INTRODUCTION Carmen Amado Mendes President of CCCM IAssociate Professor, University of Coimbra Isabel Murta Pina Senior Researcher, CCCM This volume, which inaugurates one of the new CCCM book series, devoted to historical studies, consists of the compilation of eleven chapters by ten authors. The volume is focused on maritime East Asia, Macau, intercultural contacts and other aspects that have China and the Sea as their central axes. These chapters span a temporal are that extends, for the most part, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while in some cases they also encompass the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It can thus be stated that they cover the late-Ming and Qing dynasties. Due to the thematic diversity of the contributions, this volume is organized in three sections. The first section is titled 'Chinese Maritime Trade, Entrepreneurs, and Routes\ the second 'Contacts and Perceptions: Wiriting, Publishing and Exhib- iting', and the third 'Macau, Networks and Archival Materials. The first section opens with a study by François Gipouloux, focusing on the expansion of maritime trade during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Directly from the title itsel£ the author questions why long-term trade organizations were so problematic in the Chinese case. Gipouloux recognizes that this is not an easy question to answer, which most likely contributed to few studies being carried out on Chinese economic institutions and Business practices in the pre-contemporary period. As could be expecced from an author with Gipoulouxs background, this topic is approached from a comparative perspective to the Mediterranean world. Evolution on one hand and conservatism on the other, commenda and gongsiy the commander of the ship responsible for the cargo and the numerous passengers/ merchants, the commercial relations and the family dependency networks, the support of the State and the lack of it all contribute to accounting for contrasting realities, and help to explain the different paths or evolutionary lines that led, in 11
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzM0NzM2