"Free" Labor and Trade in the Chinese Pacific, 1760-1860

FAIN: FA-53399-07

Adam M. McKeown
Columbia University (New York, NY 10027-7922)

The tranformation of maritime Asia at the turn of the turn of the nineteenth century was one of the major turning points in Asian and world history. The expansion of Chinese merchants, labor and political influence was replaced by European hegemony and depictions of Chinese as immobile and unfree people. This project will investigate this period with an emphasis on the organization of mobile labor as a means of understanding the institutional changes over this period. In particular, the implications of new institutions and ideas that enforced "free" mobility will be analyzed.