Expanding Possibilities 373
The trade peaked in the βirst half of the eighteenth century, when the
arriving junks numbered between 10 and 20. How the Dutch authorities
in Batavia felt about the impact of the trading junks is vividly reβlected in
their deliberations in the late seventeenth century about whether there
was still a need for the Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) to dispatch its
own ships to China.
As in Manila, most of the Chinese business investments in Batavia
came from Amoy, but trading junks also came from other Chinese ports. In
the 40 years between 1715 and 1754, for example, a total of 437 Chinese
junks visited Batavia, or 88 per cent of the incoming vessels in the port.
Among them, 272 ships came from Amoy, or an average of seven annually,
81 from Canton, 73 from Ningbo and 11 from Shanghai. Departing from
Batavia during the same period were 244 ships heading to Amoy, 75 to
Canton, 81 to Ningbo and 15 to Shanghai, a total of 418 ships, or 90 per
cent of the departing vessels.^79
As the Quan-Zhang people formed the majority of the Chinese
residents in Batavia, the Dutch authorities granted the green-prow Amoy
junks preferential tax rates, tantamount to an open invitation to trade in
[A study of the Chinese Council of Batavia Archives: The Chinese community
of Batavia at the end of the eighteenth century] (The Xiamen University
Press, 2002), p. 45; Leonard Blussé, “No Boats to China. The Dutch East India
Company and the Changing Pattern of the China Sea Trade, 1635‒1690”,
Modern Asian Studies 30, 1 (1996): 51‒76; Chang Pin-tsun 張彬村, “Shiqi shiji
mo Helan dong yindo gongshi weisheme buzai pai chuan dao Zhongguo lai?” 十
七世紀末荷蘭東印度公司為什麼不再派船到中國來？[Why did the Dutch East
India Company stop sending ships to China], in Zhongguo haiyang fazhan shi
lunwen ji 中國海洋發展史論文集 [Essays in Chinese Maritime History], Vol. 9,
ed. Shiuh-Feng Liu 劉序楓 (Taipei: The Research Center for the Studies on
Maritime History, Academia Sinica, 2005), pp. 169‒90; Chang Pin-tsun, “Helan
dong yindo gongshi shidai huaren de shangye shili fazhan” 荷蘭東印度公司時
代華人的商業勢力發展 [The development of Chinese businesses during the
era of the Dutch East India Company], in Zhongguo haiyang fazhan shih lunwen
ji, Vol. 10 (2008), ed. Shi-yeoung Tang 汤煕勇, pp. 329‒60; and Chin Kong James
錢江, “Merchants and Other Sojourners: The Hokkiens Overseas, 1570‒1760”,
PhD thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1998, pp. 254‒6.- George Bryan Souza, The Survival of Empire: Portuguese Trade and Society in
China and the South China Sea, 1630‒ 1754 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986), pp. 140‒1; also cited in Akira Matsuura 松浦章, “Shindai Hukken
no kaisengyō nitsuite” 清代福建の海船業につぃて [The Shipping Business
of Fujian Province in the Qing Dynasty], Tōyōshi kenkyū 東洋史研究 [The
Journal of Oriental Researches] 47, 3 (1988): 482; and Akira Matsuura, Qingdai
fanchuan dongya hang yun, p. 196.