8 Boundaries and Beyond
says, “In the 15th and 16th centuries, the average annual total amount
of pepper purchased by the Chinese has been estimated at 50,000 bags,
or two million catties; that is, almost equivalent to the total amount of
pepper imported into Europe from the East in the βirst half of the 16th
century.”^24 Not surprisingly, the bulk of the pepper produced in Sumatra
and West Java βlowed into the huge market of Ming China (Ćĉ 1368‒1644).
Among other Nanhai merchandise exported in large quantities to
China from Malacca were cloves, incense, elephant tusks, tin, Borneo
camphor, red beads, white sandalwood and the black wood that grows in
Singapore, as reported by Tomé Pires.^25
A whole array of trade goods was shipped from China including
such items as raw white silk, satins, damask, gauze, seed-pearls, musk,
alum, saltpeter, sulfur, copper, iron, copper vases, cast-iron kettles,
bowls, basins, boxes, fans, needles, brocades, ceramics, sugar and salt.
Tomé Pires considered salt to be one of the great items of merchandise
produced by China. Some 1,500 local junks would come to buy the item
after it had arrived in the port and, in turn, they would distribute it in the
surrounding region.^26 Pires’ description of the junks arriving from China
tallies well with the general pattern of their cargoes in the following
centuries, goods that both catered to the high-end market and supplied
the general populace with their daily necessities.
Ships, Navigators and Trade
The earliest record of long-distance seaborne trade between China and
India via Southeast Asia comes from a Chinese dynastic history some
2,000 years ago. The passage is cited in full below:
From the barriers of Rinan, Xuwen and Hepu, it is about βive
months’ voyage to the country of Duyuan. It is about a further
four months’ voyage to the country of Yilumo, and yet another
twenty odd days’ voyage to the country of Shenli. It is rather(London: The Hakluyt Society, 1944), Vol. 1, p. 123. Tomé Pires arrived in
Guangzhou (Canton) in 1517 as the βirst Portuguese envoy to China.- T’ien Ju-kang, “Cheng Ho’s Voyages and the Distribution of Pepper in China”,
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland, no. 2 (1981): 187.
Pepper was the most valuable export to Europe from the mid-sixteenth century
until the 1820s. See Southeast Asian Exports since the 14th Century: Cloves,
Pepper, Coffee, and Sugar, comp. David Bulbeck, et al. (KITLV Press, Research
School of Paciβic Studies, ANU and Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1998),
p. 5. - The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, p. 123.
- Ibid., pp. 125–7.
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