Bridgewater Review

Volume 17 | Issue 1 Article 5

Jun-1998 Trade & Culture in Maritime China: The aC se of Early Modern Guangzhou Wing-kai To Bridgewater State College, [email protected]

Recommended Citation To, Wing-kai (1998). Trade & Culture in Maritime China: The asC e of Early Modern Guangzhou. Bridgewater Review, 17(1), 3-6. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol17/iss1/5

This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. ______----J '- _

The significance of a Chinese mari­ through an overview of the historical de­ time sub-culture casts serious doubt on velopment of maritime trade in the monolithic notion of an essentially Guangzhou. More commonly known as land-bound state in both the imperial and Canton in the West, Guangzhou became socialist periods. The study of maritime the symbol of "old China trade" for her China serves to highlight the multiple rep­ crucial role in western trade during the TRADE & resentation of the Chinese empire and eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. nation on the one hand, and the ongoing European and American traders brought CULTURE IN forces oflocal, transnational, and overseas silk, porcelain, and tea from Guangzhou Chinese communities on the other. To put to the West and one can still see the mar­ MARITIME it differently, the construction of a mari­ velous export arts from Guangzhou in CHINA time history illustrates both the incorpo­ special museum collections in London, ration ofChinese culture in a larger polity Boston, and Hong Kong. For example, The Case of Early and the diversity ofChinese identities. The New England merchants returning from scholarly interests in maritime China fur­ China formed the East India Marine Soci­ Modern Guangzhou ther yield contributions in several areas ety in late 1798 and started to preserve and display the pic­ Wing-kai To torial items and ar­ .It);; tifacts from Beijing - Guangzhou and MARITIME CHINA: Macau including EMERGING PERSPECTIVES lacquer wares, sil­ nterest in Chinese maritime history ver wares, ivory products, porce­ has heightened both in China and I abroad in the past two decades. With lain, and wood fur­ the expansion of China's foreign trade and niture. On the eve her increasingly active role in interna­ of the bicentennial 11m anniversary of the tional affairs, scholars in Chinese history, Hankow o Peabody Essex Mu­ world history, political economy, and cul­ Jili!!!1iJ Jingdezhen seum in Salem, the tural studies have all begun to rediscover v the salient features of China's maritime special exhibit of past. Recent studies have demonstrated export arts from that the exchange of goods and ideas in Guangzhou in the Chinese history did not only concentrate past year signals the importance of on the continental border in the North and i6l"Hl maritime China in between different regions ofChina, butthe GUangZhOU ;. 0 0 the early history of developments of overseas trade, migra­ ;l.!!I"J ~C itlilifi ~ ~;il! Shantou tion, and interaction between cultures in the United States. _ ~ Hong Kong the maritime frontier were equally impres­ From the pens of historians to the sive. From the traditional trading posts ~1¥i.,", Hainan Island eyes of connois­ in Quanzhou and Guangzhou, to the seurs, the city of modern treaty ports of Fuzhou, Xiamen, Map ofPorts along the China Coast and Shanghai, to the contemporary me­ Guangzhou has of inquiry, including trade, migration, and tropolis in Hong Kong and Taiwan and represented the reference point to under­ special economic zones in Shenzhen and nationhood, Sino-Western relations, the stand the changing context of Sino-for­ Pudong, southern coastal cities in the last study of Overseas Chinese, and links with eign economic and cultural relations in five hundred years and beyond have con­ contemporary interpretations of the the nineteenth century. "Greater China" and the Asian Pacific region. nected China to the outside world and the global economy. Deeply rooted in a historical tradition This essay aims to highlight certain of overseas trade with maritime Asia and diverse features of maritime China inextricably connected to regional devel-

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with SoutheastAsia, tra­ spices. The ban on coastal shipping also ditional tributary trade, led to the emergence ofillegal private trade and smuggling with for­ and the first wave of Chinese emigration eigners all flourished in to southeast Asia from Guangdong and the Chinese coastal trad­ Fujian in the fifteenth century. ing scene. In the millen­ nium prior to the com­ The arrival of western traders in the ing of Europeans, sixteenth century created both challenges Guangzhou was an im­ and opportunities for coastal traders in portant port of entry for Guangzhou. The Portuguese were initially traders coming to China expelled from Guangzhou in 1521, gradu­ Fan c.1850 from the maritime coun- ally gained access to coastal markets in tries of the South China Zhangzhou, managed to discover Japan opment of south China, Guangzhou de­ Sea and the Indian Ocean. It served as a in 1542, and finally received Chinese offi­ serves analysis not only in terms of West­ trading center of exotic goods such as cial recognition to establish a trading post ern impact on China, but should be ana­ spices, incense, pearls, opaque glass, ivory, in Macau in 1557. The problem of piracy lyzed in a multiplicity of regional identi­ rhinoceros horns, tortoise shells, and threatened the security ofthe South China ties. Looking at Guangzhou through the feathers. The advances in the construc­ coast from the 1520s until the 1560s and lens of maritime history would further il­ tion of seagoing junks in the twelfth and provoked wariness of maritime trade with luminate the development of maritime thirteenth centuries not only facilitated foreigners in Guangzhou. Yet Guangzhou, Asia, the role ofGuangzhou in the regional the growth of maritime trade in like other areas on the south China coast, economy of China, as well as the signifi­ Guangzhou, but it also helped the Chi­ benefited from the importation of silver cance of migration, sojourning, and nese imperial governments to deploy large bullion from Japan and Mexico via the diaspora in the study of Chinese identities. navies in southeast Asia. A local record of Philippines. The Portuguese depended Guangzhou in 1304 listed a total of 104 upon supplies of Chinese merchandise GUANGZHOU IN THE EARLY "foreign kingdoms" for the transoceanic from Guangzhou and their sales ofIndian MODERN MARITIME WORLD trade between Guangzhou and southeast and Japanese goods at the Guangzhou Asia including Vietnam, Champa, Malaya, market. During the Age of European Discov­ Java, and farther west in Ceylon and In­ ery and Expansion in the early modern dia. While the early Ming emperors issued The oscillation of imperial policy to­ world, Asian patterns ofproduction, trade, edicts to prohibit private coastal trade by wards overseas trade coincided with the and governance also have fundamentally Chinese merchants, private merchants in increasing presence of English and French shaped the long process of emergence of Guangzhou simply ignored the ban and ships in the ports of Guangzhou. When the maritime facets of the modern world took to smuggling of silk, porcelain, iron, the Manchus lifted the coastal ban on system. Asian navigators, merchants, pi­ and fireworks in exchange of silver and maritime trade in 1684, a system of im­ rates, and investors were not passive vic­ perial customs posts was tims of European intrusion, but they were established to handle the active participants and effective competi­ collection of custom tors of maritime trade with their overseas dues and the enforce­ counterparts. The effort to analyze mari­ ment of regulations for time Asia in a broader framework ofworld managing trade with for­ history and cross-cultural trade can fur­ eigners. By 1754, Chi­ ther modify the Eurocentric assumptions nese officials utilized the and illuminate the rise of commercial tradition oflicensed mer­ capitalism in the early modern world. chants in Guangzhou to deal with the traders of While Chinese governments limited European companies. official foreign trade from the first arrival The establishment of this of the Portuguese in 1514 to the abolition system from 1755 to ofthe British East India Company in 1833, View ofthe Canton Factories, 1805-1806 1761, along with the des- private merchant trade, Chinesejunktrade ignation of Guangzhou

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GUANGZHOU IN THE resources especially rice and salt in the do­ POLITICAL ECONOMY mestic markets. Through centuries ofland OF LATE IMPERIAL development, dike-building, and commer­ CHINA cialization of agriculture, local inhabitants gradually developed the Pearl River delta If the analysis of mari­ into a highly productive region with an time Asia looks at the integrated marketing structure. A large extraregional trade be­ volume of commodities from the rural tween Guangzhou and hinterland was transported through a net­ overseas traders who work of riverways to the trading center of came from South China Guangzhou. In addition, Guangzhou de­ Sea and the Indian veloped into a commercial center of the Ocean, the development iron, silk and pottery industries by the six­ of the hinterland teenth century. Owing to Guangzhou's Map 2: The Pearl River Della economy contributed to close proximity to the manufacturing re­ as the sole legal port for foreign trade, led the intraregional trade of commodities in gion of pottery and the silk industrial dis­ to the famous "Canton system" of regu­ Guangzhou as a maritime export market. tricts, the growth of handicraft production lations until the outbreak of the Opium It is indeed fundamental that a commer­ contributed to the development of War in the 1840s. What is significant of cial revolution in south China at least Guangzhou as a commercial center for this multifaceted maritime trading pattern since the sixteenth century transformed maritime exports. is that the Canton system after 1757 Guangzhou from a coastal port limited to should be viewed less as a major depar­ the trading of luxurious goods to a pros­ The case of Guangzhou thus suggests ture of historical precedent, but more as perous region for the marketing of rural that maritime China did not stop along an expedient policy to manage the diverse handicraft products and other cash crops. the coast that faced the South China Sea. local commercial interests coupling with The internal market for rural production the anxiety of local defense. The accelerating political and eco­ in the river basin of the Pearl River delta nomic development in the area near supported the export of silk, palm-leaffans, The above overview of history of Guangzhou was the result of improved pottery, cotton cloth, iron products and maritime trade in Guangzhou prior to the water transport to the delta within the incense. Although Guangzhou was not nineteenth century serves to provide a drainage system of the Pearl River system, self-sufficient in grain production and re­ necessary corrective to the focus on the of the gradual migration and settlement lied on transportation of tea from Fujian anti-seafaring view of a "Continental of people after the eleventh century, and and porcelain from Jiangxi for the supply China" in overseas trade. Instead of view­ of the official interest in extracting local of maritime export trade, the prosperity ing Chinese maritime history as a process of regional economy was that revealed the fundamental differences critical to the success of between the Chinese xenophobia and the Western trade in emerging western concept of free trade, Guangzhou. the bureaucratic arrangements and com­ mercial interests associated with the Can­ GUANGZHOU IN THE ton system owed much to the long-stand­ CULTURAL BORDER­ ing tradition of maritime trade in LANDS OF MARITIME Guangzhou. The Guangzhou coastal net­ CHINA work of merchants and their involvement in commercial activities, junk trade, and I have suggested that an smuggling with maritime Asia provided a emphasis on political framework for European traders to trade economy and world sys­ with the local populations. tem seems to provide a better model than the stagnation of continent- The China Tea Trade, 1790-1800 al China in the study of maritime history. The

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history of Guangzhou can be better un­ western edge of the city where foreign of maritime China from the South China derstood not in terms of Chinese xeno­ quarters are historically located, western­ Sea to the global community. phobia and western intrusion, but in ized intellectuals have viewed the city of terms of local negotiation of commercial Guangzhou as asymbol of modem change With the decline of Maoism and the interests and cultural meanings in the which was marked by coastal trade and end of British rule in Hong Kong, the his­ maritime frontier. On one hand, the flour­ the spread of new ideas. The maritime tory of maritime China has come full circle ishing of overseas trade in Guangzhou was frontier became a reputed area of revolu­ in China. Scholars of mainland China have inextricably connected to the geopolitics tionary tradition and a gateway to the new embraced the "maritime silk road" again, of maritime Asia and the growth of re­ world. For modern Chinese intellectuals, with a revival of interest in the maritime gional economy in late imperial China. On coastal cities such as Guangzhou and history of Guangzhou. The dogmas of the other hand, the political economy of Shanghai not only serve as the prototype Communism and anti-imperialism are maritime China also provide a meeting of Chinese maritime culture, but these cit­ disappearing in China, while the Western ground for various ideological construc­ ies should also take the lead in the devel­ ethnocentric interpretations are weaken­ tions -- modem Chinese nationalism and opment of a new China and in the reform ing as well. One can hope that studies of anti-imperialism, western colonialism and of old culture. maritime China in the future will not only romanticism (or orientalism), and con­ highlight the tensions in Sino-foreign re­ temporary narratives of global The contestation of cultural meanings lations, but will further address the flow transnationalism. The meanings and in­ in the understanding of maritime China of goods, ideas, and images in the mari­ terpretations of maritime trade were was further complicated by the amor­ time milieu. The study of maritime China shifted under different historical circum­ phous representations of Chinese identity will continue to fascinate social histori­ stances. It reveals a fluid construction of in diaspora. The emergence of Hong Kong ans who are primarily concerned with maritime China in which myths and ide­ as a British colony after 1842 has height­ urbanization in coastal cities and other ologies were articulated along with eco­ ened the tensions between the center and social scientists who are interested in nomic interests. the periphery in the construction of Chi­ the contributions of overseas Chinese nese identities. The massive migrations of and transnational idioms of modern The narrative of Guangzhou based on Chinese in the last few centuries to Hong culture. ~ Chinese expansion in the maritime fron­ Kong, southeast Asia, North America, and tier was first challenged by the discourse other parts of the world have profoundly of nationalism and westernization after influenced our perceptions of the Opium War. While the local inhabit­ Chineseness. In other words, the history ants of Guangzhou in the 1840s still re­ of migration, sojourning, and diaspora in sisted western traders to move beyond the modern China has extended the frontier

Wing-kai To is an Assistant Professor in the Department ofHistory and a Member ofthe Asian Studies Group

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