Boundaries-Prelims.indd

3

ĈčĆĕęĊė 1

Commodity and Market: Structure

of the Long-distance Trade in the

East Asian Seas and Beyond Prior to

the Early Nineteenth Century

Introduction: Studies on Maritime History

Maritime East Asia as a geographical concept has been gaining acceptance
among scholars in recent years.^1 It covers the two maritime spaces of
Northeast and Southeast Asia. Examining Fernand Braudel’s depiction
of the Mediterranean Sea, one βinds the same situation that enables the
concept to be borrowed: the area of the East Asian Seas encircled by their
surrounding lands “is not even a single sea, it is a complex of seas; and
these seas are broken up by islands, interrupted by peninsulas, ringed
by intricate coastlines”.^2 For centuries, shipping trade had facilitated
connections between the northern and southern parts of the East Asian
Seas. Unquestionably the littoral populations around the connected seas

1. See, for example, Ch’en Kuo-tung 陳國棟, Dongya haiyu yiqian nian 東亞海域一
   千年 [One thousand years of the East Asian Seas] (Taipei: Yuanliu chubanshe,
   2005). The author treats the East Asian Seas as a unit; Takeshi Hamashita 濱下
   武志, “Haiyu yazhou yu gangkou wangluo de lishi bianqian: 15–19 shiji” 海域亞
   洲與港口網絡的歷史變遷: 15–19世紀 [The historical change in maritime Asia
   and networks of port cities], in Haiyang shi congshu 1 海洋史叢書 1 [Maritime
   history series 1]: Gangkou chengshi yu maoyi wangluo 港口城市與貿易網
   絡 [Port cities and trading networks] (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 2012). In the
   paper, Hamashita surveys the political, trading and cultural interactions in the
   East Asian Seas; and Francois Gipouloux, The Asian Mediterranean: Port Cities
   and Trading Networks in China, Japan and Southeast Asia, 13th–21st Centuries
   (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2011), that sees the East Asian Seas as the
   Asian Mediterranean.


2. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of
   Philip II, trans. Sian Reynolds (London: Harper & Row, 1972), Vol. 1, p. 17.