Introduction
Abstract
For all of its centuries-old importance to global economic, financial and monetary system history, the Asia-Pacific Rim - that vast region of the globe centred on the many developing economies of South-East Asia and the Pacific Islands, and also taking in Japan and Korea to the north, Australia and New Zealand to the south, and mainland China to the west - has generally received less attention from historians of banking and finance than it undoubtedly warrants. While Western economic historians deserve praise for the close interest that they have shown in Asian, Pacific and Australasian colonial and post-colonial history, the record of financial historians is rather more fragmentary, particularly in the South East Asian context. Even in Australia, where banking history in particular has enjoyed both solid corporate support and close scholarly attention over many years, significant aspects of the history of the financial services sector demand more rigorous attention. Of particular note is the limited attention accorded to Australasian and East Asian banking and financial history in the Western journal literature - a consequence, perhaps, of the prevalence of commissioned monograph histories in the field. Table 1 summarises the results of a sample survey of relevant article