The Formation of the Modern East Asian Economy
For the consequences of
their retreat went far beyond their separate shores. The
withdrawal of East Asian ships from the waters of southeast
Asia created a political and economic vacuum there which
the Westerners, especially the Dutch, filled, by moving
off their ships onto land, by turning themselves from
being overseas traders to being colonial landlords. Closer
to China, the end to the violence and trade along the
Chinese coast would see the inclusion of Taiwan in the
Chinese empire for the first time. Born at the end of
one maritime cycle and at the beginning of another, this
nation was, like its pirate developers, the offshoot of
both war and trade.
Overseas
Traders in the Integration of East Asian Trade: The
Emergence of Taiwan
Throughout East Asia, as
in the rest of the world, the end of this century is seeing
a revival of nationalism. This political trend of course
is nothing new. Its impact has long been felt in the writing
of history in East Asia during this century, and it presumably
will not disappear for some time. But it is hard to see
how this political commitment can do justice to explaining
much of the history of the first two-thirds of the seventeenth
century. These seven decades saw a great increase in not
just the currency, trade, and war of my earlier lectures,
but also in the interaction of peoples from different
cultures. Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Manchus, native
tribes, and all the peoples of southeast Asia were joined
by Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, English, and even Indians,
Ceylonese, and Africans in the waters of East Asia. So
just as this period saw the formation of a regional and
global economy through the shipping of New World and Japanese
silver, Chinese silks and ceramics, and southeast Asian
pepper all over the world, so did the peoples of these
worlds, with the exception of the Americas, converge in
East Asia and begin to deal with one another in novel
ways.
Their encounters, it must
be confessed were often bloody. In this early age of global
shipping, trading and raiding were often shared assignments
for a ship during a single voyage. The traders of these
different countries who sailed into East Asian harbours
were then also buccaneers. The Chinese officials tended
to call them "Japanese pirates" but could have equally
well chosen to label them Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese,
Dutch, or English, if they had known the difference. And,
understandably in light of the violent indifference the
Portuguese showed to Chinese imperial law, Chinese held
considerable suspicion about these Western visitors. We
read in one early seventeenth century account:
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