Commodity and Market 33
Japan, and Hoi An (Faifo), Ayudhya, Pattani, Manila, Bantam and Batavia
in Southeast Asia.^116 They formed the largest trading communities among
the foreigners. Nor was their dominance conβined to the urban centers;
they also penetrated into the interior. They performed all sorts of roles,
among them commercial agents of the indigenous rulers, tax farmers,
brokers, administrators managing their own countrymen, miners and
cultivators. In the Indonesian Archipelago, the Dutch paradoxically saw
them as both competitors and collaborators in business. In short, by the
beginning of the eighteenth century the Chinese were in a formidable
position in many businesses on account of their well-developed networks
in local societies.
Chinese Overseas Trade during the Late-Ming Period
Even though there were signs of private Chinese overseas shipping trade
emerging during the Song-Yuan periods, this business was still generally
carried on in the shadow of state supremacy. The situation began to
change in the early Ming era. Explaining the status of Chinese overseas
shipping, John King Fairbank βirmly states, “tribute from Southeast Asia
declined after the time of Cheng Ho [Zheng He], although trade did not....
[I]t was no longer they [the foreigners] who came to China but the Chinese
who went to them.”^117 The development of Yuegang in Zhangzhou in South
Fujian sometime in the βifteenth century seems to support Fairbank’s
theory. At this time, Yuegang rose to become a bustling, prosperous sea
port involved in what the Ming government perceived as illicit trade or
smuggling. However, a conspicuous change, that Fairbank describes,
occurred only a century later after the rigid policy of the maritime
prohibition promulgated by the Ming state to suppress private shipping
and trade had proved totally ineffectual. The authorities βinally realized
the limitations of their power to rein in the anarchical situation and in
1567 decided to rescind the prohibition law. Yuegang, now renamed
Haicheng district, was opened to overseas private commerce under
- Cheng Wing-Sheung 鄭永常, “Gangshi yu huaren: Wan-Ming dongya maoyi
shangbu xingcheng zhi huaren yuansu” 港市与华人：晚明东亚貿易商埠形成
之华人元素 [Port cities and the Chinese: the Chinese Element in the formation
of port cities in East Asia], in Kuayue haiyang de jiaohuan 跨越海洋的交換
[The Transoceanic Exchange], ed. Te-Lan Chu (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 2013),
pp. 87–136; and Carl A. Trocki, “Chinese Pioneering in Eighteenth-Century
Southeast Asia”, in China and Southeast Asia, ed. Geoff Wade, Vol. 3, pp. 217–8. - See John King Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening
of the Treaty Ports 1842–1854 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1953), p. 35.