Haijin

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Haijin
Hanyu Pinyin
Bìguān Suǒguó

The Haijin (海禁) or sea ban was a series of related

Zhu Yuanzhang significantly hampered the growth of China's domestic trade,[1] although the Ming was not able to enforce the policy in full despite official proclamations, and trade continued in forms like smuggling until the late Ming government opened the port of Yuegang for trade. Later, the early Qing dynasty's anti-insurgent "Great Clearance" (1661–1683) also caused considerable devastating effects on communities along the coast, until the Qing seized control of Taiwan
and opened coastal ports to foreign trade.

First imposed to deal with

Battle of Tumu led to the scrapping of Zheng He's fleets. Piracy dropped to negligible levels only upon the end of the policy in 1567, but a modified form was subsequently adopted by the Qing. This produced the Canton System of the Thirteen Factories, but also the opium smuggling that led to the First and Second Opium Wars
in the 19th century.

The Chinese policy was mimicked in other

Hermit Kingdom", before they were opened militarily in 1853 and 1876
respectively.

Ming dynasty

A map of wokou raiding, 14th–16th centuries. The early pirates were mostly based on outlying Japanese islands but targeted the Japanese as well as Korea and Ming China. The later ones were mostly Chinese dispossessed by Ming policy.

Background

The 14th century was a time of chaos throughout

Ming in 1368 did not end its wars with Mongol remnants under Toghon Temür in the north and under the Prince of Liang in the south. King Gongmin of Korea had begun freeing himself from the Mongols as well, retaking his country's northern provinces, when a Red Turban invasion devastated the areas and laid waste to Pyongyang. In Japan, Emperor Daigo II's Kenmu Restoration succeeded in overthrowing the Kamakura shogunate but ultimately simply replaced them with the weaker Ashikaga
.

The loose control over Japan's periphery led to pirates setting up bases on the realm's outlying islands,[4] particularly Tsushima, Iki, and the Gotōs.[5][6] These wokou ("dwarf pirates") raided Japan as well as Korea and China.[4]

As a rebel leader, Zhu Yuanzhang promoted foreign trade as a source of revenue.

tribute missions, handled by representatives of the Ming Empire and its "vassal" states.[9] Private foreign trade was made punishable by death, with the offender's family and neighbors exiled from their homes.[10] A few years later, in 1384, the Maritime Trade Intendancies (Shibo Tiju Si) at Ningbo, Guangzhou, and Quanzhou were shuttered.[8] Ships, docks, and shipyards were destroyed and ports sabotaged with rocks and pine stakes.[11] Although the policy is now associated with imperial China generally, it was then at odds with Chinese tradition, which had pursued foreign trade as a source of revenue and become particularly important under the Tang, Song, and Yuan.[11]

The

Battle of Tumu in 1449. The large scale of private overseas trade had caused price competition for the Ming government's purchases, such as warhorses for the northern frontier, and funds had to be reallocated. However, after the end of the treasure voyages, Chinese trade in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean continued.[13] Private, including unauthorised, Chinese trade in Southeast Asia expanded rapidly in the second half of the Ming dynasty.[14]

A 1613 edict prohibited maritime trade between the lands north and south of the Yangtze River, attempting to put a stop to captains claiming to be heading to Jiangsu and then diverting to Japan.[15]

Rationale

Although the policy has generally been ascribed to national defense against the pirates,

Ancestral Injunctions[11]
as responsible for their continuation.

Effects

The policy offered too little—decennial tribute missions comprising only two ships—as a reward for good behavior and enticement for Japanese authorities to root out their smugglers and pirates.[16] The Hongwu Emperor's message to the Japanese that his army would "capture and exterminate your bandits, head straight for your country, and put your king in bonds"[23] received the Ashikaga shogun's reply that "your great empire may be able to invade Japan but our small state is not short of a strategy to defend ourselves".[16]

Although the sea ban left the Ming army free to extirpate the remaining Yuan loyalists and secure China's borders, it tied up local resources. 74 coastal garrisons were established from Guangzhou in Guangdong to Shandong;[11] under the Yongle Emperor, these outposts were notionally manned by 110,000 subjects.[24] The loss of income from taxes on trade[11] contributed to chronic funding difficulties throughout the Ming, particularly for Zhejiang and Fujian provinces.[25] By impoverishing and provoking both coastal Chinese and Japanese against the regime,[16] it increased the problem it was purporting to solve.[26] The initial wave of Japanese pirates had been independently dealt with by Jeong Mong-ju and Imagawa Sadayo, who returned their booty and slaves to Korea;[5][6] Ashikaga Yoshimitsu delivered 20 more to China in 1405, which boiled them alive in a cauldron in Ningbo.[27] However, the raids on China continued, most grievously under the Jiajing Emperor.[25] By the 16th century, the "Japanese", "dwarf", and "eastern barbarian" pirates of the Jiajing wokou raids were mostly non-Japanese.[4][26][28]

Nonetheless, because the sea ban was added by the Hongwu Emperor to his

Macao in 1557, but only after several years of helping the Chinese suppress piracy.[32]

The sea ban was largely unenforceable from its earliest years, and no effective enforcement was ever implemented. Local authorities themselves were frequently involved in the illicit trade, and usually ignored edicts to restrict trade. Military officers brokered trade deals and the wealthy families in the coastal settlements depended on its income. Ordinary workers found employment in trade-related industries. Many of the official posts to enforce trade regulations were left vacant and the Maritime Trading Intendancies were abolished. The court generally ignored the issue of overseas trade. In the 1520s the emperor rejected all attempts to halt the trade as these came from officials who had opposed the emperor's policy of rituals, and very little trade took place under governmental channels instead of illicit means. The Grand secretary of the court in the 1530s was from coastal Zhejiang province, and he proceeded to block any attempt to enforce the sea ban. The most significant attempt to crush out the illicit trade was made by Zhu Wan, an official appointed by the court in the 1540s, but just as he was making headway in wiping out the smugglers he was removed by the court on accusations of unauthorised killings.[33]

Piracy dropped to negligible levels only after the general abolition of the policy in 1567

conquest by Martín de Goiti[32] but it wasn't until 1589 that the throne approved the city's requests for more merchant licenses to expand the trade.[36] Fu Yuanchu's 1639 memorial to the throne made the case that trade between Fujian and Dutch Formosa had made the ban entirely unworkable.[15]

The lifting of the sea ban coincided with the arrival of the first Spanish galleons from the Americas, creating a global trade link that would not be interrupted until the following century.[37]

China in the global trading system

See also:
Global silver trade from the 16th to 18th centuries

China acted as the cog running the wheel of global trade.[38] Trade with Japan continued unobstructed despite the embargo, through Chinese smugglers, Southeast Asian ports, or Portuguese. China was entirely integrated in the world trading system.[39]

European nations had a great desire for Chinese goods such as silk and porcelain.[40] The Europeans did not have any goods or commodities which China desired, so they traded silver to make up for their trade deficit.[41] Spaniards at the time of the Age of Exploration discovered vast amounts of silver, much of which was from the Potosí silver mines, to fuel their trade economy. Spanish American silver mines were the world's cheapest sources of it,[42] producing 40,000 tons of silver in 200 years.[43] The ultimate destination for the mass amounts of silver produced in the Americas and Japan was China.[44] From 1500 to 1800, Mexico and Peru produced about 80%[45] of the world's silver with 30% of it eventually ending up in China. In the late 16th and early 17th century, Japan was also exporting silver heavily into China.[45] Silver from the Americas flowed mostly across the Atlantic and made its way to the far east.[41] Major outposts for the silver trade were located in Southeast Asian countries, such as the Philippines.[46] The city of Manila served as a primary outpost of the exchange of goods between the Americas, Japan, India, Indonesia and China.[46] However, there was a large amount of silver that crossed across the Pacific Ocean directly from the Americas as well.[44]

Trade with Ming China via Manila served a major source of revenue for the Spanish Empire and as a fundamental source of income for Spanish colonists in the Philippine Islands. Until 1593, two or more ships would set sail annually from each port.[47] The galleon trade was supplied by merchants largely from port areas of Fujian who traveled to Manila to sell the Spaniards spices, porcelain, ivory, lacquerware, processed silk cloth and other valuable commodities. Cargoes varied from one voyage to another but often included goods from all over Asia - jade, wax, gunpowder and silk from China; amber, cotton and rugs from India; spices from Indonesia and Malaysia; and a variety of goods from Japan, including fans, chests, screens and porcelain.[48]

Qing dynasty

Territory held (red) or influenced (pink) by Koxinga and his Ming partisans/pirates

Background

As the

Taiwan. His dynasty then developed it as the independent state of Tungning
, but were driven from their mainland bases in 1661.

Policy

See also: Great Clearance

The

Songjiang to deal with foreign trade.[50]

Repressive Qing policies such as the

emigrate in such large numbers, however, that the Kangxi Emperor began to fear the military implications. The immigrant community in Jakarta was estimated at 100,000 and rumors circulated that a Ming heir was living on Luzon.[50] A ban on trade in the "Southern Ocean" followed in 1717, with tighter port inspections and travel restrictions.[50] Emigrants were ordered to return to China within the next three years upon penalty of death; those emigrating in future were to face the same punishment.[50]

Legal trade in the South China Sea was resumed in 1727,

East India Company's discovery that the prices and duties at Ningbo were both much lower than those at Guangzhou prompted them to begin shifting their trade north from 1755 to 1757.[51] The Qianlong Emperor's attempt to discourage this through higher fees failed; in the winter of 1757, he declared that—effective the next year—Guangzhou (then romanized as "Canton") was to be the only Chinese port permitted to foreign traders,[51] beginning the Canton System, with its Cohong and Thirteen Factories. Chinese merchants trading with foreigners, on the other hand, were not affected by any of these regulations.[52]

Effects

The initial Qing sea ban curtailed Koxinga's influence on the Chinese mainland and ended with

Qing Empire
.

Nonetheless, it was quite harmful to the Chinese themselves, as documented in governors' and viceroys' memorials to the throne. Even before the Kangxi Emperor's restrictions, Jin Fu's 1659 memorial to the throne argued that the ban on foreign trade was limiting China's access to silver, harmfully restricting the money supply, and that lost trading opportunities cost Chinese merchants 7 or 8 million

full-scale war in the 1850s and 1860s and that fueled Guangdong's piracy into the 20th century.[54]

European countries' trade with China was so extensive that they were forced to risk silver deficits to supply merchants in Asia.[55] As supplies of silver decreased in Europe, Europeans had less ability to purchase highly coveted Chinese goods. Merchants were no longer able to sustain the China trade through profits made by selling Chinese goods in the West and were forced to take bullion out of circulation in Europe to buy goods in China.[56]

The restrictions imposed by the Qianlong Emperor that established the Canton System were highly lucrative for Guangzhou's Cohong—the merchant

the end of the dynasty
.

See also

References

Citations

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  2. ^ Martin (2001), p. 14.
  3. ^ a b McNeill (1998).
  4. ^ a b c Wang (1980), p. 31.
  5. ^ a b Ōta, Kōki (2004), 『倭寇: 日本あふれ活動史』 [Wakō: Nihon Afure Katsudōshi], Bungeisha, p. 98. (in Japanese)
  6. ^ a b Kawazoe, Shōji (1996), 「対外関係の史的展開」 [Taigai Kankei no Shiteki Tenkai], Bunken Shuppan, p. 167. (in Japanese)
  7. ^ a b c Von Glahn (1996), p. 90.
  8. ^ a b Von Glahn (1996), p. 116.
  9. ^ Von Glahn (1996), p. 91.
  10. ^ Li (2010), p. 3.
  11. ^ a b c d e f Li (2010), p. 4.
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  16. ^ a b c d Li (2010), p. 13.
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  20. ^ Li (2010), p. 24–5.
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  26. ^ a b Li (2010), p. 17.
  27. ^ Takekoshi, Yosaburō (1967), The Economic Aspects of the History of the Civilization of Japan, p. 344.
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Bibliography
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