ABSTRACT
In China and Japan the chief agent of Western enterprise during the last century was the merchant house. Mercantile activities long remained at the core of enterprise, and the other economic functions of the Westerners-the provision of fixed capital and industrial expertise -and the other areas of Western activity-transport, manufacturing industry, agriculture and finance-were an outgrowth of the original and prevailing interest. In Indonesia and Malaya the forms of Western enterprise were more varied and the sources of Western initiative more diverse than in China and Japan. The merchant certainly played a leading role in stimulating development; but, in spite of the presence of the great entrepot of Singapore, he was by no means so overwhelmingly important in relation to other types of entrepreneurs as he was in those countries. As a corollary the purely mercantile functions of the large 'mixed' business houses generally occupied a somewhat less prominent place in their interests than in those of the great houses on the China coast.
