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The Nanhai trade: a study of the early history of Chinese trade in the South China Sea

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

The Nanhai trade: a study of the early history of Chinese trade in the South China Sea

Wang Gungwu’s 1958 study reconstructs the eleven centuries of Chinese maritime commerce in the South China Sea (the “Nanhai trade”) from the Ch’in conquest of the Yueh territories in 221 B.C. to the founding of the Sung dynasty in 960 A.D., arguing that this trade was structurally limited by its dependence on luxury goods, the passive role of Chinese merchants, and the dominance of foreign middlemen—Yueh, Indian, Persian, and Arab—who carried the bulk of the sea transport (pp. 1–2, 113–117).

Summary

Gungwu’s central argument is that the Nanhai trade, despite its early extension into the Indian Ocean, never rose above a localised exchange in luxury goods because of both external and internal constraints. Externally, the agrarian Chinese economy produced a society in which merchants held the lowest social status and peasant farmers lacked the purchasing power to generate sustained demand for expensive imports. Internally, the trade’s character as one in pearls, ivory, kingfisher feathers, rhinoceros horns, and later perfumes and spices meant that demand was concentrated at imperial courts and among the wealthy elite, making it extremely sensitive to political disruption (pp. 113–114). The Chinese merchant, Gungwu contends, was content to play a passive role—leaving sea transport to Yueh sailors, then to Indian, Persian, and Arab middlemen—rather than assuming the initiative that would have made China the sole carrier and cultural ambassador of the trade (pp. 114–116).

The study traces three distinct phases. The first, lasting five centuries to the end of the Chin dynasty (420 A.D.), was a trade in precious things desired by courts and palaces, characterised by the predominance of Yueh and Indian shipping and the rise of Fu-nan as the first maritime empire of the Nanhai. The second, spanning the Southern Dynasties (420–589), was a trade in “holy things” driven by Buddhist devotion, marked by the coming of Po-sse and K’un-lun traders and closer contacts with Java-Sumatra and Ceylon. The third, covering the T’ang and Five Dynasties (618–960), was a trade in drugs and spices, characterised by the commercial power of Srivijaya and the eventual domination of Persian and Arab middlemen who became the chief carriers of the inter-ocean trade (pp. 113–114).

A significant portion of the study is devoted to the political and administrative conditions that shaped the trade. Gungwu demonstrates that the effectiveness of Chinese control over the coastal commanderies—particularly the rivalry between Canton and Hanoi as entrepôts—was the single most important variable determining the volume of trade. When central authority weakened, as after the An Lu-shan rebellion (755–763) or during the Huang Ch’ao revolt (878–884), the trade collapsed; when order was restored, tribute missions and merchant traffic quickly resumed (pp. 80–86). The establishment of the shih-p’o-shih (Superintendent of the Shipping Trade) before 714 represented the imperial government’s recognition of the trade’s revenue potential and its need for specialised port administration (pp. 100–103).

Key Findings

  • The Han Shu passage (c. A.D. 80) describing the route from Hsu-wen and Ho-p’u to Huang-chih (Kanci, South India) is the earliest definitive evidence of a sea trade reaching the Indian Ocean, with the initial impetus being the demand for large pearls superior to local products (pp. 19–21).
  • Census data from A.D. 2 shows Chiao-chih (Tongking) registered 92,440 households and 746,237 individuals—far exceeding Nan-hai (Canton) with 19,613 households and 94,253 individuals—explaining why the Inspector-General was stationed at Hanoi rather than Canton (p. 18).
  • The murder of the Kwang-chou governor Lu Yuan-jui by a K’un-lun merchant in 684, who entered the office with a hidden sword and killed more than ten people before escaping by sea, demonstrates both the wealth of the foreign merchant community and the corruption of port officials (pp. 75–76).
  • The sack of Canton by Po-sse (non-Muslim Persians) and Ta-shih (Muslim Arabs) in 758, followed by the killing of several thousand of these merchants at Yang-chou in 760, marks the point at which Persian and Arab middlemen had advanced from newcomers to men of sufficient power and wealth to challenge Chinese port authorities (pp. 79–80).
  • Chia Tan’s route description (c. 800) from Canton to the Persian Gulf, passing through Champa, the Straits of Malacca, Sumatra, and the Nicobar Islands, confirms that by the late eighth century the extended Tahai (Indian Ocean) trade had gained on the Nanhai trade proper (pp. 104–105).
  • The new trading products of the T’ang period included cardamons, cloves, mace, nutmegs, psoralea, storax, myrobalan, and benzoin—goods that broadened the trade’s base beyond pure luxury items and set the stage for the Sung-era expansion (pp. 108–111).

Conclusion

Gungwu’s definitive historical takeaway is that the negligible Chinese cultural and political impact on the Nanhai countries was not due to any single cause but to the convergence of the agrarian structure of the Chinese economy, the luxury-goods character of the trade, and the passive role the Chinese merchant chose to play. Where India achieved cultural conquest through similar trade limitations, China’s impact depended on military conquest, long political subjugation, and gradual sinicisation—a process that was irrelevant to the independent kingdoms of the South China Sea. By 960, the Nanhai civilisation had already been given form and expression by Indian influence, and the window for a Chinese cultural impact through trade alone had closed (pp. 114–117).

Context

  • The study was completed in 1954 at the University of Malaya and published with the encouragement of Dr. C. Gibson-Hill; it represents early post-war Malayan historiography engaging with Chinese primary sources to reconstruct regional maritime history from a non-Western perspective (p. 2).
  • Gungwu’s work drew on the dynastic histories (Shih Chi, Han Shu, Hou Han Shu, San Kuo Chih, Chin Shu, Sung Shu, Liang Shu, Ch’en Shu, Sui Shu, Chiu T’ang Shu, Hsin T’ang Shu, Chiu Wu Tai Shih, Hsin Wu Tai Shih), the Tzu Chih T’ung Chien, the T’ang Hui Yao, and the Pen Ts’ao Kang Mu, alongside Western scholarship by Pelliot, Ferrand, Hirth and Rockhill, Coedes, Briggs, and Hourani (pp. 132–135).

References