Organizer: Linda Walton, Portland State University

Chair: Beverly Bossler, University of California, Davis

Discussant: Robert Hymes, Columbia University; John W. Chaffee, State University of New York, Binghamton

Studies of local society during the Song, Yuan, and Ming periods have addressed primarily the relationship between the "national" and the local – the interaction between the court or central government and local elites – or the construction of local identity through the appropriation of local landscapes and historical figures. This panel takes a new approach to questions of local identity through exploration of how "foreign" cultural and commercial connections interacted with and shaped local society – from Manichaeans to Mongol and Central Asian government officials to merchants engaged in maritime trade. The papers focus on communities along the southeast coast from the Yangzi delta south to Wenzhou.

Oka’s paper explores the relationship between elite and popular culture in Song and Yuan Wenzhou through an investigation of Manichaeism in local society. Yokkaichi’s paper considers the dynamics of power relationships between elite families and the Yuan government through studies of three families who interacted both with merchants engaged in southern maritime trade and Yuan government officials. Nakajima’s paper makes use of a rare list of items exported from Japan to Ming China through the port of Ningbo, illuminating both local interests in tribute trade and Japan’s role as an intermediary in trade between Ming China and Southeast Asia.

These papers expand the study of local elite society and culture to frame it in a cross-cultural and transregional context. This panel will provide an opportunity to consider localism and local elite identities from the perspective of fluid and permeable political, economic, social, and cultural boundaries.

Motoshi Oka, Hiroshima University, Japan

In Wenzhou during the latter part of the Northern Song, followers of the foreign religion, Manichaeism, participated in Fang La’s rebellion, which was eventually suppressed with the cooperation of the local elite. So, in the Southern Song, the practice of Manichaeism was prohibited by the government, and in the rural areas of Wenzhou, the Manichaean religion disappeared. However, in Pingyang county along Wenzhou’s southern border, there remains today a stone stele that professes the beliefs of Manichaeism. In this paper I will examine the role played by Manichaeism in local society by considering it in the context of the class structure of Wenzhou during the Song and Yuan periods. Furthermore, I would also like to analyze what kind of relationship there was between popular culture – understood against the background of Manichaean beliefs and practices in the region – and the elite, who had played a role in suppressing Manichaeism in the Fang La Rebellion. In this way, I hope to show how local elite society changed through the course of the Song-Yuan transition.

Yasuhiro Yokkaichi, Kyushu University, Japan

Although the political center of the Yuan dynasty was the capital, Dadu (Beijing), the economic center was the former Southern Song capital, Hangzhou. Furthermore, Hangzhou was the seat of government for Jiangzhe, where the Branch Secretariat officials were the ones who actually controlled trade policies for Quanzhou, the threshold for southern maritime trade.

In the administration of Jiangnan, Mongol generals held military power, Central Asians performed administrative tasks, and Chinese were concerned with their official status. Each, from their own standpoint, was engaged in a cooperative relationship with the others, at the very least because of their connections and interactions in the official world.

In this paper, through case studies of the Zhu of Chongming, the Zhang of Jiading, and the Yang of Ganpu, I will investigate the ties between these families and state power – in the form of financial and military officials of the Yuan government – as well as merchants engaged in southern maritime trade. Focusing especially on their interests in the southern maritime trade, I will clarify what kind of mutual relationship these families had with state power and whether they were connected to key figures in the Yuan central government, suggesting how the Yuan government exerted control over the operation of southern maritime trade.

Gakusho Nakajima, Kyushu University, Japan

The tribute trade system of Ming China has attracted considerable attention from scholars, but resources describing the precise nature of this state-controlled trade are relatively scarce.  Fortunately, a privately compiled local gazetteer of Yin county (the metropolitan county of Ming prefecture or modern Ningbo) contains a very detailed list of goods exported from Japan to China through the port of Ningbo, which was the sole officially recognized trading port between Japan and Ming China during the Yongle reign of the early 15^th century.  Compiled in the early Qing, the Jingzhi lu list includes a total of 248 items imported from Japan. These can be roughly divided into the following eight categories: gold, silver, and other metals; weapons and swords; horses and leather; textiles; sulfur and precious gems; spices, medicines, and dyestuffs; stationery and lacquer wares; paper and other utensils.

These items of trade included, of course, many famous products of Japan such as gold, swords, sulfur, and lacquer ware. But they also included various re-exported merchandise such as spices, medicines, and dyestuffs produced in Southeast Asia. This fact suggests that Japan carried out the role of relay trader between Southeast Asia, Korea, and Ming China even before the Ryukyuan  Kingdom achieved this role beginning in the mid-15^th century.