The Hong Merchants of Canton by Weng Eang Cheong

Author:Weng Eang Cheong [Cheong, Weng Eang]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780700703616
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 1997-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

4

Officials and the Trade

Traditionally, officials assumed the right and duty to regulate all economic activities affecting the livelihood of the people and to exact an official and a private tithe. Fishing and coastal trade were to the coastal peoples on the long Chinese littoral what agriculture and local trade were to the peasants; but the management of their livelihood became increasingly complex from T’ang times, when foreign trade expanded rapidly, bringing foreigners to China and Chinese to distant lands. Succeeding dynasties contributed important dimensions to the complexity of maritime administration – overseas settlement in the Sung, naval development in the Yüan and diplomacy in the early Ming. These were achievements of maritime technology and seafaring skills then second to none; they hint of an empire that never was and in the early Ming brought probably more embassies to China by sea in a few decades than in the entire previous history of her relations with the maritime world.

The experience and functions of local officials were extended beyond port administration to the management of a frontier. To the Customs Collectorate and a Superintendency of Foreign Ships, were added the regulation of the trade, residence and behaviour of foreigners in Chinese ports and the reception and dispatch of tribute missions. These were essentially attainments of periods of strength and peace or both. In mid-Ming, the increase of Japanese piracy and the arrival of the violent and feuding Europeans at a time of weakness awakened officials for the first time to maritime frontier security. Bankrupt and threatened by the northern hordes, the late Ming had little choice, but in opting for retreat, it probably still viewed the disturbances on the coast as a local matter to be contained rather than as a threat to the survival of the state. The vast expansion of the foreign trade with active official collaboration reflects the cavalier attitude of local officials towards the closed-door policy they were supposed to enforce. The early Ch’ing had a more secular attitude towards trade and foreign relations, especially in dealing with Kwangtung, but the prolonged resistance of the maritime provinces from within, notably in Fukien, increasingly impressed on officials in ensuing decades that maritime frontier security had become a matter of national security.

The opening of four Chinese ports, and the lifting of the ban on overseas navigation in 1684, coincided with changes in the trade, practices and trade partners at Canton. The English and French bilateral trades, originating from Europe1 under almost free-trade conditions, were a contrast to the carrying trades of the Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish, conducted under prohibition mainly from their settlements on the China coast or trading stations in Southeast Asia.2 Both, however, prospered and prompted an influx of new merchants from Fukien and further north to vie for a share of the new trade. After the restoration of gubernatorial rule,3 a Superintendent of Maritime Customs was appointed to regulate trade and collect customs at the newly opened ports; later known to foreigners as the Hoppo, the functionary was not new but a resurrection of an institution first established in the T’ang.

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