Trade and Empire in Early Nineteenth Century Southeast Asia: Gillian Maclaine and His Business Network by G. Roger Knight (review)

Gillian Maclaine (1798–1840), who was born into the family of a struggling Highland aristocratic family, was forced to seek a commercial career first in London with the East India Merchant house of Patrick McLachlan from 1816 to 1820. Later, in Java, after a brief adventure in growing coffee, he formed the firm of Gillian Maclaine and Co., which worked in partnership with McLachlan’s and their corresponding firm in Calcutta. Difficult relations with the London office led to Maclaine breaking with them in the late 1820s to form a new partnership—Maclaine, Watson, and Co. Such was the core of Gillian’s business activities until his death in a shipwreck in 1840.

This book combines a compelling account of Maclaine’s personal life, and his efforts to recover his lost social status and the “independency” of a gentleman, with an insightful analysis of the development of his business interests, especially the network of firms and trade that he established across Southeast Asia—a network that long outlived him and the British and Dutch empires in the region that formed the political backdrop of his life.

Many themes emerge: the role of individual agency in the development of business networks, the strategies adopted by businesses with interests straddling the competing British and Dutch empires, the role of religious and ethnic affiliations in constructing a trust-based commercial network, and, most importantly, the role of Maclaine’s networks in a predominantly Southeast Asian context, as opposed to bilateral commercial links between imperial metropole and periphery.

This is an enjoyable book, skillfully written and structured. It is especially valuable for two reasons. Firstly, the book offers a major contribution to the ongoing debate about the roots of the “Asian economic miracle,” led by the Japanese economic historian Kaoru Sugihara. Sugihara’s contention is that the growth of trade within Asia, as opposed to trade between Asia and the wider world, was crucial in the accelerating momentum of Asian economic growth, culminating in the spectacular achievements of the Asian economies toward the end of the twentieth century. As Knight points out, most studies of British mercantile firms in Asia tend to stress the centrality of their commercial connections with Britain and British commercial organizations, to which the Asian based firms were generally subordinate. Knight shows that Maclaine’s network of firms did not conform to this pattern. It not only asserted a rugged independence from those British firms with which it dealt; it also built its fortunes within Asia trading a wide array of commodities, including cotton goods, opium, and sugar. As such, his network was part of the intra-Asian commerce central to the longer-term development of the region. Knight’s work opens the way for further research into other, similar European commercial networks the commercial oeuvre of which was focused within the region.

The second contribution of the book is even greater. Those tasked with introducing economic or business history to people not versed in the key concepts—whose experience of the subject has been confined to the political and cultural—are well aware of how difficult it is to overcome deep-seated prejudices, preconceptions, and fears. The business and economic-history literature is largely unhelpful, assuming readers’ familiarity with the terminology, and even the rigors of cliometric statistical analysis. The strength of Knight’s book is that it shows Maclaine’s commercial motivation and behavior as the product of common human foibles. Instead of an abstract “economic man,” Knight offers an entrepreneur with real flesh and blood, whose fortunes were shaped as much by deep social and psychological motivations, religious and ethnic affiliations, personal relationships, and even marriage, as they were by dry, rational calculation. Knight makes business history accessible and enjoyable for audiences frequently daunted by the subject. This feature is the book’s highest achievement.