Commodity and Market 35
Information about the junk-trade investors given by Van Leur reveals
that the trade involved both Indonesians and local Chinese settlers who
went to trade in China with the returning junks. In the case of Jambi in
1636, for example, the majority of those going to trade in China were
traders with a small amount of money varying from 22 to 44 reals. Similar
patterns can also be seen in junks departing from China with hundreds of
such small traders on board. Van Leur calls them “peddlers”,^123 or small
investors, but Han Zhenhua uses another term, “san shan” or “small-
timers”, to designate this group of people. The latter says, “There could
be as many as hundreds of san shang ... on board each junk, occupying
cargo compartments ..., with a very small amount of capital.”^124 However,
Van Leur reminds us that, besides the peddlers, also traveling on board
each ship were substantial investors, called “merchant gentlemen”.
Taking the βive junks that arrived at Batavia in 1625 as an example, their
total investment reached 300,000 reals, not overlooking the fact that the
largest investment in the Dutch East India Company in 1602 amounted
only to between 26,000 and 44,000 reals.^125 Similar investment patterns
continue to be seen in a later record on Makassar in 1755, detailing a
complete list of cargo of 59 incoming items against ten outward-bound
on board a junk. The former included “4 types of umbrellas, 5 types of
paper, 6 different sorts of bowls, 11 of plates and 7 trepang”, among the
bowls and plates were 63,000 and 42,000 pieces respectively. Besides
these bulk cargoes, there were still high-value cargoes such as Chinese
tobacco, silk-yarn or raw silk and 200 chests of gold thread. Tobacco alone
was worth more than 40 per cent of the total incoming value. Among the
export items, trepang alone represents 90 per cent of the export value.
As for the investment, “(a) share of 16% was imported by the kongsi or
‘partnership’, probably of the investors who equipped the junk. Another
9% was in the hands of the skipper, the clerk and the βirst mate. The
remaining 75% was owned by 13 to 14 individual merchants, averaging
a little over 19 pikul each.”^126
- Ibid., pp. 198–9.
- Han Zhenhua 韓振華, “Shiliu zhi shijiu shiji qianqi zhongguo haiwai maoyi
hangyun ye de xingzhi he haiwai maoyi shangren de xingzhi” 十六至十九世紀
前期中国海外貿易航運業的性質和海外貿易商人的性質 [The characteristic
features of Chinese overseas shipping trade and merchants during the sixteenth
to the βirst half of nineteenth centuries], in Hanghai jiaotong maoyi yanjiu,
p. 518. - J.C. van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society, p. 201.
- Knaap and Sutherland, Monsoon Traders, p. 146.