Author Description

This book focuses on the movement of “financial resource-based” commodities, such as salt and tobacco, which were sold under the monopoly system. It analyzes the interactions between merchants, merchant associations, and state in the production, transportation, and marketing of tobacco and its products using this network in China in the 1930s and 1940s. Through the collection and compilation of information related to the shipment and marketing of salt and tobacco and the formation and maintenance of the commercial network driven by it, the authors analyze how merchant networks in the process of salt distribution in Guizhou province, southwest of China after the 1930s shaped the commercial networks and how this network was exploited by the movement of other important commodities such as tobacco. This book focuses on the initiative of merchants and entrepreneurs in regulated commodity chains and questions the dichotomous state-market perspective of socioeconomic analysis.