360 Boundaries and Beyond
from South China to Europe. Besides exporting sugar to India, Dutch
and other European merchants also shipped it from Canton to their
own countries.^34 During the Song (960‒1279) and Yuan (1271‒1368)
dynasties, ceramics from Fujian had been exported in large quantities
stimulating the spread of the industry all over the province. The Dutch in
Batavia also showed great interest in importing various kinds of dishes
in large quantities in the 1620s.^35 Fujian was also known for its tea
production that reached its peak during the Qing period (1644‒1911).
Keeping pace, the silk industry in Guangdong had greatly expanded.
Fujian exported its silk products to Southeast Asia as early as the Song
period. In the early seventeenth century, as J.C. van Leur indicates,
[t]he amount of raw silk brought to Bantam per year was three
or four hundred picul.... [Large] quantities of it were also carried
to Malacca and Manila, from whence it was shipped to the Middle
East and Europe by the Portuguese and Spanish.... A few thousand
pieces of silk, damask, and satin cloth were shipped by the Dutch.^36As the demand for Chinese raw silk rose rapidly in foreign trade from
the eighteenth century, the silk industry in the Pearl River Delta region
expanded; many of its products were shipped to Europe.^37
- Sucheta Mazumdar, Sugar and Society in China: Peasants, Technology, and
the World Market (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1998),
pp. 60, 71, 106‒7; J.C. van Leur also mentions exports of sugar and rock candy
to Bantam in the early seventeenth century, albeit in small quantities. See
Indonesian Trade and Society, p. 126. - Ibn Battuta inaccurately attributes the production areas of porcelain in China
only to Zaytun and Sin-kalan (?) in southern Fujian. However, he does provide
a piece of useful information, namely that porcelain was exported to India and
Yemen. See p. 289. For the Dutch import, see J.C. van Leur, Indonesian Trade and
Society, p. 126. - J.C. van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society, p. 126.
- Fujian jingji fazhan jian shi 福建经济发展简史 [A concise history of the
development of the Fujian economy], ed. Xiamen daxue lishi yanjiu suo [yu]
Zhongguo shehui jingji yanjiu suo 厦门大学历史研究所、中国社會经济研究
所 [Institute of Historical Studies of Amoy University and Institute of Social
and Economic Research of China] (Xiamen daxue chubanshe, 1989), p. 304;
Zhou Hongwei 周宏伟, Qingdai liang guang nongye dili 清代两广农业地理 [The
Agricultural Geography in the Two-Guang during Qing Times] (Hunan jiaoyu
chubanshe, 1998), pp. 206‒7; and Alvin Y. So, The South China Silk District (New
York: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 79‒82. Chen Zhiping 陈
支平, Jin 500 nian lai Fujian de jiazu shehui yu wenhua 近 500 年来福建的家
族社会与文化 [Lineage and culture of Fujian in the last βive hundred years]
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