374 Boundaries and Beyond
Batavia.^80 The Amoy junks of 1,000 to 1,200 tons each were larger than
the other Chinese junks. In comparison, the vessels from Changlim in
Chaozhou were of 500 tons each. Each of the junks arriving in Batavia
from the Chinese ports also carried 400 to 500 migrants. Most of them
became laborers in the locality. Some moved on to other places around
the Indian Archipelago, while others might set up small businesses
and often functioned as middlemen in the lower-end of the procuring
and distributing networks stretching into the interior or other remote
regions.
The good times were not to last. The Dutch authorities began to
resort to stringent monopolistic laws in the hope of barring the Chinese
junks from trading in the outer islands of the Indian Archipelago.
Although the Company was able to reduce the number of incoming junks
to Batavia, it soon realized that the sustainability and the resilience of the
Chinese trading networks were hard nuts to crack totally.^81
Turning to the Malay Peninsula, a 1730 Chinese record notes the
presence of Chinese seafarers in several regional ports including Chaiya
(Xiezai), Ligor (Liukun), Songkla (Songka) and Pattani (Danian), all
under Siamese jurisdiction; Kelantan (Jilandan), Trengganu (Dingjianu)
and Pahang (Pengheng) on the east coast, Johor (Roufo) in the south and
Malacca (Melaka/Maliujia) on the west coast.^82
Also frequented by the Chinese trading junks was Annam (Vietnam),
which had a population of approximately 23 million.^83 Since the seven-
teenth century, the Vietnamese ports had become popular among the
Chinese shippers in the entrepôt trade.^84
Ever since the mid-seventeenth century, Siam’s position had been rising
steadily, making it one of the major destinations of the trading junks from
China. Although a maritime ban was imposed by the Qing Court in 1656,
the smuggling junks of the Min-Yue seafarers, with the South Fujianese
in the majority, continued to make their voyages to Ayudhya, Bangkok
- Blussé and Wu, Bacheng gongguan dang’an yanjiu, pp. 46, 53.
- Leonard Blussé, “Chinese Trade to Batavia”, Archipel 18 (1979): 210‒1.
- Chen Lunjiong 陳倫炯, Haiguo wenjian lu 海國聞見錄 [Record of matters seen
and heard in the maritime countries] (Preface, 1730; edition, 1793), βirst
section, 25b‒26a; see also Jennifer W. Cushman and A.C. Milner, “Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Century Chinese Accounts of the Malay Peninsula”, Journal of
Malaysian Branch Royal Asiatic Society 52, 1 (1979): 9‒12. - John Crawfurd, Journal of the Embassy, p. 526.
- Chin Kong James 錢江, “Shiqi zhi shijiu shiji chu Yuenan yanhai de zhongguo
fanchuan maoyi” 十七至十九世紀初越南沿海的中國帆船貿易 [The Chinese
junk trade along the Vietnam coast in the 17th to 19th centuries], in Zhongguo
haiyang fazhan shih lunwen ji, Vol. 9, ed. Shiuh-Feng Liu, pp. 169‒90.
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