Mr. Smith Goes to China

An account of eighteenth-century global commerce as seen through the lives of three Scottish traders, “written with verve and filled with arresting details” (Tonio Andrade, author of The Gunpowder Age ). This book delves into the lives of three Scottish private traders—George Smith of Bombay, George Smith of Canton, and George Smith of Madras—and uses them as lenses through which to explore the inner workings of Britain’s imperial expansion and global network of trade, revealing how an unstable