Réseaux d'influences et stratégie coloniale. Le cas des marchands de soie lyonnais en mer de Chine (1843-1906)

Abstract

This article highlights the utility of the study of business networks in bettering the understanding of the colonial experience. The author uses the case study of the Lyon silk merchants and financiers who created networks destined to better compete with their British counterparts on the Asian markets. Their initial goal was to buïld an integrated System that went from a depot bank to the installation of vast communication and transportation networks in Southeast France in order to link up Lyon and Shanghai. These Liberals, strongly influenced by the philosophy of Saint-Simon, would, little by little, turn their attention to the Tonkin, planning to transform it into the necessary spring board in the conquest of Southwest China markets. To achieve their goals, these businessmen, anchored in a liberal tradition of the Centre Left, would create numerous political des with the republican Opportunists. In so doing, they created the base of what would later be known as the Colonial Party. The author brings out what he calls the linocracy, in other words, " the power of networks ".

French textile specialisation in long run perspective (1836–1938): trade policy as industrial policy

“…At the end of the 19 th century a contrast may be seen in the fortunes of silk and wool as described by Klein (2005) and Daumas (2004) respectively. Klein describes an agglomeration effect, showing how the silk traders and financiers in Lyon developed integrated strategies in Asia, from the creation of deposit banks to the structuring of transport and communication networks between Lyon and Shanghai, thus protecting their competitiveness with respect to the British.…”

Asia in World Politics: Past, Present, and Future

“…The Lyon bourgeoisie was able to integrate liberal ideas with Saint-Simonian utopian doctrine, further elaborate and put it into practice. The St-Simonian doctrine, opened to the world and imbued with a certain humanism (Klein 2005). This Saint-Simonian doctrine, which I would describe as Socialist-liberalism or Liberalism with a Human Face, influenced by a tradition of Christianity, embodied the desire to find a balance between the pursuit of profit and the pursuit of humanism, at the time of the Industrial Revolution in France.…”