Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on December 18, 2007
Enterprise and Society 2008 9(1):6-43; doi:10.1093/es/khm101
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"Many a Long Day": HSBC and Its Note Issue in Republican China, 1912–1935
Niv Horesh is a Visiting Scholar at the Australian National University. Contact information: Division of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Acton ACT 0200
E-mail: niv.horesh{at}anu.edu.au or heliniv{at}yahoo.com.
This article utilizes the local banknote circulation volumes of HSBC, the largest foreign bank in China, as a gauge with which to explore political stability and state-building during the Republican era (1912–1935). It will challenge the prevailing view that British banks faced little resistance in China through the 1920s–1930s, and expose new archival evidence on the perception of, and mobilization against, foreign banks.
The author is indebted to Edwin Green, Sara Kinsey, and their staff at HSBC Group Archives, without whose assistance and profuse counsel this research would not have been possible. Several scholars have graciously taken the time to comment on previous drafts: Mark Elvin, Pierre van der Eng, Hans Hendrischke, Richard Rigby, and Tim Wright. Others had greatly contributed to this research over the years in many untold ways: Robert Cribb, Li Tana, Raphael Israeli, Yuri Pines, Lihi Yariv-La'or, Yishai Yaffe, Aron Shai, Mao Haijian, Zhang Jianjun, and Nishimura Shizuya. Anne Xu and Wan Wong of the National Library of Australia and Anne-Marie Boyd of the Australian National University kindly located and ordered many of the rare sources cited below.