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The Formation of the Modern East Asian Economy
      In contrast to such findings on the maritime Chinese trade of these centuries, strikingly little has been written on their maritime warfare, despite the exceptional expansion then of Chinese naval power. From the late ninth century, the frequency of sea and river battles significantly increased, leading in the twelfth century, for the first time in Chinese, and probably world, history, to the establishment of a permanent national navy. It drew its ships, supplies, and sailors from a large experience merchant marine; in other words, in any given naval campaign a substantial number of the ships and personnel would have been seccombed (*) from private hands. The navy even made use of a great variety of incendiary weapons, originally designed for land battles, such as flaming arrows, rockets, flame throwers, and bombs cast by catapults. And, for the first time, China became known as a naval power in the South China Sea, and the Indian Ocean. For instance, in 987 the Song government sent eight officials in four fleets to southeast Asia and probably India to purchase drugs, ivory, rhinoceros horns, pearls, and other luxuries of the South Seas. From 1278, the Mongol government sent many missions abroad, the one in 1301 consisting of 25 ships and going as far as the Persian Gulf.

      Thus, Mongol rule of China saw no decline of court interest in such maritime advances. These nomadic conquerors even encouraged private maritime foreign trade by Chinese and foreigners at least until the early fourteenth century. They also took over the navies of Korea and Northern Song China to conduct naval wars against the Southern Song, Japan, Tongking in Annam, Champa, and Java. This naval program continued into the late fourteenth century, when the Ming dynasty's rise to power was assured by its bloody victories on the Yangtze River and along the Zhejiang coast.

      It is in the early Ming that a significant change took place. The Sung and Yuan dynasties had relied on using private boats for their military engagements, had needed customs revenue from foreign trade, and had promoted maritime trade and warfare as indivisible parts of the same expansionist policy to secure Chinese commercial control of East Asian waters. The Ming, at least initially, treated foreign trade and the navy differently. During its first three or four reigns, it made the Chinese navy the largest in the world. In about 1510, this navy consisted of a central fleet of 2,800 ships to repel raids by pirates, a maritime fleet of some 3,000 ships, and, as the pride of the Ming navy, a fleet of more than 250 "treasure ships," each capable of holding 500 men. The possession and application of such naval power not only facilitated the reconquest of Annam, but also enabled the Ming dynasty to extend its political influence beyond the East and South China Seas into the Indian Ocean.

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