Books.
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Ghassan Moazzin 