Expanding Possibilities 399
linkage between the Treaty Ports and the non-Treaty Ports. These were
the spheres that western shipping had never been able to penetrate.
Nevertheless, unquestionably the Chinese outbound overseas
junk trade lost its shine around 1850, compared to its earlier state of
predominance and omnipresence in the Southeast Asian waters as
described by John Crawfurd, John Phipps, Edmund Roberts and other
contemporary observers only two or three decades earlier. The decline
in the long-distance junk trade to Batavia, Manila or more generally in
the Indian Archipelago was especially obvious.^180 Facing the severe
competition posed by the western vessels in this sector, the Chinese
junks arriving from their Chinese home ports were reduced to a mere
- This number of vessels was only one-third of those during the
earlier peak. The total number of junks arriving in Singapore, which had
emerged as one of the major destinations of the Chinese junks from China,
βluctuated greatly from the late 1840s and indeed the junks were soon
to disappear from the scene after 1863.^181 In the Sino-Siamese trade, as
mentioned earlier, only the outbound junks from Bangkok were involved
in the trade.
Although the time around 1850 was a turning point, the declining
native junk trade of China should not be seen as a defeat for its main
players, the Min-Yue merchants, who were not pushed out of the picture
immediately. Despite the challenges, interest in the junk trade remained
large.^182 Adam W. Elmslie observes, “Notwithstanding that the Canton
junk trade has fallen off considerably within the last few years, it is still of
importance.”^183 The uncertainties in their hometown Amoy did not seem
to have depleted the fortunes of the Fujianese thus far. As Harry Parkes
notes, the junk trade of Canton was developed by Fujian merchants in
the βirst instance and it remained for the most part “in their hands at
the present day”.^184 He went on to comment that many cargoes, although
imported in the foreign vessels, were still shipped on account of Chinese
consignees, who again were “for the most part Fukien men”.^185 The Fujian
and Chaozhou junk merchants, who were engrossed in the trade to the
Nanyang and who were put under the management and supervision of - Anthony Reid, “Flows and Seepages in the Long-term Chinese Interaction with
Southeast Asia”, in Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the
Chinese, ed. Anthony Reid (St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1996), p. 46. - Wong Lin Ken, “The Trade of Singapore 1819‒1869”, pp. 123‒4.
- FO 228/136, no. 151, John Bowring to the Earl of Malmesbury, p. 6b.
- Adam W. Elmslie in FO 228/136, no. 151, John Bowring to the Earl of
Malmesbury, Encl. 9, pp. 48b‒49a. - Harry Parkes in John Bowring to the Earl of Malmesbury, Encl. 10, p. 55b.
- Ibid., p. 59.