Commerce, Capital, and Power in Early Modern Japan
Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
History
First Advisor
Botsman, Daniel
Abstract
This dissertation examines the place of merchants and their money in 18th and 19th century Japan. During the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), Japan saw the emergence of large-scale merchant enterprises that built vast fortunes, connected distant markets, and wielded significant influence over economic and fiscal policy across the archipelago. But their rise was by no means natural or inevitable. Tokugawa Japan was a society governed by a hereditary samurai ruling class that favored debtors over creditors and prioritized the stability of agrarian smallholders over economic growth. Formal institutions that would have allowed merchants to incorporate businesses and easily enforce contracts did not exist. How could merchants accumulate capital and exercise power in a society lacking nearly all of the tools which enable and facilitate the success of big businesses within modern economies? Drawing on the enormous archive of the Nakai Genzaemon merchant house, one of the period’s largest and most prosperous merchant businesses, the dissertation argues that merchants could reshape institutions to serve their own purposes in spite of the indifference of the samurai authorities to their needs. Institutional forms that were, in theory, static, restrictive, or hostile to the potential expansion of economic activity, like the household and the guild, in practice often proved to be incredibly flexible in the hands of merchant enterprises. At the same time, merchants faced serious constraints. They depended on local elites for the enforcement of contracts and the protection of their property. They also needed to secure the cooperation of powerful samurai lineages in order to wield political influence. Early modern society, then, allowed for merchant capital accumulation while also limiting the coercive power of capital.
Recommended Citation
D'Amico, John Clark, "Commerce, Capital, and Power in Early Modern Japan" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1269.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1269
