Gentry-Merchants and Peasant-Peddlers 247
The Offshore Enterprise
Soon after the arrivals of foreign traders, an enormous amount of illegal
commercial activity under the thinly veiled patronage of the local gentry
began to emerge.^16 The Portuguese smuggler-traders who frequented the
China coast in 1521‒51 built u p many contacts with Chinese of all classes
who were anxious to do business with them.^17 Lin Xiyuan, a celebrated
contemporary scholar from South Fujian, explains:
The Folangji (the Portuguese) who came brought their local
pepper, sappanwood, ivory, oil of thyme-oil, aloes, sandalwood and
all kinds of incense in order to trade with our frontier people. Their
prices were particularly cheap. Every day they consumed supplies
of drinks and foodstuffs that they obtained from our people, such
as quantities of rice, βlour, pigs and poultry. The prices that they
paid for these were double the usual amount, and therefore our
borderers gladly provided them with a market.^18The good relationship between the Portuguese and the coastal dwellers
is also mentioned in another contemporary record by a Dominican
missionary. He says that the poor people of the coastal area:
... were very glad of the Portuguese.... In these towns were those
China merchants who came with the Portugals, and because
they were known, for their sakes the Portugals were the better
entertained, and through them it was arranged for the local
merchants to bring their goods for sale to the Portugals. And as
these Chinas who came with the Portugals were the intermediaries
between the Portugals and the local merchants, they reaped a
great proβit thereby.^19The meagerly paid mandarins of the lower ranks were even less eager
to offend the local members of the gentry. They knew very well that they
had much to lose by attempting to deceive them and had much to gain in
- Ming shilu: Shizong shilu 明實錄：世宗實錄 [Veritable records of the Ming
Dynasty: Shizong Reign] (hereafter MSL: SZ), 189: 9a‒b, 422: 5b. - Ibid., 106: 5a
- Quoted in Chang Wei-hua 張維華, “Ming shi folangji, Lusong, Helan, Yidali
zhuan zhushi” 明史佛朗機呂宋荷蘭意大利傳註釋 [A commentary on the
four chapters on Portugal, Spain, Holland and Italy in the Standard History of
the Ming Dynasty], in Yenching Journal of Chinese Studies: monograph series
No. 7 (Peiping: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1934), p. 44. Following Boxer’s
translation, p. xxiii. - “The Treatise of Fr. Gaspar da Cruz”, in C.R. Boxer, South China in the Sixteenth
Century, p. 192.