Networks and Faces Between Copenhagen and Canton, 1730- 1840
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Networks and Faces between Copenhagen and Canton, 1730- 1840 Asmussen, Benjamin Document Version Final published version Publication date: 2018 License CC BY-NC-ND Citation for published version (APA): Asmussen, B. (2018). Networks and Faces between Copenhagen and Canton, 1730-1840. Copenhagen Business School [Phd]. PhD series No. 23.2018 Link to publication in CBS Research Portal General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us ([email protected]) providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 07. Oct. 2021 COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL BETWEEN COPENHAGEN AND CANTON, 1730-1840 NETWORKS AND FACES SOLBJERG PLADS 3 DK-2000 FREDERIKSBERG DANMARK WWW.CBS.DK ISSN 0906-6934 Print ISBN: 978-87-93579-92-7 Online ISBN: 978-87-93579-93-4 Benjamin Asmussen NETWORKS AND FACES BETWEEN COPENHAGEN AND CANTON, 1730-1840 Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies PhD Series 23.2018 PhD Series 23-2018 Networks and Faces between Copenhagen and Canton, 1730-1840 By Benjamin Asmussen Supervisors: Associate Professor Martin Jes Iversen of Copenhagen Business School, Professor Paul van Dyke of Sun Yat-sen University & Director Ulla Tofte, Maritime Museum of Denmark Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies, Copenhagen Business School 3 Benjamin Asmussen Networks and Faces between Copenhagen and Canton, 1730-1840 1st edition 2018 PhD Series 23.2018 © Benjamin Asmussen ISSN 0906-6934 Print ISBN: 978-87-93579-92-7 Online ISBN: 978-87-93579-93-4 The Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies is an active national and international research environment at CBS for research degree students who deal with economics and management at business, industry and country level in a theoretical and empirical manner. All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. 4 Preface In 2013 the Maritime Museum of Denmark opened in a brand new underground building, encircling an old drydock in Elsinore. Inside, two of the eight new exhibitions narrated accounts about globalisation. The first one, Tea Time – The First Globalisation, told the story of the eighteenth- century global trading network seen from the capital of the Oldenburg conglomerate state, inspired by British historian A.G. Hopkins’ interpretation of the 1700s as a time of proto-globalisation.1 Immediately next to it and somewhat intertwined, the exhibition The World in Your Shopping Basket gave an account of present-day globalisation – of how maritime transport is at the same time as important as ever before and yet also as invisible as never before, due to ports now relocated from the city centres of the world to more remote destinations, off-limits to ordinary citizens. During the years leading up to the opening in October 2013, I had the pleasure of curating the Tea Time exhibition and during its construction, an inherent distinction within the stories told there became obvious. Through both the exhibition and the objects preserved in the museum, actors of the historical context were divided into two separate categories, namely the actors that were present in the exhibition, the grand merchants, the king, and the ship captains, and at the same time a much larger set of actors who were not present. This group contained the sailors, the enslaved Africans, the traders, and the dockworkers who, while having played a vital role at the time, had left little or no legacy behind, making it difficult to tell their story in a Danish museum with its ideology of primarily telling stories through original artifacts. While all of these groups need more scholarly attention to achieve a greater understanding of the eighteenth-century business world, it was the traders directly responsible for the global interactions that especially aroused my interest. After the opening of the museum, when the focus turned towards research, this led to a deeper interest in the business environment of the Oldenburg Monarchy, especially in Copenhagen which was several orders of magnitude larger than all other towns in the realm. Recognising the untapped research potential of this rich and fascinating field, I decided to make it the topic of my thesis with a special focus on the traders travelling to China-- the most distant of trading destinations in the eighteenth century-- as well as their managers. The work, setting, and networks of the businessmen of the proto-globalised world, namely the merchants and traders within and around the Danish Asiatic Company in the eighteenth century and their connections to their Chinese counterparts in Canton piqued my interest. The underlying question became a sense of wonder of how the traders managed to cross this colossal cultural and geographical barrier, perhaps as large as has ever existed in the business history of the Oldenburg Monarchy and Denmark. Within this, however, a larger question emerged as to whether the familiar structures of ships and companies were enough to understand these traders, or if other, less studied structures and networks played a role in the trade. Acknowledgements Over the course of the more than three years of this project, several people have been very helpful. First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Associate Professor Martin Jes Iversen of the Center for Business History, CBS for all of his hard work as the primary advisor, for sharing his knowledge of later Asiatic companies, for helping me place my research into perspective, for 1 A.G. Hopkins, ed., Globalization in World History (London: Pimlico, 2002). 5 patiently reading the many versions of my thesis, and for the many great suggestions for improvement. Thank you to my other supervisor, Professor Paul van Dyke of the Sun Yat-sen University, who by virtue of our shared network agreed to the task even though we were 8,000 kilometres apart. Many thanks for sharing your vast knowledge of the China trade in the Pearl River Delta, for letting me use your immense databases, for being a great host during my visits to Guangzhou, and for introducing me to a large number of historians from all over the world who share our common interests. Also thanks to Erik Gøbel from the National Archives of Denmark for inspiration before and during the project, for showing me the DAC archive behind the scenes, and especially for introducing me to Professor Paul van Dyke in Canton. A warm thank-you to my old friend and database wizard Jakob Smith who through his coding skills, saved me from days of repetitive typing by automatically importing all the DAC company traders into the wiki database from a spreadsheet. Thanks also goes to my former colleague at the Maritime Museum of Denmark, curator emeritus Kåre Lauring, for advice, for ideas, as well as for allowing me to use his transcripts of archival material concerning the DAC in China which enabled me to include a wider range of materials than would otherwise have been possible. Many thanks to Peter Henningsen of the National Museum of Denmark for introducing me to his extensive research in the mentality and status symbols of the merchants of the period; to Jan Wulff of the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces for help with locating the painting of Chinese merchant Quionqua/Geowqua; to Niels Petri for allowing me the use of letters from his ancestor P.F.F. Mourier in China; and to Klaus Struwe for the gift of an archive of research notes about Kurantbanken created by his mother, the historian Kamma Struwe for her unfinished dissertation in the 1940s. Thanks also to retired history teacher Peter Ditlevsen for providing me with his own revised and updated edition of the memoirs of his great-grandfather’s brother, company trader Ludvigsen. Many other words of gratitude extend to Senior Researcher Jørgen Mikkelsen from the National Archives of Denmark, to postdoc Chao Huang at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou for much help, and to Zhao Li of the China Maritime Museum for a good collaboration with publishing a special issue of the museum journal about Danish-Norwegian-Chinese trade over the last 300 years. The same to fellow PhD-student Vibe Martens for many discussions on the wiki and for showing the wonderful possibilities for historians sharing notes early in the research process and for trusting each other. A special word of thanks extends to the many historians, genealogists, artists, archivists, and others in my Facebook-network, who continuously contributed with ideas, searched for sources, and helped explain the many odd and wondrous phenomena that I have struggled with over the years. Early on in the project, I received much inspiration first in Copenhagen from Henning Morgen and Chris Jephson of Maersk Line in Copenhagen, and later in China from Anders Bradt Schulze, Head of Trade & Marketing, East & Central China for Maersk Line, and Jakob Bergholdt, Group Vice President and CEO for Norden Singapore. All provided valuable insights into the modern-day practices of maritime trade in light of their eighteenth-century predecessors, the merchants and company traders. Also thanks to Dan Pode Poulsen for providing access to them and to the Danish Ministry of Culture for funding the first trip to China, which also led to a continued scholarly 6 cooperation between the China Maritime Museum in Shanghai and the Maritime Museum of Denmark about our shared history.