Linking an Asian Transregional Commerce in Tea: Overseas Chinese Merchants in the Fujian-Singapore Trade, 1920-1960

by Jason Lim

Current historical work on the international tea trade has focused on the Sino-British trade and the impact of capitalism and modern technology on tea production in India and Ceylon. These studies have overlooked the changes that were afoot in the Fujian tea industry and the problems with conducting the trade with the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Using the Fujian-Singapore trade as an illustration and drawing on Chinese-language archival materials, this book looks at the state of tea production in Fujian; the overseas Chinese tea merchants and the fluctuations of the trade during the period of political instability in China; the Sino-Japanese War; decolonisation in Singapore; and the period of collectivisation in China and the Cold War.

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Jason Lim is a Senior Lecturer in Asian History at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He is the author of A Slow Ride into the Past: The Chinese Trishaw Industry in Singapore, 1945-1983 (Monash University Publishing, 2013). His latest publication, co-edited with Terence Lee, is Singapore: Negotiating State and Society, 1965-2015 (Routledge, 2016). He is the Transnational History Regional and Book Review Editor of Asian Studies Review.