Boundaries and Beyond linked essays by a senior scholar in the field challenge the usual readings China’s southeastern coast within a broader view of maritime Asia, the first China’s Maritime farther afield, pursuing the history of Southeast in Late Imperial Times 畊海 耕海 Ng Chin-keong Boundaries and Beyond Boundaries and Beyond China’s Maritime Southeast 耕海：明清东南沿海与in Late Imperial Times 传统藩篱的移位 Ng Chin-keong © 2017 Ng Chin-keong This book is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND License. To view a copy of this license, Publishedvisit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ by : NUS Press National University of Singapore AS3-01-02, 3 Arts Link Singapore 117569 Fax: (65) 6774-0652 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://nuspress.nus.edu.sg All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher. National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Name(s): Ng, Chin-keong. Title: Boundaries and beyond: China’s maritime southeast in late imperial times / Ng Chin-keong. Description: Singapore: NUS Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographic references and index. Identiier(s): OCN 950557701 | ISBN 978-981-47-2201-8 (case) Subject(s): LCSH: Merchant marine--China--History. | China--Commerce-- History. | China--Foreign economic relations--Asia--History. Classiication: DDC 382.09510903--dc23 The electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 978-981-4722-44-5. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. Contents List of Maps Preface Acknowledgments vii ix Part One: Maritime East Asia in Historical Perspective xi 1. Commodity and Market: Structure of the Long-distance Trade in the East Asian Seas and Beyond Prior to the Part Two:Early Between Nineteenth “Us” Century and “Them” 3 Haifang 2. Maritime Frontiers, Territorial Expansion and (Coastal Defense) during the Late Ming and High Qing 57 3. Trade, the Sea Prohibition and the “Folangji”, 1513‒50 101 4. Treaties, Politics and the Limits of Local Diplomacy in Fuzhou in the Early 1850s 147 5. “Shooting the Eagle”: Lin Changyi’s Agony in the Wake of the Opium War 175 6. Information and Knowledge: Qing China’s Perceptions of Part Three:the Maritime Pushing World the Traditional in the Eighteenth Boundaries Century 191 7. The Changing Landscape in Rural South Fujian in Late-Ming Times: A Story of the “Little People” (1) 207 8. Gentry-Merchants and Peasant-Peddlers in Offshore Trading Activities, 1522‒66: A Story of the “Little People” (2) 242 9. Managing Maritime Affairs in Late-Ming Times 261 v Contents vi 10. Liturgical Services and Business Fortunes: Chinese Maritime Merchants in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries 292 11. The Amoy Riots of 1852: Coolie Emigration and Part Four:Sino-British Transcending Relations Borders 316 12. Expanding Possibilities: Revisiting the Min-Yue Junk-trade Enterprise on the China Coast and in the Nanyang during the Eighteenth to the Mid-nineteenth Centuries 345 13. The Case of Chen Yilao: Maritime Trade and Overseas Chinese in Qing Policies, 1717‒54 415 14. “Are These Persons British or Chinese Subjects?”— Legal Principles and Ambiguities Regarding the Status of the Straits Chinese as Revealed in the Lee Shun Fah Affair Glossaryin ofAmoy, Chinese 1847 Characters 444 Bibliography Index 469 474 496 List of Maps 1. The Asian Seas, Trading Regions and the Silk Road in Historical Perspective xv 2. China Coast and Trading Ports (Sixteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries) xvi 3. Maritime East Asia and Trading Ports/Regions in Historical Perspective xvii vii Preface This collection includes 14 selected essays on maritime China in Late Imperial times. The three earliest pieces originate from a Mast er’s thesis that was written in 1970 and the most recent pieces are the Englishversions of two conference papers presented in 2010 and 2013 respectivelyat the National Cheng-kung University of Taiwan. The rest were published in the 1990s and 2000s. The main title of the volume “Boundariesand Beyond” provides some sort of frame of unity for the differenttopics. Boundaries in ChinaMychoice of the word “boundaries” as a concept has been inspired byJohn Hay’s ideas in his introduction to the edited volume . Hay mentions all sorts of boundaries that have been “drawn for speciic purposes, demarcating particular regimes of powers.… The demarcations are erected as barriers.…” Ritual is a good example. While its principal purpose is for “the maintenance of stability in a system”, it can also be seen “as a dynamic system, rather than simply as a frozen body of pre/proscription”. The former situation “inherently sets it against the forces of change”. However, “its inception … is eactiona r to those forces, which are therefore always implicit in it. Ritual is not ‘non-change’, but rises 1to demarcate a fundamental boundary between stability and instability.” The main heading of the book title, “Boundaries and Beyond”, highlights the two contesting forces of continuities and discontinuities that characterized China’s maritime southeast in late imperial times. Boundaries were in the process of shifting. They were there for the purpose of maintaining stability, status quo, or law and order. The state prescribed which occupations were perceived to be fundamental and which secondary. Besides this function, boundaries also worked to protect the powerful, the wealthy or the interest groups whoten of had the privilege of setting the boundaries to prevent others from inlicting harm and destruction upon them.There were also boundaries of ctivitya set to demarcate the land and the sea and between “us” and “them”. In actuality, boundaries were not strict demarcations separating the space within them from that outside them. Boundaries were in a state of lux, driven by the emerging socioeconomic forces and hence embodied dualistic characters of “tradition” and “change”. Boundaries in China 1. , ed. John Hay (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 1994), pp. 8‒9. ix Preface x In accordance with the content of each topic, the 14 chapters are grouped into four parts. Part One provides a long view of the development of maritime East Asia. It places China’s southeastern coast in late imperial times in the broad perspective of maritime East Asia and the Asian Seas over a long period of some two thousand years. One salient feature of this maritime world was its lexibility and inclusiveness, allowing people from within or without to assume different roles as commodity producers, traders, shippers, cargo carriers or consumers in the long- distance shipping trade. Part Two depicts the orthodox perceptions of viewing and responding to the changes or challenges. Part Three reviews the undercurrent of social and economic forces that had the effect of modifying the existing boundaries. Part Four examines the transnational movements crossing the borders, altering the status quo and creating new types of boundaries. Parts Two to Four are arranged under three sub-themes that seem to indicate a chronological sequence of movement in three stages from tradition toward change. In fact, they illustrate a continuous process of interactions throughout late imperial times between the status quo and challenges as shown in all the chapters. In other words, status quo and change did not preclude each other, rather, both were responding to the current social and economic forces. Although tradition remained strong, change was also occurring all the time, either in the form of a deep undercurrent or as an increasingly visible phenomenon. As regards the conventions, the volume uses Pinyin romanization and simpliied Chinese characters in general for the Chinese terms or publication titles. However, the Wade-Giles or dialect-pronounced names are kept in accordance to the scholars’ own preference. An older form of romanization is applied to a few Chinese place names, such as Amoy, Soochow and Canton that were commonly used in the older western writings. There is also no conversion to Pinyin for such place names as Taipei that follow the local usage. For the Chinese characters in the article or book titles, the complex form of characters is kept for the pre- 1949 publications, the historical texts of Imperial times or the printed materials from outside mainland China. Place names in Southeast Asia are as complicated. In general, names that have long been used in the past in English literature have been chosen. Among them are the Moluccus, Celebes, Bantam and Malacca. When discussing shipping trade in the Malay world, however, either the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago or the Indonesian Archipelago are the terms used depending on the geographical extent of the activity. When it comes to the modern period, the more familiar term in western writings, the Indian Archipelago, is also used. No attempt has been made to update the contents of the essays to accommodate later works by other scholars. Other than the editorial reinement, the essays are kept in their original form and style. Acknowledgments Chronological Table of Chapters Date Title Source 1970 Managing maritime affairs in An outgrowth of a chapter late Ming times in my MA thesis writtenNanyang in University1970. The Journalthesis chapter was reproduced in , no. 5 (1971): 81–100. 1970 The changing landscape in An outgrowth of a chapter rural south Fujian in late- in my MA thesis writtenNanyang in Ming times: A story of the University1970. The Journal,thesis chapter “little people”(1) was reproduced in no.