Hu, Zhiqing (2025) China's banker : Hu Xueyan and late Qing financialisation. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.
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Abstract
This dissertation examines the history of late Qing financialisation through the life and career of Hu Xueyan (胡雪巖, 1823-1885). In the period between the end of the Taiping rebellion and the 1883 financial crisis, Hu built a financial empire that dominated commercial finance, controlled the collection of customs duties and the remittance of official funds, and funded the Western Expedition to recolonise Xinjiang. The focus on finance in this study deepens our understanding of Qing financial actors, institutions and markets. My findings challenge traditional assessments about the attitudes of Chinese merchants to innovation and risk, the weakness of domestic banks and the market’s reliance on foreign capital. The collaboration between Hu and Zuo Zongtang (左宗棠, 1812-1885) reveals the changing relationship between the state and the financial sector. By exploring Hu’s central role in the development of sovereign debt, I show that government reliance on private financiers went much further than previously thought. The history of those loans draws out the interactions and negotiations between various organs of the central government, the Customs Service, provincial authorities and the British legation. It also illuminates the inherent flexibility and dynamism within the Qing administrative structure that allowed for the deployment of external expertise, the evolution of institutions over time, and the overturning of old fiscal rules. My analysis of the 1883 crisis from a global perspective suggests that, far from being a cause of the delay in the development of capitalism in China, the crisis was a symptom of the capitalist financial system built on debt and risk.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Copyright Holders: | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author, who asserts his/her right to be known as such according to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. No dealing with the thesis contrary to the copyright or moral rights of the author is permitted. |
| Depositing User: | Acquisitions And Metadata |
| Date Deposited: | 12 Aug 2025 15:46 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Sep 2025 19:14 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/56047 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.18743/PUB.00056047 |
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