Breaking free? The evolution of intra‐Asian trade at the dawn of globalization (1795–1839)

Alejandro Ayuso‐Diaz

Economic History Review, 2025, vol. 78, issue 2, 424-451

Abstract: This article contributes to the scholarly discourse on the repercussions of trade liberalization in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that contributed to early globalization, offering a perspective that extends beyond the traditional focus on Atlantic economies. Our study centres on East and Southeast Asia, pivotal in Pacific and Indian Ocean trade. We overcome data scarcity by presenting a new, partner‐disaggregated imports dataset spanning 10 ports across the region from 1795 to 1839. Employing a gravity model and incorporating interactions, we assess the degree of intra‐Asian trade and its evolution following key events that liberalized East and Southeast Asian commerce in a period when measurable global integration started to become apparent. Supporting new Asian scholarship, our results highlight the remarkable intra‐Asian trade before the high colonial era. We also show that, in general, colonial trade policies fostering inter‐continental trade disproportionately augmented colonial imports in East and Southeast Asia, eclipsing gains in intra‐Asian or Pacific trade, especially before 1830. We explore the impact of the influx of British textiles in the region as a mechanism to explain these trends. Our study illuminates complex trade dynamics in East and Southeast Asia during a transformative period of measurable global integration.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13350

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ehsrev:v:78:y:2025:i:2:p:424-451

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0013-0117

Access Statistics for this article

Economic History Review is currently edited by Stephen Broadberry

More articles in Economic History Review from Economic History Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().