An Intrepid Pioneer: Sherman Cochran and Chinese Business History

Abstract

Sherman Cochran is Hu Shih Professor Emeritus of Chinese history at Cornell University, where he has been on its faculty since 1973. He is the founding director of Cornell’s China and Asia-Pacific Studies (CAPS) Program, which is “designed to train future leaders who are equipped to address the inevitable challenges and negotiate the delicate complexities in the various domains of U.S.-China relations” (CAPS statement). In 2010, the CAPS Program established the Sherman Cochran Prize in honor of his contribution to the establishment and development of the program. The Sherman Cochran Prize is awarded each year “to the top graduating senior whose performance in the major [best] exemplifies Professor Cochran’s dedication to the study of China.” For his research, Cochran was awarded a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Henry Luce Senior Fellowship at the National Humanities Center, among other awards and honors. In his more than half a century of work in the field of modern Chinese history since entering the field in the late 1960s, Cochran has made important contributions to the field and, in particular, distinguished himself as the leading scholar on Chinese business history. His research covers a wide range of industries and commerce in business history, including petroleum, coal, tobacco, textiles, matches, cement, and medicine, as well as the lives of some of the most prominent entrepreneurs in modern China, such as Ye Chengzhong (葉澄衷1840–1899), Huang Chujiu (黄楚九1872–1931), Wu Tingsheng 鄔挺生 (1877–1935), Aw Boon-haw (胡文虎1882–1954), and, most of all, Liu Hongsheng (劉鴻生1888– 1956). One of his books, Chinese Medicine Men: Consumer Culture in China and Southeast Asia, won the 2008 Joseph Levenson Book Prize of the Association for Asian Studies for making “the greatest contribution to increasing understanding of the history, culture, society, politics, or economy of China” since 1900. Cochran excels in using seemingly obscure and somewhat unconventional source materials for research. Under Cochran’s pen, things as trivial as cigarette cards, commercial posters, tin containers, and the like reveal broader meanings linked to the global or transnational nature of life in the modern world. His research often reminds us of the Chinese expression jian wei zhi zhu 見微知著, roughly equivalent to an old English saying, “a straw will show which way the wind blows,” in its positive sense that there are great lessons to learn from little things. The Chinese Historical Review, 28. 2, 166–190, November 2021