ABSTRACT
The history of relations between Europeans and Chinese can be traced back at least as far as the beginning of the Christian era. The value of the goods brought from China on the famous Silk Road (which also included the route by sea via the Middle East and India) that bore silk and other luxuries to Rome is known to have been so significant as to lead to a “serious adverse balance which was made up by bullion or species payment.”1 There was little of comparable value and volume that Rome had to offer that was acceptable in China. This was a pattern that was to repeat itself throughout most of the eighteenth century until the introduction of opium turned the scales heavily the other way. The contemporary adverse balance of trade between the countries of the EU and China, however, is dissimilar as it is due less to China’s self-sufficiency than to the nature of its role in the globalized chain of production. However, the main point to be made about the earlier trade is that it was indirect and that, being conducted through the agency of “middle men” in central and southern Asia, there were no direct relations between Europeans and Chinese at this time.
