2. China: Politics, History and Economy

The six ministries were divided into four Directorates-General headed by two vice ministers, one of Manchu and one of Chinese origin. The Ministries of Finance and Justice were different as they had one Directorate General per province.

From the second half of the sixteenth century, corporations began to operate alongside regulated companies which were more complex organizations responsible for running transcontinental trade: the British East India Company was founded in 1597 for trade with the New World, and three years later, in 1600, the East Indian Company (which up until the mid-seventeenth century was more of a regulated company than a joint stock company). Adam Smith pointed out some important events in the company’s history (Smith 1976, 290 et seq.). In 1658, Oliver Cromwell, leader of the Puritan Commonwealth (1649–1660) and the inspiration behind the first Navigation Act in 1651, bestowing a new statute on the Company, according to which its capital was declared to be permanent: from then on a partner could only leave by selling their shares to other partners. From 1688, its shares were quoted on the London Stock Exchange. In 1708 it merged with another, similar company set up by the British parliament in 1698, becoming the United Company of Merchants, which lasted until 1873.

This blockade banned all ships flying the British flag from docking in ports in countries under French dominion. The decree was issued by Napoleon Bonaparte in Berlin on 21 November 1806; it was extended in 1807 to include the Baltic seaports and made even stricter by the Milan Decree of the same year. The objective of the ban was to hit the British economy, given that following their defeat at Trafalgar France was no longer able either to counter British naval supremacy or to invade British soil by transporting troops by sea (see Orlandi 2016).

Confucius (551 B.C.—around 479 B.C.), a Chinese philosopher who founded a school of thought whose teaching was based on morality. Its fundamental concept was that the individual, by cultivating his/her character, could to bring harmony to the human race.

The Forbidden City, begun in 1406 and built in 14 years on the orders of the Emperor Ming Zhu Di, is a series of imperial buildings spread out over the centre of Peking, entrance to which was forbidden to anyone not part of the imperial court.