Expanding Possibilities 413
multitudes of migrant settlers. Together they created the functional multi-
layered and the multiport enterprise that was born from the junk trade.
This boundary-transcending perspective broadens our horizons by
viewing the interconnected regional networks as integral parts of the
trade and allows us to appreciate better the modus operandi of the Min-Yue
businesses. Speaking of Fujian and Guangdong, G. William Skinner posits
that the southeastern region, that extended from the southern portion of
Zhejiang to Chaozhou in eastern Guangdong with the port city Quanzhou
at the center, experienced a more than two-centuries-long maritime
“dark age” between the turbulent Ming-Qing transition in the 1600s and
the 1840s when βive Treaty Ports were opened to trade after the Opium
War. He suggests that the economy and coastal trade entered a cycle of
decline between these two points in time.^228 In contrast to his claim, this
chapter has described an overall upward trend in economic and shipping
developments. Although periodically βluctuations and depressions
did occur, it was on the whole a period of unmistakable upward swing
in the one and a half centuries from the lifting of the maritime ban in
1684 until the golden age of the seafaring trade that might be viewed
as the long eighteenth century. The driving force behind the seaborne
enterprise came from the southeastern coast covering the subregions
of South Fujian, the Chaozhou-Shantou Plain and the Pearl River Delta,
with Amoy, Changlim and Canton as the three major interconnected
ports. Although G. William Skinner sees Fujian and Guangdong as two
different geographical regions in his macro-regions analysis, the growth
of domestic and overseas junk trade in the eighteenth through the βirst
half of the nineteenth century had in fact integrated the two in their
common pursuit of proβit.^229
In each of the transaction centers, the presence of the Min-Yue
merchants boosted the development of a prosperous mercantile culture.
By nature the community of a port city was pluralistic and competitive.
The lack of social cohesion often led to conβlicts among the different
interest groups. The mercantile community too often encountered
jealousy and oppression on the part of the government, but the local
authorities had a stake in maintaining social harmony and avoiding
disorder. In this respect, they shared with the mercantile community
a strong desire to maintain peace and harmony, and this provided a
conducive environment for the economic growth and social stability
- G. William Skinner, “Presidential Address: The Structure of Chinese History”,
Journal of Asia Studies 44, 2 (1985): 276‒9. - Also refer to Sucheta Mazumdar, Sugar and Society in China, p. 113, for similar
comments on the issue.