E. Meyer & Co. at the Eastern Frontiers of Capitalism: The Leading Western Merchant House in Korea, 1884 to 1914

This study explores the history of an important multi-regional merchant house in Asian trade during the age of merchant capitalism. Previous scholarship in business history has shown that British overseas merchants played a significant international role as the industrial revolution unfolded facilitating an unprecedented intensity of circulation of goods, people and capital around the world. This article goes beyond the conventional British Empire viewpoint on European trade with Asia to expand our understanding of business history as a global history of connection also to previously neglected actors such as German mercantile enterprises and Asian countries such as Korea. After Great Britain's opium wars with China and the establishment of the treaty port system of commercial relations, Western enterprises came to dominate overseas trade in Asia. By contrast, scholars have previously argued that Western merchants played a marginal role in Korea due to the lack of business appeal of a poor country with a small and volatile domestic market where mostly Japanese and Chinese traders took charge of exports and imports. This article explains the success of German-owned E. Meyer & Co. as a country specialist in Korea, revealing several features the enterprise shared with other multi-regional merchant partnerships such as a focus on the import of Western consumer and capital goods but also an engagement in shipping, finance, real estate, and mining. It also shows how for three decades the prosperity of the firm depended on turning an early mover advantage into lasting business ties with the Korean state and society to exploit its access to European finance and Western manufacturers. Despite the economic and political rivalries of Western and Eastern imperial powers over Korea the firm prospered also during the Japanese colonial period, which was partly due to its pioneering role in the creation of an incipient Korean consumer market.