Managing Maritime Affairs 283
encourage unlawful activities.... Second, ... Zhangzhou people are
used to trading in Luzon.... If they are not allowed to return, the
foreigners will make use of them for their own ends.... Third,... we
shall no longer be able to collect information about the foreigners
from our merchants who also act as good informers.... Fourth,
there are regular troops consisting of several thousand men
stationed along the coastal area south of Zhangzhou. Military
spending amounts to as much as βifty-eight thousand liang (taels).
Twenty thousand of this comes from commercial taxes. Without
this revenue, not only will there be a shortage of military supplies,
but we shall also have to levy taxes more heavily on the people....
My predecessor, Governor Tu Zemin,... was granted approval to
open the shibo.... In the past thirty years, fortunately we have not
heard of any serious piracy.... During my investigation, I noticed
that evil people from Tong’an (in Quanzhou prefecture), Haicheng,
Longxi, Zhangpu and Shaoan (in Zhangzhou prefecture) put to sea
during April‒May ... to Funing (in North Fujian), under the pretext
of carrying βish or trading in Jilong and Danshui (in Taiwan), but
frequently they are transporting forbidden cargo ... to Japan....
Some others , on the pretext of going south to Chao, Hui, Guangzhou
and Gaozhou to ship back grain, actually set their course for
Japan.... Since it is impossible to stop them ... a better option is to
reopen the shibo in order to recover the revenue.... Otherwise, we
are alienating all the other foreign countries, causing damage to
our own merchants and making way for plunderers, only to help
Chaoxian guard against Japan.^56Governor Xu Fuyuan’s management of maritime affairs is a good
example of administrative βlexibility. When the restoration of the
seafaring prohibition in 1592 caused people a great deal of distress,
Governor Xu not only promptly memorialized and appealed to the
Court for a re-consideration of its reinstatement of the prohibition law,
he also took immediate measures to relieve the hardship of the people
affected. He issued a special permit to allow people who were still
trading overseas or had been spending the winters in foreign lands to
come back without punishment or discrimination. Subsequently, several
merchants sailed back with 24 vessels and reported to the authorities.
They were duly taxed at the customs. This extraordinary measure helped
the seafaring people enormously and in 1594 earned the local authority
- Xu Fuyuan 許孚遠 (1535‒1604), “Shu tong haijin shu” 疏通海禁疏 [Lifting the
Sea Prohibition], in MJSWB, 400: 1a‒6b.