Keiko Nagase-Reimer's Copper in the Early Modern Sino-Japanese Trade is published in the collection edited by Hans Ulrich Vogel at Brill, Monies, Markets, and Finance in East Asia, 1600-1900. It is part of the renewal of interest in the West since the 2000s for a connected economic history of Asia, with special emphasis on monetary issues and their corollary, the metal trade. Works available in Western languages, however, are still very limited and often focus on precious metals, such as Richard Von Glahn's researches. Nagase-Reimer's study on the copper trade, which covers a field that remains largely unknown in Europe and the United States, is therefore welcome, as it draws the attention of researchers to a metal that, although less prestigious than the gold or silver, had nonetheless held a prominent place in the economies of East Asian countries until the nineteenth century.
