The Nanhai Trade. Early Chinese Trade in the South China Sea [2 ed.]

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Contents List

of Maps

List

of Abbrcvialions

iv V

Preface to Second Edition

vii

Freface

xi

Introduction

South to Nan Yiieh, 221-111 B.C.

I I2

8. A Mission to Fu-nan, 22,-420

4. The Tribute of Holy Things, 420-689

4O

5. The Needs of an Emperor, 589-618

70

6. Ports, Markets and Officials. 618-960 (I)

83

»-..

2. A Passage to I-Iuang-chih, 111 B.C.-A.D. 220

Lu

1

XiN

7. The Middlemen and the Spices, 618-960 (II)

107

8. The Limitations of the Trade

136

Appendix

I

Appendix B

Select Index

Missions from the Nemhai, A.D.1-960

143

The Persian Sea Trade with China before the Seventh Century

151

of Chinese Characters

List of References

.156 16/

List of Maps Map 1

Southeast Asia and Ancient "Southeastern Asia"

Map 2

South China in Ch'in~Han Times (with the routes of the "Five Armies")

Map 3

South China and the Nanni in Wu-Chin Times

40

Map 4

South China and the Nanhai during the Southern Dynasties

58

Map 5

Sui Dynasty Routes to Ch'ih~t'u and

74

xiii

3

LiL1-ch'iu

Map 6

Ports, Markets and Major Trade Routes, Tang and the Five Dynasties

86

Map 7

The Southern Kingdoms of the

97

Five Dynasties

Map 8

The Nanhai during the T'ang Dynasty

118

List of Abbreviations SC HanS HouHS

Shih Chi

SKCVVL1 ChinS SSh Ll fuChS

San Kuo Chief (\Vu) Chin Shu Sung Shu Nan Ch'i Shu Liang Shu Ch'en Shu Sui Shu Nan Shih T'ang Shu Chiu T'ang Shu T'ung Ticn Tzu Chief T'L1ng Chien

LgS Ch'enS SuiS

NanS T'angS ChiuTS TTien TCh'en

TK'ao THYao Pen Ts'ao

Han Shu Hou Han Shu

BEFEO

Wen Hsieh T'ung K'ao T'ang Hui Yao Pen Ts'ao Kang Mu T'oung Pao Journal Asiatique Bulletin do l'Ecole Francaise d'Extréme-

IMBRAS

Orient journal of the Malayan Branch of the

TP

JA

Royal Asiatic Society

Pro.Rlcc to Second Edition

vii

Preface to Second Edition

When I was a young man, trade in the South China Sea had been dominated. by European shipping for at least 2.00 years. It appeared likely that local and regional commercial interests could not reassert themselves for a long time. The Iapanese maritime fleets in the 1930s had tried to change that, but their naval forces sent to advance their imperialist ambitions were beaten back by 1945. In the early 1950s, no one could have predicted that the coastal states of this "Mediterranean" sea could recover some of its ancient lustre so soon . The reasons for this transformation have been analysed at great length of late. Certainly Iapan's economic "miracle" was a factor, and also the rise of the Four Tigers (Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore). In the background was the Llnited States' commitment to fight the Cold \Nar in East and Southeast Asia and extend the productive skills and institutions of mature capitalism to the region. The various new nations in the region responded unevenly. It was not until Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms in the People's Republic of China that the scale of international as well as intraregional trade began to grow. What is striking is that. with the reappearance of the China mainland as an economic force and the end of the ideological Cold W'ar, trade has begun to remind us of the trading world before the coming of the West 500 years ago.

Of course, there are no real analogies. The world has changed enormously during this century alone- The forces at work, especially in the financial and communications areas, are now global and the region's trade is inseparable from the numerous complex networks Lhat connect it with much stronger centres of production and exchange. We must avoid anachronistic readings of the past, not to say the ancient past of which we know so little. What we know is fragmentary at best, and skewed by the documentary sources, mostly in Chinese, that have survived. The only corrective to a Chinese view of the trade , which is obvious in my study, would have to come from more systematic archaeological excavations in each of the littoral states of

viii

< "" ,

The Nanni Trade: Early Chinese Trade in the South China Sea

the region. Much has been done since the 1950s when I first studied the subject to find Et local perspective of the trade from each of the ancient ports and trading markets. For the larger picture of China's interest in that trade, however, this study has, l believe, stood the test of time. I was particularly encouraged when ProfessorYao Nan of Fudan University in Shanghai still thought it worthwhile to have the work translated into Chinese and published as late as in 1988 (Nanni Mao;/i Yu Nanyang I-fuaren, Zhonghua Publishing Company, Hong Kong). When I wrote The Nanhai Trade, I was a graduate student at the University of Malaya in Singapore, curious about what it was like in the past, how things began, in ways that history students are wont to do. To embark on a thousand-year history of a steadily expanding trade was foolishly ambitious, but it was a most exciting experience. I was carried away to try to tell the whole story and only stopped in the tenth century, on the eve of the foundation of the Song dynasty, when I had to submit the thesis and leave for London for my doctoral studies. Thus the story ended when southern China was opening up and a new era of direct Chinese commercial interest in the South China Sea had just begun.

Have I any regrets that I did not go on with the story? Sometimes I do. But I had my own trade to learn as an historian, and spent the next three years focused on the end of the Tang dynasty and its bloody aftermath in northern China. This was in fact the first half of the tenth century where I had stopped my Nanhai trade story. Thus I immersed myself in the intricacies of the Chinese empire in turmoil, one that

was seeking ways to regain its unity and integrity. It was such 8. fascinating subject that I lost myself in questions pertaining to the nature of Chinese politics, history and culture, and never returned to the study of the trade in the South China Sea. By that time, others like Paul Wheatley and Oliver Walters had begun their extensive research

into the regions commercial and political relationships, and a number of archaeologists in and outside the region were actively seeking new sources for a fuller story. This study of mine has been out of print for nearly two decades. It was written during a twelve-month period in 1953-1954, and was not published until five years later. It appeared as a monograph, the

June 1958 issue of the journal of the Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society. Some years ago, the editor of the Journal, the late Tan Sri

Preface to Second Edfuon

ix

Mubin Sheppard, told me of the many inquiries he had had over the years for copies of my study. He was interested in reprinting the work but asked me if I would like to update it and take in all the new research that has been published since the l950s. I have been following some of the archaeological reports, but too desultorily to be able to revise the study without leaving my present research interests. A revised edition has proved to be not possible. I finally decided that, if there is enough interest in the original study, it should appear without revision . l have taken the opportunity, however, to correct some obvious mistakes. Many of my interpretations reflect the youthful enthusiasm of a neophyte. The main thrust of the story, I believe, remains true to the sources available at the University of Malaya library at the time. Wang Gungwu

Singapore 14 October 1997

Preface

The early history of the maritime trade of China has until now been largely studi.ed from the western point of view, that is, as the eastern terminal .point of a trade carried and dominated by Indians, Persians and Arabs. This has also been true of the early history of Southeast Asia. Historians both of China and of Southeast Asia have seen the trade mainly as the coming of western merchants in search of gold, silks and various kinds of spices. No study has yet been made of the ancient trade between China and Southeast Asia which was known to the Chinese as the Nanhai trade. The following study introduces this little-known subject. It examines various features of this trade, especially the economic background and the Chinese imperial and regional attitudes towards it. The period covered is the eleven centuries before the founding of the Sung dynasty in 960 - roughly the period from the Han dynasty to the T'ang. This study was completed in 1954. Professor C.N. Parkinson, then Professor of History at the Llnivcrsity of Malaya, asked me to publish it, but as I had become by that time fully engaged in a different piece of research in London. I felt unable to prepare the work for publication. Since my return to this country, I have interested myself in more recent history. Vi/'ere it not for the encode rage rent given to me

by Dr C. Gibson-Hill, I would not have returned to this early work of mine. And now with the help of my colleague Dr H.A. Lamb and the Director of Museums, Federation of Malaya, Mr la»/Iubin Sheppard, I have dared to bring this out largely as it was written more than five years ago. I also wish to thank Dr Lamb for drawing some of Lhe maps for me. Wang Gungwu University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, 1959

Introduction

The Chinese civilisation rose from the land, from the Huang Ho Plain far from the mouth of the river. When it began, its world consisted of the fields in which the people tilled and for which they often fought, the rivers they feared and tried to control and the towns and fortresses where they hid from their enemies. The sea was only known as a peaceful boundary to the east, that yielded salt and fish, and as a deep and limitless boundary that divided prince, sage and common man from the saints and immortals.

The first Chinese people had known of the sea from very early times. In fact, a section of the Yin tribes who founded the Shang dynasty (c.1523-1027 HC.) inhabited the coastal areas of Shantung and Hopei and, on the basis of their use of cowrie shells, IL has been suggested that these tribes had come from the south or that they had had an early coastal trade with Southeast Asia. But there is insufficient evidence for either view. As far as we know, to the civilisation that rose from the fusion of the Yin tribes with the pre-Yin peoples of the Central Plains and then with the tribal groups from the west, which established the Chou dynasty [1027-256 B.C.), the sea was not important. There is no evidence of any commercial interest in the products of the sea till the middle of the Chou dynasty.

This was in the sixth century B.C. when the state of Ch'i, occupying most of the Shantung peninsula and southern Hoper, showed the efficacy of a developed trade and industry to the other states. Its famous minister Kuan Chung had encouraged not only the growth of the river trade in bronze and iron with South China and the

growth of a silk industry, but also the development of large-scale fishing and salt production (including possibly a trade in salted fish).1 its capital Lin-tzu, a city on the Tzu River about fifty miles from Lai-chou Bay (in the Gulf of Chihli), became one of the greatest trading centres of China for the next two centuries. Its fishing fleets must have been considerable, but there is no evidence that the people of the state

used the sea as a trade route.

xiv

The Nunhclf Tiucfc: Eczrhr Chinese Trade In: the South China See

The next century, the fifth century B.C., provides the first evidence of a sea trade between the Shantung peninsula and the mouth of the Yangtse. This followed the rise of the non-Chinese kingdoms of Wu and YUeh (modern Kiangsu and Chckiang provinces respectively), two kingdoms which became wealthy and powerful partly through increased trade with the Chinese cities to their north and north-west. It is significant that their success was largely due to their employing Chinese ministers and to their developed shipping? The evidence of a coastal trade is found in the Kuo pa (Record of states), in a statement concerning the Ytich naval expedition to the Shantung coast in the middle of the fifth century B.C. The statement describes the route as starting from a port near the mouth of the Yangtse, probably near modern Su Chou, and then following the coast of Kiangsu up to Chiao-chou Bay and indicates that th.e YUeh people knew that route well and probably dominated its trade.'I,1 It also shows the naval superiority of these people. But it does not appear that the trade was an important one for the Chinese. Prom the point of view of later history, the more important development was the use of Chinese ministers in the states of V\fu and Yiieh. This was the first step in the gradual "sinicisation" of the northern branch of that group of peoples the Chinese called Yiieh. These Yiieh people may not have been "non-Chinese" but probably were what Professor Owen Lattimorc calls "not yet Chinese". "Sirlicisation" then, covers "all the processes of assimilation and elaboration " that Professor Lattimore finds in the growth of the Chinese society "which was accomplished by the acculturation and incorporation of homogeneous or kindred peoples who were not yet Chinese socially but became Chinese as soon as they acquired those cultural characteristics which made them Chinese."4 The sinicisation was stir ulatcd by long trading contacts and was intensified when the Yrjeh people expanded northwards into the Huang Ho plains. The Wu and Yiieh rulers adopted Chinese institutions and paid respect to Chinese thinkers and politicians, but the assimilation of the people by the Chinese in th e north was not rapid until after the great Yu'eh kingdom had fallen to the armies of the state of Ch'u in 384 B.C. This was largely because the people of Ch'u (its capital in

modern Hupei province), whose own culture had enriched Chinese culture, had themselves eventually become sinicised. From the fourth

fnfroducNufv

xv

century B.C., they contributed greatly to the spreading of Chinese culture and influence to the south and east. Thus about the third century B.C., when the YUeh people of the Yangtse area became assimilated, the first seafaring group became part of the Chinese people. The "Chinese" now included men who "used boats as their

carriages and oars as their horses."" It is well known that trade long preceded the political and cultural conquest of South China by the Chinese. The Chinese exchanged their silks and other manufactured goods for luxury goods like ivory, pearls, tortoise shells, kingfisher and peacock feathers, rhinoceros horns and cinnamon and scented woods. With growing prosperity in the Huang Ho plains. the demand for these goods increased and this demand may have been the strongest single motive for the southward expansion of Chinese political power. By the end of the fourth century B.C., the Chinese had extended some control over the areas south of the Yangtse River. The final drive to the Nanhai, the Southern Sea, was only a matter of time. This southward movement was delayed by the arduous struggle for power among the Seven Warring States. It was not until 221 B.C. that the lone victor of that struggle, the new empire of Ch'in, held the entire coast from the Liaotung peninsula in modern Manchuria lo the modern port of Ningpo in Chekiang province. That year, Ch'in ShihHuang-ti was ready to march into the land of the Yiiehs. And by 214 B.C., he was ruler of a considerable section of the coasts of southern

Chekiang, Fukien, Kuangtung and Tongking. The Chinese had reached the South China Sea. The South China Sea is the pivot of this study of Chinese trade. It extends, in the west, from the port of Fu-chou to that of Palembang and, in the east, from the island of Formosa to the west coast of Borneo. The area is roughly equivalent to that of' the Nanhai or Southern Sea mentioned in ancient Chinese records.

The South China Sea has a number of good ports between Fuchou and Saigon and is remarkable for its near-Mediterranean nature. Its main trade route from one end in the north-east to the other in the south-west lies in the path of the two monsoons and is, therefore, eminently suited for monsoon sailing.

xvi

The Nanhai Trade: Early Chinese Trade in the South China Sea

Map I ...\l_\=»-'nn-r.l.llI HF

D1P~ECEXPANSON

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Soulhuust Asia and Atnifcni "5'ou!heosfern Asia"

The sea has an important place in "south-eastern Asia" which is considered here as a regional unit in the study of ancient history. It is proposed to distinguish this earlier unit from Southeast Asia which does not emerge as a unit until the tenth century A-D., that is, after Annam had gained its political independence from China and after the rise of the new synthetic culture of the Indianised states of IndoChina and Indonesia. This regional unit of south-eastern Asia roughly comprises the areas of land and sea south of 30°N latitude and east of 95°E longitude. It is distinguished by its cultural and racial similarity

before the entry of the Chinese and the Indians and by the fact that these two great civilisations began to advance into the area from

Introduction

xvii

different directions at about the same time It became more important when a part of the people turned to the Chinese and another part to the Indians for their commercial, cultural and political growth. A significant feature is that almost halfway down the western coast of this area, at l5°N latitude about the region of modern Tourarie, a line may be drawn inland towards the north-west marking the division of the very different cultural influences of China and India. This line also indicates their different methods of cultural conquest: that of China almost wholly by land and that of India chiefly by sea (see Map 1)-

The South China Sea was the main route of what may be called the Asian east-west trade in commodities and ideas. It was the second Silk Route. Its waters and its island straits were as the sands and mountain passes of Centra] Asia, its ports were like the caravanserais. It became to the southern Chinese what the land outside Jade Gate was to the northern Chinese. It is chiefly this aspect of the trade route that has prompted this short survey of Chinese expansion towards the southern coast.

Very little is known of the economic life of the early peoples of South China? The few prehistoric sites along the coast which have so far been examined merely suggest that the people were quite different from the Chinese and had a different cultural base. As for the surviving Chinese records, they describe sketchily the peoples with a less developed culture inhabiting the area south of the Yangtse. Of these peoples, most of the "hundred YUehs" seem to have lived along the

coast from southern Kiangsu to Tongking. They were excellent boatmen and sailors and carried on much trade with the Chinese, sometimes by sea up the Kiangsu coast. There are no records of sea trade southwards from the coast of Chekiang but the difficult land communications between Chekiang and Fukien, within Fukien itself, between Fukien and Kwangtung, all point to the sea as the easiest

and perhaps safest means of communication. The later history of this area confirms the importance of coastal trading in the lives of the people. \*Ve may infer that if there was any trade among the related YUeh peoples of ancient times, most of it was carried in ships sailing along the coast of the South China Sea. But it seems certain that the

Chinese had no part in this trade till the era of the First Empire which began in 221 B.C.

xviii

The Nanhrlf Tilde: Ecrrfy Chinese Trade in the South China Sea

Endnotes 1.

T'ung Shu-yeh, Ch'un-ch'fu Shih (History of the Spring and Autumn Period, 722-481 B.C.] Ch'i-lu Lirlivcrsity publications no. 5, 1946, pp. 150-2.

2.

The state of Wu expanded northwards from the middle of the sixth century B.C. This was checked by the state of Yiieh in 473 B.C. From 478-884 B.C., YUch was a great power in the south-eastern coasts of China. ShihChi, 41. 3a-sa and Wu Yiieh Ch'ur1-ch'iu, Ch. 6, p. 232. of. ICS. Latourettze, The Chinese, New York, 1950 (8rd ed.], p. 50.

3.

Kuo Yu, Ch. 19, p. 219. See also Wei ChU-hsien, Ku-tai Chung~hsi to Chiao-t'ung (Relations between ancient China and the West) in Ku-shih Yen-chiu, Shanghai, 1934, Vol. 11, Pt. 2, p. 762.

4. 5.

o.

Owen Lattimore, "An Inner Asian Approach to the Historical Geography of China," Geographical Iournol, Vol. CX, Inly-December 1947, p. 184. Wu Yrlieh Ch'un-ch'iu, Ch. 6. p. 232. The Chinese first moved south in the third century B.C. but it was not until the middle of the first century A.D. that northern Annam was effectively taken. By this time, the Indians, more peaceably, had brought

their culture as far east as Fu-nan and possibly also Lin-yi. And near the end of the third century A.D., the Chinese armies had met the armies of the lndianised Chains of southern Annam in battle. 7.

For the modem controversies about the early peoples of South China, sec Li Chi, The Formation of the Chinese People, Cambridge, 1928, VV. Eberhard, A His£o:j.»'o)"Ch.'ncF, London, 1950, and Haroldl. W'iens, China? March towards the Tropics, Yale University, 1954, passim.

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All records and studies of the rise of the Ch'in dynasty speak of the complete unification of China in 221 B.C. when the last two of the warring states. Ch'u and Ch'i, were conquered. They all agree that after 121 B.C., the Ch'in campaigns south of the "1-ive Passes", were imperialist wars which extended Chinese power and influence into foreign territories. The foreign territories were those of the Yiieh peoples who had not been assimilated by the Chinese. They

consisted Of four k1'IOWTl kingdoms. The first, later known as Tung Ou. was based on the southern coast of Chekiang province with its capital near the modem port of \Very Chou. Another was a little further south along the coast in Fukien province with its capital at I-u-ehou. This was later known as the kingdom of i\lin YUeh or TUng Yiich. The third was roughly the extent of Kwangtung p r o i n e e . It was known as Nan Yiich and its capital at P'an-yt] was near the modern city of Canton. The fourth was based on Tongking with its capital probably near the city of Hanoi. It was called Lo Yueh but was also known later on as Hsi On-lo.' The chief motive for C h i r a c expaluiula ton aide the south was

an economic one. The value of the deltas of \\'eat River around modern Canton and of the Red River around Hanoi had lung been recognised.

2

5.

The Nanhaf Trade: Early Chinese Trade in the South China Sea

In the earliest surviving account of the campaigns against the YUehs, the Huui-nan Tzu (dated second century), it is said that Shih Huangti sent five armies totaling some 500,000 men because of the expected gains from the lands of the YUeh with their rhinoceros horns, elephant tusks, kingfisher feathers and pearls?

The first-century B.C. historian, Ssu-ma Ch'ien, specifically says that the land was rich and populous and describes the Nan Yiieh capital of P'an-yU (near modern Canton) as "the collecting-centre of rhinoceros horns, elephant tusks, tortoise~shells, pearls, fruits and cloth (of hemp and other fibrous plants)."~*In the following century, the historian Pan Ku adds silver and copper to the list of goods found at P'an-yU and says that "most of the Chinese merchants who go to trade there have become very wealthy." P'an-yti was already a mart for the goods of South China and northern Indo-China and the Chinese were already obtaining their supplies of metals and luxury goods from this mart. The merchants who crossed into Kwangtung to trade, via the mountain passes and rivers of Kiangsi, Honan and Kwangsi, brought back reports of its wealth and may have also urged political intervention there. Thus, after 221 BC., the Ch'in emperor sent five armies against the Yuehs. Each army was sent along a different route. The first marched into Kwarigsi through soLltl*1~western Human and then turned east down the Kwei River towards P'an-yU. The second also went through south~western Human but down another river, the Ho, to P'an-yti. The third and fourth armies went by more direct routes, the

former through southern Human and down the Pei River and the latter through southern Kiangsi across the Ta-yU Mountains and then down the Pei River to P'an-yU. As for the fifth army, it did not head directly for Kwangtung but first set forth from eastern Kiangsi across the VVL1-i Mountains (sometimes better known as the Bohea) of Fukien, one section going down the Min River to Fu-chou and the other down the Ou River of southern Chekiang to the port of Wen Chou. The army at Fu-chou then went down the coast entering Kwangtung via the Chieh-yang hills (north of the modern port of Swatow) and then eastwards to P'an-yU.

After taking P'an-yti, an army was sent up the West River and up one of its tributaries leading to the Tongking border from where it

South to Nan Yiieh, 22 I-I11 B.C.

3

descended on the Red River basin and captured the Lo YUeh capital (see Map 21.rJ Two significant facts emerge from this. The Chinese were well informed about the best routes into the Yiieh country and lost no time in sending large forces by these routes against the "barbarians" They were also well informed about the resources and manpower of the YUchs and sent one army to take the two kingdoms in southern Chekiang and Fukien and four armies against the Yiiehs of Kwangtung alone. This is evident in the routes taken by these armies which ultimately converged on P'an~yU, the stronghold of a

powerful kingdom. Map 2

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