ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the histories of piaohao as family-centered social and cultural units rather than financial firms, and thus revisits the fundamental hypothesis of the book: Could families and firms from the Chinese hinterland promote and support capitalist development in the age of Western imperialism? As financial institutions, the rise and development of piaohao followed the logic of capital relentlessly. As individuals and families situated in the social and cultural context of nineteenth-century China, the noncapitalist histories of piaohao merchant-bankers and their progeny existed alongside but regularly interrupted the capitalist history of piaohao as impersonal banking institutions. The futures of piaohao as families cannot fall prey to the linear teleology of a singular global capitalist narrative in which their banking firms’ sole option is to “evolve” into modern Western-style banks.
