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Date(s)： 2023/12/07
Time： 10:00~12:00
Venue： Archives 2nd Conference Hall
Speaker：Prof. Zhu Marlon (Associate research fellow, IMH, AS)
Disscussant： Prof. Yeh, Er-jian (Associate Professor, Department of Taiwan and Regional Studies, NDHU )
Organizer： IMH
視訊會議連結：https://asmeet.webex.com/asmeet/j.php?MTID=m6d110272edd70d597091979df15b8d63 Abstract: Coal-enhanced steam transportation has marked, in a global scale, the fossil fuel consumption for power in the modern age. Basing on the private commercial letters of the Jardine, Matheson & Co. from Amoy (Xiamen) and Chinchew (Quanzhou), this paper introduces that the Keelung coal had been used by the early steamers plying on the China coasts since the 1850s. Prior to the massive importation of the Japanese and Australian coals to the markets of Shanghai and Hong Kong in the 1860s, the steam navigation interests, as the earliest energy-for-power users, had deemed Keelung coal of the prime importance. The U.S. and U.K. navies and their governments had respectively launched experiments on the fitness and efficiency of various coals, domestic and abroad, for bunker usage; in which, Keelung coal was one of them being tested. The Keelung coal was then prohibited by the Chinese officials from mining and exporting, the unofficial records of the JM letters had though revealed its circulation among the ports of the China coasts such as Amoy and Hong Kong. This offshore-ness of this coal trade might again shed light on the less told aspect of the Sino-foreign engagement in the modern period mainly through the “free trade”.