Yuegang
Yuegang (
Smuggling trade
The coastal province of Fujian was home to a long maritime tradition, giving rise to many great ports during the
Foreign goods flowed into Yuegang while
As other smuggling ports like Shuangyu further up the coast were shut down by the Ming army in the late 1540s, Yuegang, being relatively unscathed by the pirate suppression campaigns, gradually thrived as the primary Chinese port of the overseas smuggling trade.[6][7] In the early 1560s, it was recorded that the Yuegang port was home to up to 200 oceangoing vessels.[3]
Legal trade
As the pirate suppression campaigns went on, some Ming officials examined the roots of piracy and determined that the harsh maritime prohibition laws were effectively forcing the coastal populace into piracy by criminalizing their commercial livelihoods. By relaxing the prohibition, they argued, the government could tax the maritime trade and eliminate one of the causes of piracy,[8] and the tax revenues could further fund efforts to combat actual piracy.[9] Officials petitioned to establish a new administrative county at Yuegang in the early 1520s, the 1540s, and the 1560s along this line of reasoning, and finally succeeded after the death of the hardliner Jiajing Emperor.[9] On 17 January 1567, the Haicheng County was established at Yuegang, and it was here that the maritime prohibition laws were relaxed, making Yuegang the only port where private overseas trade was legal.[10] With this, along with the suppression of the lingering piracy in the area by general Yu Dayou in 1569, Yuegang was converted from a pirate den to an official trading port.[7]
The legalization of trade at Yuegang was well-timed, since the Spanish began to take possession of the Philippines in 1565 and Yuegang merchants sailing to Manila found it a bustling port dealing goods from New Spain. Beginning from 1573, Chinese silks and porcelain were carried across the Pacific Ocean by the Manila galleons, while New World crops and precious metals from the Americas returned via the galleons and were brought to China by the Yuegang merchants, resulting in a number of drastic changes in Chinese society.[11] Many staples of the modern Chinese diet, like the sweet potato, maize, and tomato were first introduced to China through the Yuegang trade.[12] Tobacco also came to China via Yuegang, inaugurating the custom of smoking in China.[13] Silver traded from Spanish Philippines[14] through the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade, minted in New Spain (Mexico), mined in Potosí (Bolivia) circulated in China through Yuegang in the form of Spanish silver dollar coins and the influx of silver reinvigorated the Chinese silverware industry.[15] Architecturally, Yuegang and its surrounding areas were noticeably transformed by the foreign trade as Chinese buildings utilizing red bricks in the Roman-Islamic style appeared in the late Ming dynasty.[16] The Daiwei village (埭尾) south of Yuegang, noted for its concentration of more than 60 brick-and-mortar buildings of similar size and orientation, represents an example of the hybridization of the Chinese courtyard dwelling style and western red brick masonry technique as a result of globalization via the Yuegang trade.[17]
Decline
While the legalization of trade put a stop to the smuggling trade, the concentration of wealth in southern Fujian resulted in the rise of the merchant-pirate
In 1656, Koxinga's commander in Haicheng Huang Wu (黃梧) surrendered the city to the Qing dynasty, depriving Koxinga the port of Yuegang and years of supplies stocked there. Huang Wu further suggested to the Qing that the Zheng organization could be starved into disintegration if their maritime trade routes were cut off. The Shunzhi Emperor acted on the advice, banning all private maritime trade and travel on August 6 of that year. This ban did not accomplish much since the merchants in Qing-held territories merely continued trading through smuggling.[20] This prompted an escalation to the Great Clearance edicts which mandated the evacuation of Haicheng county in 1660, relocating its residents to the interior. These edicts were harshly enforced, and the port was devastated.[21] When the sea ban was lifted after the defeat of the Zheng kingdom in Taiwan in 1684, Xiamen, not Yuegang, was made the Qing dynasty's seaport of choice in Fujian. In 1727, Xiamen officially took Yuegang's previous status as Fujian's only official port where foreign trade was legal.[22]
See also
- Nan'ao One - shipwreck of a Chinese junk on the Yuegang-Manila route
- Kraak ware or Swatow ware - style of Chinese porcelain exported from Yuegang
References
Notes
- ^ Higgins 1980, p. 31.
- ^ Wu 2019a, p. 5.
- ^ a b c von Glahn 1996, p. 117.
- ^ Liu 2019, p. 36.
- ^ Wu 2019b, p. 80.
- ^ Liu 2019, p. 33.
- ^ a b Hang 2015, p. 30.
- ^ Lim 2013, p. 17.
- ^ a b Brook 2010, p. 42.
- ^ Lim 2013, p. 20.
- ^ Geiss 1988, p. 505.
- ^ Wu 2019b, pp. 70–73.
- ^ Wu 2019b, pp. 73–76.
- ^ Brook 1998, p. 205; Mann 2011, pp. 149–150.
- ^ Wu 2019b, p. 78.
- ^ Wu 2019b, p. 83.
- ^ Wu 2019b, p. 84.
- ^ Liu 2019, p. 38.
- ^ Hang 2015, p. 89.
- ^ Hang 2015, p. 113.
- ^ Hang 2015, p. 130.
- ^ Wu 2019b, p. 44.
Works cited
- ISBN 0-520-21091-3
- ISBN 978-0-674-04602-3.
- ISBN 9780521243322.
- Hang, Xing (2015). Conflict and Commerce in Maritime East Asia: The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modern World, C. 1620-1720. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OCLC 916408349.
- Higgins, Roland L. (1980). "Pirates in Gowns and Caps: Gentry Law-breaking in the Mid-Ming". Ming Studies. 1980 (1). .
- Lim, Ivy Maria (2013). "From Haijin to Kaihai: The Jiajing Court's Search for a Modus Operandi Along the South-Eastern Coast (1522-1567)" (PDF). Journal of the British Association for Chinese Studies. 2.
- Liu, Miao (2019), "The Cultural Change of Kilns and Contents of Export Ceramics on the Perspective of Development of Zhangzhou Seaports During Ming and Qing Dynasties", in Wu, Chunming; Junco Sanchez, Roberto; Liu, Miao (eds.), Archaeology of Manila Galleon Seaports and Early Maritime Globalization, The Archaeology of Asia-Pacific Navigation, vol. 2, Singapore: Springer, pp. 29–48, S2CID 210634978
- ISBN 978-0-307-59672-7
- von Glahn, Richard (1996). Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000-1700. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. OCLC 43476120.
- Wu, Chunming (2019a), "Bound for America: A Historical and Archaeological Investigation in Yuegang (Crescent) Seaport as the Main Origin of Galleon Cargo", in Wu, Chunming; Junco Sanchez, Roberto; Liu, Miao (eds.), Archaeology of Manila Galleon Seaports and Early Maritime Globalization, The Archaeology of Asia-Pacific Navigation, vol. 2, Singapore: Springer, pp. 3–27, S2CID 210273341
- Wu, Chunming (2019b), "A Historical Review on the Social-Cultural Impact of Yuegang-Manila Navigation on the Ancient Chinese Civilization", in Wu, Chunming; Junco Sanchez, Roberto; Liu, Miao (eds.), Archaeology of Manila Galleon Seaports and Early Maritime Globalization, The Archaeology of Asia-Pacific Navigation, vol. 2, Singapore: Springer, pp. 67–89, S2CID 211677165