The role of merchant capital in the industrialization process(Conference report,<SPECIAL ISSUE>72th annual conference)

Abstract

Professor Hisao OTSUKA once argued that merchants could be linked with a variety of economic interests, and that in feudal society they were closely linked with feudal economic interests. However, we should recognize that such feudal merchants could suddenly change their behavior in order to link with modern economic interests. The common theme of the seventy-second annual conference of the Socio-Economic History Society, organized by Kanji ISHII, was the re-examination of this theory of Professor OTSUKA, through analysis of the role of merchant capital in the process of industrialization. Takafumi KUROSAWA discussed how the industrialization of Switzerland was led by the activity of merchants who imported raw materials and exported products. Kanji ISHII discussed how the moneychangers in Kyoto, Osaka, and Yedo changed their behavior during the Meiji reform era to support the development of modern merchants. Commenting on these two reports, Saburo SODA observed that Chinese merchants only began to promote industrialization after 1900. Hisashi WATANABE remarked that merchants in other parts of Europe functioned in a way similar to the role of Swiss merchants. Makoto KASUYA asked how the highly developed financial system of the late Edo era influenced the formation of the capital market in the Meiji era.