Eclipsed Entrepots of the Western Pacific: Taiwan and Central Vietnam, 1500-1800 (The Pacific World-Lands, Peoples and History of the Pacific, 1500-1900 : Volume 5)

Among the great entrepots around the Pacific were some which had such great advantages of location that for many centuries there always was a trade centre somewhere in the vicinity. Others rose to prominence for a time when the political and economic conditions were right, but then were eclipsed and almost forgotten. In the 1600s, Taiwan was a vortex of world trade and great power rivalry, but then became a remote frontier of the great Qing Empire. Hoi An in central Vietnam was another major centre of foreign trade, strongly encouraged by the local Nguyen rulers, from the 1500s to the 1770s, but then was shattered by the Tayson Rebellion and revived only in very different form under the 19th-century Nguyen dynasty. This volume offers access to the scattered scholarship on these two intriguing cases which help throw light on the success of other centers, such as Macao or Manila.