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Ghassan Moazzin 孟嘉升
PhD, University of Cambridge
Assistant Professor
Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences
School of Humanities (History), Faculty of Arts
The University of Hong Kong
Ghassan Moazzin is Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he received both his B.A. (2012) and Ph.D. (2017). Before coming to Hong Kong, he was a JSPS International Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Economics of the University of Tokyo. He has also been a visiting scholar at East China Normal University in Shanghai and the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica in Taipei. His doctoral dissertation won both the Coleman Prize of the Association of Business Historians and the Herman E. Krooss Prize of the Business History Conference. It was also a finalist for the Dissertation Prize (Category: The Long 19th Century) of the World Economic History Congress 2018.
Moazzin’s research deals with the economic and business history of modern China and the global history of capitalism. He has previously worked on the history of foreign banks, international finance and economic globalisation in late 19th and early 20th century China. His research has been published in Cross-Currents, Modern Asian Studies, Business History Review and Enterprise & Society. His first monograph, Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870 – 1919, was recently published by Cambridge University Press. In 2023, the book was a finalist for the Hagley Prize in Business History. In 2024, it received an honourable mention for the Ralph Gomory Prize and was the co-winner of the First Monograph Prize in Economic and/or Social History of the Economic History Society. He was also awarded the Faculty Research Award for Junior Tenure-track Professoriate Staff (for cumulative research activity over a 3-year period) for 2024. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His new research project deals with the history of the electrical and electronics industries in modern China.
Contact
Address: Room 110, May Hall, The University of Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 3917-8110
Fax: (852) 2559-6143
Email: gmoazzin@hku.hk
Personal Webpage: www.ghassan-moazzin.com
Book
2022 Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870 – 1919. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Journal Articles
“Incomplete Infrastructure: State-Building and the Early History of China’s Long-Distance Telephone Network, 1900–1937.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, First View (2025): 1-27.
“Banking on Distant Shores: A Comparison of the Development of Foreign Banks in pre-World War I China and Japan.” International Journal of Asian Studies, First View (2024): 1-19.
“Electric Pioneers: Nationalist Lobbying, Technology Transfer, and the Origins of the Chinese Electric Lamp Industry, 1921–1937.” Enterprise & Society 25, No. 1 (2024): 213-247.
“Investing in the New Republic: Multinational Banks, Political Risk, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911.” Business History Review 94, No. 3 (2020): 507-534.
“Sino-Foreign Business Networks: Foreign and Chinese Banks in the Chinese Banking Sector, 1890 – 1911.” Modern Asian Studies 54, No. 3 (2020): 970-1004.
“Networks of Capital: German Bankers and the Financial Internationalisation of China (1885 – 1919).” Enterprise & Society 20, No. 4 (2019): 796-808.
“From Globalization to Liquidation: The Deutsch-Asiatische Bank and the First World War in China.” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 4, No. 2 (2015): 601-629. (Open Access Version available here).
Book Chapters
“Pollution and Business: Case Studies from Modern Chinese Business History.” In Climate Change and Business: Historical Perspectives, edited by Teresa da Silva Lopes, Paul Duguid, and Robert Fredona, 53-70. New York: Routledge, 2025.
Fora
“International Business Interactions in Modern China”. Forum in Modern Asian Studies 54, No. 3 (2020), guest editor.
Book Reviews
“Chinese Hinterland Capitalism and Shanxi Piaohao: Banking, State, and Family, 1720 – 1910. By Luman Wang, Abingdon, Routledge, 2020, 208 pp, illus., £120 (hard-back), iSBN 978-0-3674-5809-6.” Business History (2022): 1-2.
“Financial Stabilization in Meiji Japan: The Impact of the Matsukata Reform. By Steven J. Ericson. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020. 210 pp. Illustrations, index. Hardcover, $49.95. ISBN: 978-1-5017-4691-8.” Business History Review 95, No. 2 (2021): 356-358.
“Vernacular Industrialism in China: Local Innovation and Translated Technologies in the Making of a Cosmetics Empire, 1900 – 1940. By Eugenia Lean. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. 416 pp. ISBN: 9780231193481 (cloth).” The Journal of Asian Studies 79, No. 4 (2020): 994-996.
Translations
With Li Wenjie, “Dehua yinhang niandu baogao (1897 – 1902)” (Chinese Translation of the Annual Reports of the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank (1897 – 1902)), Jindaishi ziliao (Sources in Modern Chinese History) 137 (2018): 87-117.
Conference Reports
“The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire,” held at the University of Cambridge (August 2015). H-Soz-Kult (H-Net) Conference Reports, 10/2015.
CCGL9069 – Multinationals and the Global Economy
MFWM7001 – History of Wealth and Financial Markets
HIST2096 The History of European Business in China
HIST2176 Doing Business in Modern China, 1800 – 1949
HIST2177 The Economic History of Modern China, 1800 to the Present
IHSS6001 Research Seminar on East Asian Culture
Junfeng Zhang, MPhil graduate, IHSS, 2024
Jiarui Wu, PhD Student, IHSS, 2023-
Yunfei Zhang, PhD Student, IHSS, 2024-
