War, Trade and Piracy in the China Seas 1622-1683 TANAP Monographs on the History of Asian-European Interaction

War, Trade and Piracy in the China Seas 1622-1683 TANAP Monographs on the History of Asian-European Interaction Edited by Leonard Blussé VOLUME 16 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tamo War, Trade and Piracy in the China Seas 1622-1683 By Cheng Wei-chung LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013 The TANAP programme is funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). ISSN 1871-6938 ISBN 978-90-04-25066-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-25353-7 (e-book) Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. v For my parents Cheng Wen-shan Lin Hsueh-er blanco vii SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD Probably nowhere in the world have such profound changes in historiography been occurring as in the nation states of Monsoon Asia that gained independence after the conclusion of the Pacific War in 1945. These tra- ditionally outward-looking countries on the rims of the Indian Ocean and the Eastern Seas have been interacting with each other through maritime transport and trade for more than two millennia, but the exi- gencies of modern nation-building have tended to produce state-centred historical narratives that emphasise a distinctive heritage and foster cultural pride and identity on the basis of such heroic themes as anti-colonial resistance. No one will deny the need for and utility of such ‘nation- building’ agendas, but an inward-directed national historiography does not necessarily prepare one’s citizens for our present age of regional co- operation and globalisation. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the coastal societies of Monsoon Asia witnessed the entry of European traders, the emergence of global maritime trading networks, and the laying of the foundations of colonial empires that reached their apogees in the nineteenth and twen- tieth centuries. The difficulties of studying this pre-colonial and early colonial past should not be underestimated. Local sources are often rare because of wars and the frequent changes of both indigenous and colonial regimes. The hot and humid tropical climate is also unkind to the preservation of manuscripts. The mass of western-language data preserved in the archives of the former East India Companies and those of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in Asia often have an undeniably Europe-centred character and bias. Thus we face not only a highly imbalanced supply of source material, but also the very complex problem of how to decode the hidden agendas that often colour these primary materials. Over the past fifty years there has been a pronounced effort in academ- ic circles in North America, Australia, and the former European colonial nations to ‘decolonize’ historical writing on Asian–European interaction, albeit for reasons totally different from those in their Asian counterparts. Increasingly doubt has been cast on such longstanding paradigms as the superiority of the dynamic West over static Asian societies. Historians of international trade such as the late Holden Furber, whose description of this period as ‘The Age of Partnership’ inspired the name of the TANAP programme, have taken an interest in the various ways and means by which Asian–European interaction began in various kinds of competi- tion, rivalry, collaboration, diplomacy, and military confrontation. This viii SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD approach has forced historians to return to the archival sources and the places where these events unfolded with the result that new frontiers of research have opened up in which close partnerships between Asian and European historians, with their specific cultural tool kits and linguistic backgrounds, are now starting to bear fruit. In anticipation of the four hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Dutch East India Company in 1602, members of the History Department of Leiden University proposed the establishment of an international research programme aimed at training a new generation of Asian historians of Asian–European interaction in the early modern period. It was taken for granted that any such drive towards international educational co-operation should be carried out in carefully planned collaboration with the National Archives in The Hague, the Arsip Nasional of the Republic of Indonesia in Jakarta, and the archives of Cape Town (South Africa), Colombo (Sri Lanka), and Chennai (India), which together hold several kilometres of archival records from the former Verenigde Oost- indische Compagnie. The TANAP—Towards a New Age of Partnership —educational and archival preservation programme was started in 2000 thanks to generous grants from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands Organi- zation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO), the Netherlands UNESCO Commission, and Leiden University. Twelve universities in Asia sent some thirty young lecturers to Leiden during 2001–2003. Under the auspices of the Research Institute for Asian-African and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), these historians participated in an advanced master’s programme that included intensive courses on historiography, palaeography, and the old Dutch written language. With additional funding from several Asian foundations, in 2002 seventeen of the TANAP graduates from Sri Lanka, India, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Africa, and the Netherlands began working towards a Ph.D. degree at Leiden. Three others went on to pursue their doctorates at universities elsewhere in the world. The present monograph is the last of the TANAP programme doctoral theses defended at Leiden University between 2005 and 2012. Leonard Blussé, Kyoto University 2012 ix CONTENTS Acknowledgements xiv Pictures xviii Introduction: The Missing Link 1 How was history rescued from the historical accounts? 2 Convergence of different knowledge interests 6 The VOC archives and the reconstruction of the history of the 8 Cheng lineage A note on the transcription standards and Chinese place names 9 Chapter One: The Tributary System Challenged 11 Silver tides sweep the Chinese tributary system 11 The emergence of the Chinese privateers 13 Maritime mercenaries take the stage 17 Chapter Two: Nicolas Iquan before 1627 27 Shadow over the Sino–Japanese transit trade in Manila 27 after 1617 The Dutch presence and the revival of the maritime 32 mercenaries in 1624 Captain and reluctant mercenaries 36 Crossing the Rubicon 41 Farewell, Dutch Brother 45 Chapter Three: The Survival Game of the Mercenaries 47 1628–1631 March to Amoy for empty fame 47 Hungry mercenaries need to be fed 49 Iquan and the VOC engage in smuggling 51 Initiation of family business 53 An-hai Harbour and the fishermen militia 55 Chapter Four: The Establishment of the An-Hai Trading 63 Emporium 1630–1633 1630: the exceptional year in which the Eastern Ocean 63 monopoly of An-hai was established Towards the An-hai monopoly in the Western Ocean: 66 the Taijouan trade from 1630 to 1632 x CONTENTS Regional commander without a fixed base 72 Chapter Five: Stormy Weather at the Imperial Court 77 and on the South China Coast 1632–1633 The Dutch petitions 77 Cry wolf again? Imperial permission for Sino–Taiwan trade 82 Red-haired barbarians at the gate 85 Lever effect of the typhoons at the imperial court 88 Chapter Six: The Winding Ways towards the Western Ocean 91 1631–1636 First dip into the Western Ocean 91 Kicking out the Kwangtung pirates 94 Stretching out to the terminals 98 Chapter Seven: The Risk of Politics and the Politics of Risk 101 1636–1640 The mercenaries become involved in politics 101 The risk of politics: confronted by the Siamese king’s 103 Canton trade The politics of risk: co-operation with the Dutch 109 in the Japan trade Chapter Eight: In Search of Silver in a Changing World 117 1640–1646 The usurpation of the silver trade from Macau 117 The usurpation of the pepper trade of Macau 123 in the South China Sea Region Chasing silver in a changing world in crisis 128 Chapter Nine: The Open Coast of the Chinese Empire 137 1646–1650 The interlude of Nanking and Chekiang merchants 137 Hunting silver and rice for the newly established Coxinga force 143 The lucrative pepper trade targeted against Macau 145 The re-organization of the Min-nan monopoly on Chinese 148 overseas trade under Coxinga Chapter Ten: Fukienese Exceptionalism Transformed 151 into a Political Project 1650–1654 The renewed struggle for the monopoly on the export of silk 151 Expansion of the ‘Western Ocean’ trade in China and Japan 155 The politicization of Fukien exceptionalism 159 CONTENTS xi Chapter Eleven: The Passions of a Merchant Prince 1654–1657 165 Challenging all limitations 1654–1656 165 Expanding war and trade 1656–1657 178 Chapter Twelve: From Defeat to Victory 1658–1662 191 The long and winding

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