Commodity and Market 25
from the sea.”^85 By this time, the Chinese were active participants in the
shipping trade. The country “has more than a thousand junks, and each of
them trades where it sees βit”, Pires records.^86
In sum, Chinese ships might have begun to sail into the Nanhai and
the Indian Ocean much earlier than is generally believed. The rather
obscure picture of Chinese shipping grows slightly less obscure in the
late Tang period. Hence there are grounds for arguing more conβidently
that, while the Arab merchants resident in Chinese ports often owned
and operated the Chinese ocean-going vessels, there was nothing to
stop them from having native Chinese or indigenized Arab merchants
as their business partners, joining them or taking charge of the voyages.
Certainly this was the situation in the Song era. By then, unquestionably
many people of Arab descent had become indigenous Chinese people.
In the βifteenth century, the presence of Chinese shipping had become
a common scene in the Nanhai region. Its principal destination was
Malacca to acquire commodities from Southeast Asia and the Indian
Ocean region.^87 By this time, direct voyages farther west to Calicut no
longer made commercial sense, since commodities from the Indian Ocean
were now abundantly available in the new emporium Malacca. Besides
Malacca, Chinese junks were also found in many other ports, even in the
remote areas of maritime East Asia.^88
The Emergence of Multiple Port Polities during the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
As Anthony Reid suggests, the period between 1400 and 1750 witnessed
“the Age of Commerce” in Southeast Asia.^89 Nevertheless, it is possible
to take a slightly different view and think of the βifteenth century as a
transitional period in maritime East Asia. It was the βinal stage in the long
preceding period that had lasted about 1,400 years, when it had been
- The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires, pp. 120–1.
- Ibid., p. 123.
- For the development of Chinese maritime trade during the Ming, see Roderich
Ptak, “Ming Maritime Trade to Southeast Asia, 1368–1567: Visions of a ‘System’”,
in From the Mediterranean to the China Sea, ed. Claude Guillot, et al., pp.157–91. - Liangzhong haidao zhen jing 兩種海道針經 [Two editions of navigational
guides], ed. Xiang Da 向達 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961). For the sea routes,
see J.V. Mills, “Chinese Navigators in Insulinde about AD 1500”, in China and
Southeast Asia, ed. Geoff Wade, Vol. 2, pp. 1–26. - Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 14650–1680 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1993), Chapter 1 of Vol. 2.