On The Maritime Commodity Trade During The Ming And Qing Dynasties (1368-1840)

International trade can be researched from different perspectives. This dissertation, dealing from the perspective of time or history, studies international trade in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.This paper chooses and focuses on the Ming and Qing Dynasties in the long history of China because China experienced a dramatic change in this period:Chinese suddenly realized that China no longer stood among the advanced countries, faced with the strong western countries in the Opium War in 1840. Obviously China's lagging behind did not happen suddenly at a certain point of time, instead it is a process. In order to research the process, we need to trace back. The historical period the dissertation focuses on is confined to the Ming and Qing Dynasties before the Opium War. Although we are unable to determine the specific starting point of China's change from an advanced country to a country lagging behind, we can confirm that the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368-1840) were the key period in the process. In this period, China still had the opportunity to remain advanced.The reason for China's change from an advanced country to a country lagging behind is extremely complicated, among which external relationship is remarkable. People use "closed and isolated" to criticize the emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties frequently. External relationship remains a broad theme. The author is majoring in international trade. As a result, this paper confines the research scope in international trade in this period. International trade can be divided into land-way trade and maritime trade. Obviously, maritime trade was more important than land-way trade in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. As a result, the author emphasizes particularly on maritime trade.During the process of research, the author finds that the systematically direct literature on maritime trading commodities is rare despite the fact that there is a large amount of literature on maritime trading commodities during this period. Therefore, this paper focuses on the imports and exports during this period, thus the topic of this dissertation: On the Maritime Commodity Trade during the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368-1840).The international trade of China began in the Qin Dynasty if we consider only unified country. However, the Qin Dynasty did not last long. Therefore, the Han Dynasty witnessed China's formation of real international trade.First, china's maritime trading route can be divided into three directions of east, south and west, or three sailing routes, which were called the East Ocean, the South Ocean and the West Ocean by people lived in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.Second, China's maritime trade has been developing since the Han Dynasty. Luxuries were the main commodities traded in the Song and Yuan Dynasties; however, the maritime commodity trade in the real sense first developed in the middle Ming Dynasty when the Great Voyage era came. It was a significant change that trading commodities shifted from luxuries to bulk commodities in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The trade volume increased accompanying the change.Third, another significant change of China's maritime trade in Ming and Qing Dynasties was the beginning of large-scale direct trade between China and western countries with the Great Voyage era beginning in roughly the middle Ming Dynasty and westerners flocking into the east. However, before the Ming Dynasty, even in the early period of the Ming Dynasty, trade between China and European countries was mainly conducted through Arabs. With the coming of the Great Voyage era, the mysterious veil of the east disappeared gradually. With more westerners flocking into the east, the maritime trade between China and the western countries became more important. Western countries substituted the countries around China, becoming the main trading partners of China in maritime trade. Ever since then, Chinese maritime trade was divided into two parts. One was the traditional trade with countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia, and the other the trade with European countries.Fourth, the maritime trade in the Ming and Qing Dynasties can be divided into two categories by trading patterns:tributary trade and non-governmental trade. Tributary trade was important only in the early Ming Dynasty. After the middle Ming Dynasty, although there still was tributary trade, its importance was decreased a lot compared to non-governmental trade.Non-governmental trade included legal trade and smuggling trade. The governments of the Ming and Qing Dynasties imposed various restrictions on non-governmental maritime trade. They even banned maritime trade in some periods. The Ming and Qing governments were therefore criticized by later generations as imposing closed and isolated policy, which gave rise to the lagging of China afterwards. Objectively, inadequate opening was one of the reasons why China did not became an earlier endogenous-typed modern country, but the most important reason lied in inner China. It was especially the case for a big country like China at that time. In fact, the volume of maritime trade in the Ming and Qing Dynasties was higher than that of preceding dynasties, which was proved by the description of the imports and exports of commodities in the dissertation. Most restrictive policies on maritime trade imposed by Ming and Qing Dynasties came from the restrictions on domestic business as well as the restrictive policies imposed by preceding dynasties. All-around ban on maritime trade, whose interval was not long and far shorter than the period of opening maritime trade, was imposed by governments in the early Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty. In fact, there was never a comprehensive closed policy. Even if the rulers wished to do so, they were unable to achieve it.Rigorous restrictive policy of maritime trade also included "one trading custom,' among which turning from "four trading customs" to "one trading custom" in 1757 was more famous, lased longer and had greater impacts. The government closed Fujian Custom, Zhejiang Custom and Jiangsu Custom, remaining only Guangdong Custom until 1840. Later generations often exaggerated the policy. First, at that time the customs named after a certain province included more than one ports. Second, revocation of customs did not mean ban on ports. For example, during the period of "one trading custom," businessmen dealing in bronze still leave for Japan from Ningbo. Third, the trade volume and trading ports did not exhibit linear relationship. What it meant was that trading commodities through other ports then trade through the remaining ports. What is more, even during the four-trading customs, there was at least "Shanhaiguan Port" besides the four customs although Shanhaiguan Port mainly dealt with domestic trade. More importantly, there was a lot of smuggling except for legal trade. The governments'ability of suppressing smuggling at that time was far poorer than that of the modern governments. The proportion of smuggling was far larger than now, especially in the period when war accompanied the ban of maritime trade.Except for introduction and conclusion, the main body of the dissertation is divided into three parts, each having four chapters. The first part deals with the exports of main commodities, while the second part is concerned with the imports of main commodities. Part Three involves the inflow of silver. The first and second parts analyze the exports and imports of main commodities separately. The most important exporting and importing commodities are analyzed in separate chapters, while less important ones were combined into one chapter, using only one section or even less content to describe. The analysis of each exporting (importing) commodity includes roughly the following contents. First, their places of origin (country of invention) and developing history are introduced in brief. Second, the production as well as demand and supply of the commodities in the exporting (importing) countries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties are analyzed. Third, the exporting (importing) channel and dealers, exporting (importing) quantities as well as their rise and fall are dealt with. Fourth, their positions in the exporting (importing) commodities as well as the effects on exporting (importing) countries are discussed. The third part analyzes the imports of silver. Silver can be taken a kind of commodity. In fact, it was the most important importing commodity in the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China. The dissertation discusses silver in a separate part because it had a special significance in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.China deserved to be a country with vast territory and abundant resources in the world in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Take the handicraft industry before the machine-producing era as an example. China's technology was more advanced not only than the countries around China in Asia, but also than western countries. The commodities were of low cost and high quality. Many commodities had powerful competitiveness in the world market with people from other countries purchasing actively. Therefore, in the main period of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the exporting volume was ranked the first in the world. Sometimes China was even the only producing country. The types of exporting commodities were abundant, with hundreds recorded in the historical literature. Roughly classified, agricultural goods and their products were the main exporting commodities; however, products and semi-products were the vast majority, while primary products took only a small proportion. Only decades after the Opium War, primary goods, especially agricultural primary goods took a larger proportion. Of course, at that time China's products and semi-products were made by hand. If we consider the relative importance of the specific exporting commodities, there were "three kings and five emperors". "Three kings" were silk, china and tea, while "five emperors" were cloth, sugar, medicine, books and currency.The importing commodities were of various types, similar to exporting commodities. Products also occupied a large proportion. For the specific importing commodities, opium was the most famous (of course it was in fact notorious) and its quantity and influence were huge. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the importing weapons were of great significance although its quantity was not as large as that of other commodities, such as cotton. The main importing weapons were Japanese knife, western firearms and sulfur from East Asia and Southeast Asia. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, some spices changed from luxury goods to bulk of trading goods. The importing spices came mainly from Southeast Asia to China and Europe. Cotton was originally produced in foreign countries; however, it was widely planted in China in the Ming Dynasty. Cotton and textile became the bulk of importing goods after the end of the 18th century. Cotton became the bulk of importing goods before textile and its trading volume was far larger than that of textile before the Opium War. China began importing rice from Siam and Luzon long ago. The importing scale was large in the Ming Dynasty and even more in the Qing Dynasty. Besides, other commodities had a certain position in the importing commodities, including metals such as tin, lead and azoth, sea food from East Asia and Southeast Asia, rare woods in Southeast Asia, odd birds and animals, jewellery, folding fan from Japan, fur products from Asia and America, clocks from western countries as well as glass products.It is safe to state that silver was the most important importing commodity, which had the largest value among all the imported goods in the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China. However, sliver is not only a commodity, but also a currency, which was of particular significance to the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In some sense, the import of silver reflects the international trade equilibrium of the other commodities. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, China had a shortage of self-produced silver, whose production kept decreasing. As domestic economy was developing rapidly and the currency policy turned into Silver Standard, there was a substantial demand for silver. While foreign countries had a large demand of Chinese commodities, they did not have a suitable or sufficient supply of good to export to China. Since the mid 16th century, Japan and America had had a mass production of silver. Moreover, since there was an opportunity for compound interest from the silver trade, a large amount of Japanese- and American-produced sliver flew into China. The major inflow of Japanese-produced silver took place in the late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty. The amount was approximately two hundred million taels, one third of which was direct import from Japan to China, and the rest was indirect import. American-produced silver was massively imported during the period of the 1570s to the early 19th century. The amount was around four hundred million taels, half of which was transferred from Manila, and the other half was from Europe (or America). Thus, during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the total amount of silver imported to China was approximately six hundred million taels.The innovation of this dissertation lies in its systematic study on maritime commodity trade in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. This paper considers China's developing problems in a long process and articulate one specific thing in the historical period when China changed from a long-advanced country to a country lagging behind. In the author's point of view, although the research after the Opium War was sufficient, there lacks of systematic research on the maritime commodity trade in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with many misunderstandings on this period. Although literature on the maritime commodity trade in the Ming and Qing Dynasties is vast, this dissertation does a comparatively comprehensive and systematic carding on the related literature on maritime commodity trade in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The purpose of this dissertation is to mirror technology advancement, opening up and the developing of the exporting and importing trade through historical data, so as to compensate for the possible deficiencies of formers researches.This dissertation may serve as a reference and guidance to the current situation. After the 30-year's reform and opening-up, Chinese economy has been developing fast, with opening-up to be the important impetus. Through mirroring the maritime commodity trade in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, scholars of today can summarize the experiences and lessons of historical foreign trade, which is of reference and guiding significance to China's current and future economic development, especially to the development of foreign trade.