Session 80: East by Southeast: Maritime Trade, Networks, and Exchanges between China and the Philippines and Indonesia, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

Organizer: Lucille Chia, University of California, Riverside

Chair and Discussant: Richard von Glahn, University of California, Los Angeles

Keywords: Fujian, Nanyang, Philippines, Indonesia, Java, overseas Chinese, tobacco, opium.

This panel presents new research and poses new questions on the commercial and social networks in the early modern period connecting China and two of its important trading partners in the Nanyang area: the Philippine and Indonesian islands. The three papers examine the growing complexities of intra-Asian trade partly brought about by but by no means determined by the participation of the European newcomers. The first essay explores and refines what we know about the dynamics of Chinese migration to and the trade with the Philippines, and the effects on the society and economy of southern Fujian, from whence the Chinese came. The second contributes to the ongoing debate on whether the Dutch East India Company’s massive intrusion into the trade of Java from the late seventeenth century onward largely destroyed the heretofore thriving commerce conducted by Chinese and indigenous merchants. The third looks at the patterns in the marketing of tobacco and opium and the new ways in which these substances were consumed in the Indonesian Archipelago, prior to the Dutch and the Spanish Philippine colonial administrations’ decisions to monopolize the revenues from the production and distribution of these commodities. The evidence analyzed by these papers shows how China and Southeast Asia were vitally linked from the sixteenth century onward and challenges some of the received wisdom concerning the histories of these regions.

The Butcher, the Baker, and the Carpenter: Chinese Sojourners in the Spanish Philippines and Their Impact on Southern Fujian (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries)

Lucille Chia, University of California, Riverside

This paper considers the impact on southern Fujian (Minnan) in southeast China of trade with and migration to the Spanish Philippines (late sixteenth to eighteenth centuries) by examining the Chinese there and their links with their native places. Although earlier studies have examined Sino-Philippine and the related trans-Pacific trade, as well as the role of Chinese settlers and their descendants in Philippine history, few have considered how this early instance of the Chinese diaspora affected the region from which the emigration originated. We can more fully understand the history of southern coastal China by expanding its study in two different directions: looking at its interactions with Southeast Asia, and distinguishing between the commercial and migration patterns from the various parts of Minnan. For example, why did the economic fortunes of Zhangzhou decline, while those of Quanzhou managed to revive after the political and economic turmoil of the mid- and late seventeenth century? And why did the natives of Zhangzhou first go the Philippines but later changed their primary destinations to Taiwan and Java, and were replaced in the Philippines largely by natives of Quanzhou? And what were the relationships among the Minnan merchants, laborers, and farmers who went to the Philippines? By using a combination of largely Chinese and Spanish sources, we can start to answer such detailed questions concerning the history of southern Fujian and the complexities of Chinese business and social networks in Southeast Asia during the early modern period.

All about Money: The "Chinese Century" and Java’s Maritime Commerce, ca. 1775

Gerrit Knaap, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Studies of insular Southeast Asia maritime commerce during the early modern period have long been concerned about the volume and nature of the trade conducted by Asian ship masters and merchants. But it is only in the last decade or two that the ongoing debate about the characteristics of Asian trade has been systematically documented with empirical data, such as shipping lists and other information from the archives of the Dutch East India Company for eighteenth-century Java. This paper asks the following questions: What actually were the "leading commodities" in Java’s maritime commerce? And, from the viewpoint of the economic "actors," can the eighteenth century in Java, as in other parts of South East Asia, be labeled a "Chinese century," in which local Chinese businessmen increasingly dominated the economy and replaced native traders and producers? Answers can be found in the analysis of archival sources concerning shipping and trade in the fourteen major ports of the island of Java for the eighteenth century. Not surprisingly, an analysis focusing on the volume and weight of the merchandise suggests that Java rice, and to a lesser extent timber, were the main commodities. When the value of commodities is taken into account, however, this picture must be radically revised. With the help of price information, we can make an educated estimate of the turnover of trade.

Developing Habits: Tobacco and Opium in the Indonesian Archipelago (Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries)

George B. Souza, University of Texas, San Antonio

This paper examines the general patterns in the commercialization and consumption of tobacco and opium in the Indonesian Archipelago in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It discusses the connections between the practice of smoking tobacco and opium throughout this region. Tobacco grown in China, the Philippines, and Java became an export commodity and a valued item of exchange within the South China Sea region. Not only did smoking tobacco, a relatively recent practice introduced from America, quickly spread throughout East and Southeast Asia, it also transformed the way opium was ingested—from chewing or swallowing to being smoked together with tobacco in a pipe, and thereby greatly increased the consumption of opium. The coupling of these two commodities resulted in the Dutch East India Company’s increasing involvement in the commercialization of Indian opium from Bengal to Java, and the colonial port of Batavia on Java became a distribution center for both tobacco and Bengal opium. Finally, this paper explains how research using Dutch records in the Netherlands and in Java helps us better understand the role and involvement of Chinese, indigenous Javanese, and other merchant groups in the redistribution of these commodities from Batavia via inter-island trade to markets and consumers throughout the Indonesian Archipelago.