RAS Summer School 2026: Currents of the Ming: Commercial and Intellectual Exchanges in a Globalizing WorldLong before the modern era of globalization, the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) was actively reshaping the world economy, intellectual landscapes, and the natural environment. This four-part series explores the massive “inflows and outflows” of silver, exotic spices, revolutionary ideas, and botanical imports that transformed the Ming dynasty and laid the foundations of our modern, interconnected world.Part 2: The Floating Markets of Zheng He.
Far from the European voyages of discovery, but at a similar time, Admiral Zheng He’s legendary treasure fleets were massive, floating platforms for commercial intelligence and diplomatic exchange. We chart the fleet’s journey across the Indian Ocean and learn how these vast expeditions facilitated the transfer of vital navigational technologies, exotic fauna, and rare botanical goods between China, the Middle East, and the Swahili Coast.Reading materials will be distributed 48 hours in advance to registered attendees.
Speaker: James MillerAssociate Dean for Interdisciplinary initiatives at Duke Kunshan University
A first edition of Ellen Catleen’s Peking Studies (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1934, 87 pages). Originally from Berlin Catleen, later better known as Ellen Thorbecke, nee Kolban (1902-1973) was the wife of the Dutch ambassador to China, W.J.R. (Willem) Thorbecke. Catleen was her first married name,. This publication is a lovely collaboration between the Dutch photographer and the Austrian illustrator FH Schiff (including on the cover) showing various aspects of everyday life in Peking in the 1930s. Thorbecke took the photos with her Rolleiflex camera. Schiff (1908-1968) was born in Austria and came to China in 1930 where he worked as caricaturist for several newspapers and illustrated book.
The next book in my Asian Arguments series for Bloomsbury Publishing is Jerome Sauvage’s first-hand account of life in North Korea based on his time as a UN Special Resident coordinator in Pyongyang. A unique deep dive into Pyongyang and often invisible rural DPRK. Out August – pre-order here….
The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea has become one of the most secretive and isolated societies in the world, with NGOs, UN agencies and even embassies being expelled from the country in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Witness to North Korea, Jerome Sauvage presents a unique first-hand account of life in North Korea based on his time as a UN Special Resident coordinator in Pyongyang. Recounting his work organising and delivering humanitarian aid, Sauvage reflects on his experience working with North Korean citizens, the successes, the setbacks and the missed opportunities. The book books asks the question: how can the world rebuild its relationship with this secretive regime.
This is a potentially fascinating letter dated November 29, 1834 from a destitute American seeking help to return home) from Macao. The letter is addressed to William Shepard Wetmore in Canton (Guangzhou). Wetmore had traveled to Canton and took over a partnership in Dunn & Company. With Joseph Archer he established a new merchant house, Wetmore & Company. Wetmore traded tea, silks and spices as well as wines, ports, opium, hemp, pearl buttons, copper and coffee. They also transported a variety of foreign currencies, and delivered newspapers and letters via “Fast boats” between Canton and Macao.
According to the Derby auctioneers Cavendish:
“The letter is rare as it is stamped with the ‘Boat Office’ Post service. The Canton Boat Office did not employ a handstamp for this 10c charge, although Macao Boat Office did from 1832 to 1838. Only two examples of this Canton Manuscript “10. Cents” marking have been recorded the other example was in the Richard Chan collection (here) and was from the same correspondence but dated 27 Sept. 1834. This first local Boat Office mail service linking Canton and Macao started in 1832. The Macao “Boat OFFICE/10 Cents” marks (1832-38) are well known, but this is one of only two recorded covers with this matching Canton “10 Cents” manuscript mark.”
Home to 25 million people, Shanghai is the most populous and wealthiest city in China. A meeting point between China and the wider world, the city has become the beating heart of Chinese capitalism, a place of initiative, confidence, and forward thinking. It is a city of stark contradictions, suffused with both extreme wealth and poverty, luxury living, and a highly organised criminal underworld.
Michael Dillon explores the full history of Shanghai, from its origins as a small fishing village to the bustling financial hub of today. The city has been central to some of the most turbulent events in China’s modern history, from the British and French colonial concessions of the nineteenth century, to the birth of the Chinese Communist Party and its vital role in Chinese economics and politics today. Shanghai is a fascinating portrait of China’s most dynamic city—and explores its future role in the country’s development
Found time, on a boiling hot day, to visit the replica of the Santa Maria which tours Europe stopping off at ports and harbours to let visitors aboard. It happened to be at Eastbourne (East Sussex) and has now moved on to Shoreham (near Brighton) and who knows where after that.
The Santa María was the largest of the three Spanish ships (alongside the Niña and Pinta) used by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage across the Atlantic. The ship ran aground off Haiti on Christmas Day in 1492.
What interested me was that the Santa Maria was a nao (or carrack), making it highly similar to Portuguese vessels of the era that made it to Macao by the 1500s. Portugal and Spain shared nearly identical Iberian shipbuilding traditions, and naos were the standard, ocean-going, round-hulled ships used throughout the “Age of Discovery”. Portuguese naos sailed to Macao during the 16th and 17th centuries. They navigated the treacherous Cape of Good Hope, connecting Lisbon to Goa, Malacca, and eventually Macao and the Pearl River Delta. By the mid-1550s naos hag gotten significantly larger, but not that much that the Santa Maria is not perhaps an interesting visit to gauge the sort of vessels the Portuguese used to get as far as China and on the initial “black ships” trade with Japan.
Anyone who ever wandered the old flea markets of outer Shanghai or the more organised tourist markets such as the old Dongtai Lu (now destroyed) may have bought beautiful old Swan brand electric fan. Swan desktop fans were popular in Shanghai, imported from Britain and made by Bulpitt & Sons Ltd of Birmingham under the Swan brand (registered 1868). Bulpitt and the Swan brand have gone through multiple owners since, so many I’ve lost track, but the brand is still around and still making desktop fans. Competing with Swan was GE, from America, also popular and also regularly to be found in old Shanghai markets. Most I found could be rewired and worked perfectly well.
But there was a local competitor, Wahson, founded by Shanghai businessman Yang Jichuan and which produced the first domestically-made electric fans in China and who claimed to export to over 90 countries by 1924.
Wahson Electronic appeared around 1916 with a factory in Hongkou. They were a Chinese-owned business and manufactured small electrical items, most popularly desk top fans, similar in design (if not actually identical and reverse engineered) to the Swan brand. The company is still in existence and still makes ceiling fans though no longer desktops. Still, their desktop fans were things of beauty too and probably essential in any Shanghai office or home in the summers…..
The Chinese characters on the building read “华生” (Huáshēng), which translates to Wahson.
