1 Introduction

The concept of 'gentlemanly capitalism', a term that was coined by PJ. Cain and A.G. Hopkins to characterize the nature of British capitalism, has been at the centre of scholarly debate for some time.

This chapter outlines how the gentlemanly capitalism debate has blended with recent Japanese-language literature on modern Asian international economic history. The latter is over twenty years old,² and part of it is now available in English.³ This literature tries to account for the growth of intra-Asian trade and Japanese industrialization since the late nineteenth century, and asks how and why they became possible under the international order dominated by the Western powers, par­ticularly Britain, while similar developments did not occur in the rest of the non-European world. It is concerned with the identification of Asian merchants and manufacturers, as well as the independent gov­ernments that backed them, who carried out the modernization of Asian economies. It discusses the historical links of East Asia's industri­alization both with Japanese aggression in the 1930s and early 1940s, and with postwar East Asian economic growth.

Going back to Cain and Hopkins, there are two main arguments run­ning through their narrative. The first concerns the motivations behind British expansion. In contrast to the emphasis of mainstream political historians on the role of local conflicts in the periphery, the authors argue that the driving force behind the expansion came from the eco­nomic interests in the metropole, particularly of the landlord elites in the earlier period, and of the financial and service interests centring around the City of London after 1850.

The second argument relates to a critique of the literature, which emphasizes British decline since the late nineteenth century. The authors argue that most literature on British history assumes that, as British manufacturing competitiveness declined, so did British hegemony in the international economic and political order. In fact, Britain's power actually increased well into the twentieth century, first absolutely, and after the First World War relative to other powers, because of her financial and service sector supremacy. The target of this critique is primarily Marxist literature, but it also includes any writings which tend to directly associate industrial strength with political hegemony.

The authors substantiate these historical arguments both by showing landed elites' (and later financial and service sector interests') domi­nance in the political and economic decision-making process in the southern counties in Britain, and by demonstrating their significance in accounting for British expansion abroad.

Thus, as far as the period after 1850 is concerned,⁴ this study is essentially a history of British imperialism from the perspective of the City. Its strength is that the authors make their case through academic arguments and the use of historical evidence, rather than by identifying themselves with the value standard of gentlemanly capitalism. In fact their stance often comes close to that of J.A. Hobson, one of the most profound critics of British imperialism. They bring out both positive and negative attributes associated with service sector orientation. There is no doubt that the two central ideas are important arguments, and are likely to make a lasting impact on literature.

The weakness of their approach lies in the fact that its scope of analy­sis is largely limited to the perspective of the City. As a result, in spite of its vast coverage of the history of the non-European world, it does not explicitly address the question of how to locate the achievements and failures of City-centred British capitalism in the wider context of the development of the capitalist world economy. It seems to me that, the authors' interest in linking their thesis to industrial development notwithstanding, the fundamental significance of global industrializa­tion for the long-term survival and vitality of the City is insufficiently developed in their narrative. This, in turn, affects their interpretation of the relative strength of British imperialism. In what follows, I shall try to explore these points from the perspective of modern Asian inter­national economic history, and suggest ways in which to assess British contributions to global history.

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