390 Boundaries and Beyond
more often carried on a coasting trade. Although their trade involved
mostly coarse produce, its aggregate value equaled or perhaps exceeded
that of the exports from Siam, as Rutherford Alcock noted.^155
One 1846 source says that, excluding the Hainan junks, the trading
capital of the Guangdong junks was βive million Spanish dollars,
amounting to one-sixth of the total value of the junk trade along the coast.
One-half of the Guangdong junks were trading to Siam.^156
In the βirst few years after Shanghai became a Treaty Port, every
year it received a large number of ocean junks returning from overseas
voyages. Their operators were mostly the Min-Yue people. The Shanghai
shippers made up only 10 to 20 per cent of those participating in the
trade.^157 Around 1850, there were 12 to 20 junks involved in the trade,
importing chieβly Straits produce, bêche-de-mer, birds’ nests, medicines,
red and black woods, joss and incense, shirting, glass, opium, deer horn,
coconuts, rattan, tobacco and gold. Three of them were large junks
of 940 tons that traded to Siam. The kingdom imported goods from
Shanghai worth 210,000 dollars. Another three junks of the same tonnage
returned from Singapore with an import value of 417,000 dollars.
Two small junks, both 75 tons, shipped back goods from Burma worth
112,000 dollars each. Two junks of the same tonnage were back from
Batavia and the east coast of the Malay Peninsula carrying cargoes worth
112,000 dollars and 83,000 dollars respectively. Two junks of 75 tons
each visited Riau once every two years, shipping back a cargo of 41,000
dollars. Returning from the Vietnam coast was one junk of the same
tonnage carrying a cargo worth 112,000 dollars.^158 Rutherford Alcock
estimated the total value of this branch of so-called “southern trade”
at 8,350,600 dollars. He also put the total value of the import maritime
trade in Shanghai at 9,680,000 dollars, and the value of the exports north
and south of the native and foreign ports at 4,053,499 dollars.^159
In short, the Chinese junk trade remained resilient after 1843. At a time
in which the number of junks visiting the Dutch and Spanish colonies in
Southeast Asia was declining, the volume of trade with Siam and Vietnam
seems to have made up for the losses in the Archipelago to some extent.
- Ibid.
- Sarasin Viraphol, Tribute and Proϔit, p. 197
- Gao Hongxia, Shanghai fujian ren yanjiu, pp. 59‒60.
- FO 228/136, no. 151, Rutherford Alcock in John Bowring to the Earl of
Malmesbury, Encl. 5, p. 20a; and Encl. 7, pp. 31a‒b. - FO 228/136, no. 151, Rutherford Alcock in John Bowring to the Earl of
Malmesbury, Encl. 5, p. 21a.
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