The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts THE REBIRTH OF CHINA’S INTRA-ASIAN MARITIME TRADE, 1670 - 1740 A Dissertation in History and Asian Studies by Ryan Holroyd © 2018 Ryan Holroyd Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2018 The dissertation of Ryan Holroyd was reviewed and approved* by the following: Ronnie Po-chia Hsia Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History Dissertation Co-Advisor Chair of Committee Kathlene Baldanza Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies Dissertation Co-Advisor Jyoti Gulati Balachandran Assistant Professor of History Carol Reardon George Winfree Professor Emerita of American History Shuang Shen Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Chinese Gregory J. Smits Director of Graduate Studies Professor of History and Asian Studies *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. ii Abstract This dissertation is a study of the development of China’s overseas trade during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It argues that beginning in the 1670s, the formerly profitable trading links that connected China to Japan and Luzon were compromised by political changes in the three regions, and particularly by a civil war in China. The result was a turn towards Southeast Asia that began in 1674 when the Taiwan- based Zheng family, who then dominated maritime trade in East Asia, were forced to find alternative sources of goods to replace Chinese ones that had become inaccessible during the war. After the Qing empire’s conquest of Taiwan in 1683, its government legalised maritime trade from Chinese ports, creating a surge in the volume of China’s overseas trade. The markets of Japan and Luzon were not elastic enough to allow all of the new China-based merchants to participate profitably there, so they once again turned towards Southeast Asia. However, unlike the Zheng family in the 1670s, the goal of these new merchants was to find alternative markets to Japan and Luzon for their Chinese goods, and new imports for their home market. This trading network that emerged in the 1680s is examined in depth. Its structure developed as a ‘hub-and-spoke’ system; China-based merchants concentrated their activity in a few major commercial hubs that were already connected to many smaller centres by the spokes of sub-regional trading networks, and in some cases to the Indian Ocean as well. This gave the China-based merchants indirect access to a larger number of markets than would have been possible otherwise. The major impact of the expansion of Chinese trade in Southeast Asia was a re-orientation of the region’s economies towards China, and away from other trading systems, including the Dutch Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie’s commercial empire. This network in Southeast Asia was also easily the most important maritime link between China and the global economy until about 1720, when a combination of factors helped prompt the growth of direct trade between China, Europe, and South Asia. iii Table of Contents List of Tables ................................................................................................................ vi List of Figures ..............................................................................................................vii List of Maps ............................................................................................................... viii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... ix Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Cut Adrift .................................................................................................... 20 The Rebellion of the Three Feudatories and Maritime Trade ............................................................. 21 A Period of Relative Stability, 1664 – 1673 .......................................................................................... 23 Mountain and Sea Routes .................................................................................................................... 29 The South Seas Connection ................................................................................................................. 33 The Final Years of the Zheng Trading System, 1680 – 1683 ................................................................ 40 Conclusions .......................................................................................................................................... 42 Chapter 2: Flood Gates & Bottlenecks ........................................................................ 44 Qing Economic Recovery ..................................................................................................................... 45 Disapointment in Nagasaki .................................................................................................................. 50 The Manila Galleon Bottleneck ............................................................................................................ 57 Conclusions .......................................................................................................................................... 66 Chapter 3: A Borean Tailwind ..................................................................................... 69 Chen Lunjiong and the New Structure of Trade .................................................................................. 73 The Five Great Emporia of Southeast Asia ........................................................................................... 80 The Dominance of China-based Merchants within the New System .................................................. 90 Conclusions .......................................................................................................................................... 96 Chapter 4: The Swell .................................................................................................... 98 The Triangular Trades between Southeast Asia, China, and Japan ................................................... 101 The Qing Commodity Conquest of Southeast Asia ............................................................................ 103 The Trinh and Nguyen Domains ......................................................................................................... 105 Siam ................................................................................................................................................... 110 Johor and the Malay World ............................................................................................................... 119 Banjarmasin ....................................................................................................................................... 126 The Philippines, Northern Borneo, and the Maluku Islands .............................................................. 129 Java and the Core of the VOC’s Empire ............................................................................................. 135 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 139 iv Chapter 5: More Distant Shores ................................................................................. 142 The Flow of Chinese Goods into the Indian Ocean before c. 1715 .................................................... 144 The Inadequacy of the Old Routes through Southeast Asia .............................................................. 154 Surat’s Ships at Guangzhou ............................................................................................................... 162 The Macanese .................................................................................................................................... 168 Private British and French Trade from c. 1720 to 1740 ..................................................................... 173 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 179 Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 181 Appendix A. Notes on masses, currencies, and dates ............................................... 186 Appendix B. Non-Spanish ships arriving in Luzon, 1680-1701 ................................. 188 Appendix C. Ships arriving in Nagasaki from Southeast Asia in the Kai Hentai, 1684 - 1724 ............................................................................................................................. 200 Appendix D. British company and private ships sailing between South Asia and China, 1720 – 1740 ...................................................................................................... 221 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 224 v List of Tables Table 1.1. Raw silk imported to Nagasaki on Chinese Ships, 1654 – 1683 .................................... 28 Table 2.1. Asian Ships arriving in Nagasaki, 1674 – 1715 ................................................................. 50 Table 2.2. Value of imports on Asian ships in kanme of silver, 1674 – 1713 ................................. 53 Table