History in the Making – Ports of Profit: European Trading Hubs in Asia, c. 1500-1800

Well before the rise of 20th-century Special Economic Zones and world financial centres, the ports of maritime Asia were areas of global trade and nodes of capitalism. Today ‘factories’ are places of industrial production, but they owe their name to these pre-modern Asian trading ports, European-controlled commercial hubs headed by company servants called ‘factors’. Around 200 of them were founded by European powers in Asia for trade. These ports were places where commodities for intercontinental trade were assembled, stored, and shipped. This paper investigates their genesis, evolution, activities, and connections, and asks what kinds of economic activities were carried out in these Asian trading centres and what the interactive roles of European and local merchants were.

Giorgio Riello is Professor of Early Modern Global History at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy and Professor of Global History and Culture at the University of Warwick, UK (currently on secondment). He has published widely on the material exchange between Europe and Asia in the early modern period. Among his books Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (2013), Luxury: A Rich History (2016), and the forthcoming In Times of Wealth (2027). Giorgio coordinates a European Research Council Advanced grant Project entitled ‘CAPASIA: The Asian Origins of Global Capitalism, 1500-1800’ considering the system of trade in the Indian Ocean (2022-27).

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