French Trade and Banking Footholds in Hankow/Wuhan Challenging British Hegemony up the Yangtze (1903–1920)

Hubert Bonin

Chapter Chapter 8 in The Development of International Banking in Asia, 2020, pp 195-220 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract French companies and banks (mainly Banque de l’IndochineBanque de l’Indochine) undertook to sustain the momentum launched by the French State, its diplomacy and various business lobbies in favour of the promotion of economic patriotism in China. The coalition of the Consulate, the branch Banque de l’IndochineBanque de l’Indochine and trade houses transformed Wuhan/HankeouHankeouWuhan into a hub to draw regional commodities and to introduce French goods. Bankers there had to cross military and political events, to resist competitionHSBC (HSBC, from Shanghai), and to take part to the development of the concession, in the midst of the Yang Ze Kiang valley. They had to get embedded into the connections of Chinese business (through the comprador and trade houses) to avoid the risk of asymmetry of information, to broaden their capital of knowledge about the business opportunities in the area, and to get used to the local uses of payment. Their intimacy with the few French trade houses having offshoots there favoured the development of substantial banking stuff, despite the dependence from theShanghai market-place Shanghai marketplace and from the treasury funds of the Banque de l’IndochineBanque de l’Indochine branch downstream.

Keywords: Banque de l’indochine; Wuhan/Hankow/Hankeou concession; Yang Tzekiang; Trade banking; Trade houses; Risk management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:stechp:978-4-431-55615-2_8

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9784431556152

DOI: 10.1007/978-4-431-55615-2_8

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Studies in Economic History from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().