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Maritime trading networks and late imperial China's imperfect rediscovery of Southeast Asian geography, 1500–1740
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2022
Abstract
This article shows that the descriptions of Southeast Asian geography contained in Ming and Qing Chinese sources that used observations collected from contemporary mariners reflect the structure of the maritime trading networks in the region. It examines several Chinese textual studies of Southeast Asia, navigational rutters, and maps, and uses geographic information system mapping to visualise and compare the extent of the authors’ and cartographers’ knowledge of the region. The article then takes the findings and situates them in the context of early modern Southeast Asian economic history to explain how the Chinese networks were transformed.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2022
Footnotes
We would like to thank the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Academia Sinica for supporting this research. As well, we would like to thank Naomi Hellmann, Gary Sigley, Geeta Kochhar, Kaz Ross, Liza Wing Man Kam, and Liu Shiuh-Feng for reading earlier drafts of this article and providing helpful feedback. Wu Hsin-fang's advice and support throughout the writing process was also instrumental to keeping it on track. The maps presented in this article were mainly produced by Kuan-Chi Wang.
References
1 See for example, the University of Southampton's ‘The merchant fleet of late medieval and Tudor England, 1400–1580’, http://www.medievalandtudorships.org/ (last accessed 20 June 2021); the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences of the Academia Sinica's ‘Pi hai ji you dong tai di tu yu ying pian 《裨海紀遊》 動態地圖與影片’ [Pi hai ji you dynamic map and film], http://gis.rchss.sinica.edu.tw/google/?p=3831 (last accessed 20 June 2021); and Luo Fengzhu 羅鳳珠, Bai Biling 白璧玲, Liao Xuanming 廖泫銘, Fan Yijun 范毅軍 and Zheng Jinquan 鄭錦全, ‘Tang dais hi ren yin di tu jian gou: Li Bai, Du Fu, Han Yu 唐代詩人行吟地圖建構：李白、杜甫、韓愈’ [Maps of relocation and poems of Tang dynasty poets: Li Bai, Du Fu, and Han Yu], Tu shu guan xue yu zi xun ke xue 圖書館學與資訊科學 40, 1 (2014): 4–28.
2 Mapping the locations and shipping lanes described in the textual sources required the identification of many premodern Chinese toponyms for Southeast Asian locations, which are often inconsistently used even within individual sources. To make many of these identifications the present study has relied on Chen Jiarong 陳佳榮, Xie Fang 謝方 and Lu Junling 陸峻嶺, eds, Gu dai nan hai di ming hui shi 古代南海地名彙釋 [Collection of ancient geographic terminology of the South Sea] (Beijing: Zhong hua shu ju, 1986); and Chen Jiarong's online database, ‘Nan ming wang 南溟網’, http://www.world10k.com/blog/?p=2028 (last accessed 20 June 2021).
3 See Reid, Anthony, Southeast Asia in the age of commerce, 1450–1680, vol. II: Expansion and crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 267–330Google Scholar; and Reid, Anthony, A history of Southeast Asia: Critical crossroads (Chichester: Wiley, 2015), pp. 142–56.Google Scholar
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14 For some of the best examples see Chen Jiarong 陳佳榮, ‘“Ming wei jiang li ji Zhang Quan hang hai tong jiao tu”: Bian hui shi jian, te se ji hai wai jiao tong di min glue xi 《明末疆里及漳泉航海通交圖》 編繪時間, 特色及海外交通地名略析’ [Notes on the Selden Map of China with a focus on its compilation, features and toponymies], Hai jiao shi yan jiu 海交史研究 2 (2011): 52–66; Ptak, Roderich, China, the Portuguese, and the Nanyang: Oceans and routes, regions and trade (c.1000–1600) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), chap. 7, pp. 106–9Google Scholar; Mills, J.V., ‘Chinese navigators in Insulinde about A.D. 1500’, Archipel 18 (1979): 69–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brook, Timothy, Mr. Selden's map of China: Decoding the secrets of a vanished cartographer (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013)Google Scholar; and Brook, Timothy, Completing the map of the world: Cartographic interaction between China and Europe (Taibei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 2020)Google Scholar.
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17 Ibid., pp. 83–5.
18 See ibid.
19 Huang, Hai yu.
20 Elke Papelitzky has recently published an extremely useful study of Huang's work. See E. Papelitzky, ‘Editing, circulating, and reading Huang Zhong's Hai yu 海語: A case study in the history of reading and the circulation of knowledge in Ming and Qing China’, Ming Qing yanjiu 23, 1 (2019): 1–38.
21 Ming shi Wuzong lu 明實武宗錄 [Veritable records of Ming Wuzong], juan 卷194, p. 3628, http://hanchi.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/mql/login.html (last accessed 20 June 2021).
22 Andaya, Leonard Y., The kingdom of Johor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 23Google Scholar; and Macgregor, I.A., ‘Johore Lama in the sixteenth century’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 28, 2 (1955): 73–4Google Scholar. We wish to express our appreciation to the second anonymous reviewer of this article for pointing out why Huang may have believed that Mahmud had retaken the city.
23 See Papelitzky, ‘Editing, circulating, and reading’.
24 Ruan Yuan 阮元, ed., (Daoguang) Guangdong tong zhi （道光）廣東通志 [(Daoguang era) Guangdong provincial gazetteer] [1822], juan 卷 276.
25 Gakusho Nakajima, ‘The structure and transformation of the Ming tribute trade system’, in Global history and new polycentric approaches: Europe, Asia and the Americas in a world network system, ed. Manuel Perez Garcia and Lucio De Sousa (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 148–9; and Ptak, China, the Portuguese, and the Nanyang, chap. 1, pp. 177–82.
26 See Igawa Kenji, ‘The concrete image of the smuggling trade in sixteenth-century East Asia’, in Tribute, trade and smuggling: Commercial, scientific and human interaction in the middle period and early modern world, ed. Angela Schottenhammer (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014); and Pin-tsun Chang, ‘Chinese maritime trade: The case of sixteenth-century Fu-chien (Fukien)’ (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1983).
27 See Zhang's introduction. Zhang, Dong xi yang kao, pp. 19–20.
28 Zhang, Dong xi yang kao, p. 101. For background on the conflict in the Maluku Islands, see Andaya, Leonard Y., The world of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the early modern period (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993), pp. 152–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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30 Ricklefs, M.C., A history of modern Indonesia since c.1200 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 47–8Google Scholar.
31 Zhang, Dong xi yang kao, p. 83.
32 Ricklefs, A history of modern Indonesia, p. 45.
33 Mills, ‘Chinese navigators’, p. 79.
34 There are many studies of the Zheng family, but the best is probably Cheng Wei-chung, War, trade and piracy in the China seas, 1622–1683 (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
35 Yu, Pi hai ji you.
36 Ibid., p. 71. Four women ruled Aceh successively from 1641 to 1699. See Khan, Sher Banu A.L., Sovereign women in a Muslim kingdom: The sultanahs of Aceh, 1641–1699 (Ithaca, NY: SEAP Publications, Cornell University, 2017)Google Scholar.
37 Ibid., pp. 64–5.
38 Ibid., p. 72.
39 See Blussé, Leonard, Strange company: Chinese settlers, mestizo women, and the Dutch in VOC Batavia (Dordrecht: Foris, 1988), pp. 97–155Google Scholar; and Ryan Holroyd, ‘The rebirth of China's intra-Asian maritime trade, 1670–1740’ (PhD diss., Pennsylvania State University, 2018), pp. 69–141.
40 See Gang Zhao, The Qing opening to the ocean: Chinese maritime policies, 1684–1757 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013), pp. 153–68; and Guo Chengkang 郭成康, ‘Kang qian zhi ji jin Nan Yang an tan xi 康乾之際禁南洋案探析’ [An analysis of the South Sea prohibitions between the Kangxi and Qianlong periods: Re-examining how regional interests influenced central decision making], Zhong guo she hui ke xue 中國社會科學 1 (1997): 184–97.
41 Chen, Hai guo wen jian lu, pp. 1–2.
42 Ibid., pp. 12–13.
43 Ibid., pp. 13–14.
44 Ibid., p. 16.
45 Ibid., p. 20.
46 Ibid.
47 Zhang, Dong xi yang kao, pp. 41–8, 59–83.
48 Chen, Hai guo wen jian lu, p. 20. See Blussé, Strange company, pp. 127–8.
49 The contents of both rutters have been published in a number of different books, but their original publication by Xiang Da, who discovered them in the Bodleian Libraries, is still the most accessible. Xiang Da 向達, ed., Liang zhong hai dao zhen jing 兩種海道針經 [Two maritime rutters] (Beijing: Zhong hua shu ju, 1961).
50 See for example, Liu Yijie 劉義傑, Shun feng xiang song yan jiu 《順風相送》 研究 [Shun feng xiang song research] (Dalian: Dalian hai shi da xue chu ban she, 2017).
51 Liu, Shun feng xiang song yan jiu, p. 40; and Chen Jiarong 陳佳榮, Shun feng xiang song zuo zhe ji wan cheng nian dai xin kao 《順風相送》 作者及完成年代新考 [Notes on the Shun-feng Xiang-song (Fair winds for escort) with a focus on its author and compilation] in ‘Nan ming wang 南溟網’.
52 J.V. Mills believes that the Shun feng xiang song had a route beyond the Sulu Islands to some unidentifiable harbour in northern Sulawesi. Mills, ‘Chinese navigators’, p. 79.
53 Mills identifies the two ports as Barus (Maolu 貓律) and Pariaman (Jializiman 加里仔蠻). Ibid., p. 71.
54 On the dating of the Zhi nan zheng fa, see Chen Jiarong 陳佳榮, ‘Zhi nan zheng fa Wan cheng nian dais hang xian xin zheng 《指南正法》 完成年代上限新證’ [New proof of the upper limit on the date of the Zhi nan zheng fa's final compilation], in ‘Nan ming wang 南溟網’, http://www.world10k.com/blog/?p=2379 (last accessed 20 June 2021).
55 Andaya, Kingdom of Johor, pp. 179–80.
56 See Batchelor, Robert K., London: The Selden Map and the making of a global city, 1549–1689 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014)Google Scholar; and Brook, Mr. Selden's map of China.
57 Chen, ‘Ming wei jiang li’.
58 Sotiria Kogou et al., ‘The origins of the Selden Map of China: Scientific analysis of the painting materials and techniques using a holistic approach’, Heritage Science 4, 28 (2016).
59 Zhou Yunzhong 周運中, ‘Ying cang Ming mo Min shang hang hai tu chu zi Xiamen wan 英藏明末閩商航海圖出自廈門灣’ [The author of the Selden Map was from Xiamen Bay], in Jiao, Ming dai hai yang mao yi.
60 The current authors have not been able to examine the original copies of these maps, which are held in the First Historical Archives of China 中國第一歷史檔案館 in Beijing. Reproductions of both maps have been published in Aomen li shi di tu jing xuan 澳門歷史地圖精選 [Selected historical maps of Macao] (Beijing: Hua wen chu ban she, 2000), pp. 34, 38. Chen Jiarong has transcribed the text on Shi's map in two different books, and the discussion here is based on these reproductions. Chen Jiarong 陳佳榮 and Zhu Jianqiu 朱鑒秋, ed., Zhongguo li dai hail lu zhen jing 中國歷代海路針經 [A collection of maritime routes and rutters of imperial China] (Guangzhou: Guangdong ke ji chu ban she), vol. 1, pp. 501–4; and Zhu Jianqiu 朱鑒秋, Chen Jiarong 陳佳榮, Qian Jiang 錢江 and Tan Guanglian 譚廣濂, eds, Zhong wai jiao tong gu di tu ji 中外交通古地圖集 [A collection of ancient maps related to Sino–foreign interaction] (Shanghai: Zhong xi shu ju, 2017), pp. 227–9.
61 For an introduction to the VOC's establishment, see Parthesius, Robert, The development of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) shipping network in Asia, 1595–1660 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), esp. pp. 31–49Google Scholar. For the expansion of the VOC's power in Java, see Ricklefs, M.C., War, culture and economy in Java, 1677–1726: Asian and European imperialism in the early Kartasura period (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993)Google Scholar. The classic work on sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Southeast Asian maritime trade is Meilink-Roelofsz, M.A.P., Asian trade and European influence in the Indonesian archipelago between 1500 and about 1630 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962)Google Scholar. See the tenth chapter for an overview of the company's effect on the trading system in the central and eastern archipelago.
62 For the Portuguese descriptions of the route, see Gaynor, Intertidal history, p. 36.
63 See Knaap, Gerrit, Shallow waters, rising tide: Shipping and trade in Java (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1996), p. 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blussé, Leonard, ‘Chinese trade to Batavia during the days of the V.O.C.’, Archipel 18 (1979): 197CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Luc Nagtegaal, Riding the Dutch tiger: The Dutch East Indies Company and the northeast coast of Java, 1680–1743, trans. Beverly Jackson (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1996), pp. 120–22.
64 Kwee Hui Kian, ‘The expansion of Chinese inter-insular and hinterland trade in Southeast Asia, c.1400–1850’, in Environment, trade and society in Southeast Asia: A longue durée perspective, ed. David Henley and Henk Schulte Nordholt (Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 152; and Nagtegaal, Riding the Dutch tiger, pp. 119–20.
65 Gaynor, Intertidal history, pp. 34–5.
66 This proposition is also supported by most modern scholarship on the region. See Leonard Y. Andaya, ‘Local trade networks in Maluku in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries’, Cakalele 2, 2 (1991): 78; and Heather Sutherland, ‘Trepang and wangkang: The China trade of eighteenth-century Makassar, c.1720s–1840s’, in Authority and enterprise among the peoples of south Sulawesi, ed. Roger Tol, Kees van Dijk and Greg Acciaioli (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2000), p. 78.
67 See Paulo Jorge de Sousa Pinto, The Portuguese and the Straits of Melaka, 1575–1619: Power, trade and diplomacy (Singapore: NUS Press, 2012), pp. 17–223; Lewis, Dianne, The Jan Compagnie in the Straits of Malacca, 1641–1795 (Athens: Center for International Studies, Ohio University, 1995), pp. 9–10Google Scholar; and Lobato, Manuel, ‘“Melaka is like a cropping field”: Trade management in the Strait of Melaka during the sultanate and the Portuguese period’, Journal of Asian History 46, 2 (2012): 248–9Google Scholar.
68 Kathirithamby-Wells, ‘Forces’, p. 27. See also Ptak, ‘Possible Chinese references to the Barus area (Tang to Ming)’, in China, the Portuguese, and the Nanyang, chap. 10, pp. 119–47.
69 Andaya, The kingdom of Johor, pp. 39–40; and Fernando, M.R., ‘Continuity and change in maritime trade in the Straits of Melaka in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in Trade, circulation, and flow in the Indian Ocean world, ed. Pearson, Michael (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2015), pp. 118–19Google Scholar.
70 Kathirithamby-Wells, ‘Forces’, pp. 42–3. See also Andaya, Barbara Watson, To live as brothers: Southeast Sumatra in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993), pp. 122–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.