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The Formation of the Modern East Asian Economy
Today I wish to begin with a series of pictures. I apologize for not bring along slides of these large Japanese screens dating from about 1600. But only last weekend did it occur to me that these examples of Namban art might help you understand my talk today. For although these examples of "Southern Barbarians art" describe not Taiwan but Japan and most likely its city of Nagasaki, they are the finest visual evidence I know of the various races' interaction in East Asia in the seventeenth century. Their gold leaf background, bright colors, and exotic scenes immediately catch our eye. But notice how these scenes portray three types of visitors to Japanese shores-the clergy, of whom we will talk no more; the Portuguese whites, who lord over ship and land alike in highly decorative clothes; and the black sailors, who serve the whites and do all the work. The foreigners' hierarchy, at least as perceived by the Japanese of the time, is one of race, in which an inferior group of blacks actually functioned as slaves. In addition to the presence of these slaves, I wish to call your attention to the absence of something essential in life and in most Japanese paintings. For among all these foreign men-white as well as black-parading their fashions, boats, and sports, one can find not a single non-Japanese woman. It is then to the questions of the role of slavery and the role of women in seventeenth century East Asia, particularly as related to Taiwan, that I want to discuss today.

For by the early and mid-seventeenth century the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese traveling around East Asian waters were confronted with a serious problem. If their small coastal settlements in East Asia, such as Macao, Manila, Zeelandia Castle, and the many Japan towns in southeast Asia were to grow, if they were to develop from forts into prosperous and permanent settlements like colonies, then they needed to find people to settle there. The problem of who was to man their settlements was made more complex by the question of who was to do the manual work, particularly the farming needed to provide the local food supplies required by any self-sufficient, self-respecting settlement.

One solution considered was slavery. The Portuguese used this solution in Brazil, by shipping large numbers of African slaves to Brazil. The Spanish, Dutch, and English also dealt in this infamous trade, but likewise concentrated such efforts in the Americas. In East Asia, they introduced slaves from Bengal, East Africa, China, and Japan. At the same time, they had African slaves in Macao who attracted comment from the Chinese:

On board the foreigners' boats there is a certain kind of man, the so-called "Kunlun slaves." They are commonly called the "black ghosts," as their entire body is like lacquer, with only their two eyes white. These men only recognize the man on whom they depend for their good and clothing;

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