Expanding Possibilities 371
Quanzhou, Hangzhou and Yangzhou. Chinese overseas trade prospered
in the Song dynasty (Ćĉ 960‒1279).^70 The coastal ports were the gateway
through which the handicraft products from the interior were exported
overseas. In return, China also received foreign goods that were imported
in large quantities. A Song source of 1141 records some 333 items from
the foreign countries, the bulk of them consisting generally of spices and
drugs.^71
During Song-Yuan times (960‒1368), Chinese junks and maritime
merchants appeared in the Nanhai (Nanyang). They even put in an
appearance in the faraway countries west of Southeast Asia. During the
renowned seven maritime expeditions (1403‒33) led by Admiral Zheng
He in the early Ming, Chinese ofβicials came across Chinese settlements
in several parts of the Indonesian Archipelago. When western explorers
and missionaries arrived on the southeastern coast of China in the early
sixteenth century, Chinese junks were already present in the Nanhai in
increasing numbers. Two centuries later, the ocean junks βitted out from
the Min-Yue region entered a vigorous stage of development. As a report
from the 1740s shows, there were more than 110 ocean-going junks
worth βive to six million taels of silver. The cargoes kept in the Amoy and
Canton warehouses were estimated to amount to several million taels
in value.^72
Apace with the development of seaborne trade, extended trading
networks were built in both the eastern part of the Nanhai, consisting
of the Philippines and the eastern islands of present-day Indonesia,
and the region west of it, including Siam, the Malay Peninsula and the
Indonesian Archipelago.
Ever since the founding by the Spanish of a settlement in Manila in
1571, a new era of the junk trade had commenced between Manila and
Haicheng (Yuegang), from where an increasing number of junks were
βitted out to trade to Manila and thence connected to places as far away
as Acapulco in Mexico via the trans-Paciβic shipping provided by the
Spanish galleons. For purposes of control, the Ming government initially
- Wang Gungwu, “The Nanhai Trade: A Study of the History of Chinese Trade in
the South China Sea”, Journal of the Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society 31, 2
(1958): 135. - Paul Wheatley, “Geographical Notes on Some Commodities Involved in Sung
Maritime Trade”, Journal of the Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society 32, 2
(1959): 31. - Ng Chin-keong, Trade and Society, p. 212, citing Zhangzhou fu zhi 漳州府志
[Gazetteer of Zhangzhou Prefecture], 1877 ed., 33: 64a‒65a; and Fujian tongzhi
福建通志 [General Gazetteer of Fujian], 1871 ed., 230: 21b‒26b, “Biography of
Cai Xin”.