Managing Maritime Affairs 271
chose to overlook the previous, unpleasant event in order to proβit from
their arrival, but the old story repeated itself. Assaults on and murders
of people in and around the city became common. The audacity of the
Portuguese reached such heights that they began to construct a fort
on land. Their boldness alarmed the Chinese ofβicials who had hitherto
condoned them for the sake of the personal proβits they made from the
trade. The Portuguese establishment in Ningbo soon met an abrupt and
violent end.^26 The experience in Ningbo was repeated in Quanzhou in
- Here too, the Portuguese, having been well received at βirst, soon
proved intolerably aggressive and were expelled by force. It was at this
time that the Westerners earned the derogatory nickname of fanguei
(foreign devils).^27
The disturbances that were erupting along the southeast coast in
the 1540s stirred up heated discussions both at the Court and in the
locality. For the βirst time, government ofβicials and scholars began to
pay serious attention to issues related to coastal defense. On the basis
of the attitude they adopted toward maritime affairs, the gentry circles
of Ming society can be divided into two opinion groups: the defenders
of law and order, stressing the importance of enforcing the Sea
Prohibition, and the supporters of trade, especially found among the local
vested interests.
The law-and-order defenders upheld the existing maritime
prohibition as the best way to restore peace and stability in the coastal
regions. They treated the maritime turmoil as part of the larger frontier
problem, believing that the best solution was to follow the traditional
frontier policy that had been a general practice during the previous
dynasties and followed by the Ming state in the past. Prior to the Ming,
outside threats had been posed, almost without exception, along the
inland borders. The vast ocean to the east and southeast was considered
an impassable natural barrier. Therefore national defense was principally
conceived as βinding a means to repel the nomads along the long inland
frontiers. As an agricultural society, China imported furs, skins and hides
from the nomads, but the most important item of trade was horses. In
their turn, the nomads had to import agricultural and handicraft products,
notably grain, silk, cloth and tea from China. As pastoral products were
not essential to the maintenance of daily life in the sense that grain and
cloth were, the Chinese had the economic upper hand at the expense of - For the causes of the Sino-Portuguese clashes, see Chang T’ien-tse, Sino-
Portuguese Trade from 1514 to 1644 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969), pp. 63‒8, 75‒80. - South China in the Sixteenth Century, ed. C.R. Boxer (reproduced from the
Hakluyt Society; Nendeln: Kraus Reprint Ltd., 1967), p. xxi.