34 Boundaries and Beyond
a system of managed trade. In 1589, a quota of 88 sailing permits was
issued. The number was later increased to 110, to allow junks to trade in
the Eastern Ocean (eastern sector of the Nanhai covering the Philippines
and the surrounding region) and the Western Ocean (western sector of
the Nanhai consisting of mainland Southeast Asia and the western part
of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago).^118 Maritime trade subsequently
prospered. The tax list records 49, 89 and 115 items of commodities in
1572, 1589 and 1615, including ivory, pepper, sappanwood, sandalwood,
Borneo camphor, bird’s nests, rhinoceros horn, tortoise-shell, buffalo
hide, black lead, betel nut, opium, rattan mats, for example, listed by
Chang Pin-tsun.^119 Most of the items came from the Nanhai region.
The opening of Haicheng to outward-bound private trade came at an
opportune moment as shortly afterwards Manila was occupied by the
Spanish in 1571 and desired trade with China. Trading junks βlocked to
the colonial port, some 30 to 40 on average per year with a tonnage of
100 to 300 each. The βirst hundred years represented the heyday in the
junk trade between the two ports.^120 Another important opportunity for
junk trade arose not long after the Dutch had found a foothold in Batavia
that thereafter welcomed the arrival of Chinese junks. As a 1625 Dutch
record shows, a Chinese βleet of βive junks of 600 or 800 tons each, traded
with Batavia. Each junk carried 100 to 500 migrants on board in addition
to her cargo. According to Van Leur’s estimate, the total tonnage of the
junks was “as large as or larger than that of the whole return βleet of
the Dutch Company”.^121 He also records that other large trading junks
continued to arrive not only in Batavia but also in other Southeast Asian
ports. In 1626, for example, βive arrive in Batavia from Fujian, as well as
“four to Cambodia, four to Cochin China, three to Siam, one to Pattani, one
to Jambi, one to Jaratan (Grise), three to Siam and around 100 smaller
junks on a shorter route to Manila.”^122
- Zhang Xie 張燮, Dong Xi Yang kao 東西洋考 [An investigation into the affairs of
the Eastern and Western Oceans] (Taipei: Zheng-zhong shuju, 1962), 7: 1b–2b;
Chang Pin-tsun, “Chinese Maritime Trade: The Case of Seventeenth-Century
Fuchien (Fukien)”, PhD thesis, Princeton University, 1983, pp. 250–90; and
Anthony Reid, “The Unthreatening Alternative: Chinese Shipping in Southeast
Asia, 1567–1842”, Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs (RIMA), no. 27
(1993): 13–32. - Chang Pin-tsun, “Chinese Maritime Trade”, pp. 272, 365–70.
- Seraβin D. Quiason, “The Sampan Trade, 1570–1770”, in The Chinese in the
Philippines, 1570–1770, Vol. 1, ed. Alfonso Felix, Jr. (Manila: Solidaridad
Publishing House, 1966), pp. 161, 165. - J.C. van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society, p. 198.
- Ibid.
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