Commodity and Market 45
enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the shipping business between Southeast
Asia and China.^157
The Extensive Hinterland Networks
China had always been the largest market for commodities imported
from the Nanhai and the Indian Ocean regions. Its appetite for the foreign
goods imported by its trading junks had swelled enormously since the
sixteenth century. China’s trade expansion was greatly facilitated by
linkages between ports and their hinterlands.
The extensive trading networks connecting ports and hinterlands
are one area of study waiting to be explored in more depth. To illustrate
the picture, one can cite as an example an eyewitness account by an
anonymous author, probably an Englishman residing in Guangzhou,
which was a major trading port for many trading junks and foreign
ships. He offers some rare and illuminating glimpses of these domestic
networks in the 1830s. According to his description, the port city of
Guangzhou was the hub of the commercial networks. He mentions the
βlow of trade goods to the city from the regions that bordered on Tonkin
and from all parts of the empire, including provinces near and far, among
them Guangxi, Yunnan, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Honan,
Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Shandong and Zhili. Each would bring in
their local special products in exchange for both the domestic products
of Guangzhou and imported foreign merchandise. Attracted by the
opportunities it offered, βinanciers and investors from these locations,
particularly Shanxi and Ningbo of Zhejiang, were drawn there and
invested in the various branches of commerce. Frequently, merchants
from the provinces took up residence in Guangzhou. For instance, a very
wealthy group of Ningbo merchants resided in the city and played an
inβluential role in local businesses.^158
The Europeans and Global Trade
Goa-Macao-Nagasaki
The Portuguese arrived in the Indian Ocean at the end of the βifteenth
century. Their main goal was to seize control of the highly proβitable spice
- John Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago (Orig., 1820; reprint, London:
Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1967), p. 186. - Anonymous, “A Dissertation upon the Commerce of China”, in Nineteenth
Century China: Five Imperialist Perspectives (Michigan Papers in Chinese
Studies, no. 13, 1972), pp. 25–44.