The Nanhai Trade

Exploring the ancient maritime trade between China and Southeast Asia, this study examines various features of Chinese trade with Southeast Asia, especially its economic dimension and the Chinese imperial and regional attitudes towards it during the eleven centuries before the foundation of the Sung dynasty in 960.

This book explores the ancient maritime trade between China and Southeast Asia. It examines the various features of the trade with Southeast Asia, especially the economic background as well as the Chinese imperial and regional attitudes towards it during the eleven centuries before the foundation of the Sung dynasty in 960-roughly the period from the Han dynasty to that of the T'ang.

Under the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, China's maritime trade went through several stages of rapid expansion. This concerns both activities initiated by the central government and private seafaring: Chinese ships would sail to ports in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, and foreign merchants would come to China, often declaring themselves as tribute envoys. In the early 16th century, the Portuguese made contact with the Middle Kingdom, leading to the foundation of Macao in the 1550s. The present volume, the third collection by Roderich Ptak, explores important structural features related to China's maritime ventures and Luso-Chinese relations. It also discusses the perception of maritime space in late medieval Chinese texts and the importance of trade routes, especially the so-called eastern route from Fujian via Luzon to the Sulu 'zone'. The third section presents different 'key' regions as seen through Chinese eyes: Hainan, the coral island in the South China Sea, Barus on Sumatra, and finally Wang Dayuan's chapters on the Kerala coast.

WINNER OF THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2020 A SUNDAY TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, THE TIMES AND BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR For most of human history, the seas and oceans have been the main means of long-distance trade and communication between peoples - for the spread of ideas and religion as well as commerce. This book traces the history of human movement and interaction around and across the world's greatest bodies of water, charting our relationship with the oceans from the time of the first voyagers. David Abulafia begins with the earliest of seafaring societies - the Polynesians of the Pacific, the possessors of intuitive navigational skills long before the invention of the compass, who by the first century were trading between their far-flung islands. By the seventh century, trading routes stretched from the coasts of Arabia and Africa to southern China and Japan, bringing together the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific and linking half the world through the international spice trade. In the Atlantic, centuries before the little kingdom of Portugal carved out its powerful, seaborne empire, many peoples sought new lands across the sea - the Bretons, the Frisians and, most notably, the Vikings, now known to be the first Europeans to reach North America. As Portuguese supremacy dwindled in the late sixteenth century, the Spanish, the Dutch and then the British each successively ruled the waves. Following merchants, explorers, pirates, cartographers and travellers in their quests for spices, gold, ivory, slaves, lands for settlement and knowledge of what lay beyond, Abulafia has created an extraordinary narrative of humanity and the oceans. From the earliest forays of peoples in hand-hewn canoes through uncharted waters to the routes now taken daily by supertankers in their thousands, The Boundless Sea shows how maritime networks came to form a continuum of interaction and interconnection across the globe: 90 per cent of global trade is still conducted by sea. This is history of the grandest scale and scope, and from a bracingly different perspective - not, as in most global histories, from the land, but from the boundless seas.

The present volume is a collection of papers originally presented for the concluding conference of the research project The East Asian 'Mediterranean' entitled "The East Asian 'Mediterranean' - Maritime Crossroads of Culture, Commerce and Human Migration" and held at Munich University from November 2-3, 2007. The papers in this volume have been arranged according to thematical sections, that is "Mediterranean Seas - from East Asia to East Africa", "Merchants and merchant networks", "Commodities and transport", and finally "Trade parameters and perceptions" - each section covering a different aspect of trade, diplomacy and perceptions across and within the East Asian and Asian waters. In order to show the variety and the different qualities of interaction and exchange relations we have selected case studies with a main focus lying on Sino-Japanese, Sino-Ryukyuan, and Japanese-Korean relations as well as the involvement of Muslim merchants in the Asian waters. The volume in particular tries to draw the readers' attention to the necessity and the advantages of international cooperation and interaction investigating topics of Asian history.

This book focuses on the political and commercial relations between the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Vietnamese kingdom of Tonkin from 1637 until the beginning of the eighteenth century. The VOC exported silk and silk piece-goods from Tonkin to Japan. The author focuses on various aspects of the mutual relationship between the VOC and Tonkin, and how this fitted into the larger picture of the intra-Asian trade. The book reveals the vicissitudes in political relations, and the varying trends in the VOC’s import (silver and copper) and export (silk, ceramics, musk, and gold). While examining a great deal of detailed archival materials, the author evaluates Dutch influence on Tonkin’s feudal society and economy. The book also offers a fascinating sketch of how the Vietnamese trading elite maximized their own profits by dealing with various western tradesmen, including the English and French.

This substantial work explores the impact of monetization in premodern Southeast Asia from the third century BCE to the rise of Maleka in the early fifteenth century. The author explores why concepts of money developed unevenly throughout the region. He considers trade policies, price controls, exchange ratios, monopolies, variant standards of value, and the administrative structures required to support such a complex economic innovation.