Focused on a group of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century industrial entrepreneurs in an interior city removed from Western influences, Zelin's masterful study reshapes our understanding of Chinese economic culture. Her powerful account of lineage-based but diverse partnerships raising capital through self-enforcing contracts in the absence of a fully developed legal framework offers a fascinating historical parallel to some of the processes ... Read morethat have shaped China's more recent economic boom.
Jonathan Ocko, North Carolina State University, author of Bureaucratic Reform in Provincial China A stunning piece of historical scholarship. Professor Zelin's is the first work in Chinese economic history to combine exhaustive research in the local archives of numerous late Qing and Republican enterprises with a sophisticated analysis of all of the legal, technical, political, and sociological aspects of the evolution of the nation's salt-mining industry during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book simply has to be read by anyone seriously interested in China's modern economic transformation.
Frederic Wakeman, University of California, Berkeley, author of Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861 This is a model work of business history that everyone in the field should read regardless of his or her country of specialization. It is both deeply researched and theoretically savvy. As a result, Zelin has much to teach us about entrepreneurship, technological innovation, and business practice in China, and she also forces us to reconsider some of our most hallowed beliefs about the importance for economic development of preexisting financial markets and a well-articulated body of commercial law.
Naomi R. Lamoreaux, University of California, Los Angeles, editor of Learning by Doing in Firms, Markets, and Countries An outstanding contribution to the field.
Elisabeth Koll Economic History Review A fine-grained study... [The Merchants of Zigong] is a trove of information about business and industry in late traditional China.
David D. Buck China Review A necessary read for business historians.
Lane J. Harris Historian One of the best books produced on Chinese economic history.
Tom Wright Australian Economic History Review [An] important book.
William T. Rowe Journal of Interdisciplinary History Zelin's insightful analysis demonstrates the potential of classical Chinese merchant culture for generating significant technological and organizational innovation.
Peter C. Perdue Technology and Culture Both China historians and economic historians have good reason to read this book and to take Chinese economic history seriously.
R. Bin Wong Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies The Merchants of Zigong is a well-argued and well-documented book on the history of Chinese trade and industry.
Juanjuan Peng The Sixteenth Century Journal this comprehensive study provides new fascinating insights into the forces and networks that shaped Chinese business and industrial development.
Thomas Hirzel H-HistGeog Show Less