396 Boundaries and Beyond
Amoy merchants had made their fortunes in the extended shipping
networks or business operations outside Amoy. The losses in Amoy
itself had not signiβicantly depleted their fortunes or jeopardized their
leading position in the junk trade enterprise.^171 Indeed, the highly
fragmentary and disjointed information collected in the Amoy Gazetteer
makes painful reading. As said before, Amoy continued to βit out junks to
trade to other coastal cities and the Nanyang. Until the 1840s, its junks
were arriving in Singapore in increasing numbers and they remained
active in the coastal trade. Nevertheless, after the turn of the century
Amoy gradually passed its peak as a shipping center.^172 In 1853, the
native maritime trade in Amoy came to a standstill during the Small-
Sword rebellion, during which Amoy suffered nine months of destructive
occupation.^173 Leaving this aside, as a Treaty Port, its role in shipping
had inevitably undergone changes that linked it to international trade
with the coming of foreign vessels. In the ensuing one hundred years, it
was also a favorite port of call for the Nanyang Fujianese, above all the
Straits Chinese.
As Amoy battled, what had happened to the junk trade of the
prosperous port of Shanghai? It had also been showing signs of
difβiculties in the latter part of the 1840s. Rutherford Alcock noted, “(t)he
junk trade by all account(s) appears to be on the decrease”. He listed a
few serious obstacles to the healthy development of the trade. The worst
grievance was that very frequently the authorities took up the whole of
the tonnage to convey the government’s tribute rice to Tianjin. Secondly,
the shippers were incurring great losses from piracy on the high seas
and from fresh-water thieves in the interior. Thirdly, when the Treaty
Ports were the destinations of their shipments the merchants opted for
- Commenting on conditions in Amoy in the early 1830s, Murakami Ei rightly
observes that, “the decline of Amoy does not necessarily reβlect the decline
of the South Fujianese trading activities”. See Murakami Ei 村上衛, “Binetsu
engaimin no katsudō to shintyō: zyūkyū seiki zenhan no ahen bōeki katsudō
wo tyūshin ni” 閩粵沿海民の活動と清朝—一九世紀前半のァヘソ貿易活動
を中心に [The Coastal Activities of the Min-Yue people and the Qing Dynasty
as Seen from the Opium Trade before the Opium War], Tōhō gakuhō 東方學報
(Journal of Oriental Studies), no. 75 (Kyoto, 2003): 209. A rewritten Chinese
version of his essay was published in Zhongguo haiyang fazhan shi lunwen ji,
Vol. 10, ed. Shi-yeoung Tang (2008), pp. 361‒417. - Liao Dake, Fujian haiwai jiaotong shi, p. 329.
- Compare the different readings of the Amoy Gazetteer offered by Sarasin
Viraphol, Tribute and Proϔit, pp. 108‒9; Chen Kuo-tung, “Qing tai zhongye
xiamen de haishang maoyi”, pp. 500‒1; and Ng Chin-keong, Trade and Society,
pp. 59‒61.
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