ABSTRACT
The chapter provides the historical background for the emerging soybean trade between Asia and Europe that will be analyzed in the subsequent chapters. It first traces the transformation of Manchuria due to geopolitical conflicts between Russia, China, and Japan and argues that the rise of the soybean as the region's most important cash crop in course of the nineteenth century was tied up in these imperial struggles. It also shows that the rising intra-Asiatic soybean trade came about due to the crop's value as a fertilizer, not as a food. While trade in the crop flourished in Asia, in around the 1900s, the Western world had hardly any interest in the soybean, as analyzed in the second part of this chapter. In Europe, expert circles concerned with botany, agriculture, and nutrition tried to establish the crop as a food but failed to do so. In the United States, the situation was slightly different as a few Midwestern farmers tried out soybeans in an attempt to improve their depleted soils. Either way, the crop remained largely unknown in Europe and the United States alike and did not acquire much economic value.
