Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550-1800: Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700 9789048535446

Table of contents :
Table of contents
List of plates and figures
Acknowledgements
1. People and things in motion: the view from the East
Part I. Circuits and exchanges
2. The maritime trading world of East Asia from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries
3. The junk trade and Hokkien merchant networks in maritime Asia, 1570–1760
4. The trade activities of sixteenth-century Christian daimyo Ōtomo Sōrin
Part II. Commodities
5. From global to local: the diaspora of Asian decorative arts in colonial Latin America
6. Trans-Pacific connections: contraband mercury trade in the sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries
7. “The Features are Esteem’d very just”: Chinese unfired clay portrait figures of Westerners
Part III. Hybrid aesthetics
8. The global keyboard: music, visual forms, and maritime trade in the early modern era
9. Barbarian tropes framed anew: three Qing dynasty Chinese lacquer screens of Europeans hunting
10. Chinese porcelain, the East India Company, and British cultural identity, 1600–1800
Index

Citation preview

Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late medieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies. Series Editor Dr. Allison Levy, an art historian, has written and/or edited three scholarly books, and she has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, from the N ­ ational Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Getty Research Institute, the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library of Harvard University, the Whiting Foundation and the Bogliasco Foundation, among others. www.allisonlevy.com.

Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800 Edited by Tamara H. Bentley

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Scenes of Traders at Nagasaki, late 18th century. Japanese pair of hand scrolls, 20144P11 (a-c). Art Gallery of South Australia. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Newgen/Konvertus isbn 978 94 6298 467 7 e-isbn 978 90 4853 544 6 doi 10.5117/9789462984677 nur 685 © The authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2019 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

For Eric, Kristina, and Kai —T.H.B. In memory of John E. ( Jack) Wills, for his manifold contributions —Picturing Commerce authors

Table of contents List of plates and figures

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Acknowledgements19 1. People and things in motion: the view from the East Tamara H. Bentley

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Part I Circuits and exchanges 2. The maritime trading world of East Asia from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries Richard von Glahn

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3. The junk trade and Hokkien merchant networks in maritime Asia, 1570–176083 James K. Chin 4. The trade activities of sixteenth-century Christian daimyo Ōtomo Sōrin113 Hiroko Nishida Part II Commodities 5. From global to local: the diaspora of Asian decorative arts in colonial Latin America127 Donna Pierce 6. Trans-Pacific connections: contraband mercury trade in the sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries Angela Schottenhammer

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7. “The Features are Esteem’d very just”: Chinese unfired clay portrait figures of Westerners William R. Sargent

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Part III Hybrid aesthetics 8. The global keyboard: music, visual forms, and maritime trade in the early ­modern era Victoria Lindsay Levine

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PIC TURING COMMERCE IN AND FROM THE EAST ASIAN MARITIME CIRCUITS, 1550–1800

9. Barbarian tropes framed anew: three Qing dynasty Chinese lacquer screens of Europeans hunting Tamara H. Bentley

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10. Chinese porcelain, the East India Company, and British cultural identity, 1600–1800275 Stacey Pierson Index293

List of plates and figures Plate 1

Plate 2 Plate 3

Plate 4

Plate 5 Plate 6 Plate 7 Plate 8

Plate 9

Unknown artist, tea-leaf storage jar, named Chigusa, China, Southern Song or Yuan dynasty, mid-thirteenth to mid-fourteenth century. Stoneware with iron glaze. Vessel, h. 41.6 × dia. 36.6 cm (16 3/8 × 14 7/16 in.). Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Purchase, Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F2016.20.1. Unknown artist, Foreign Factories in Guangzhou, China, c. 1795. Gouache on silk. Hong Kong Museum of Art Collection, AH1964.0025. Designers Guy Louis Vernansal the Elder, Jean-Baptiste Belin de Fontenay the Elder, and Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer, “The Audience of the Emperor” tapestry from the tapestry series The Story of the Emperor of China. Produced in Beauvais, designed c. 1685–90, woven c. 1685–1740. Wool and silk, h. 123 1/2 × w. 183 3/4 in. (313.7 × 466.7 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of Mrs. J. Insley Blair, 1948, 48.71. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art/ Art Resource. Unknown artist, Arrival of a Japanese “Red Seal” Ship in Hội An, Japan, seventeenth century. Section of a hand scroll, ink and colors on paper. Jōmyō-ji temple, Japan. Banned from Chinese ports, Japanese merchants conducted trade with their Chinese counterparts at neutral ports such as Hội An in central Vietnam. This seventeenth-century hand-scroll painting depicts a ship dispatched by the Chaya merchant house of Nagoya being towed to anchorage at Hội An. The Japanese settlement (at top left) was located across a small river separating it from the Chinese quarter (bottom left). According to the inscription, the ship carried a complement of more than 300 sailors and merchants. Unknown artist, Oido-type tea bowl, known as Sogyu, Korea. Nezu Museum, Tokyo. Unknown artist, Shuko-type celadon tea bowl, China, thirteenth century. Nezu Museum, Tokyo. Unknown artist, Totoya-type tea bowl, known as Kasugayama, Korea, sixteenth–seventeenth century. Nezu Museum, Tokyo. Unknown artist, fragment of tea bowl with ash glaze, Korea, late sixteenth century, excavated at the Funai castle site. Image by the kind permission of the Funai Castle archaeology site, Oita Prefecture, Board of Education, Oita City. Adrian Boot, Puerto de Acapulco en el Reino de la Nueva España en el Mar del Sur, drawing, Mexico; facsimile lithograph by A. Ruffoni, 1628. Colored inks on paper. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

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PIC TURING COMMERCE IN AND FROM THE EAST ASIAN MARITIME CIRCUITS, 1550–1800

Plate 10 Unknown artist, Virgen de Belém [Our Lady of Bethlehem], Cuzco, Peru, eighteenth century. Oil on canvas, h. 154.9 × w. 101 cm (61 × 39 3/4 in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, gift of Eugenie Walsh Flaherty in memory of Alexandra and Philip Walsh. Plate 11 Unknown artist, Young Woman with a Harpsichord, Mexico, 1735–50. Oil on canvas. Denver Art Museum, gift of the collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer. Photo: Denver Art Museum. Plate 12 Miguel Cabrera (Mexican, 1695–1768), Portrait of Don Juan Xavier Joachín Gutiérrez Altamirano Velasco, Count of Santiago de Calimaya, c. 1752. Oil on canvas, h. 81 5/16 × w. 53 1/2 in. (206.5 × 135.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Brooklyn Museum Collection Fund and Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 52.166.1. Plate 13 José de Alcíbar (Mexican, 1725–1803), From Spaniards and Black, Mulatto, Mexico, c. 1760. Denver Art Museum, gift of the Collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer. Photo: James Milmoe. Plate 14 Amoy Chinqua, Joseph Collet, China, dated 1716 by inscription. Painted unfired clay portrait figure, h. 33 in. © National Portrait Gallery, London. Given by the sitter’s descendant, W.P.G. Collet, 1956, NPG 4005. Plate 15 Unknown artist, Figure of Thomas Hall, Guangzhou, China, 1715–30. Unfired clay, wood, velvet, straw, silk. Without base, h. 12 1/4 × w. 13 1/8 × 6 in. (31.115 × 33.338 × 15.24 cm). © 2010 Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Peabody Essex Museum, museum purchase with funds donated anonymously, 2002, AE86368. Photo: Dennis Helmar. Plate 16 Attributed to Chitqua (Tan-Che-Qua, Chinese, c. 1728–96), David Garrick, c. 1770–75. Painted unfired-clay portrait figure. Private collection. Photo: Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images. Plate 17 Jan van Kessel “The Elder” (Flemish, 1626–1679), The Continent of America, 1666. Painting on panel, h. 48.6 × w. 67.9 cm (center panel). Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, inv. 1913. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Art Resource, NY. Plate 18 Michael Mietke (German, c. 1656/1671–1719) and Gérard Dagly (French, 1660–1715), harpsichord, 1702–4. Detail of painting on white lacquered case. Schloss Charlottenberg, Berlin. V104. Photo: Tomasz Samek. Plate 19 Madhu Khanazad, Plato Charming Animals with Music, c. 1595. Manuscript illumination in Khamsa of Nizami. British Library, MS Or. 12208, fol. 298a. The British Library, London. Plate 20 Johan Zoffany (German, 1733–1810), Colonel William Blair and his Family, 1786. Oil on canvas, h. 965 × w. 1,346 mm. Tate Britain, London. Bequeathed by Simon Sainsbury 2006, accessioned 2008. T12610. © Tate Images. Plate 21 Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Playing Music, China, 1670s–1680s. Two parts of twelvefold incised lacquer screen (two parts currently separated). Left screen (upper), right screen (lower).

List of plates and figures

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Ham House, Richmond, England. The National Trust. Photo: Chris Lacey Photography. Plate 22 Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Loading Ships, China, c. 1700. Incised lacquer screen. Each panel, h.244 × w. 46 cm (96 1/16 × 18 1/8 in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Keith McLeod Fund, 1975.333. Plate 23 Unknown artist, Dutchmen and Associates Loading Tribute, China, eighteenth century. Very large twelvefold incised lacquer screen. Overall, h. 2.66 × w. 5.96 m. National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet), Copenhagen. Plate 24 Unknown artist, a pair of Namban screens, Portuguese Ship Arriving at the Port of Nagasaki, Japan, c. 1600. Namban Bunkakan, Japan. Source: Nanban bijutsu to yofuga, vol. 20 of the Genshoku Nihon no bijutsu series, ed. Akiyama Terukazu et al. (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1970), pp. 64–67. Plate 25 Unknown artist, porcelain tea caddy, with overglaze decoration of the arms of Benjamin Tarin pictured on the scroll unrolled above the table, China, 1736–95, 4 1/2 × 3 in. (11.43 × 7.62 cm). © 2010 Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Peabody Essex Museum, museum purchase with funds donated by the AEA Visiting Committee,1999, AE85683. Photo: Dennis Helmar. Plate 26 Unknown artist, porcelain teapot, with overglaze design, China, 1770–75. Detail of side of pot showing cobbler at work, with inscription “I must work for leather is dear,” 4 1/2 × 9 × 4 1/2 in. (11.43 × 22.86 × 11.43 cm). © 2010 Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Peabody Essex Museum, gift of Mr. Carl L. Crossman in memory of Priscilla Waldo Papin, 1983, E72796. Photo: Dennis Helmar. Plate 27 Unknown artist, porcelain plate, with overglaze design of English tea inspector above and Chinese tea packer below, China, c.1770, 1 × 9 1/8 in. (2.54 × 23.178 cm). © 2010 Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Peabody Essex Museum, museum purchase with funds donated by the AEA Visiting Committee, 1996.AE85239.1. Photo: Dennis Helmar. Plate 28 Unknown artist, porcelain punch bowl, with overglaze enamel decoration of the Hongs of Canton, South China, eighteenth century. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Fig. 1.1. Charles Grignion II (British, 1753–1804), Tan-Che-Qua, “Chitqua” (recto), Royal Academy 1771. Chalk on paper. Image © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, WA.OA252. Fig. 1.2 Unknown artist, Portrait of Catharina van Braam Houckgeest, China, c. 1790. Oil painting on glass. Purchased with the support of the Van Braam Houckgeest Family, the M.A.O.C. Gravin van Bylandt Stichting, the K.F. Hein Fonds, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, the Mondriaan Stichting, and the Rijksmuseum Fonds. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, AK-RAK-2003-7.

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Fig. 1.3 Unknown artist, Sueyoshi “red seal” ship with foreign pilots and sailors, Japan, c. 1633. A wood-plaque painting from Kiyomizu-dera Temple, Kyoto. Photo: History/Bridgeman Images. Fig. 1.4 Map of some of the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean shipping circuits, 1567– 1639. Map by Inspiration Design House, Hong Kong. Note that not all East Asian shipping routes for this period are shown, and the European routes in East Asia are not depicted. Fig. 1.5 Mu Qi (Chinese, 1210?–1269?), Fishing Village at Sunset. Section of a long hand scroll, probably originally the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang, thirteenth century. Ink on paper, mounted as a hanging scroll, h. 33.0 × w. 112.6 cm. Former collection of Shogun Yoshimitsu, Nezu Museum, Tokyo. Fig. 1.6 Unknown artist, plate with “IHS” design, China, 1522–66, 4 1/8 × 20 5/8 in. (10.478 × 52.388 cm). © 2005 Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Peabody Essex Museum, museum purchase, 2000. AE85730. Photo: Dennis Helmar. Fig. 1.7 Jan Jansz van de Velde (Dutch, 1619/1620–1662), Still Life with Goblet and Fruit, 1656. Oil on canvas, h. 37.5 × w. 34.9 cm (14 3/4 × 13 3/4 in.) Anonymous gift, by exchange 27.465. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Fig. 1.8 Unknown artist, cellaret with nine porcelain bottles, Japan, c. 1680–c. 1700. Wooden case made in Indonesia. Kakiemon porcelain flasks from Arita Japan, h. 36 × dia. 33 × w. 27 × l. 25.5 cm. Inscription on bottom of the bottles: VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, Dutch East India Company). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, NG-444. Fig. 1.9 Unknown artist, covered bowls with polychrome Nanban decoration of Dutch Fig.s and ships, Japan, late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. Enameled and gilt porcelain (Arita ware), h. 8 × dia. 11.8 cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased, NGV Asian Art Acquisition Fund, 2011, 2011.5.a–d. Fig. 1.10 Johannes Nieuhof, frontispiece of the English version of The Embassy from the East India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham, Emperor of China. Originally published in Amsterdam in 1665. Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture, University of Wisconsin Libraries. Fig. 1.11 Unknown artists, silk bedcover, China, produced in Guangdong or Fujian province, 1680–1720. Silk embroidered with silk and metal-wrapped threads. Without fringe, h. 119 1/4 × w. 91 1/4 × dia. 1/8 in. (302.895 × 231.775 × 0.381 cm). © 2015 Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Peabody Essex Museum, museum purchase, 2004, AE86474. Photo: Walter Silver. Fig. 2.1 Map of maritime East Asia, c. 1620. Map by Inspiration Design House, Hong Kong. Fig. 2.2 Map of Naha, Ryukyu islands, fifteenth century. Map by Inspiration Design House, Hong Kong. The Ryukyu kingdom prospered as the crossroads of

List of plates and figures

Fig. 2.3

Fig. 2.4

Fig. 2.5

Fig. 2.6

Fig. 4.1

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maritime trade between Ming China and Japan. Both Chinese and Japanese merchants settled at the port of Naha on Okinawa, the main island of Ryukyu, but the location of the Chinese settlement of Kumemura at the center of Naha reflected China’s pre-eminent position in Ryukyu’s foreign trade and diplomatic relations. Map of the principal daimyo domains of Kyushu, c. 1580. Map by Inspiration Design House, Hong Kong. For much of the sixteenth century the Ōtomo clan dominated Japan’s foreign trade through its control of the ports of Bungo Funai, the domain capital, and Hakata. Although Portuguese traders initially focused their activities at Bungo Funai, they later relocated to a new trading base at Hirado, under the protection of the Matsura daimyo, and then to Nagasaki, which was directly governed by the shoguns. Map of Bungo Funai, late sixteenth century. Map by Inspiration Design House, Hong Kong. Ōtomo Sōrin sought to enhance his political power by cultivating trading alliances with Chinese and Portuguese merchants. This late sixteenth-century map shows the daimyo’s compound (1) at the center of the daimyo capital of Bungo Funai. Funai’s “Chinatown” (Tōjinmachi) (2) was located between the daimyo’s residence and Upper Market street (4), the main business district. The Jesuit mission (3) was placed among a row of Buddhist temples on the western edge of the city. Image courtesy of the Oita City Historical Museum. Simon de la Loubère, “A Map of the City of Siam (i.e. Ayudhya).” Printed illustration from A New Historical Description of the Kingdom of Siam (London, 1693). Ayudhya, the capital and principal port of the kingdom of Siam, flourished as a center of maritime trade. This map of Ayudhya, drawn by a member of an embassy dispatched by the French king Louis XIV to the Siamese court in 1687, shows the separate enclaves of foreign merchants— including Chinese, Japanese, Malays, Burmese (Peguans), and Vietnamese (Cochinchinois) as well as Portuguese and Dutch traders—surrounding the capital city. Unknown artist, a nautical chart of the Kadoya merchant house, Japan. A translation of a Portuguese nautical chart (a Portuguese heraldic emblem appears as a compass rose at center). This map of the East Asian trading world was prepared for the Kadoya merchant house. Under Tokugawa patronage, the Kadoya became one of the most prominent firms engaged in the “red seal” overseas trade. A faint dotted line indicates the navigation route used by the Kadoya’s vessel to travel from Nagasaki to Hội An in central Vietnam. Collection of the Chōkokan, Jingu History Museum, Mie. Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641), St. Francis Xavier before Ōtomo Sōrin, Daimyo of Bungo, 1641. Oil on canvas. The Graf von Schönborn art collection in Schloss Weissenstein in Pommersfelden, Germany.

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Fig. 4.2 Rosary beads, recovered from Bungo Funai, Japan. Datable to the late sixteenth century. Image by the kind permission of the Funai Castle archaeology site, Oita Prefecture, Board of Education, Oita City. Fig. 4.3 Venetian glass, recovered from Bungo Funai, Japan. Datable to the late sixteenth century. Image by the kind permission of the Funai Castle archaeology site, Oita Prefecture, Board of Education, Oita City. Fig. 4.4 Tricolor South China ware, recovered from Bungo Funai, Japan. Datable to the sixteenth century, or earlier. Image by the kind permission of the Funai Castle archaeology site, Oita Prefecture, Board of Education, Oita City. Fig. 4.5 Blue-and-white porcelain sherds, recovered from Bungo Funai, Japan. China, Yuan to Ming dynasty. Image by the kind permission of the Funai Castle archaeology site, Oita Prefecture, Board of Education, Oita City. Fig. 4.6 Blue-and-white porcelain fragment, recovered from Funai castle, Japan. China, Yuan to Ming dynasty. Image by the kind permission of the Funai Castle archaeology site, Oita Prefecture, Board of Education, Oita City. Fig. 4.7 Blue-and-white porcelain fragment, recovered from Funai castle, Japan. China, Yuan to Ming dynasty. Image by the kind permission of the Funai Castle archaeology site, Oita Prefecture, Board of Education, Oita City. Fig. 5.1 Antonio Pérez de Aguilar (active 1749–69), The Painter’s Cabinet, Mexico, c. 1765. Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City, Instituto Nacional de Bella Artes. Fig. 5.2 Porcelain sherds, China, 1522–1617. Excavated at San Gabriel del Yunque, San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico. Courtesy of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico. Photo: Donna Pierce. Fig. 5.3 Manuel de Arellano (active 1691–c. 1722), Rendering of a Mulatta, Mexico, 1711. Oil on canvas. Denver Art Museum, gift of the Collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer, 16.2014. Photo: James O. Milmoe. Fig. 5.4 Skirts of indianilla, Mexico, mid-eighteenth century. Current location unknown. Photo: Donna Pierce. Fig. 5.5 Unknown artist, folding screen from the Palace of the Viceroys of Mexico, Mexico, 1676–1700. Oil on canvas, h. 184 cm × w. 488 cm. Museo de América, Madrid, no. 00207. Fig. 5.6 Unknown artist, Christ Crucified, Goa or Philippines, seventeenth century. Ivory sculpture. Collected in Mexico. Denver Art Museum, gift of the Collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer, 2015.547. Photo: Denver Art Museum. Fig. 5.7 Francisco Clapera (Spanish, active in Mexico late eighteenth century), From Chino and Indian, Genízara, Mexico, c. 1790. Oil on canvas. Denver Art Museum, gift of the Collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer, 2011.428.14. Photo: Denver Art Museum.

List of plates and figures

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Fig. 5.8 Luis Juárez, Birth of the Virgin, Mexico, 1615–25. Oil on copper. Denver Art Museum, gift of the Collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer, 2011.425. Photo: Denver Art Museum. Fig. 5.9 Unknown artist, Ex-Voto with Saint Gertrude, Mexico, 1778. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society, Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1954.005. Fig. 5.10 Interior of Governor Lente’s house, Isleta Indian Pueblo, New Mexico, late nineteenth to early twentieth century. Photo courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (MNHM/DCA), 012331. Fig. 6.1 Alvaro Alonso Barba, Arte de los Metales, 1640. Printed illustration. This image from a 1770 edition of the text. Fig. 6.2 Alvaro Alonso Barba, Arte de los Metales, 1640. Printed illustration of a furnace designed to heat mercury-silver amalgam; the mixture was held in copper cauldrons. A 1770 reprint of the 1640 text, p. 114. Fig. 6.3 Map of Manila Galleon trade between the Philippines and the Americas. Map by Inspiration Design House, Hong Kong. Fig. 7.1 Unknown artist, Edward Harrison, China, 1715. Unfired clay portrait figure. Unknown Collection, National Portrait Gallery, London. Fig. 7.2 Unknown artist, Peter Mule (1693–1749) with book reading “manufactured in Canton in China in 1731,” China, 1731. One from a group of painted, unfired clay portraits of crew members from the Kronprins Christian Danish ship in horseshoe-back chairs. Approx. h. 10 in. Maritime Museum of Denmark. Fig. 7.3 Unknown artist, Captain Pyke, China, 1730–35. Unfired clay portrait figure, h. 11 × w. 6 1/2 × dia. 5 1/4 in. (27.94 × 16.51 × 13.335 cm). Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Peabody Essex Museum, gift of Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland, The Copeland Collection, 1996, AE85238.AB. Fig. 7.4 Attributed to Chitqua (Chinese, 1728–1796), A Dutch Merchant, possibly Andreas Everard van Braam Houckgeest, 1765–75. Painted, unfired clay portrait figure, h. 36.5 × w. 31.5 × dia. 20.0 cm. Gift of the heirs of J.H. Timmer, Amsterdam. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, BK-1976-49. Fig. 7.5 T’ai-Yuan (Chinese), Johannes Jacob van Harpen (1761–1792), officer of the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, Dutch East India Company), 1782–1802. Painted unfired clay portrait figure, late eighteenth century. History Museum of Amsterdam. Fig. 7.6 Amoy Chinqua (Chinese, active 1716–19), Figure of a European Merchant. Painted unfired clay portrait 1719. Height of figure only: 11 9/16 in. (29.4 cm). © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art purchase, Louis V. Bell, Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, and Rogers Funds and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest and several members of the Chairman’s Council Gifts, 2014, 2014.569. Photo: Art Resource, New York.

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Fig. 7.7 Unknown artist, Portrait of the American Captain Daniel Sage (1759–1836), China, late eighteenth century. Courtesy of a private collection, The Crosby Company of New Hampshire, Arts Foundation. Photo: Laura Wulf. Fig. 8.1 Unknown artist, Dutchman Taking a Walk with his Javanese Slave Holding an Umbrella, and a Dog, Japan, late eighteenth century. Woodblock print, Nagasaki school, h. 32.2 × w. 22.9 cm. © The Trustees of the British Museum, 1951, 0714,0.17. Fig. 8.2. Unknown artist, clavichord, Italy, with painting on inside of clavichord lid of the battle of Lepanto, c. 1571. Museum of Music Collections/Cliché Anglès. Musée de la Musique, Paris, E.2111. Photo: Jean-Marc Anglès. Fig. 8.3 Jean-Antoine Vaudry (French, c. 1680–1750) and Vaudry family, harpsichord, 1681. Painting on Japanned walnut case. Purchased from Ronald A. Lee Works of Art, London, with the assistance of the vendor. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London, W.12:1 to 4-1974. Fig. 8.4 Michael Mietke (German, c. 1656/1671–1719) and Gérard Dagly (French, 1660–1715), harpsichord, 1702–4. Painting on white lacquered case. Schloss Charlottenberg, Berlin, V104. Photo: Roland Handrick. Fig. 8.5 Mrs. S.C. Belnos, Twenty Four Plates Illustrative of Hindoo and European Manners in Bengal, engraving by A. Colin, hand-colored. Reprint. Bengal (India): Riddhi-India, 1979, pl. 18 of 24. Fig. 8.6 William Hamilton Bird, frontispiece to Oriental Miscellany (Calcutta, 1789). Volume of printed music. Foyle Special Collections Library, King’s College, London. Fig. 9.1 Unknown artist, Estate Reception, China, 1670s. Twelvefold incised lacquer screen. Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne, Germany. Fig. 9.2 Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Playing Music, China, c. 1670–80. Detail of hunted creatures. Incised lacquer folding screen. Ham House, Richmond, England. Photo: Chris Lacey Photography. Fig. 9.3 Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Playing Music, China, c. 1670–80. Detail of figures trussing up dead creatures. Incised lacquer folding screen. Ham House, Richmond, England. Photo: Chris Lacey Photography. Fig. 9.4 Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Playing Music, China, c. 1670–80. Detail of figures blowing air on stove at right. Incised lacquer folding screen. Ham House, Richmond, England. Photo: Chris Lacey Photography. Fig. 9.5 Attributed to Chen Hongshou (Chinese, 1599–1652), Gathering of Hermits, c. 1650. Detail of attendant fanning stove. Hand-scroll, colors on silk. C.C. Wang Family Collection. Source: Tamara Heimarck Bentley, The Figurative Works of Chen Hongshou (1599–1652): Authentic Voices/Expanding Markets (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), p. 190.

List of plates and figures

17

Fig. 9.6 Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Loading Ships, China, c. 1700. Detail of lead European figure on horseback with attendant alongside. Incised lacquer screen. Each panel, h. 244 × w. 46 cm (96 1/16 × 18 1/8 in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Keith McLeod Fund, 1975.333. Fig. 9.7 Unknown Kano school artist, Tartars Hunting (paired with screen of Tartars playing polo), Japan, seventeenth century. Ink and color on gold-leafed paper, h. 154.2 × w. 358.6 cm (60 11/16 × 141 3/16 in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Fenollosa-Weld Collection, 11.4167. Fig. 9.8 Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Loading Ships, China, c. 1700. Detail of a few of the border antiquities. Incised lacquer screen. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photo: Tamara Bentley. Fig. 9.9 Unknown artist, Dutchmen and Associates Loading Tribute, China, eighteenth century. Detail of blue dog at center foreground. Incised lacquer screen. National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen. Photo: Tamara Bentley. Fig. 9.10 Yan Liben and Yan Lide, Foreigners Bringing Tribute, China, Song dynasty (960–1279 CE) copy of Tang dynasty (618–906 CE) scroll. Hand-scroll painting, ink and colors on silk. Collection of the National Palace Museum. © National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan. Fig. 10.1 Unknown artist, armorial porcelain plate, decorated with the Arms of Pitt, with Ridgeway in pretense, China, c. 1720. Jingdezhen kilns, Qing dynasty. Porcelain painted in overglaze enamels and gilt. © Trustees, Victoria and Albert Museum. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Bequeathed by Legh Tolson, C.70-1932. Fig. 10.2 Unknown artist, porcelain coffee pot, overglaze decoration with the arms of the Clifford family of Chudleigh (Devon, England), China. Jingdezhen kilns, Qing dynasty, Yongzheng period. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Fig. 10.3 Unknown artist, porcelain plate, with overglaze enamel design of fox hunting paired with armorial shield, China, c. 1755–60. Fox-hunting scene derived from a print of a painting by James Seymour, 1702–1752. Jingdezhen kilns. Hard-paste porcelain, lime glaze. Courtesy, Winterthur Museum, gift of Leo A. and Doris C. Hodroff, 2003.47.23. Fig. 10.4 Unknown artist, porcelain sauce tureen, made for the countess of Macclesfield (d. 1779), with overglaze decoration of shield, China. Private collection photo © Christies Images/Bridgeman Images. Fig. 10.5 Unknown artist, porcelain service, with overglaze arms of the English East India Company, China, eighteenth century. © Trustees, Victoria and Albert Museum. Fig. 10.6 Unknown artist, porcelain teapot, with overglaze enamel design of coat of arms, China, 1755–85. Jingdezhen kilns. Hard-paste porcelain, lime glaze. Courtesy, Winterthur Museum, gift of Leo A. and Doris C. Hodroff, 2001.29.3.

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PIC TURING COMMERCE IN AND FROM THE EAST ASIAN MARITIME CIRCUITS, 1550–1800

Fig. 10.7 Unknown artist, porcelain teapot, with overglaze design of cobber’s boot and the initials “RP” for “Richard Philcox,” China, 1770–75, 4 1/2 × 9 × 4 1/2 in. (11.43 × 22.86 × 11.43 cm). © Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Peabody Essex Museum, gift of Mr. Carl L. Crossman in memory of Priscilla Waldo Papin,1983, E72796. Photo: Dennis Helmar. Fig. 10.8 Unknown artist, export porcelain punch bowl, with overglaze enamel design including the arms of the Anti-Gallican Society, China, c. 1750–55. Picture taken from a Hogarth print of the Gate of Calais. Jingdezhen kilns. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Basil Ionides Bequest, C.23-1951.

Acknowledgements This work is the product of many scholars, and they will all want to thank a variety of people. My heartfelt thanks go out to all those who sustained the authors represented here in a host of ways. Without your support, these essays and these images would never have made it to the public arena. My deepest gratitude also goes to all the researchers in the volume. The vision for this work was to contact the finest scholars presently writing on early modern trade in the East Asian circuits. I feel exceedingly fortunate that they have so kindly agreed to contribute their important scholarship to this book. The chapter authors and I are all grateful to Erika Gaffney, our acquisitions editor for Amsterdam University Press, for appreciating our ideas and working with us over quite a long stretch of time to bring this volume to life. We also want to thank Allison Levy for being a second champion, and accepting our volume into the Visual and Material Culture, 1300 to 1700 series. To all those we’ve been working with at AUP, including Mike Sanders, James Thomas, and Chantal Nicolaes, thank you for your time, energy, and investment. If any errors have slipped past their careful editing that is entirely my own responsibility. For myself, I have first to thank my colleagues Marion Hourdequin and Victoria Levine for boldly encouraging me to convene a symposium at Colorado College on this subject. It seemed an impossibility to me at the time, but they assured me it could be done—in fact, they had both organized conferences before. My next debt of gratitude is to Katharine Burnett, my fellow Chinese-art historian from the University of California, Davis, who agreed to co-organize the summer 2014 Picturing Commerce symposium with me. Without Katharine’s creative input and hard work, I could never have tracked down such quality scholars, nor brought the event to successful fruition. It was a sad loss for this volume when Katharine got another grant for a large tea-culture project, and needed to turn her energies in that direction. In addition, I want to thank my colleagues John Williams and Rebecca Tucker and Deborah Hutton, who all participated in important ways in the initial conference without intending to write chapters for the final volume. My colleagues Ruth Kolarik and Gale Murray also helped me in every way imaginable—by reading chapters, and engaging in discussion over objects and issues. I am exceedingly grateful, as well, to Meghan Rubenstein and Karen Britton of the Art Department at Colorado College for helping obtain images and permissions for the large quantity of images in the book. This was a Herculean task, and they both sent out inquiries, followed up on contacts and formatted and tracked images with great optimism and effectiveness. There were a number of weeks when Karen’s smile and can-do spirit kept me going. Guyda Marr was a bedrock presence in a different way, initiating and tracking an extremely broad array of payments.

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PIC TURING COMMERCE IN AND FROM THE EAST ASIAN MARITIME CIRCUITS, 1550–1800

For funding, I am honored to have had the support of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for our 2014 Picturing Commerce symposium. We could not have brought together international scholars in the way we did without the generous Chiang Ching-kuo grant. I also had support from the Colorado College President’s office, the Colorado College Dean’s office, the Colorado College Humanities Executive Committee, the Colorado College Art department Berg fund and the Asian Studies program Gaylord endowment for the conference and this volume, and I am very grateful to them all. As even a cursory glance at this book makes clear, there are close to a hundred institutions and individuals that agreed to share images from their collections for publication. The list of these benefactors is longer than I can write out here. From Australia to Japan to Germany, and Hong Kong to Boston to Texas, key contacts at these institutions have provided quality images of works of great beauty and historical value, an enormous and very worthy public service. Thank you all very much for your hard work and graciousness. Last, I would like to thank my family, my husband Eric and my children Kristina and Kai, for patiently supporting this project through many evenings, many weekends, and many summer days. For my own part, this project is dedicated to you.

1. People and things in motion

The view from the East



Tamara H. Bentley Abstract For the merchants involved in early modern maritime shipping in Asia, a central feature of daily life was the repeated crossing from one national, ethnic or financial system to another. The objects loaded onto ships also transformed; on arrival at a new location, commodities were repositioned as they entered new spatial and reception contexts. There is a need for interdisciplinary studies combining an understanding of fluctuating trade routes, merchant networks, port cities, and trade goods themselves. Export ceramics, lacquerwares, textiles, and prints are all touched upon. It is argued that the impact of the early modern East Asian trade circuits has been underestimated, and that before 1800 we cannot place a single world economic center of gravity in Europe. Keywords: early modern trade; East Asian trade routes; hybrid aesthetics; merchant networks; porcelain; textiles

A year ago, despite the dangers of the trip, Naya Sukezaemon had ventured from Sakai, Japan to the Philippines to acquire costly old brown-glazed Chinese tea jars. He was proud to think of his success selling these Luzon jars to collectors and to Toyotomi Hideyoshi—the political and military leader—for the tea ceremony. Now it was 1594, and he was back on the Philippine island of Luzon, acquiring wax for candles and for sealing ships, musk for perfume, and Chinese umbrellas. He knew many other Japanese merchants who used Latinized names when conducting exchanges under the supervision of the Spanish there—any number of them went by Eduardo or Pedro. There was even a Balthazar. He had acquaintances who had received “red seal” authorizations from Hideyoshi to travel as far as Southeast Asia. Little did he know he would eventually end up there himself.1

1 I have drawn these details regarding Naya Sukezaemon’s activities from the fine article on Japanese in Manila in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by Iaccarino. See Iaccarino, “Merchants, Missionaries and Marauders,” esp. p. 166. Iaccarino notes that, after a disagreement with Hideyoshi, Bentley, Tamara H. (ed.), Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984677/ch01

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Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

It was in 1769 that Tan Chitqua had first arrived here, in London, on the ship Horsendon, having given up his clay portrait shop near Canton. He had thought he might establish a profitable business here, but somehow it was not the prosperous life he had imagined. The weather was getting him down. Not that he hadn’t met with some success—he had made contacts among well-to-do patrons. He had exhibited some of his sculptures at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1770, and met a broad range of artists who belonged to the Academy; several of them had asked with ethnographic curiosity if they could draw or paint his portrait. Strange to have others doing his portrait. How awful, though, when he tried to ship back to China in 1770, and got into those conflicts with the crew—sent back to shore at Kent! And then cooling his heels in London for over a year. The gentleman William Chambers now said he would add an “appendix” to his dissertation on Oriental Gardening relaying Chinese ideas “from the mouth of Chitqua himself ”—he seemed to be twisting Chitqua’s words for his own purposes. Fortunate, then, that he would be able to leave London this year, and put these awkward situations behind him. Overwhelmingly, he kept thinking, “it is time to go home.” In 1763, on the way back to the Netherlands after his first long period in China, the Dutchman Andreas Everard van Braam Houckgeest had married in South Africa, to Catharina, the daughter of the Lieutenant Governor of the Cape of Good Hope. Now in 1794, back in China, he reflected on his current life. He was pleased to have commissioned a Chinese portrait of Catharina on glass, with a suitably classical scene at lower left showing female figures gazing anxiously after a departing ship. And that clay portrait of himself that Chitqua had done—nice to have that in the family. Things were going relatively well in Canton, though he wished they could get better trade terms. His suggestion that the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or Dutch East India Company) send a tribute delegation to the Chinese emperor had thankfully been approved by the Heeren XVII (“Gentlemen Seventeen”) in Amsterdam. The delegation was to arrive in Beijing by January 1795—both sides accepted the vague suggestion that they represented the Dutch “King,” rather than a commercial entity. Perhaps they could persuade the Chinese Emperor, or some high officials there, to make some trade concessions. Unfortunately, Isaac Titsingh, the head agent of the VOC branch at Nagasaki, was set to head the delegation, but Houckgeest would be second in charge. Meantime, why could he not abandon these ideas of eventually heading back to America and starting up a business there?

Sukezaemon was exiled, and seems to have settled in Southeast Asia. Iaccarino, “Merchants, Missionaries and Marauders,” p. 166. The Japanese writer Shigenori Chikamatsu (1695–1778) also composed a brief entry about the enormous amount of money Sukezaemon made, seemingly overnight, selling the Ruson or Luzon jars to patrons such as Hideyoshi.

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As the above narratives illustrate, ventures in maritime trade in East Asia in the period 1550–1800, with routes extending east and west from there to span the globe, involved a vast array of intertwined lives. For those active in shipping, or in marketing their wares, a central feature of daily life was the repeated crossing from one national, ethnic, or financial system to another. In the sixteenth century, in a port such as Melaka, Malaysia, many types of ships could be seen, even after the Portuguese took control of the port in 1511. In 1515, when Portuguese apothecary Tomé Pires (c. 1465–c. 1524) completed his Suma Oriental que trata do Mar Roxo até aos Chins (An account of the East, from the Red Sea up to the Chinese), he was so impressed by the trade in Melaka that he wrote: “whoever is Lord of Melaka has his hand on the throat of Venice.”2 By the 1590s one might see large Portuguese ships, smaller Arab dhows, Gujarati and Coromandel Indian ships, Indonesian rigs, Chinese Cantonese and Fujianese vessels, Japanese “red seal” ships, and boats from the Ryukyu islands. The Dutchman Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563–1611) wrote of Melaka in 1595, “It flourishes thanks to an enormous body of merchants […] through their incessant activity of buying and selling, a very large number of merchants from every part of the East have made Melaka immensely splendid.”3 For individuals such as Naya Sukezaemon, Tan Chitqua, or van Braam Houckgeest, their journeys took them from place to place, and to some degree they became comfortable with living multilingual, code-shifting lives. Alongside these artists and merchants, the objects loaded onto ships transformed as a result of their journeys; on arrival at a new location, trade commodities were repositioned, or even physically altered, as they entered new spatial and reception contexts. See for example a Southern Song (1127–1279 CE) or Yuan dynasty (1279–1368 CE) Chinese shipping jar, which made its way over to Japan by the fifteenth century and was converted into a much treasured tea leaf storage container (see Plate 1). There is an admirable interaction between the vessel’s reddish clay and the casually dispensed variegated olive-brown glaze. In Japan, these jars were considered to best preserve the qualities of tea leaves, and it was presumably this type of vessel that Naya Sukezaemon was seeking to purchase in the Philippines. The example illustrated here was given a name, Chigusa, and utilized by a number of famous Japanese tea practitioners of the Muromachi (1392–1573) and Momoyama (1573–1615) periods; it is now in the collection of the F­ reer and Sackler Galleries. See also a chalk portrait of Tan Chitqua by Charles G ­ rignion II in the Ashmolean (Fig. 1.1), revealing something of Chitqua’s British contacts. We have as well a clay sculptural portrait by Tan Chitqua, held in the Rijksmuseum, most likely depicting van Braam Houckgeest (see Fig. 7.4). (­William Sargent’s chapter in this volume provides more information on Chinese clay portraits.) A Chinese reverse 2 Tomé Pires’ two-volume work is now available in digitized format from the McGill Library. See The Suma Oriental of Tome Pires, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-136385-182 (accessed 13 August 2018). 3 Translated in Boogaart, Civil and Corrupt Asia, p. 54.

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Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

Fig. 1.1: Charles Grignion II (British, 1753–1804), Tan-Che-Qua, “Chitqua” (recto), Royal Academy 1771. Chalk on paper. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

painting on glass of van Braam’s wife Catharina apparently commissioned by van Braam Houckgeest (Fig. 1.2) shows, in the lower left, a section reproducing a European print of two women gazing after a ship; the anchor to the right of the figure supporting the portrait symbolizes steadfast hope. While in China, this image could reaffirm van Braam Houckgeest’s connection to his wife, and her loyal wishes for his safety.4 We might consider as well a fanciful Japanese image (illustrated on the book cover) of maritime merchants trading by way of Nagasaki, seemingly including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean merchants, a section of a longer hand scroll dated to the late eighteenth century. Aspects of the Chinese and Korean attire seem to recapitulate the ballooning pants and tall hats of earlier images of the Portuguese in Japan. 4 In the Rijksmuseum, there is another Chinese reverse painting on glass from the late eighteenth century of Catharina van Braam Houckgeest and one of her daughters, Françoise—the pose is reproduced from an engraving by Thomas Burke (1749–1815), itself based upon a painting by German artist Angelika Kaufmann (1741–1807) of Lady Rushout with her daughter Anne, both in classical garb. Like the glass portrait of Catharina van Braam Houckgeest, this glass painting seems to have been commissioned in China by Andreas van Braam Houckgeest, and it remained for some time in the family collection before coming to the Rijksmuseum. See the Rijksmuseum collection website, http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.432501 (accessed 13 August 2018). The mother and daughter painting is Rijksmuseum object no. AK-RAK-2007-6, and is by an anonymous artist, and produced in Canton, China, titled Portrait of Catharina van Braam Houckgeest, née Van Reede van Oudtschoorn, and her daughter Françoise, c. 1795.

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Fig. 1.2: Unknown artist, Portrait of Catharina van Braam Houckgeest, China, c. 1790. Oil painting on glass. ­Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Although more imaginary than documentary, this image nevertheless reinforces the fact that some early modern East Asian trade relationships involved European merchants, while others did not. This volume is an attempt to create a vision of what some aspects of the early modern East Asian trading world looked like—in terms

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Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

Fig. 1.3: Unknown artist, Sueyoshi “red seal” ship with foreign pilots and sailors, Japan, c. 1633. A wood-plaque painting from Kiyomizu-dera Temple, Kyoto.

of port-to-port sojourns, merchant’s lives, the cultural impact of innovative goods and ideas, visual and musical hybridities, and the conduct of buying and selling. By combining art history, history, economic history, and ethnomusicology, we attempt to examine shifting trade networks and images of that trade; as well as the aesthetic dimensions of the traded objects themselves. Perhaps history and art history and music history need not be so much about things that are fixed, or even fully understood. They might be about things in transition, in the process of being negotiated. They might concern instead paths—the paths of boats, and people, and things—that bring us from world to world (see an early seventeenth-century Japanese painting of a red seal ship traveling from Japan to Southeast Asia, Fig. 1.3).

East Asian maritime trade: some key dynamics As a prelude to the discussions in this book, it is useful to describe the East Asian waters geographically. Figure 1.4 provides a map of some of the shipping routes employed by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ships in the period 1568 to 1639. (The

People and things in motion

27

European trade routes which in this period intersected with East Asian shipping are not shown on this map.) Hugging the coast of Asia are seas subsidiary to the vast Pacific Ocean. North of the archipelago of Japan we find the Sea of Japan. East of China’s Shandong peninsula and west of Korea is located the Yellow Sea. Below that, bordered by Japan’s southern Kyushu island and the Ryukyu island chain on the east, and the Southeast China coast down to the region across from Taiwan, we find the East China Sea. In the area south of Taiwan, connecting down all the way to the Melaka strait, we find the South China Sea, bordered by South China, the Philippines, parts of Indonesia, and mainland Southeast Asia. The port of Melaka, on the west coast of the Malaysian peninsula, served as an important extension of the East Asian maritime sphere, since it was strategically placed along the narrow strait connecting the Indian Ocean with the East Asian seas. Some important ports should be noted. From 1557 to 1887 the Portuguese leased from the Chinese government the trading port of Macau in South China, near current-day Hong Kong.5 Key trade ports in China included Ningbo (in Zhejiang province), Quanzhou (also called Fuzhou, in Fujian province), and Guangzhou (also called Canton, in Guangdong province). In Japan, three important ports were Hirado, Hakata (modern Fukuoka), and Nagasaki, all on the southern island of Kyushu. The Japanese island of Tsushima served as an important midway point for Japanese-Korean trade. Many shifting trade routes are described in the course of this volume. In an introductory way, it is significant that, beginning in 1565 and continuing until 1815, the Spanish Manila galleons sailed between Manila (the Philippines) and Acapulco (in modern-day Mexico). Chapters in this volume by Donna Pierce and Angela Schottenhammer particularly elucidate aspects of this interchange. A few key commodities also deserve introduction. From the 1520s a very productive silver mine was established at Iwami, and in 1542 the Japanese discovered rich deposits of silver at Ikuno;6 as a result, an enriching trade exchanging Chinese raw silk for Japanese silver developed. It may have been the proliferation of this trade through a variety of routes, even in spite of a Ming dynasty maritime trade prohibition (in Chinese called a haijin), that eventually resulted in the abolition of the haijin in 1567. Due in part to an upheaval between two Japanese diplomatic corps in the Chinese port of Ningbo in 1523, the Chinese emperors continued to disallow direct trade between China and Japan even after 1567, when other forms of Chinese maritime trade were sanctioned. Also in about 1550, a silver deposit was discovered in Mexico, and another in Potosi, in the viceroyalty of Peru (modern-day Bolivia). Although the Spanish did not formalize their Asian base of operations until 1571, in Manila, these developments set them on a course to generate rich exchanges of silver for other Asian commodities such as silk, like the Japanese. The Spanish Manila galleons were critical to this exchange. 5 6

In 1887 Macau became a Portuguese colony. The colony was returned to China in 1999. See Schottenhammer, “East Asian Maritime World, 1400–1800,” p. 36.

28 

Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

CH IN A

Pacific Ocean

Indian Ocean ________

,._........,. e..or..--..nw

------~ ........not

Fig. 1.4: Map of some of the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean shipping circuits, 1567–1639. Map by Inspiration Design House, Hong Kong. Note that not all East Asian shipping routes for this period are shown, and the European routes in East Asia are not depicted.

It is significant that from the late sixteenth century through to the end of the Ming in 1644, silver imports from Japan into China exceeded silver imports from the Americas.7 In both cases, however, the continuing exchange of silver for Chinese goods 7 As Schottenhammer writes: “The quantity of silver that reached China from Japan at that time [sixteenth century] is said to have been 6–7 times higher than that from Spanish America.” Schottenhammer, “East Asian Maritime World, 1400–1800,” p. 36.

People and things in motion

29

provided critical links in a trade network of increasing global interconnectedness. Since the Chinese economy ran primarily on silver by weight throughout the period covered by this book, 1550 to 1800, and the value of silver in China was higher than in other locations, China has been spoken of at this time as a “silver sink,” driving a considerable amount of world trade due to her nearly insatiable demand for silver. Apart from the significance of silver, the East Asian maritime world was organized according to some unusual dynamics, worth elucidating. First was the long-standing dominance of China in this region. Maritime trade between China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia had been very active at least since 600 CE, and the export of Chinese products, including ceramics and copper coins, was central to this activity, as was the Northeast Asian demand for tropical products such as woods and spices. Chinese writers and thinkers articulated a sense that China was a cultural center—calling China “the middle kingdom.” In many cases (though not always) the Chinese emperor insisted on establishing a tribute connection with another country before trade could be conducted. This essentially amounted to foreign delegations traveling to the Chinese court, offering up local products to the Chinese emperor, and accepting a vassal-like relationship to China. In return, the Chinese emperor offered more valuable gifts than he received, and granted the relevant member of the embassy group a ruling title within his home state. These tribute-offering rituals will surface in many contexts in the narratives that follow. Up until the sixteenth century, Chinese copper coins had been the dominant monetary system in the East Asian trade zone. In fact, in early periods, one of Japan’s major imports from China was Chinese coin. By the later sixteenth century, however, China had transitioned to an economy based primarily on silver, and copper coins were used only for smaller transactions. By the early modern period, other nations in the area developed their own hybrid monetary systems.

The approach taken in this volume Rather than conceptualizing a Europe/non-Europe binary, we attempt here to construct a model that is multinodal, acknowledging the three-part, four-part, or even more multivalent nature of Asian trade interactions, at times involving European merchants. The scholar Gang Zhao recently flatly stated—in our view correctly— that, although the West did, in the period 1550 to 1800, lay foundations for later global hegemony, “it is an exaggeration to place the West at the center of global history during the early modern period.”8 He also asserts: “In maritime Asia […] Chinese private traders held sway [from 1500 at the start of this period] until the 1820s.”9 8 Zhao, Qing Opening, p. 4. 9 Zhao, Qing Opening, pp. 5–6.

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Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

European merchants were constrained by local practices within Asia. In East Asia, through 1800, the Europeans established their trade presence in ports, and the Spanish claimed the Philippines, but otherwise (except for a brief interlude where the Dutch occupied Taiwan) they did not amass land empires there. When necessary, they typically acceded to paying tribute to the rulers in China and Japan. As Joyce Denney says of Edo Japan: “In 1600 the Dutch appeared on the scene [in Japan], followed in 1613 by the English, but Japan’s Asian trading partners—China, Korea, Ryukyu, and Southeast Asia—remained the most important.”10 No single group could really dominate the many branches of the East Asian maritime sphere, and different groups of merchants, as Gang Zhao puts it, “formed a multipolar network.”11 This is the vision we attempt to bring to light in this volume.

Chinese Ming trade in light of earlier developments Both Richard von Glahn and James K. Chin provide insightful summaries of the overall trade dynamics in the early modern East Asian circuits following this introduction. Prefatory to these more comprehensive studies, it is useful here to situate some of the key trade developments of the Chinese Ming period (1368–1644 CE) against the backdrop of prior trade configurations in East Asia. Many scholars assert that the high point of Chinese maritime trade actually took place during the Song and Yuan periods, prior to the “early modern” Ming and Qing (1644–1912 CE) dynasties. We might particularly consider early period Chinese-Southeast Asian trade, and Sino-Japanese trade in this regard. Sino-Japanese trade was quite active in the first three quarters of the thirteenth century, during the Kamakura period (the Southern Song period in China); and again in the first half of the fourteenth century, during the Kamakura/Muromachi transition, after the late 1200s threat of Mongol invasions of Japan had been extinguished. The flourishing trade in the first half of the fourteenth century occurred before the Mongol Yuan dynasty in China descended into chaos between 1350 and 1368. Concerning Chinese-Japanese trade during the mid- to latter Muromachi period in Japan, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a number of factors should be considered. First, in 1374, just after the Ming dynasty began in 1368, the first Ming emperor enacted a maritime trade ban (haijin), as mentioned above, which prevented Chinese maritime merchants from legitimately embarking on trade voyages from China to Southeast Asia, Japan, or elsewhere. This haijin lasted throughout much of the Ming, until 1567. As Angela Schottenhammer and others have made clear, for the first Ming dynasty emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang (the Hongwu emperor) the purpose 10 Denney, “Japan and the Textile Trade,” p. 57. 11 Zhao, Qing Opening, p. 5.

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of this policy was to support an agrarian-based, egalitarian empire, limiting trade ventures for profit—ventures which in theory exacerbated income inequality. The Hongwu emperor instead envisioned a modest and moral, land-based, self-sufficient populace. Turning his back on the flourishing maritime trade of the Song and Yuan dynasties, the new maritime policy of the first Hongwu emperor constricted Chinese entrepreneurial ventures, and resulted in a wide array of unanticipated effects. First, the official limitations on Chinese trade led to the ascendancy of the Ryukyu island state, which sent ships as far as Indonesia and the Malaysian peninsula, and served as a central exchange point for Southeast Asian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean trade. Second, it led to an upswing in the production of Southeast Asian ceramics, which were during this period exported in some numbers due to the lessening of available Chinese ceramics.12 Third, it led to an increase in illegitimate smuggling, and piracy, by multi-ethnic Asian seamen in the East China Sea and South China Sea. The prevalence of piracy in turn led to further Chinese skepticism about officially endorsing maritime trade. There were two important exceptions to the Ming period haijin. First was the sanction of tribute trade to China. Foreign trade missions sometimes had 250 or more people, and sometimes 10s of ships; a portion of the cargo was reserved for sale at the port of entry in China; and Chinese goods could be purchased and shipped home in the “tribute” armada. Thus, in this period particularly, the ritual of offering tribute to the Chinese emperor was interwoven with the mechanics of trade. As the Japanese Muromachi-period state headed into chaos between 1470 and 1570, the Sengoku Jidai—“Warring States” period—the central part of the Japanese archipelago was home to vying feudal lords, and a greatly disempowered central shogunate (military governmental administration). As mentioned above, two different Japanese daimyo (enfeoffed lords) actually sent tribute in 1523 to China, leading to a scuffle in the port of Ningbo, China, and an even more restrictive Chinese ban on Chinese-Japanese trade from 1523 forward. A second exception to the haijin was the practice of licensing foreign trade ships. Beginning in 1383, there was the development in China of an “official certificate” kanhe system, licensing foreign ships to conduct trade in Chinese ports. The usage of this system expanded throughout the fifteenth century, until by the sixteenth century there were at least eight foreign countries making use of Chinese kanhe licenses, including Japan.13 After the 1567 lifting of the Ming dynasty haijin (at least until the next haijin was enacted, in 1655), some 100 large Chinese ships sailed to Southeast Asia every year.14 Chinese trading junks also stopped at Manila and Batavia. As Leonard Blussé writes: 12 Schottenhammer, “East Asian Maritime World, 1400–1800,” p. 16. 13 Schottenhammer, “East Asian Maritime World, 1400–1800,” p. 16. 14 Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 65. Jansen adds that some of these Chinese ships were equipped with 20,000 tons of cargo space. Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 65.

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“[these Chinese ships] brought thousands of pieces of silver back [to China] from Manila as well as tropical products. At Jakarta (which the Dutch renamed Batavia) the Chinese fleet in the early seventeenth century had a total tonnage as large or larger than that of the whole return fleet of the Dutch East India Company.”15 The Chinese fleet of merchant ships was not a national undertaking, but an independent commercial enterprise sponsored by merchants from Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, or elsewhere in China.16

European arrivals in the Asian circuits Although as noted above it would be overstatement to conclude that the Europeans dominated East Asian trade from 1550 to 1800, they did become a significant economic presence, and it is worth outlining their endeavors here. First the Portuguese and then the Spanish arrived in East Asia from 1514 to 1550. By 1515 the Portuguese controlled Melaka; and by 1557 the Portuguese established a base in Macau17 and were active in South China Sea trade. The Portuguese had explored the route from Europe, around Africa across the Arabian sea, where they set up their commercial and religious center of operations at Goa on the central west coast of India. After taking Melaka, they extended their trade as far as South China and Nagasaki, Japan. Because Portugal had laid claim to this eastward route to Asia, Spain was obliged to sail west, down South America, through the straits of Magellan, and across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines. Having taken parts of Central and South America under their control, the Spanish began exporting silver from South America (primarily Potosi) into the Asian circuits, and importing Asian goods back to New Spain; a further leg of the journey brought Asian goods across Central America and shipped them from there back to Europe. Following the establishment of flourishing silver mines in Japan, and the 1567 lifting of the Chinese trade prohibition, in 1571 the Spanish established their East Asian base in Manila, the Philippines; for all three reasons, the vigor of intra-Asian trade and East-West trade expanded greatly. Silver flowed into China both from Spanish New World sources and from Japan, with some economists suggesting that the year 1600 was a high-water mark for silver import into China via the Manila galleons. As noted, at this time, the late Ming period Chinese 15 Blussé, Strange Company, pp. 99, 103; cited in Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 65. As Jansen puts it: “The Chinese chain of trading posts throughout Southeast Asia thus served as the basis for Portuguese, Japanese, and Dutch trading activities in the area.” Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 65. Jansen adds: “[European ships] frequently assaulted [Chinese junks] and stole their cargoes […].” Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 65. 16 A Japanese map of Nagasaki harbor that Jansen examines, for example, shows Dutch ships moored there, as well as two Chinese ships, one labeled “Nanjing” and one labeled “Fujian.” See Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 63, and fig. 4. Of Batavia, Li Qingxin writes: “[These Chinese ships] came to Batavia once a year from Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, and other coastal provinces.” Li, Maritime Silk Road, p. 123. 17 Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 67.

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economy was running on silver by weight, with smaller items ordinarily purchased in copper coins. By 1581, the Chinese government had shifted from taxing the Chinese people in kind to taxing them (in the “single-whip tax”) in silver. The Portuguese started bringing Japanese silver into China, and Chinese raw silk into Japan, a lucrative and relatively short circuit. In Asia, the Iberians were soon joined by the Dutch. The Netherlandish region (modern-day Belgium and Holland or the Netherlands) revolted against the control of Spain in 1568, and the northern Netherlands successfully established an independent republic. The people of the new Dutch Republic in the main embraced Protestantism. In the late 1500s, as Dutchmen such as Joris van Spilbergen (1568–1620) and Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563–1611) captained their own expeditions or shipped out with the Portuguese, they published accounts of their travels, encouraging compatriots to invest in Asian trade.18 The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC) was established in 1602, partly to coordinate Dutch trade enterprises, so that one Dutch merchant would not undercut another by oversupplying the market with any particular product. The Dutch East India Company was not controlled by the Dutch government, but by the Heeren XVII (“Gentlemen Seventeen”)—an early version of the concept of a corporation run by a board. At first, the Dutch set up their center of operations at the port of Bantam, on Java, but by 1617 they had moved their trade center on the island north and east to Batavia. Interfacing with the Dutch, a wide range of ships called at Batavia, including vessels from Melaka, Southeast Asia, Vietnam, China, and Japan.19 VOC leaders decided in 1689 that they would lessen their attempt to gain a foothold in South China, and focus instead on encouraging, or even forcing, Chinese ships to come to Batavia.20 The British East India Company was chartered in 1600, and they set up a f­ actory in Ayudhya, Thailand, in 1612, and in Hirado, Japan, in 1613. However, as British products did not sell well, the English East India Company president, then at Batavia, ordered both settlements withdrawn in 1623.21 British outposts were set up on the coast of India and at Bantam, but a flourishing involvement in East Asia did not begin until they began trading with the Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) maritime empire in the 1660s. The British were able to transition the contacts they initially established with the Zheng empire, for example on islands off the South China coast, to new trade contacts with Qing dynasty officials once the Qing overthrew the Zheng in 18 Linschoten’s book was published in Dutch in Amsterdam in 1595–96. One of the texts recounting Spilbergen’s voyages, based on his travel records, was published in London in 1625. 19 Li, Maritime Silk Road, p. 121. Li adds that, for the years 1619 to 1659, the Dutch focused on wresting control of the spice trade from the Portuguese, and securing their trade in Indian textiles. Li, Maritime Silk Road, p. 121. Li also argues that, for the time the Dutch were in Taiwan, they were able to effectively re-route business away from Macau and Manila, and interconnect Southeast Asia with Japan. Li, Maritime Silk Road, p. 122. This strategic asset ended when Zheng Chenggong took over Taiwan from the Dutch in 1662. 20 Li, Maritime Silk Road, p. 123. 21 Bassett, “Trade of the English East India Company,” pp. 210–11.

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1683. In the 1700s, the British were gradually directed to limit their Chinese trade to the port of Canton, with its regulated export system. By the eighteenth century, tea became a critical export, and by 1773 opium, from Bengal, India, and modern-day Burma, became an important trade good brought by the British into China.

Visual and political dimensions of Japanese foreign trade As early as the Sui dynasty in China (589–618 CE)—the Asuka period in Japan (552– 645 CE)—there had been formal, high-level exchanges between China and Japan. Throughout the Nara period in Japan (710–794 CE), exchange with the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) was very active. In the Heian era (794–1185 CE), the last official Japanese mission to China left in 836, returning in 838; however, there were also large numbers of unofficial merchant ships conducting trade at this time outside the official embassy missions.22 In the Nara and the Heian periods, the Kyushu administrative center of Dazaifu, in modern-day Fukuoka prefecture, was an important location for contact with Tang dynasty and Silla Korean envoys and merchants, and was also associated with ocean-going vessels leaving Japan.23 A compound called the Kōrokan in Dazaifu housed foreign merchants, and, to some extent, also their wares. By the Muromachi period, the Kyushu port of Hakata, also in modern-day Fukuoka, eclipsed Dazaifu in importance. What were some of the implications of the ongoing, periodically restructured, China-Japan trade in the fields of painting and ceramics? Chinese Southern Song monochrome ink court paintings made their way into Japan in the Kamakura period and were much valued. These misty, one-corner landscape compositions went on to become a central aesthetic in Japanese painting by Zen monastery painters in the fifteenth century, during the middle Muromachi. As one example of these visual contacts, a Southern Song hand scroll by the Chinese Chan (J: Zen) artist Mu Qi titled “Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang” was prized by Muromachi shogun Yoshimitsu (1356–1408), who asked that the horizontal scroll be cut into eight hanging scrolls, such as could be used during tea ceremonies (see Fig. 1.5). From the start of the sixteenth century, some Japanese painters, such as Sesshu, actually traveled to Ming China and incorporated Zhe school reinventions of Southern Song traditions, creating works that were generally larger in scale and more overtly calligraphic than 22 See Fuqua, “Japanese Missions,” p. 167ff. 23 The Taiho Code (701 CE) specified that the administrative center of Dazaifu was to oversee the administration of Kyushu, and receive foreign emissaries. See the article on “Dazaifu, Fukuoka” (section titled “History”), in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazaifu,Fukuoka. As Douglas Fuqua puts it: “the Tang court sought to administer its own maritime trade, which had begun to flourish in the Guangzhou district in the first half of the eighth century, by sending a customs official to the [Guangzhou] region. The Japanese must have been aware of this because they too attempted to administer their own trade with foreign merchants [at Dazaifu].” Fuqua, “Japanese Missions,” pp. 167–68.

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Fig. 1.5: Mu Qi (Chinese, 1210?–1269?), Fishing Village at Sunset. Section of a long hand scroll, probably originally the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang, thirteenth century. Ink on paper, mounted as a hanging scroll, h. 33.0 × w. 112.6 cm. Former collection of Shogun Yoshimitsu, Nezu Museum, Tokyo.

typical Song styles. Sixteenth-century Japanese painters also absorbed the bird-andflower compositions of Ming dynasty court artists such as Lu Ji and Bian Wenjin. In the Muromachi, Momoyama, and early Edo periods we also find extensive connections between China, Japan, and Korea in the field of ceramics. Chinese Song dynasty celadons and white wares were both highly valued within Muromachi collecting practices. Among the karamono (Chinese things) collected, the oilspot-glaze and rabbit’s-fur-glaze tea bowls utilizing a dark-brown clay produced in Fujian (in China called jian ware) were even more desirable than other Chinese wares. Called temmoku ware in Japan, these brown-glazed bowls were considered ideal for bringing out the green of the powdered matcha tea used in tea ceremonies, at least in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. As the Muromachi period ended and the Momoyama period began in 1573, Chinese Southern Song temmoku tea bowls were gradually replaced by Korean tea bowls and Japanese raku-ware tea bowls, which more clearly exemplified the Momoyama-period wabi (rugged, hermit-like) tea aesthetic. The Momoyama period was a turning point in a variety of ways. In the years 1592– 1598, the second Momoyama military leader, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, attempted several times, unsuccessfully, to invade Korea, which set back Japan-Korea relations for a time. Also, beginning with Hideyoshi’s administration, the Japanese government began to intervene more actively in international trade, seeking government profits. The Japanese system of red seal ships (shuinjō) was established,24 which allowed licensed Japanese ships to sail as far as Southeast Asia, a system which continued in the Edo period under Tokugawa Ieyasu, up until the 1630s.25 24 Jansen states that the first shuinjō, red seal authorization, was issued by Hideyoshi in 1592, the same year he invaded Korea. Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 66. 25 As Jansen puts it: “[In the late sixteenth century] [p]rivate shipping ventures sponsored by Japanese feudal lords and wealthy temples began to participate in the trading network established by Chinese ships in Southeast Asia.” Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 66.

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It was in the years just before 1600 that Japanese daimyo Ōtomo Sōrin, with his fiefdom in Kyushu including Hakata, received red seal licenses to trade with both Southeast Asia and Korea, an enterprise which Hiroko Nishida examines in this volume. Nishida also provides a nuanced description of the rise of interest in Korean tea bowls in Japan in the late sixteenth century. By the Momoyama period, the active involvement of the Portuguese and Spanish in East Asian trade by way of ports such as Macau, Manila, and Nagasaki created new routes, new aesthetic interfaces, and new points of conflict. The Spanish Manila galleons further compounded the expansion of Chinese and Japanese shipping in the late sixteenth century. The Portuguese and Spanish merchants also brought Catholic missionaries to Asia with them. The Jesuits in particular set up a mission in Nagasaki Japan, teaching Japanese Christian converts Western-style methods for rendering religious subjects. The Jesuits also gifted books of maps and mechanisms of scientific learning to Japanese elites. On the European side, written accounts show the European fascination with Japanese aesthetics. For example, Iberian Catholics participated in some Japanese tea ceremonies, and remarked on the sophisticated Japanese taste for “plain” or rugged simplicity. As a result of the many forms of international exchange noted above, diverse visual forms of hybridity become evident in late Ming China and early Edo Japan in the first part of the seventeenth century. The complex interchange of goods in maritime East Asia in the time period just before and after 1600 can be illustrated with a few examples. The “patio process” technology for refining silver through the use of mercury was conveyed by Spaniards to the Japanese, and consequently both Japan and New Spain attempted to import cheap Chinese mercury, to the extent that their governments allowed, as discussed in Angela Schottenhammer’s chapter in this volume. Japanese folding screens and Chinese silks, Asian cottons, and porcelains were shipped, by way of the Spanish galleon trade, into New Spain and South America; records concerning these goods in New Spain and imagery illustrating the impact of Asian goods in the Spanish colonies are considered in Donna Pierce’s chapter in this volume. Jesuits in China brought keyboards to the Chinese court and taught others how to play them; British merchants in India also brought keyboards, and facilitated musical exchanges in a variety of settings. (See Victoria Lindsay Levine’s chapter in this volume for a rich description of the global circulation of keyboard instruments and keyboard music.) For a period of time in the late sixteenth century, Japanese merchants, some ostensibly Christianized and many having taken Spanish names, would arrive in Manila to trade Japanese goods such as silver, copper, and sulfur for Chinese commodities and Philippine goods such as honey, deerskins, and civet cats, who secreted a musk-like fragrance. These are just a few examples of the complexity of these multipart trade dynamics.

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After the third Edo-period shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, enacted a series of expulsion edicts in the 1630s, the Iberians were forbidden from trading with Japan and expelled. By now the Dutch had arrived to take up that trade. For the remainder of the Edo period, until 1868, Japan remained “selectively closed,” continuing trade with the Ryukyus, China, and Korea, as well as, in a rather limited way, the Dutch, but closed to trade with other powers. Although Chinese merchants calling at Japan had been active earlier at Hirado and Hakata, among other port locations, they were restricted to Nagasaki in 1635. Despite the 1640s political transition from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty in China, in 1640 seventy-four Chinese ships came to Nagasaki, and in 1641 ninety-seven Chinese ships came.26 After the Qing dynasty takeover of Taiwan from the Zheng regime in 1683, and the lifting of the Qing dynasty haijin (the second haijin) in 1684, direct trade with China intensified. In 1688, a full 193 Chinese ships arrived in Nagasaki.27 A Chinese residential quarter was established in Nagasaki in 1689. According to Marius Jansen, in that quarter’s first year the Chinese housed there numbered 4,888, dwarfing the Dutch Deshima establishment.28 Due to the Japanese laws of 1685 and 1715 limiting the export of bullion,29 this Chinese trade over time constricted. In 1720, for example, there were only twenty Chinese ships at Nagasaki; in 1791, there were only ten.30 As Marius Jansen has described, there were late seventeenth-century temples in Nagasaki for Chinese sailors and merchants linked to three “place-based” associations: one covering Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Jiangxi, called “Nanjing,” and two more for sailors and merchants from Fuzhou, Fujian, and Zhangzhou-Quanzhou. Later there was also one for Chinese from Guangzhou (Canton).31 In addition, there were hereditary positions as “translators” in Nagasaki; some for the Dutch and many more for the “Chinese”—which actually included translating for a number of other ethnic groups such as the Southeast Asians.32 As had been evident in earlier Japanese exchanges with the Iberians and the Jesuits, European sciences, especially optics, mapping, astronomy, anatomy, and mathematics, were of great interest to the Japanese. Now provided by way of the Dutch, printed books or scientific instruments useful to such studies seemed to symbolize, in some way, the Western orientation. Meanwhile, European and New World elite culture, even middle-class culture, was transformed by Asian commodities such as porcelain, silk, printed cottons, wallpaper, folding fans, folding screens, tea, and lacquerware. 26 Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 89. 27 Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 88. 28 Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 87. 29 First in 1685, and then again in 1715, the Japanese restricted the export of bullion. In the 1720s, the Shogun encouraged domestic Japanese production of silk and foodstuffs. 30 Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 88. 31 Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 88. 32 Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, pp. 87–88.

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Fig. 1.6: Unknown artist, plate with “IHS” design, China, 1522–66, 4 1/8 × 20 5/8 in. (10.478 × 52.388 cm). Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

Some of the complexities of trade dynamics: ceramics The massive production of blue-and-white porcelains in China was centered at the kiln site of Jingdezhen.33 Beginning in the early 1500s, the Portuguese and Spanish brought blue-and-white porcelains to Europe, some of which came from Jingdezhen. As Arturo Giraldez points out: “In the 1540s, the Lisbon elite were drinking tea from Ming porcelain services and placing special orders for [Chinese] porcelain with Portuguese decorations.”34 A porcelain plate in the Peabody Essex Museum, dated between 1520 and 1540, with bespoke, and incompletely understood, “IHS” Jesuit insignias spaced alternately along the central border, is an early example of Jingdezhen Chinese ware commissioned by Portuguese patrons (Fig. 1.6).35 Tracing the early modern export trade in ceramics from China and Japan to points elsewhere, we discover complexities easily overlooked, such as (1) the nature of shipped cargoes, with multiple layers of side-by-side goods packed onto ocean-going ships, the choices of export goods and the percentages of different goods varying over time; (2) the fact that some East Asian ceramics carried on European ships, at 33 As Arturo Giraldez points out, Jesuit Xavier d’Entrecolles recorded that in the first half of the 1700s there were about 3,000 kilns at Jingdezhen. Giraldez, Age of Trade, p. 37. 34 Giraldez, Age of Trade, p. 37.

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times the majority, were destined for ports within Asia, rather than being directed towards the European market; (3) the reality that the Japanese and Chinese porcelain industries competed with each other for foreign markets in sophisticated ways, borrowing from each other; (4) the multiplicity of production points in China, such that not all Chinese porcelains were from Jingdezhen, or were not entirely from Jingdezhen, as sometimes undecorated forms from Jingdezhen were painted and glazed in the Canton region, and the corollary reality that there were probably twelve different kiln sites in Arita Japan during the high point of their production, from 1675 to 1720, leading to a degree of variability in these wares that is greater than we might assume; (5) the fact that East Asian made-to-order porcelains were in fact, in some cases, European designed though Asian produced, thereby muddying the distinction between cultural production from one area and another; and (6) the realization that a very large portion of the conveyance of Chinese porcelains to the Dutch Republic, for example, took place by way of VOC employee private trade, rather than through the official channels of VOC trade and auction. In other words, the “under-the-radar” trade in porcelains was probably considerable. Stacey Pierson’s chapter in this book considers the aesthetic gray area of Chinese porcelains produced to British specifications—at times even coming to symbolize British identity. While considering porcelain export, it is useful to understand the reception of Chinese porcelain in Japan. As noted above, although Chinese celadons, white wares, and brown-glazed jian (J: temmoku) wares had been greatly appreciated in Japan in the Muromachi and Momoyama periods, we find also by the Momoyama and early Edo that some Japanese collectors amassed large numbers of Chinese blue-andwhite tableware for entertaining.36 Tokugawa Ieyasu (d. 1616), for example, apparently had thousands of relatively pedestrian blue-and-white wares in his collection. Interestingly, in about 1600 some Chinese craftsmen mimicked the mountain-form small dishes originally made popular by the Japanese tea master Oribe (d. 1615) to market back to Japan.37 Stacey Pierson has noted the above instances, further adding that the Chinese “Oribe-style” wares were not produced at the dominant Jingdezhen kilns, but more likely in Fujian as Swatow or Zhangzhou ware.38 Taking into account 35 As Karina Corrigan explains in the Asia in Amsterdam catalogue illustrating this work, this is one of the first surviving Chinese porcelain pieces displaying a European motif. Karina Corrigan, catalogue entry, in Corrigan et al., Asia in Amsterdam, p. 79; Corrigan also cites Sargent, Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics, pp. 49–50. Of the IHS logo, Corrigan writes: “This monogram for Jesus Christ, used as early as the third century, represents the first three letters of his name in Greek, Iesous. When transcribed into Latin, IES became IHS.” Corrigan et al., Asia in Amsterdam, p. 79. 36 See Stacey Pierson’s note that the death inventory for Tokugawa Ieyasu (d. 1616) reveals a collection of Chinese blue and white cups, bowls, and plates in the thousands. Rather than being collected individually as outstanding items Pierson argues that blue-and-white wares were mainly purchased in this context as large sets for entertaining. Pierson, From Object to Concept, p. 35. 37 Pierson, From Object to Concept, p. 35. 38 Pierson, From Object to Concept, p. 35.

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the examples offered above, the multidimensionality of Chinese porcelain production and exchange becomes clear. As Japanese buyers began to appreciate Chinese blue-and-white porcelains between about 1610 and 1620 in the Arita area of Kyushu an indigenous Japanese industry developed to produce blue-and-white porcelain for domestic consumption. (Marius Jansen notes that Korean craftsmen captured during the invasion of Korea in the late sixteenth century were instrumental in starting up this industry.)39 With setbacks to the Chinese export-ceramic trade during the Ming/Qing transition in the 1640s, Japanese merchants began shipping these Arita porcelains to world markets. It is fascinating to learn that, in a porcelain order sent to Japan in 1659 by the VOC Heeren XVII leadership in Amsterdam, 5,748 pieces were ordered for Holland, whereas 50,952 pieces were ordered for sale mainly in the markets of Mocha and India.40 Mirroring the complexity of Chinese production and shipping, the multinodal nature of Dutch VOC trade is also apparent. As noted above, beginning in 1689, the VOC leadership in Asia decided to focus on bringing Chinese merchant ships to Batavia, rather than attempting to navigate the ports of South China. (Li Qingxin argues that in this period there were probably about twenty-four large Chinese ships each year calling at Batavia.)41 At the same time, from about 1675 to 1720, the Japanese Arita kilns were at a high point for export porcelain production. Thus, the Dutch were well situated to acquire porcelains from Chinese merchants coming to Batavia and to acquire them from Japanese kilns, negotiating from their base on the island of Deshima off the port of Nagasaki. Due to the multifaceted commerce of the VOC, and also due to Chinese-Japanese porcelain competition in the seventeenth century, it can be hard to tell whether blue-andwhite porcelains pictured in Dutch still lives of the Golden Age reference Chinese or Japanese wares. A Dutch painting datable to 1656 by Jan Jansz. van de Velde, titled Still Life with Goblet and Fruit, seems to show a kraak Chinese porcelain bowl with panels of alternating motifs (Fig. 1.7).42 However, we also have evidence that the VOC ordered special porcelain flasks for holding oils from the Arita porcelain kilns in 1686. (For a similar set of Arita porcelain flasks commissioned by the VOC see Fig. 1.8.)43 The Dutch multifaceted trade in porcelains continued in the eighteenth century.44 39 Jansen, Making of Modern Japan, p. 70. 40 Pierson, From Object to Concept, p. 13. 41 Li, Maritime Silk Road, p. 123. 42 This painting is illustrated and discussed in Corrigan et al., Asia in Amsterdam, pp. 274–75. 43 For more information on these Japanese Arita-ware porcelain oil flasks, and the other set dated 1680– 1700, see Corrigan et al., Asia in Amsterdam, p. 112. 44 Arturo Giraldez writes: “Dutch East India Company ceramic exports are an example of the immense capacity of China’s manufacturing. During the fifty-five years between 1602 and 1657, the company brought to Europe more than 3 million pieces of Chinese pottery, in addition to several million pieces trans-shipped at Batavia for re-export to Southeast Asia, India, and Persia. From 1729 to 1734, another 4.5 million items were imported, and finally the Dutch exported 42.5 million pieces between 1730 and 1789.” Giraldez, Age of Trade, 37.

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Fig. 1.7: Jan Jansz van de Velde (Dutch, 1619/1620–1662), Still Life with Goblet and Fruit, 1656. Oil on canvas, h. 37.5 × w. 34.9 cm (14 3/4 × 13 3/4 in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The contours of the eighteenth-century trade in East Asian porcelains can tell us a good deal about that larger era. As the Japanese Edo shogunate enacted restrictions on trade beginning in 1685, due to their attempt to lessen the outward flow of precious metals—first gold and silver, then copper—other forms of trade were constricted and ultimately choked off as well. For example, by the 1730s, the export of Japanese porcelain by way of official VOC orders had just about concluded. However, the Arita kilns continued to produce porcelains for domestic consumption, increasingly with overglaze enamel designs. At times, these wares even folded in images of the Dutch “foreigners,” who were possibly understood as “ebisu” (auspicious outsiders), and whose presence was associated with the arrival of “treasure ships,” and could therefore function as auspicious motifs in Japan.45 It is possible also that some Arita-ware images of At the end of these comments, Giraldez cites Boxer, Portuguese Seaborne Empire, pp. 174–75; and Deng, Chinese Maritime Activities, p. 119. 45 This is asserted in Yasumasa, “Hollandisme,” p. 153. Dutch “foreigners” may have functioned as auspicious motifs in this way, although the small number of Dutch in Japan rarely made it inland, except when they ventured on tribute missions to Edo (modern-day Tokyo).

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Fig. 1.8: Unknown artist, cellaret with nine porcelain bottles, Japan, c. 1680–c. 1700. Wooden case made in Indonesia. Kakiemon porcelain flasks from Arita Japan, h. 36 × dia. 33 × w. 27 × l. 25.5 cm. Inscription on bottom of the bottles: VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, Dutch East India Company). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Dutchmen borrowed these motifs from Chinese Jingdezhen-porcelain imagery, akin to the way European porcelains picked up Chinese figural images from Asian porcelain.46 (See Fig. 1.9 for an example of an Arita-ware porcelain cup of the late eighteenth century picturing Dutch figures.)47 Oka Yasumasa refers to the fascination with Dutchmen in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Japan as a Hollandisme trend.48 It is important to note that, following the second round of Japanese trade constrictions in 1715—constrictions which applied to both the Chinese and the Dutch in Nagasaki—the downward trend in the Japanese export porcelain trade was in fact part of a larger pattern of dwindling trade with Japan. Another factor in the decline of Japanese export porcelain, as Oliver Impey points out, is that the Chinese porcelain was cheaper. We should also note that more foreign powers were trading through China during the eighteenth century than through Japan. This turn away from trade was an intentional development on the part of the Edo-period shogunate; Japan was encouraged to become more self-sufficient beginning in the 1720s, supporting her own silk production and silk finishing manufacturers, as well as developing her own capacity in rice-growing and foodstuffs. 46 Yasumasa, “Hollandisme,” p. 153. 47 These two cups are illustrated in Shirahara, Japan Envisions the West, p. 152. See the fascinating discussion of Shinto messenger demons/foreigner spirits namahage and powerful foreign spirits ebisu in Japanese culture, and the conflation of these folk spirits with foreigners such as the Tartars, the Portuguese, and the Dutch. Yasumasa, “Hollandisme,” pp. 153–55. 48 Yasumasa, “Hollandisme,” p. 150.

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Fig. 1.9: Unknown artist, covered bowls with polychrome Nanban decoration of Dutch Fig.s and ships, Japan, late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. Enameled and gilt porcelain (Arita ware), h. 8 × dia. 11.8 cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Recent scholarship has shed considerable light on the process of producing and selling porcelain through the port of Canton in South China. By 1720, Chinese merchants formed the first Co-Hong association. Although this association was shortly thereafter disbanded, by the 1750s the Co-Hong structure was formalized. There were about fifteen Hong merchants in Canton, and each incoming ship needed to be linked with a specific Hong merchant, who acted as guarantor for the transactions and also for the actions of the Europeans.49 One section of Canton was designated as the “foreigners” concession, and there was a street there, called “New” street or “China” street, for the showcasing of wares, among them ceramic wares.50 There were also merchants outside the Co-Hong system who sold ceramics to European merchants on a more ad hoc basis, along with other goods. Orders could be placed for specific porcelain shapes from the inland kiln site of Jingdezhen. (One contemporary diarist said he saw thousands of kilns working at Jingdezhen.) Also, unpainted Jingdezhen wares could be shipped to Canton and painted in to-order designs by workshops there. The porcelain trade was known to be very competitive, since fashions for particular designs changed quickly.51 See Plate 2 for a late eighteenth-century Chinese painting of the European factories in Canton. Although some records indicate that the large-scale import of blue-and-white porcelains into Europe meant that these ceramics were affordable to middle-class Dutch buyers by about 1610,52 Dutch trade in Chinese porcelain continued in the eighteenth century. The VOC ship Geldermalsen, for example, which sank on the way to the Dutch Republic in 1752, was apparently carrying 239,000 pieces of Chinese 49 Van Dyke and Mok, Images of the Canton Factories 1760–1822, p. 160. 50 Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, p. 172. 51 Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, p.173. 52 Corrigan et al., Asia in Amsterdam, p. 142.

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porcelain, and 687,000 pounds of Chinese tea.53 In 1753, five large merchant ships of varying nationalities (British, French, Dutch, and Danish) collectively brought 1 million pieces of Chinese export porcelain to Europe.54 Much of the Chinese export porcelain in the period 1573 to 1800 is termed kraak porcelain; these are most often blue-and-white bowls or plates with segmented panels radiating from the center, each panel with a motif—often repeated alternating motifs panel to panel. (These were not designed to be consumed by the domestic Chinese market.) European craftsmen developed a close analogue to Chinese porcelain by about 1700. Gradually, suitable import substitutions for Chinese wares developed in Delft in the Dutch Republic; in Meissen, Germany; and in Staffordshire, England. In Canton it is interesting to see that, as Paul A. Van Dyke has demonstrated, ceramics were definitely used by foreign East India companies as ballast for their ships. In spite of their dual function as trade goods and ballast, the overall weight of tea in eighteenth-century cargoes greatly exceeded that of ceramics, generally assuming an 8:1 ratio.55 Van Dyke also shows that some porcelain merchants catered to a specific groups of foreigners. Interestingly, one Canton porcelain dealer, Lisconjon, is known to have invested in the Chinese junk trade to Southeast Asia, which ships in turn provided the Sago palm sugar he needed to pack inside the empty porcelain export vessels.56 Sales in Chinese porcelains began to decline in the mid- to late 1780s.57 English East India Company official porcelain shipments ended in the 1790s.58 At the same time, more Spanish ships began arriving in the 1780s and 90s.59 As the East India companies waned in the late 1700s, private commerce by smaller ships escalated, along with an associated preference for more individualized, sometimes higher-end, porcelain commissions.60

Some of the complexities of trade dynamics: prints East Asian prints and European prints both circulated internationally and facilitated the transmission of a wide range of imagery from one culture to another. Chinese print culture was based on the use of carved wooden blocks (xylography). Both the textual component of Chinese books and the illustrations could be cut into the 53 Li, Maritime Silk Road, p. 167. 54 Li, Maritime Silk Road, p. 167. 55 Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, pp. 126–27. 56 Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, p. 168. 57 Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, p. 169. 58 Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, p. 169. 59 Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, p. 170. It is worth noting that Van Dyke’s chapter 3 concerning the Spanish trade seems to contradict Giraldez where he describes the end of the Spanish galleon trade in about 1825. 60 Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, p. 170.

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same woodblock, allowing for the replication of highly individualized calligraphy, among other features. In the expansive economic environment of Wanli-period China (1572–1620), publishers sought increasingly sophisticated illustrations to enhance the sales of their books. Some of these prints traveled to Japan and impacted painting compositions there. Chinese “how to paint” printed books were very influential in both Japan and Korea in terms of transmitting specific painted brushwork and compositional elements.61 During the “Christian Century” in Japan, when the Portuguese and Spanish were trading and preaching Christianity there from about 1539 to 1639, the Iberians brought printed products from Catholic Flanders and the northern Netherlands for instruction and for gifts. These included globes and printed world maps. As scholars have previously pointed out, some portions of a Willem Blaeu wall map were reinvented in anonymous Japanese screens such as the Suntory Museum of Art’s Foreign Emperors and Kings, dated to the 1610s.62 Bird’s-eye city views from Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum were also transposed onto Japanese screens.63 During this period as well, the Jesuit Matteo Ricci brought illustrations for Nadal’s Life of Christ to China, which were copied and included in the 1606 Chinese printed book Chengshi moyuan.64 In Europe, Johan Nieuhof’s (1618–72) illustrated Het gezantschap der Neerlandtsche Oost-Indische Compagnie, aan den Grooten Tartarischen Cham, den tegenwoordigen keizer van China (The embassy from the East India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham, emperor of China), published in Amsterdam in 1665, was very influential in conveying imagery about Chinese customs and entertainments. The frontispiece, for example, has clearly been translated onto a Delftware blue-and-white jar, and a Chinoiserie image on a Delft plaque is derived from another of the text’s plates.65 In addition, a set of tapestries from the court of Louis XIV, titled the Emperor of China series, drew upon illustrations from the Nieuhof text for tapestry sections (see Fig. 1.10 for the frontispiece to Nieuhof’s text and Plate 3 for a tapestry from the Emperor of China series titled “Audience of the Emperor”). Another influential printed source in Europe was William Chambers’ book on Oriental designs, published in 1772. Since large paintings were hard to move, printed images and porcelain imagery could often serve more readily to bring visual traditions together.

61 For more information on this topic see Park, Art by the Book. 62 Both of these are illustrated in Shirahara, Japan Envisions the West, pp. 58–59. 63 These are both illustrated in Shirahara, Japan Envisions the West, pp. 64–65. 64 For these illustrations, and an in-depth examination of the Chinese treatment of the prints, see Spence, Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. 65 For this porcelain image, alongside several of Nieuhof’s prints, see Corrigan et al., Asia in Amsterdam, pp. 323–26.

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Fig. 1.10: Johannes Nieuhof, frontispiece of the English version of The Embassy from the East India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham, Emperor of China. Originally published in Amsterdam in 1665. Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture, University of Wisconsin Libraries.

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Some of the complexities of trade dynamics: lacquerwares As we have seen above, by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, export competition between China and Japan led to “export substitutions”—one country venturing into the export market previously held by the other. This happened in lacquerware as well as in porcelain. For example, Chinese artisans began to produce lacquerware folding screens for domestic and European consumption, partly drawing upon depictions of Europeans seen in earlier Japanese Nanban (“southern barbarian”) imagery. This topic is covered in Tamara H. Bentley’s chapter on Chinese lacquer screens of Europeans hunting. Japanese lacquerware was held by Europeans to be the finest, but sometimes the price made it prohibitive for the East India Companies to carry. In New Spain, artisans seeking to reproduce the look of lacquerwares sometimes utilized the secretions of the scale insect to create a similar, polished surface, mixing Asian technologies with South American native Indian technologies.

Some of the complexities of trade dynamics: textiles As in the Indian Ocean region, textiles were central to much of East Asian trade. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, silk from China, exchanged for the silver of Japan, was an important source of wealth for merchants of many nations.66 Since direct trade between the two countries was outlawed in Ming China—even after the 1567 lifting of the Chinese maritime ban—Chinese merchants brought textiles to Japan illegally; Chinese and Japanese merchants exchanged goods in Hội An, Vietnam; and Chinese merchants sold silks to businessmen in Macau, who traded it by various routes to Japan, sometimes directly on Portuguese ships prior to 1639. (From the 1570s to 1617 the Portuguese sent one large carrack each year to Nagasaki, carrying a rich cargo of Chinese silk.)67 From the 1590s to the mid-1630s, Japanese red seal ships also brought silver and other goods to Manila, Vietnam, or other third-party locations to trade for textiles and other items. Much of the need for silk among Europeans was met by the silk textiles of the Safavids of Iran and the Ottomans based in Turkey. Printed cottons from India were also a central trade item carried into early modern Europe. Among the Europeans trading in Chinese textiles, the Spanish reserved a high percentage of their cargoes for Chinese raw and finished silk, lessening the amount of space for porcelain and

66 As Joyce Denney writes, most of the Chinese silk exported to Japan was raw: “By far the largest portion of Japan’s silk trade with China in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was in reeled silk (silk filaments wound directly from several cocoons into skeins), neither dyed nor woven.” Denney, “Japan and the Textile Trade,” p. 317, n 1. 67 Denney, “Japan and the Textile Trade,” p. 57.

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Fig. 1.11: Unknown artists, silk bedcover, China, produced in Guangdong or Fujian province, 1680–1720. Silk embroidered with silk and metal-wrapped threads. Without fringe, h. 119 1/4 × w. 91 1/4 × dia. 1/8 in. (302.895 × 231.775 × 0.381 cm). Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

tea.68 The Spanish collaborated with the Portuguese, and shipped a high percentage of these textile cargoes from Macau to Manila, and thence on Spanish ships to New Spain, South America, and Europe. As modern scholar Li Qingxin notes:

68 As Paul A. Van Dyke notes: “[The model of emphasizing first tea and secondly porcelain] was not necessarily true for private ships trading in China or for the Spanish ships [...] the Spaniards often did not purchase tea. Silk was their main export, so those ships would have been loaded differently.” Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, p. 127.

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At around 1608, the amount of goods the Spanish purchased in Macau and shipped to Manila valued at around 200,000 pesos, of which silk knit products accounted for 95% of the total. From 1619 to 1631, the Spanish through Guangdong and Macau shipped to the Philippines raw silk yarns and silk fabric valued at 1.5 million pesos every year. These silk products were largely reshipped for sale in the Americas and Europe.69

One example of a finished Chinese silk product, likely exported on the ships of Catholic Portuguese and Spanish merchants, is a bedcover from a South Chinese workshop (probably from Guangdong or Fujian) dated about 1680–1720 (see Fig. 1.11).70 The hybrid imagery drawn out in embroidery depicts putti figures in the four outer corners, Asian lions chasing flaming pearls at the inner corners, and at the center an image of a pelican piercing its own breast to feed its young, a symbol of Christ. England imported considerable amounts of both Indian printed cottons and Chinese silks. The international trade in textiles was significantly impacted by the Calico Acts in England in 1700 and 1721. These disallowed the import of a wide variety of cotton textiles into England—which, to bolster domestic industry, struck particularly at the worldwide distribution of Indian cotton textiles. Since these laws did not apply in the American colonies, Indian textiles continued to be imported there. As for silk, in 1723 in Canton, China, a “silk workers guild” was established, although merchants of porcelain and other commodities could also join.71 They sold two types of silk: Nanking (higher end) and Canton (lower end and lower price).72 Raw silk was also purchased, and sold by weight.73 New duties were assessed on Chinese export silks in the 1770s to 1790s, and the prices correspondingly rose, dampening sales.74

Modeling the early modern economic engine The sum total of all the exchanges described above—ship to ship, purveyor to consumer, and production shop to domestic display—is a new form of global interconnectedness. To what extent is this early modern globalization forged by Europeans? This large-scale question belongs to economic history, and directs us to recently pervasive models of the early modern economy, such as those advocated by Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein. These two influential authors centered their discussion on the developing stages of the leap forward to capitalism in Europe. In these 69 Li, Maritime Silk Road, p. 120. 70 This silk bedcover is illustrated and discussed in Corrigan et al., Asia in Amsterdam, p. 87. 71 Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, p. 172. 72 Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, p. 173. 73 Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, p. 173. 74 Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macau, p. 206.

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models, international trade was, to some extent, not very important, and the trade of Asians was treated as peripheral to the central drama of the unfolding modern European world.75 In our view, however, certain “counter-indications” are apparent, which should be treated as significant. For example, how do we deal with the fact that so much of the wealth infused into Europe derived, broadly speaking, from trade with Asia? And, given that, what do we make of the fact that early modern European and Asian enterprises were so often wrapped up together? (One case would be that of Dutch merchants investing in Chinese Hokkien shipping ventures, as covered in James K. Chin’s chapter. Another case would be that of the British attempting to set up a factory on Taiwan in conjunction with the Zheng maritime empire administered from there.) In addition, we should also note that French shipping in Asia or other parts of the world pre-1800 was never very strong, and that Dutch profits from Asia-based trade dropped off in the eighteenth century, while Chinese shipping to Southeast Asia and other parts of Asia remained significant. The development of the canton system in China in the middle eighteenth century was surely important, and the escalation of British trade at this time is particularly notable. Still, it is not clear that, in the years before 1800, the British strongly felt they had the upper hand in Chinese trade ventures. Taking these parameters into account, to what extent could we argue, as some recent scholars have done, for economic “interactive emergences” prior to 1800, born of multilateral trade interactions, rather than a European-dominated economic revolution?76 Both Braudel and Wallerstein posited that there was, at any given time, a single economic core, the magnetic “center” of the overall world system. In the period under review in this book, both authors suggest that that single center moved from southern Europe to northern Europe. However, the eighteenth century provides a good example of a time period without any single dominating core. Japan had partly closed itself to the outside world, but Chinese, Dutch and Korean trade still proceeded with Japan. China had resumed trade with Southeast Asia, and Chinese merchants prevailed there over European traders. The British were gradually linking products exported out of greater India (most especially opium) to products they could trade for silver in China, although much of this opium trade was at first private, rather than above-board English East India Company trading. The British found an ever-expanding market for tea in Europe sufficient to fund ongoing Europe-China trade ventures. In fact, by the middle eighteenth century, a variety of nations were trading through Canton: Britain, the Dutch Republic, France, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. China was still a relatively thriving and vast land empire under the Qing dynasty Qianlong 75 As Wallerstein states, “[…][in the period 1763–1815] in the intracore struggle, the United Provinces, which did best by far initially, was eventually undercut by English and French competition.” See Immanuel Wallerstein, “Struggle in the Core—Phase III: 1763–1815,” in Wallerstein, The Modern World-System III, p. 59. 76 Andrade and Hang, Sea Rovers, p. 22; for the term “interactive emergences” they cite Wills, introduction to China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800.

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emperor; and Jesuits remained in the Forbidden City, sending reports home about China, until the rites controversy and other difficulties closed out that enterprise in about 1760. The Dutch VOC was dissolved in 1799, and the Chinese Qianlong emperor died the same year. If we locate ourselves in Asia in 1750 looking forward, it would strain credulity to predict that Britain would come to compromise China’s power, or that the Dutch VOC would close up shop. (It would also be very hard to feel that the entire world economy was centered on British-French rivalry in this century, as Wallerstein argues.) From the Asian perspective, it would be impossible to sense any single center for the world economy, in fact, and that is precisely the point.

Bibliography Andrade, Tonio and Xing Hang, eds. Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai: Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1550–1700. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016. Bassett, D.K. “The Trade of the English East India Company in the Far East, 1623–1684.” In European Commercial Expansion in Early Modern Asia, ed. Om Prakash, pp. 208–36. Aldershot: Variorum, 1997. Blussé, Leonard. Strange Company, Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1986. Boogaart, Ernst van den. Civil and Corrupt Asia: Image and Text in the Itinerario and the Icones of Jan Huygen van Linschoten. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Boxer, Charles R. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415–1825. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. Corrigan, Karina, Janvan Campen, and Femke Diercks, eds., with Janet C. Blyberg. Asia in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum, 2015. Deng, Gang. Chinese Maritime Activities and Socioeconomic Development, c. 2100 B.C.–1900 A.D. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. Denney, Joyce. “Japan and the Textile Trade in Context.” In Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800, ed. Amelia Peck, pp. 56–65. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013. Fuqua, Douglas Sherwin. “The Japanese Missions to Tang China and Maritime Exchange in East Asia, 7th to 9th Centuries.” PhD diss., University of Hawai’i, Manoa, 2004. Giraldez, Arturo. The Age of Trade: The Manila Galleons and the Dawn of the Global Economy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Iaccarino, Ubaldo. “Merchants, Missionaries and Marauders: Trade and Traffic between Kyūshū (Japan) and Luzon (Philippines) in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries.” Crossroads 10 (October 2014): 155–96. Jansen, Marius. The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000. Li, Qingshin. Maritime Silk Road, trans. William W. Wang. Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 2006. Park, J.P. Art by the Book: Painting Manuals and the Leisure Life in Late Ming China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012. Pierson, Stacey. From Object to Concept: Global Consumption and the Transformation of Ming Porcelain. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013. Pires, Tomé. The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: An account of the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, written in Malacca and India in 1512–1515; and, the book of Francisco Rodrigues, rutter of a voyage in the Red Sea, nautical rules, almanack, and maps, written and drawn in the East before 1515, 2 vols. London: Hakluyt Society, 1944. Sargent, William R. Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics: From the Peabody Essex Museum. Salem: Peabody Essex Museum, 2012.

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Schottenhammer, Angela. “The East Asian Maritime World, 1400–1800: Its Fabrics of Power and Dynamics of Exchanges—China and her Neighbours.” In The East Asian Maritime World 1400–1800: Its Fabrics of Power and Dynamics of Exchanges, ed. Angela Schottenhammer, pp. 1–86. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007. Shirahara, Yukiko, ed. Japan Envisions the West: 16th–19th Century Japanese Art from Kobe City Museum. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2007. Spence, Jonathan. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. Van Dyke, Paul A. Merchants of Canton and Macau: Success and Failure in Eighteenth-century Chinese Trade. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016. Van Dyke, Paul A. and Maria Kar-wing Mok. Images of the Canton Factories 1760–1822: Reading History in Art. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015. Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System, 3 vols. San Diego: Academic Press, 1989. Wills, John E., Jr., ed. China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800: Trade, Settlement, Diplomacy, and Missions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Yasumasa, Oka. “Hollandisme in Japanese Craftwork.” In Japan Envisions the West: 16th–19th Century Japanese Art from Kobe City Museum, ed. Yukiko Shirahara, pp. 135–63. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2007. Zhao, Gang. The Qing Opening to the Ocean: Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684–1757. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013.

About the author Tamara H. Bentley is Professor of Asian Art History at Colorado College, where she has taught since 2001. She is also currently the Director of the Asian Studies program at Colorado College. She received her PhD in Asian art from the University of Michigan in 2000. She is the recipient of a Fulbright from the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange for study in Taiwan. Together with colleague Katharine P. Burnett, she also applied for, and received, generous funding from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for the 2014 Picturing Commerce symposium at Colorado College, which preceded this volume. She has published broadly on Chinese painting and prints, as well as intercultural connections in the early modern period. Her first book considered the works of seventeenth-century Chinese artist Chen Hongshou in a social context (2012).

Part I Circuits and exchanges

2. The maritime trading world of East Asia from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries

Richard von Glahn Abstract This essay offers an overview of shifting East Asia maritime trade configurations from the thirteenth century to about 1700. Rapid growth in Sino-Japanese trade began in the late twelfth century, and was partly driven by the acute need for Chinese coins within Japan’s economic system. Despite the attempted Mongol invasions of Japan in the late thirteenth century, by 1300 trade between China and Japan had rebounded. In 1374, Ming emperor Hongwu prohibited Chinese merchants from venturing overseas, restricting foreign commerce to the tributary system. When the Chinese maritime ban was lifted in 1567 (although not for direct China-Japan trade) a period of flourishing East Asian trade ensued. The impact of the Portuguese and Dutch in East Asian shipping is considered. Keywords: early modern trade; silver circulation; global trade; East Asian trade; ­Japanese red seal ships; Chinese maritime trade

Upon venturing into Asian seas at the turn of the sixteenth century, Portuguese mariners were amazed to find flourishing trade networks spanning the oceans from India to China. At that time Melaka—a small Islamic sultanate on the Malay Peninsula, at the crossroads of the navigational routes linking India to China—was the great hub of this maritime trading world, and thus the richest prize in the eyes of Portuguese empire builders. Arriving in Melaka shortly after the Portuguese seized the city in 1511, Tomé Pires wrote a report for his patron, the king of Portugal, exclaiming that “men cannot estimate the worth of Malacca [Melaka], on account of its greatness and profit. Malacca is a city that was made for merchandise, fitter than any other in the world.”1 From Melaka, the Portuguese pushed eastward, arriving on the coasts of China in 1513. The Portuguese would make no further conquests in East Asia, but rather turned to the pursuit of commercial profit. 1 Pires, Summa Oriental, vol. 2, p. 286. Bentley, Tamara H. (ed.), Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984677/ch02

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Over the next several centuries the European presence in maritime East Asia altered the structure of trade, but did not transform it.2 Rather, the Europeans insinuated themselves into a dynamic of maritime trade and cross-cultural intercourse that had existed for centuries.3 Commercial success for the Portuguese (and other Europeans who followed them) depended on their ability to compete with their indigenous rivals under terms of trade established by Asian rulers. But success did not come easily. In the seventeenth century the Dutch would develop a new business model, one that relied on violent conquest and monopolistic control of production centers and trade routes rather than entrepreneurial achievement in free markets. A distinguishing feature of the East Asian maritime trade network was the prominence of “port polities” centered on the major emporia of international trade. These emporia were citadels of merchants more than princes; the latter often resided at a safe remove from the tumult of the marketplace and interfered little in the commerce that yielded them substantial revenues. Comprised of multinational enclaves of merchants who conducted business across ethnic, national, linguistic, and religious boundaries, the emporia exhibited a distinctively pluralistic and cosmopolitan character. Before it fell to the Portuguese Melaka was the quintessential example of the “port polity” emporium. Europeans—and especially their chartered trading companies, which acted as colonial rulers as well as commercial enterprises—fashioned a new framework for conducting maritime trade: the entrepôt. Designed to organize the production, mobilization, and delivery of commodities on a global scale, the entrepôts often relied on colonial political domination to control the terms of trade. Fort Batavia, founded by the Dutch East India Company on Java in 1618, would become the prototype of this new commercial system.4

The first phase of East Asian maritime commerce: tenth to thirteenth ­centuries During the period 900–1300 parallel movements of economic prosperity and commercial growth occurred throughout Eurasia. Favorable climate, intensifying agricultural production, urban growth, burgeoning money supply, the development of merchant networks and more sophisticated financial and commercial institutions all contributed to economic development. The initial impetus for economic expansion arose in the Islamic lands of the eastern Mediterranean and in China, but soon spread 2 My definition of “maritime East Asia” is more expansive than the usual geographic sense of the term “East Asia” (generally delimited to China, Japan, and Korea), and includes the lands and waters ringing the South China Sea and the Gulf of Siam from the Straits of Melaka in the west to Java and Kalimantan in the east. 3 For a balanced digest of this story see Gipouloux, Asian Mediterranean. 4 This distinction between emporium and entrepôt is derived from Gipouloux, Asian Mediterranean, pp. 102–6.

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to Europe, the Indian Ocean littoral, both mainland and archipelagic Southeast Asia, and Japan. The main catalyst for the formation of a maritime trading sphere in East Asia was the prodigious economic transformation of Song dynasty (960–1276) China. The rise of the rice economy and exploitation of the rich resources of South China raised agricultural productivity, fostered rapid population growth, and stimulated the emergence of new technologies and industries. Tea, porcelain, silk, iron goods, paper, books, and sugar as well as staple foods such as rice, soybeans, and wheat became the major commodities traded in regional, national, and even international markets. The evergreen conifer forests of South China supplied the key raw materials for shipbuilding, one of many industries that underwent significant technological improvement. The adoption of deep-keeled ships, sternpost rudders, and the nautical compass enhanced the capabilities of seafarers to venture overseas.5 The political climate of the Song dynasty further encouraged such ventures. With the overland Silk Road routes occupied by hostile adversaries, both the Song state and private merchants turned toward maritime commerce as a source of bulk commodities as well as prestige goods. To an unprecedented degree the fiscal base of the Song government relied on indirect taxation of trade and consumption, and commercial taxes and maritime customs became important sources of state revenues. Expansion of overseas trade also was fostered by the formation of transnational merchant networks that linked together the principal maritime emporia of East and Southeast Asia.6 Arab traders from the Persian Gulf and Tamils from southern India settled in southern Chinese ports. But much of China’s trade with Southeast Asia was handled by Chinese seafarers, who commonly joined together in partnerships to pool capital and diffuse the risks of overseas trading expeditions. Over the course of the eleventh century Quanzhou in Fujian superseded Guangzhou, farther to the south, as China’s great maritime trading port. According to an inscription of 1095, two convoys of twenty vessels each arrived in Quanzhou from the “South Seas” every year.7 But in the thirteenth century Ningbo, near the mouth of the Yangzi River, eclipsed Quanzhou as China’s main gateway of international trade. Ningbo’s rise resulted from the relocation of the imperial capital—and its vast consumption demand—to nearby Hangzhou, the reorientation of overseas trade toward Japan and Korea rather than Southeast Asia, and the success of Ningbo merchants in establishing overseas communities and networks that gave them competitive advantages over their Fujian rivals.8 Rapid growth in Sino-Japanese trade beginning in the late twelfth century was driven by agricultural expansion and the intensifying circulation of goods within Japan’s domestic economy, and especially the acute need for money to facilitate this 5 On economic development in Song China, see von Glahn, Economic History of China, pp. 208–78. 6 On Southeast Asian maritime trade in this era, especially its trade with China, see Wade, “Early Age of Commerce.” 7 Cited in So, Prosperity, Region, and Institutions, p. 40. 8 Von Glahn, “Chinese Coin and Changes.”

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circulation. Japan’s rulers had ceased minting coin in the early tenth century, and instead relied on commodities such as rice and silk as measures of value. But a more efficient means of commerce and finance was sorely needed—especially on the part of the ruling class of imperial clan members, aristocrats, religious institutions, and rising warrior households, who sought to transfer the wealth generated by their farflung estates to their domiciles in Kyoto and Kamakura. Massive quantities of Song coin were exported to Japan, and in 1226 the Kamakura shogunate officially recognized Song coin as its monetary standard. In addition, Japanese elites were eager to obtain prestige goods such as silk fabrics, porcelains, books, writing materials, and a wide assortment of handicrafts—collectively known as “Chinese goods” (karamono). Japanese handicrafts—including swords, armor, fans, and lacquer—were held in high esteem in China, but in the twelfth century Japan’s main exports to China consisted of gold and bulk commodities such as sulfur, timber, and mercury. Hakata (modern Fukuoka)—designated by the Japanese court as the single port open to foreign traders—became an enclave of Ningbo merchants and shipping agents, who outnumbered the native Japanese population.9

Reorientation of maritime trade in the fourteenth century The Mongol conquest of the Southern Song in 1276 and the seagoing armadas dispatched by Khubilai Khan to invade Japan in 1274 and 1281 disrupted maritime trade in East Asia, but the effects were temporary. The Mongols ardently promoted commerce, and under their aegis maritime exchange with the Indian Ocean world and Japan quickly rebounded. Still, the structure and organization of the East Asian maritime trading world underwent significant changes. In Southeast Asia, Angkor’s subjugation of Champa, the subsequent decline of the Angkor kingdom, and the demise of the Srivijaya thalassocracy in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula over the course of the thirteenth century demolished old concentrations of political and commercial supremacy. At the same time, new patterns of maritime exchange emerged in this region. Sino-Japanese trade also flourished in the fourteenth century. But the installation of a new political and economic order in China with the founding of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) severely disrupted commercial exchange across maritime East Asia. As the Srivijayan hegemony over trade through the Straits of Melaka unraveled, a constellation of new port polities sprang up, including Lambri and Samudra in northern Sumatra, Kedah, Temasik (Singapore), and Melaka in the Straits of Melaka, and Tambralinga, Kelantan, and Pahang on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula. Whereas the Srivijayan ports had largely served as emporia for exchanges between 9

Von Glahn, “Chinese Coin and Changes.”

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China and Indian Ocean markets, the parvenu port polities exported local goods: pepper and other spices, aromatics, rattan and fine woods such as gharu and ebony, medicines, and exotic tropical faunal products.10 From the end of the thirteenth century two new regional powers, Majapahit and Siam, began to exert hegemonic influence over maritime trade. The Majapahit kingdom, which directly ruled Java and Bali, gradually extended its sphere of control to encompass the trade routes to the Spice Islands and southern Sumatra. Majapahit adopted Song coin as its official currency for state payments, and Chinese coins displaced indigenous gold and silver pellets as the principal form of money throughout Java.11 The ascendancy of Siam as the dominant polity in the Chaophraya River Delta was closely linked to the strategic location of its capital, Ayudhya, which connected Thailand’s rich agricultural hinterland to the Gulf of Siam. The success of Ayudhya as a maritime power is attributed to the large community of Chinese traders who resided there; indeed, the first Siamese king, Uthong (r. 1351–69), was a Chinese merchant who married into a local ruling family.12 Under the Mongol-ruled Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), the geographic range of Chinese seafarers expanded even farther, to the Indian Ocean littoral. Distinctions between public and private economic spheres were largely erased under Mongol governance: Mongol nobles, acting through commercial agents, became deeply involved in trade; the ortoq merchant cartel—primarily composed of Central Asian Muslims—at times enjoyed a monopoly over maritime trade; and powerful merchant families often gained administrative appointments, including serving as maritime commissioners. Government officials themselves organized and dispatched overseas trading vessels. Competition with private merchants intermittently provoked the government to enact (short-lived) bans on private maritime trade. But on the whole Yuan state policies toward maritime trade were favorable.13 Despite the hostility between the Mongol regime and the Kamakura shogunate during and after the failed Mongol invasions of Japan, the appetite for karamono among Japan’s elites—to say nothing of the Japanese market’s hunger for Chinese coin—remained unabated.14 By 1300 Sino-Japanese trade had resumed. As before, trading voyages were organized principally by Chinese mariners, but Japanese 10 Heng, Sino-Malay Trade, pp. 95–100, 191–217. On new developments in Southeast Asian maritime trade during the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, see Reid, Southeast Asia; Jacq-Hergoualc’h, Malay Peninsula; Lockard, “Sea Common to All”; Hall, “Revisionist Study.” 11 Wicks, Money, Markets, and Trade, pp. 290–97. 12 On the rise of Ayudhya as a major emporium, see Lockard, “Sea Common to All,” pp. 239–45; Kasetsiri, “Origins of a Capital and Seaport.” 13 On Yuan maritime trade policies, see Yokkaichi, Mono kara mita kaiiki Ajia; Heng, Sino-Malay Trade, pp. 63–71; Enomoto, Higashi Ajia kaiiki, pp. 106–209. For studies on maritime trade in Yuan China from the perspective of trade goods and material culture see Yokkaichi, “Chinese and Muslim Diasporas.” 14 By one estimate (Iinuma, “Chūsei Nihon,” p. 86), Japan imported as much as 1,000 tons of Chinese coin in peak years of the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries.

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investors increasingly took the initiative in launching overseas ventures.15 A Japanese vessel that ran aground near Wenzhou in 1318 was said to have carried “five hundred merchants from their home country […] seeking to make landing at Ningbo and engage in trade to obtain bronze coins, medicines, and aromatics.”16 The great Zen Buddhist monasteries of Kyoto and Kamakura took particularly eager interest in foreign trade as well as religious pilgrimage to China. The Sinan shipwreck—a Japanese vessel laden with 28 tons of Chinese coin as well as ceramics and other cargo that sank off the coast of Korea in 1323 on its return from Ningbo—attests to the entwined goals of religious piety and commercial profit. The vessel had been commissioned by the Tōfukuji monastery in Kyoto to obtain coin and goods from China to finance the rebuilding of the monastery after a devastating fire in 1319. The actual outfitting of the vessel at Ningbo appears to have been undertaken by Chinese merchants based in Hakata who acted as agents for the monastery.17 From the 1330s onward, however, Sino-Japanese trade entered increasingly turbulent waters. Emperor Go-Daigo’s attempt to reinstate the sovereign authority of the imperial house brought an end to the Kamakura shogunate, but also provoked a schism between two rival imperial courts and paved the way for the rise of a new dynasty of shoguns, the Ashikaga (1338–1573). Initially, the political turmoil in Japan does not seem to have interrupted trading voyages to China. Following the accession of Toghon Temür (r. 1333–70) as Yuan emperor, however, the Mongol court under the direction of chief minister Bayan adopted a harsh attitude toward Japan and—in part, at least, to eradicate the corruption and graft perpetrated by Ningbo’s maritime commissioners—suspended trading relations. Traders from Japan refused entry to Ningbo resorted to violent pillage of other sea-coast towns, inciting widespread alarm over nefarious “Japanese pirates” (Wokou). Trade relations were restored following Bayan’s fall from power in 1340, but after 1348 China itself was engulfed in civil wars. As opportunities for trade vanished, seafarers resorted to piracy. In the 1350s Wokou began to prey on commercial shipping in the Bohai Gulf and the tribute fleets that delivered grain and other goods from Jiangnan (Southeast China below the Yangzi) to the Yuan capital of Dadu (Beijing). The precise origins and identity of these “Japanese pirates,” is obscure, but recent scholarship suggests that they were transnational groups of seafarers based in southern Korea, northern Kyushu, and the principal islands—Jeju, Iki, and Tsushima—lying between them.18 Despite the turmoil of the final decades of Mongol rule in China, it was the reign of the first Ming emperor, Hongwu (r. 1368–98), that marked the crucial rupture in the development of East Asian maritime trade. Hongwu was determined to eradicate 15 Murai (“Jisha zōeiryō”) persuasively argues that the transnational character of these trading communities renders moot the question of whether merchants were of Chinese or Japanese ethnic origin. 16 Wenzhou fuzhi (1503), juan 17, p. 23a. 17 Kawazoe, “Kamakura makki.” 18 Enomoto, Higashi Ajia kaiiki, pp. 106–75.

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what he regarded as the corrupting taint of Mongol customs and to restore the institutions and values of the agrarian society enshrined in the Confucian Classics. In so doing Hongwu repudiated not only the Mongol heritage but also the robust market economy that had continued to flourish under Yuan rule. Although Hongwu’s policies evolved over his thirty-year reign, his basic goals remained constant: to restore the autarkic village economy idealized in Confucian doctrines and to minimize the market economy and the inequalities it fostered. In pursuit of this agenda the emperor formulated fiscal policies predicated on a return to unilateral in-kind payments to the state, conscripted labor service, self-sufficient military farms, and payments to officials and soldiers in goods rather than money.19 Hongwu instituted a new type of inconvertible paper currency (baochao) while simultaneously banning the use of gold and silver (and for a period of time even state-issued bronze coin) as money, but the baochao proved an abject failure. By 1425 baochao notes were worth only 2 percent of their face value and essentially had ceased to function as viable currency.20 Moreover, the Ming state was unable to mint bronze coin in sufficient quantities, and in the early 1430s suspended coinage altogether. Domestic commerce contracted sharply, and the populace resorted to uncoined silver as the principal means of exchange. Hongwu similarly disparaged the benefits of international trade and cultural intercourse with foreign countries. He instituted a highly formalized system of tributary diplomacy that exalted the ritual hegemony of the Chinese emperor and compelled deference from foreign rulers. Under the terms of the tributary system, foreign embassies were permitted to engage in three types of exchange: (1) submission of tribute, such as exotic goods from their home countries, which were lavishly rewarded with the bestowal of imperial gifts; (2) official trade, in which the Ming officials reserved the right to purchase (at prices they determined) goods brought by foreign merchants who accompanied the embassies; and (3) private trade, whereby the remaining commercial stock could be sold to Chinese merchants through the intermediation of brokers assigned by the government. Thus the hand of the Ming government weighed heavily on all aspects of tributary trade. In 1374 Hongwu prohibited Chinese merchants from venturing overseas, restricting all foreign commerce to the tightly regulated tributary system.21 The ban on private maritime trade, which would last until 1567, effectively throttled the flourishing overseas commerce that had developed during the Song-Yuan era. Although the tributary system afforded some crucial opportunities for exchange, Chinese exports sharply diminished. The most striking evidence for this hiatus is found in the abrupt demise of Chinese ceramics in overseas trade with Southeast 19  For a digest of Hongwu’s economic and fiscal policies see von Glahn, Economic History of China, pp. 285–89. 20 Von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune, pp. 70–73. 21  The most comprehensive study of the Ming maritime bans is Danjō, Mindai kaikin; he emphasizes concerns over national defense (versus the Wokou) rather than economic motives.

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Asia. From the founding of the Ming, the proportion of Chinese ceramics in shipwreck cargoes declined sharply, and they virtually disappeared altogether after the conclusion of Zheng He’s voyages in the 1430s. (See more on these voyages below.) Chinese ceramics reappear in large quantities in shipwrecks from the final decade of the fifteenth century, when the ban was temporarily relaxed, but again vanish in the sixteenth century until the repeal of the ban in 1567.22 This “Ming gap” in the Southeast Asian ceramics trade reflected not just the effectiveness of the Ming embargo, but also the steep decline of private porcelain production in China itself during the first century of the Ming.23

The revival of East Asian maritime trade Despite the constraints of the Ming tributary system, over the course of the fifteenth century maritime trade in East Asia slowly recuperated. Japan and other states that established diplomatic relations with the Ming sought to exploit the channels for commercial exchange offered by the tributary system. Chinese mariners slowly became emboldened to circumvent the prohibition against private overseas trade and undertook clandestine voyages to Ryukyu and Southeast Asia. By the turn of the sixteenth century swelling numbers of smugglers routinely flouted the imperial prohibition, provoking new security fears among Chinese officials and eventually precipitating armed conflict between the Ming state and a new generation of Wokou privateers. Early on the Ashikaga shogun Yoshimitsu (1358–1408)24 sought to restore relations with China and regain access to Chinese markets and goods, especially the bronze coin that had become the lifeblood of Japan’s domestic economy. But Hongwu reacted coolly to the Japanese diplomatic overtures. In 1386, upset that the shogunate had failed to take stronger measures to curb the Wokou depredations, Hongwu suspended relations with Yoshimitsu. However, Yoshimitsu received a far more positive response from the Yongle emperor (r. 1402–25). After usurping the throne from Hongwu’s designated successor, Yongle embarked on a radically different course of foreign policy, one inspired by the Mongol vision of world empire repudiated by his virulently anti-Mongol father. Yongle sought to create his own world empire by invading and occupying northern Vietnam in 1407, launching repeated sallies against the Mongols, and dispatching massive armadas to the South Seas under the leadership of his close confidante, Admiral Zheng He. Zheng He’s seven expeditions between 1405 and 22 Brown, Ming Gap. 23 Tai, “Ming Gap and the Revival.” 24 Yoshimitsu was formally installed as shogun in 1368, the year of the Ming founding, at age 10, and officially retired in 1394. However, he continued to control the government, even in retirement, until his death in 1408.

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1433, which journeyed as far as the coasts of Arabia and Africa, added dozens of new potentates to the Ming roster of tributary subjects.25 Yongle also restored diplomatic ties with Japan, bestowing the title “king of Japan” (Riben guowang) on Yoshimitsu in 1404 and welcoming annual tribute missions. Soon after Yoshimitsu’s son Yoshimochi (1386–1428) came into his own as shogun after his father’s death in 1408 he abruptly halted the tribute embassies to China, which had roused opposition among the Japanese nobility. By the time the Ashikaga shogunate resumed its embassies to China in 1432, the Ming court had withdrawn from Yongle’s policy of enthusiastic diplomatic engagement. The tributary relationship became increasingly one-sided. Japanese envoys and merchants avidly desired coin—which the Ming state no longer minted—as well as silk cloth and yarn and a wide range of karamono goods. The tribute missions to China became an important source of revenue for the shogunate, which leased trading privileges to wealthy religious institutions and warrior houses. But the Ming court, beset by its own fiscal difficulties, had little desire to subsidize tribute trade. The tribute fleet that arrived from Japan in 1453—numbering nine ships, with a complement of 1,200 men—vastly exceeded the scale of previous missions, prompting the Ming court to curtail the scale of future embassies: only one mission, comprising no more than three ships, per decade. Moreover, the Ming court proffered only token amounts of coin as tribute gifts, further diminishing the commercial value of the missions.26 Stymied by the restrictions encumbering tributary trade, Japan’s rising class of regional rulers, the daimyo warrior houses, explored alternative means of access to Chinese goods. Opportunity presented itself in the form of the Ryukyu kingdom, which ruled the Okinawan archipelago (see Fig. 2.1 for a map of East Asia’s maritime trade sphere, including the Ryukyu islands). At the time of the Ming founding Okinawa had been divided into three separate chiefdoms, each of which obtained Ming recognition as tributary states. In 1429, Shō Hashi vanquished his rivals and united the Okinawan archipelago under his Ryukyu kingdom. The Shō kings developed close ties to the Ming court. Altogether Ryukyu sent 171 tribute missions to China, second only to Korea, and nearly twice as many as any other state. These missions enabled Ryukyu to engage in extensive commercial exchange with the Chinese. In addition, Chinese seafarers routinely defied the Ming ban on private overseas commerce to travel to Ryukyu for trade. After the Ming curtailed the scale of Japanese tribute missions, Japanese merchants flocked to Ryukyu to obtain coin and other Chinese goods.27

25 On Zheng He and his voyages, see Dreyer, Zheng He. 26 For comprehensive studies of Ming-Japan tributary relations see Murai et al., Nichi-Min kankei. 27 Hamashita, “Rekidai hōan.”

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Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

...... M 1N G

....... Pac ific Ocean

I

---Fig. 2.1: Map of maritime East Asia, c. 1620. Map by Inspiration Design House, Hong Kong.

Ryukyu itself lacked much to offer in trade, apart from horses. Instead, its principal port, Naha, became the grand emporium of Sino-Japanese trade, and also the main supplier of South Seas goods to both the Chinese and Japanese markets. Chinese coin—now mostly imitations of Song coin privately minted by entrepreneurs in Fujian and Ryukyu—remained the staple of Sino-Japanese commerce. Naha, located on a large island in the middle of an excellent natural harbor, flourished as a multinational merchant enclave: the port was divided between a walled Chinese settlement, Kumemura, adjacent to the wharves and customs house, and Wakasamachi, populated by Japanese merchants and native islanders, at a farther remove (see a map of

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TOINII

I.W!'n!Ullu

',

(~:

...lle_,)

:

Fig. 2.2: Map of Naha, Ryukyu islands, fifteenth century. Map by Inspiration Design House, Hong Kong. The Ryukyu kingdom prospered as the crossroads of maritime trade between Ming China and Japan. Both Chinese and Japanese merchants settled at the port of Naha on Okinawa, the main island of Ryukyu, but the location of the Chinese settlement of Kumemura at the center of Naha reflected China’s pre-eminent position in Ryukyu’s foreign trade and diplomatic relations.

Naha, Fig. 2.2). A causeway connected Naha to the mainland and the royal capital of Shuri, situated about 5 kilometers away on bluffs overlooking the harbor.28 The vital importance of Ryukyu as a conduit for Chinese and Southeast Asian imports sparked fierce competition among Japan’s leading daimyo. In the aftermath of the Ōnin War (1467–77) and the subsequent decline in the power of the Ashikaga shoguns, the Hosokawa clan attained political pre-eminence in Kyoto. The number of Ryukyu ships voyaging to Japan declined precipitously. Instead, merchants based in Sakai (modern Osaka) and licensed by the Hosokawa took over the Ryukyu-Japan trade. However, the Hosokawa effort to monopolize foreign trade was challenged by the Ōuchi daimyo, based in western Japan. In the early sixteenth century the Ōuchi and their clients, the Hakata merchants, gained the upper hand in trade relations with both Ryukyu and Ming China. The struggle between the Ōuchi and the Hosokawa culminated in 1523, when the two daimyo sent competing tribute missions to China. Violence broke out among the rival Japanese groups after they landed at Ningbo, prompting the Ming court to sever all diplomatic exchanges with Japan. In 1539, the 28 Uezato, “Formation of the Port City.”

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Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

Ōuchi dispatched another embassy to Ningbo and succeeded in renewing the tributary trade protocols. But by that time the winds of transformative change already were sweeping over the maritime world of East Asia.29

The sixteenth-century transformation of the East Asian maritime world In the mid-sixteenth century three new developments fundamentally reshaped the international economy of East Asia: (1) the rapid growth of China’s domestic economy, spurring commercialization and intensifying the demand for silver as a monetary medium; (2) the arrival of the Portuguese and the formation of a global economy linking Asia, Europe, and Spain’s colonial empire in the Americas; and (3) the emergence of “port polity” emporia that derived their economic strength and political independence from maritime trade rather than agrarian produce and revenues. These developments had profound repercussions for trade networks, merchant communities, and commodity production, and also for political power and cultural exchange. The powerful lure of trade exerted intense pressure on the Ming tributary trade system. The Ming state’s efforts to enforce its maritime ban incited violent reprisals— and impelled the rapid dissemination of gunpowder weapons introduced by the Portuguese. Finally, in 1567, the Ming was forced to rescind the embargo. The massive quantities of Japanese and American silver that flowed into China restructured trade networks and propelled the development of new institutional mechanisms for conducting international trade. Port polities sprang up to seize economic and political advantage from these changed circumstances, and for a time at least offered an alternative to the political model of China’s bureaucratically ruled agrarian empire. China only slowly recovered from the debilitating effects of Hongwu’s anti-market policies. By the mid-sixteenth century, however, rising agricultural and handicraft production had fostered rural-urban exchange, regional specialization, the formation of empire-wide staple markets (most strikingly for cotton textiles, a wholly new industry), new institutions for finance and business organization, and spectacular urban growth. But given the state’s inability to sustain either paper money or bronze coinage, the Ming economy had come to rely on uncoined silver to lubricate the wheels of commerce. The discovery of abundant silver deposits in Iwami, in western Honshu, coupled with the introduction of Chinese mercury cupellation techniques for silver refining, touched off a boom in silver mining in Japan beginning in the 1520s. Yet little of this silver could reach China within the confines of the tributary trade system. The enormous profits to be made in conveying silver to China instigated a new phase of “Japanese piracy” (Wokou) activity. In contrast to the predatory pirates of the fourteenth century, these Wokou bands consisted of transnational 29 For a digest of the Hosokawa-Ōuchi rivalry in foreign trade see Murai et al., Nichi-Min kankei, pp. 12–18.

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groups of seafarers (mostly Chinese, at least to judge by their leaders) operating out of ports in southern Japan or the islands off the Zhejiang coast. In the late 1540s the government’s campaign to suppress smuggling escalated into full-scale war between the Ming and the Wokou chiefs. The Ming attempts to eradicate the Wokou and the smuggling trade were complicated by the arrival of the Portuguese in East Asian waters in the 1510s. Rebuffed in their initial attempts to negotiate trade privileges with the Ming, the Portuguese allied with Wokou chiefs to gain a share of the lucrative trade in Japanese silver. The Portuguese also shifted the balance of power by introducing more sophisticated gunpowder weapons, including naval cannon and muskets. After stumbling upon the Japanese archipelago in 1543, the Portuguese began to pursue trade opportunities with regional rulers in Kyushu. In 1549, the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier received an enthusiastic welcome by Ōtomo Sōrin at the latter’s capital at Bungo Funai, on the northeast coast of Kyushu (see Fig. 2.3, a map of Kyushu and its major ports at about 1580). Funai was a bustling center of domestic trade where silver could be readily obtained. But a year later the Matsura daimyo in western Kyushu allowed the Portuguese to establish a trading post at the port of Hirado, which already was serving as a base for Wokou traders and offered more convenient access to silver-producing areas along the Sea of Japan.30 For its part the Ming government sought to drive a wedge between the Portuguese and the Wokou by granting the former permission to open a permanent trading base at Macau in 1557. Although the Portuguese had now gained a legitimate means to deliver Japanese silver to China (in exchange for Chinese silk yarn and fabrics, which comprised 80 percent of Chinese exports to Japan), Chinese demand vastly exceeded the capacities of the Portuguese traders. Chinese seafarers became increasingly brazen in defying the Ming prohibition of private overseas trade. The port of Yuegang in Fujian— whose “several ten thousand inhabitants have amassed great stores of rare goods from distant lands obtained in trade with Japan to the east, Siam to the west, and the Portuguese to the south”—was said to be the home port of 100 to 200 ocean-­ going vessels.31 Local elites in the coastal regions of South China, weary of the Wokou de­predations and eager to profit from foreign trade themselves, clamored for an end to the embargo. Finally, in 1567, the governor of Fujian persuaded the court to rescind the ban on foreign trade, subject to a range of conditions: Chinese ship captains had to obtain licenses, the number of which was fixed by quota; export of strategic materials such as sulfur, copper, and iron was forbidden; and Chinese merchants were required to return home within a year’s time. Most importantly, the court retained the prohibition against direct trade with Japan. 30 On the foreign trade initiatives of the Ōtomo and Matsura daimyo see respectively Itō, “Ōuchi-shi no gaikō,” and Toyama, Matsura shi no Hirado. 31 Citation from von Glahn, Fountain of Fortune, p. 117.

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Sea of Japan

East Chins Sea

Fig. 2.3: Map of the principal daimyo domains of Kyushu, c. 1580. Map by Inspiration Design House, Hong Kong. For much of the sixteenth century the Ōtomo clan dominated Japan’s foreign trade through its control of the ports of Bungo Funai, the domain capital, and Hakata. Although Portuguese traders initially focused their activities at Bungo Funai, they later relocated to a new trading base at Hirado, under the protection of the Matsura daimyo, and then to Nagasaki, which was directly governed by the shoguns.

Despite these restrictions, a new era had begun, not only in maritime East Asia, but in global trade. In addition to imports of Japanese silver, American silver began to flow from Europe into Asia, and eventually to China. In 1571 the Spanish founded a trading base at Manila, opening a trans-Pacific conduit for the importation of silver from Peru and Mexico to the Chinese market. Although Manila, like Macau,

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nominally was a colonial beachhead for a far-flung European trading empire, by 1600 the vast majority of its inhabitants were Chinese immigrants, who virtually monopolized Manila’s trade with southern China. European consumers avidly desired artisanal wares from China such as porcelain and silk. But it was the profits generated by delivering silver to China that was the mainspring for creating the first truly global trading system.32 The transformation of maritime East Asia wrought by the globalization of trade networks produced both winners and losers. Chief among the casualties of the new order was the Ryukyu kingdom. Ryukyu’s salience in commerce and shipping already had begun to slip in the late fifteenth century, when Japanese vessels took over trade between the Okinawan archipelago and Japanese ports. Growing economic dependence on Japan was reflected in changes in monetary circulation. Rather than supplying Ming coin to the Japanese market, Ryukyu traders began to adopt the debased imitations of Chinese coins that had begun to proliferate in southern Kyushu in the late fifteenth century. A Chinese ambassador who visited Ryukyu in 1534 reported that the inhabitants exclusively used small mumon coins—privately minted blank coins lacking any inscription at all—cast in Japan that were worth only one-tenth the value of standard coin.33 After the Ming lifted its ban on maritime trade in 1567 Ryukyu’s role as the intermediary for Sino-Japanese trade quickly became obsolete. Ryukyu’s marginalization within the East Asian maritime trade also undermined its political independence: in 1609 the Shimazu daimyo in southern Kyushu imposed de facto hegemony over Ryukyu, a step that eventually would lead to the island kingdom’s incorporation into the Japanese nation-state. The demise of Ryukyu’s emporium trade also was accelerated by the emergence of a new emporium for Sino-Japanese trade at Hội An, along the central coast of Vietnam. In the 1520s the Đại Việt kingdom was rent by power struggles among its leading families, resulting in the usurpation of the throne by Mạc Đăng Dung and the founding of the Mạc dynasty (1527–92) in Tonkin in northern Vietnam. The central and southern portions of the kingdom nominally remained under the rule of Lê emperors, sustained by the military support of the Nguyễn and Trịnh lords. However, in 1558 this alliance unraveled, and the Nguyễn established a separate regime, Quang Nam, with its capital at Phú Xuân (near modern Hué). The Trịnh lords regained control of Tonkin from the Mạc in 1592, and thereafter reduced the Lê emperors to puppet figureheads. Civil war between the Nguyễn and Trịnh regimes would persist down to 1673, when a tense but enduring truce was declared. The Nguyễn territories along Vietnam’s rugged central coast, in contrast to the broad alluvial plains of Tonkin, were ill-suited for rice agriculture. Lacking a substantial agrarian base, the Nguyễn adopted a mercantilist strategy of encouraging foreign 32 Flynn and Giráldez, “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon.’” 33 Chen, Shi Liuqiu lu, p. 32a. See also von Glahn, “Chinese Coin and Changes,” pp. 644–47, 653–55.

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trade as a source of revenue. Hội An, about 10 kilometers downriver from Phú Xuân, was declared a free port, open to all traders. In the early 1590s the Nguyễn court, using Chinese merchants as intermediaries, dispatched letters to the “king of Japan” seeking to establish trading relations.34 Although nothing came of these gestures, in the early seventeenth century Hội An became the main crossroads for Sino-Japanese trade, succeeding to the emporium role formerly performed by Naha.35 Following the founding of the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan in 1601, Hội An became the principal destination of the “red seal ships,” the overseas traders officially licensed by the shogunal government. Like Naha before it, Hội An also became a multinational merchant enclave, inhabited mostly by Japanese and Chinese traders (see a Japanese painting depicting the arrival of a Japanese “red seal” ship in Hôi An, Plate 4). A Jesuit missionary who resided at Phú Xuân during 1617–22 described Hội An in the following words: “[…] there are two towns, the one of the Chinese, and the other of the Japanese; Each of them having his own Quarter apart, and their several governors, and living after their own manner; That is, the Chinese according to their own particular laws and customs of China, and the Japanese according to theirs.”36 After the suspension of the red seal ship trade in 1633 the Dutch replaced the Japanese, and the emporium trade at Hội An continued to flourish. As we have seen, in the late fifteenth century the Ashikaga shogunate had relinquished its tributary trade privileges with Ming China to powerful daimyo houses. The Hosokawa daimyo and their clients, the Sakai merchants, monopolized the tributary trade in the decades after the Ōnin War, but were superseded by the Ōuchi, who gained control of the main international trading port of Hakata, in the early sixteenth century. As the Wokou disturbances intensified in the 1540s, regional rulers in Kyushu—among them the Ōtomo, Sagara, Shimazu, and Matsura daimyo—competed to secure trading alliances with the Wokou, the Portuguese, and the Ming court. “Chinatowns” (Tōjinmachi) inhabited not only by seafaring traders but also artisans, doctors, and shopkeepers sprang up in Hakata, Hirado, Gotō, Bungo Funai, Usuki, and other Kyushu ports. Ōtomo Sōrin (1530–1587) was perhaps the most aggressive of the Japanese daimyo in trying to extract political gain from maritime trade. Sōrin’s efforts to make Bungo Funai the hub of Japan’s foreign trade were part of his grand political ambition to become Japan’s paramount ruler. The Ōtomo house had long been involved in foreign trade at Hakata, and had outfitted one of the ships dispatched in the infamous 1453 trade mission to China. In 1544 Sōrin’s father, Ōtomo Yoshiaki (1502–1550), 34 See the recently discovered letter, dated 1591, in the archives of the Kyushu National Museum: “Annan koku fukutodō Fukugi kō Guen shokan” 安南国副都堂福義侯阮書簡, reproduced in Kyūshū kokuritsu hakubutsukan, Betonamu monogatari, p. 105, pl. 79. 35 Iwao, Nanyō Nihonmachi, pp. 20–84; Kikuchi, “Betonamu no minatomachi.” Lockard (“The Sea Common to All,” pp. 234–39) references the Western scholarship on Hội An. 36 Borri, Cochin-China, ch. 8 (no pag.). On overseas Chinese merchant communities in maritime East Asia during this period, see James K. Chin’s essay in this volume.

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boldly dispatched his own embassy to Ningbo, but his entreaty was rebuffed by the Ming court for lack of proper credentials. Two subsequent missions sent by Yoshiaki likewise were refused entry at Ningbo. In 1551, after Sōrin succeeded his father, a new opportunity presented itself when the current Ōuchi daimyo was assassinated by one of his retainers and Sōrin maneuvered to place his brother Yoshinaga as official head of the Ōuchi clan. In 1553 Sōrin and Yoshinaga sent a joint embassy to China that claimed to represent “the king of Japan.” But this expedition too was turned away. Another ship sent by Sōrin to Ningbo in 1557 was seized and burned by the Ming authorities under suspicion of being a pirate vessel. Sōrin continued to pursue other options. He allowed the Jesuits to found a mission and hospital in Bungo Funai, and later converted to Christianity, a decision that surely had political motivations. He also dispatched an embassy to establish trade relations with Siam in 1579. But Sōrin’s political ambitions fell short. After a devastating military defeat at the hands of the Shimazu, who captured and razed Bungo Funai in 1586, Sōrin appealed to Toyotomi Hideyoshi for assistance. Hideyoshi’s Kyushu campaign of 1587 ended in the subjugation of both the Shimazu and Ōtomo houses to Hideyoshi’s regime, extinguishing the last prospects for independent port polities in the Japanese archipelago.37 Bungo Funai’s brief efflorescence as an emporium of international trade faded after the Shimazu warriors torched the city in 1586. The transnational character of Funai during Sōrin’s heyday was reflected in its physical layout: the “Chinatown” (Tōjinmachi) was located adjacent to the daimyo’s compound at the city’s center, with the Christian church grouped together with the major temples and shrines at its western edge (Fig. 2.4). The grand mansion that directly faced the daimyo’s compound is believed to have been the home of the merchant Nakaya Sōetsu.38 Contemporaries described Sōetsu’s father, a man of humble origins who made a fortune as a sake merchant before venturing into overseas trade, as “the richest man in western Japan.” Sōetsu, who had close relations with an extensive network of Chinese merchants and artisans, was said to have been the commanding voice in negotiating prices with foreign merchants who came to Funai, and his own overseas trading ventures traveled as far as Cambodia. The Nakaya family also had branch operations in Osaka, Sakai, and Kyoto to facilitate their remittance, financing, and merchandising activities.39 Bungo Funai’s far-flung connections to overseas markets have been confirmed by recent archaeological investigations, which have uncovered abundant remains of utilitarian Vietnamese, Thai, and Burmese ceramics as well as fine Chinese and Korean porcelains. (For more on Sōrin, see Hiroko Nishida’s essay in this volume.) There is some evidence that Funai’s residents continued to engage in foreign trade after the demise of the Ōtomo regime. For example, a contract dated 1617 records the loan of 1.1 kanme (41 kilograms) of silver lent by a Chinese investor to a Japanese merchant in 37 Itō, “Ōuchi-shi no gaikō.” 38 Tsubone, “Namban bōeki jidai.” 39 Kage, Ōuchi to Ōtomo.

72 

Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

"

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Fig. 2.4: Map of Bungo Funai, late sixteenth century. Map by Inspiration Design House, Hong Kong. Ōtomo Sōrin sought to enhance his political power by cultivating trading alliances with Chinese and Portuguese merchants. This late sixteenth-century map shows the daimyo’s compound (1) at the center of the daimyo capital of Bungo Funai. Funai’s “Chinatown” (Tōjinmachi) (2) was located between the daimyo’s residence and Upper Market street (4), the main business district. The Jesuit mission (3) was placed among a row of Buddhist temples on the western edge of the city.

Funai to underwrite a trading voyage to Hội An.40 But the restrictions on foreign trade enacted by the Tokugawa regime beginning in 1635 put a definitive end to Funai’s career as an international port. Port polities such as Bungo Funai and their multinational merchant communities had thrived amid the convulsive “creative destruction” of political instability and economic change that erupted in many parts of maritime East Asia in the sixteenth 40 “Bungoya Shō Jirō nagegane shōmon” 豊後屋庄次良抛銀証文, in Fukuoka-ken, Fukuoka-ken shi shiryō, vol. 6, pp. 163–64.

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century, including Japan, Vietnam, and Java. Over the course of the seventeenth century, however, resurgent agrarian states absorbed these port polities and subjected maritime trade to tightening political control.

Maritime East Asia in the seventeenth century At the turn of the seventeenth century, barriers to foreign trade were falling everywhere across maritime East Asia. The ensuing expansion of trade accelerated with the arrival of Dutch and Spanish as well as Portuguese merchants, all eager to profit from China’s voracious demand for silver. Although Hideyoshi’s establishment of unified rule extinguished the prospects of independent port polities in the Japanese archipelago, Japan’s new rulers—notably Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa shogunate (1601–1868)— recognized the fiscal, strategic, and technological benefits of foreign trade. For three decades maritime trade rose to unprecedented levels. But from the mid-1630s a reversal began to set in. The Tokugawa adopted a series of policies that severely restricted foreign trade and contact. The fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644 and the fledgling Qing dynasty’s punitive policies against the Zheng merchant princes, who established an independent base in Taiwan, sharply curtailed China’s foreign trade. Economic depressions that afflicted both Europe and China in the second half of seventeenth century had negative repercussions on foreign trade as well. To trace the trajectory of the rise and fall of maritime trade in East Asia during the seventeenth century, I will focus on two stories: Japan’s red seal ships and the Zheng merchant princes in Taiwan. From the outset, the first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu (r. 1601–16), followed in the footsteps of his predecessors in pursuing diplomatic and commercial relations with other parts of maritime East Asia. In letters dispatched in 1601 to the Nguyễn court and the Spanish captain in Manila, Ieyasu insisted that only Japanese ships bearing licenses issued by his government should be permitted to trade in their ports, while at the same time guaranteeing safe passage to foreign vessels.41 All vessels based in Japan—both Japanese and foreign—departing on overseas trading expeditions were obliged to obtain “red seal” licenses that specified their destination.42 Most of the red seal licenses were granted to Japanese merchant houses, but bakufu (shogunal government) officials, Chinese merchants, and Europeans residing in Japan also obtained them.43 As Table 2.1 shows, during the three decades (1604–35) this system was in operation, Vietnamese ports were the main destination of red seal ships (more than a third of the total), but they also frequented Siam, Manila, and Cambodia.44 41 Katō, “Oranda Rengō Higashi.” 42 Iwao, Shuinsen bōeki, remains the unsurpassed study of the red seal licensing system. 43 Before they were prohibited from mounting such voyages in 1611, Kyushu daimyo also were actively engaged in red seal trade. 44 Table includes all voyages for which destination information exists; the actual total of red seal licenses was higher.

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Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

Table 2.1 “Red seal” ship licenses, 1604–35 Destination

“Red seal” licenses

Percentage of total

75 55 54 47 44 36 18 7 6 11 353

21 16 16 13 12 10 5 2 2 3

Cochin (Hôi An) Siam (Ayudhya) Manila Annam (Tonkin) Cambodia Taiwan Macau Pattani (Malay Peninsula) Champa Other Total Source: Iwao, Shuinsen bōeki, p. 147, table 4.

The voyages of the red seal ships delineated a new trade network connecting Japan to the wider maritime world of East Asia. Still barred from direct trade with China, Japanese merchants instead utilized ports such as Hội An, Tonkin, Manila, and even Ayudhya to trade with their Chinese counterparts. In all of these ports—as we have already seen in the case of Hội An—“Chinatowns” and “Japantowns” (Nihonmachi) appeared adjacent to each other (see a map of Ayudhya, Thailand, in the late seventeenth century, showing this layout, Fig. 2.5; refer also to the painting of Hôi An, Vietnam, Plate 4). In the 1620s, as many as 3,000 Japanese and over 20,000 Chinese resided in Manila, compared to only several hundred Spaniards.45 In the latter days of the red seal trade, Spanish, Dutch, and Chinese merchants based in Taiwan also became conspicuous trading partners. Absent from this new configuration of trade routes, however, was Ryukyu. On a Japanese rendition of a Portuguese nautical chart prepared for the Kadoya merchant house of Nagasaki, a dotted line indicating the trade route used by the Kadoya ship on its voyage to Hội An runs through the Taiwan Straits, bypassing Ryukyu entirely (Fig. 2.6). The Tokugawa government also reconfigured Japan’s maritime links to the outside world. As mentioned earlier, in the 1560s Hirado displaced Bungo Funai as the focus of Portuguese traders coming to Japan, but Hirado soon was eclipsed by nearby Nagasaki. Initially a small fishing port, the town of Nagasaki grew up around a burgeoning local community of Christian converts. In 1570 the local daimyo, himself a 45 Tremml-Werner, Spain, China, and Japan, pp. 303, 310.

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Fig. 2.5: Simon de la Loubère, “A Map of the City of Siam (i.e. Ayudhya).” Printed illustration from A New Historical Description of the Kingdom of Siam (London, 1693). Ayudhya, the capital and principal port of the kingdom of Siam, flourished as a center of maritime trade. This map of Ayudhya, drawn by a member of an embassy dispatched by the French king Louis XIV to the Siamese court in 1687, shows the separate enclaves of foreign merchants—including Chinese, Japanese, Malays, Burmese (Peguans), and Vietnamese (Cochinchinois) as well as Portuguese and Dutch traders—surrounding the capital city.

convert, granted the Portuguese the use of Nagasaki as an anchorage. From this time forward Portuguese traders exclusively relied on Nagasaki as their gateway to the Japanese market. Hideyoshi issued new regulations in 1588 that reclaimed the central government’s monopoly on foreign trade and brought Nagasaki under his direct control. Under the Tokugawa regime as well Nagasaki was directly administered by the shogunate. Despite restrictions—for example, the shogun’s agents had priority in purchasing Chinese silk goods—Nagasaki’s commerce boomed, and in the heyday of the red seal voyages the city’s population, including its Portuguese and Chinese residents, reached 25,000.46 The Tokugawa promotion of foreign trade proved to be a boon especially for the Dutch, who became a significant force in Asian trade after the founding of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC) in 1602. In 1609 Ieyasu permitted the VOC to establish its own trading post at Hirado. Initially, however, Hirado served more as a pirate’s lair, providing a haven for Dutch ships preying 46 For the origins of the Portuguese settlement at Nagasaki and the city’s development as an international port under Hideyoshi’s rule see Nagasaki kenshi henshū iinkai, Nagasaki kenshi, pp. 36–70.

76  .. . ,

Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800 • • •

•

•. . ..

·~

,

1~..-

. ,. - / ·~~~ J-'~J ' -

' i

Fig. 2.6: Unknown artist, a nautical chart of the Kadoya merchant house, Japan. A translation of a Portuguese nautical chart (a Portuguese heraldic emblem appears as a compass rose at center). This map of the East Asian trading world was prepared for the Kadoya merchant house. Under Tokugawa patronage, the Kadoya became one of the most prominent firms engaged in the “red seal” overseas trade. A faint dotted line indicates the navigation route used by the Kadoya’s vessel to travel from Nagasaki to Hội An in central Vietnam.

on Portuguese and Chinese vessels, than a trade emporium.47 Japanese protection provided crucial assistance in enabling the VOC to gain a foothold in Asian maritime trade; for example, the VOC ship (actually a Portuguese vessel seized and renamed by the Dutch) that traveled from Hirado to Siam in 1615 carried a large complement of Japanese warriors as well as its cargo of silver, weapons, and armor.48 But the VOC 47 The English also established a trading post at Hirado, in 1613. But the English venture failed to turn a profit, and it was abandoned in 1624. 48 Katō, “Oranda Rengō Higashi.”

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failed to make much headway in the Japanese market before 1624, when the Dutch erected Fort Zeelandia in southern Taiwan and gained access to Chinese goods via merchants, including the Zheng family, operating in Fujian. The Tokugawa regime finally achieved undisputed political supremacy over the archipelago in 1615. Political consolidation eased the shogunate’s military and fiscal pressures, diminishing the value of foreign trade as a source of revenue and supplies. Following the death of Ieyasu in 1616 the Tokugawa leadership refocused its energies on maintaining social stability by enforcing a rigid, rule-bound status order. This political vision increasingly deemed concentration of mercantile wealth anathema to warrior supremacy. So, too, were Christian communities that set themselves apart from the rest of Japanese society. During the 1630s the growing perception of foreigners as destabilizing forces impelled the adoption of increasingly restrictive measures to insulate Japan from the outside world. By 1641, the Tokugawa government had revoked the red seal trading privileges and forbid Japanese to venture abroad; expelled the Portuguese and harshly enforced the long-standing proscriptions against Christians; relocated Dutch and Chinese traders to the single port of Nagasaki (where they were confined to prison-like compounds on the margins of the city); and created a monopsony on the import of Chinese silks by obliging foreign merchants to conduct business with a cartel of designated Japanese merchants. Although these so-called “seclusion” edicts (a term coined in the eighteenth century) were primarily aimed at preservation of domestic order, they also reveal a desire to continue foreign trade, albeit under the control of and on terms favorable to the shogunate.49 By eliminating competition for Dutch and Chinese merchants, however, the edicts inadvertently strengthened their hand in commercial negotiations. After the seclusion edicts took effect Taiwan became Japan’s main source of Chinese goods. The object of Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese colonization since the 1620s, Taiwan by 1642 had mostly come under Dutch control. The VOC began to develop Taiwan into a colonial base, cultivating sugar cane (using immigrant Chinese labor) and bartering with the aboriginal population for deerskins, both of which were export commodities destined for Japan. But in the mid-1650s a struggle broke out between the VOC and the Zheng family of merchant princes for control of the island that ultimately culminated in the expulsion of the Dutch in 1662.50 The Zheng family exemplified the transnational merchant entrepreneurs of this age.51 Zheng Zhilong (d. 1661) was born in Quanzhou and worked as a translator in Macau and Taiwan before joining the retinue of the Chinese merchant Li Dan in Hirado, where Zheng took a Japanese wife. Apprehended by the Ming navy for smuggling, 49 Foreign trade—and also much diplomatic intercourse—with what the Tokugawa regarded as tributary subjects was delegated to domain governments on the frontiers: Satsuma (with Ryukyu), Tsushima (with Korea), and Matsumae (with Ezochi, i.e. Hokkaido and the other northern islands). 50 On Dutch rule in Taiwan, see Andrade, How Taiwan Became Chinese. 51 On the Zheng family and their merchant empire, see Hang, Conflict and Commerce.

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Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

Zheng offered to assist the Ming in suppressing clandestine traffic between Japan and China. During the final decades of the Ming, Zheng Zhilong became the paramount military commander along the coastal frontier while also building up a formidable merchant marine based in Anhai and Xiamen. Although Zheng Zhilong surrendered to the Manchus in 1646, his son Zheng Chenggong (1624–1662) refused to capitulate, and instead carved out an independent dominion in coastal Fujian. Throughout the 1640s–50s the Zheng merchant fleet operated with impunity and dominated Sino-Japanese trade: of fifty-six Chinese vessels making port at Nagasaki in 1654, forty-one hailed from the Zhengs’ home port of Anhai; in 1658, twenty-eight of forty-seven Chinese ships arriving at Nagasaki were dispatched by the Zheng.52 In 1661, the Manchu rulers of the new Qing government—who had enacted a prohibition against overseas trade in 1655—ordered the removal of coastal populations in Fujian and Guangdong to the interior (creating a no-man’s-land of 18–30 kilometers along the coast) in an effort to halt clandestine contact with the Zheng. This action forced the Zheng to relocate to Taiwan, where they ousted the Dutch and re-established their maritime trade with Japan, Manila, and Southeast Asia. Under the leadership of Zheng Chenggong’s son Zheng Jing the family dominated emporium trade at Nagasaki and Manila.53 But in 1683 Qing military forces gained the upper hand, capturing Taiwan (which was annexed to the Manchu empire) and extinguishing the Zheng clan and their commercial enterprise. After this triumph, however, the Qing immediately restored free trade. Chinese merchants flocked to Nagasaki, where, much to the dismay of the Tokugawa, eighty-five Chinese vessels arrived in 1685. Beginning in the late 1660s the Tokugawa government, alarmed by soaring prices for Chinese silks, had already adopted a series of measures intended to staunch the drain of silver abroad. Debasement of Japan’s silver currency—and, more importantly, the onset of economic depression in China (the so-called “Kangxi Depression” of 1660–1695)—sharply curtailed the Chinese appetite for Japanese silver, and by 1700 silver exports from Japan had ceased.54 Thus the second half of the seventeenth century marked a transition to a new phase in the history of maritime East Asia. Political consolidation by new regimes in China and Japan reasserted the pre-eminence of the agrarian bureaucratic state as the paradigm of political economy. Both the Manchu-Qing empire and the Tokugawa bakufu resurrected the Ming tributary model of sovereignty and diplomacy, but in contrast to the Ming practice trading privileges were decoupled from tributary relations. Although the Qing government would restrict European traders to the single port of Guangzhou in 1757, foreign trade grew at a far more brisk pace in subsequent 52 Iwao, “Kinsei nisshi bōeki,” p. 995. 53 Yamawaki, Nagasaki no Tōjin; Hang, Conflict and Commerce, pp. 163–75, 188–209. 54 Tashiro, “Foreign Trade in the Tokugawa.” On the Kangxi Depression in China, see Kishimoto-Nakayama, “Kangxi Depression”; on the depression’s effects on Chinese overseas trade see von Glahn, “Cycles of Silver,” pp. 39–44.

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decades. As we have seen, it was not the seclusion edicts issued in the 1640s, but rather the protectionist policies adopted by the Tokugawa government beginning in 1668, that curtailed Japan’s foreign trade. By 1700 the port polities that had thrived during the celebrated “Age of Commerce” in maritime East Asia (1400–1650) had all but vanished. Ryukyu and the Kyushu daimyo domains had been absorbed into the hegemonic Tokugawa political order; the Qing empire had annexed Taiwan and eliminated freebooting traders like the Wokou from its maritime periphery; and the Nguyễn regime in Vietnam, after the cessation of hostilities with the Trịnh in 1672, shifted its attention southward, expanding into the Mekong delta and developing an agrarian economic base centered on rice cultivation. At the end of the eighteenth century the Nguyễn rulers would efface their origins as a maritime port polity and thoroughly embrace the Chinese model of agrarian bureaucratic state, recasting themselves as an imperial dynasty reigning over a renascent Đại Việt empire. Transnational merchant communities vanished along with the port polities that had nurtured them. The “Japantowns” that had germinated across maritime East Asia during the heyday of the red seal ships withered away. The new order was symbolized by Nagasaki, where Chinese and Dutch traders were confined to separate walled compounds and forbidden to intermix with Japanese residents. This model of containment—intended to allow trade but exclude cultural interaction—was later replicated in the “canton system” imposed by the Qing government in 1757. In the eighteenth century, transnational merchant communities persisted most strongly in European colonial enclaves such as Macau and Manila, and in the port towns ringing the Southeast Asian seas that swelled with Chinese immigrants after the onset of the Chinese diaspora beginning around 1740. In the nineteenth century, the restructuring of East Asia’s maritime trade under the new institutional order established by European colonial powers would also engender a new paradigm of the port city— entrepôts such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai—and foster a new kind of cosmopolitanism as well.

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Kishimoto-Nakayama, Mio. “The Kangxi Depression and Early Qing Local Markets.” Modern China 10.2 (1984): 226–56. Kyūshū kokuritsu hakubutsukan 九州国立博物館 ed. Betonamu monogatari ベトナム物語. Fukuoka: TVQ Kyushu Broadcasting Co./Nishinippon Shimbun Co., 2013. Lockard, Craig A. “‘The Sea Common to All’: Maritime Frontiers, Port Cities, and Chinese Traders in the Southeast Asian Age of Commerce, ca. 1400–1750.” Journal of World History 21.2 (2010): 219–47. Murai, Shōsuke 村井章介. “Jisha zōeiryō Tōsen o minaosu: bōeki, bunka kōryū, chinbotsu” 寺社造営料唐 船と見なおす：貿易、文化交流、沈没. In Minatomachi to kaiiki sekai 港町と海域世界, ed. Murai Shōsuke 村井章介, pp. 113–43. Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 2005. Murai Shōsuke 村井章介 et al., eds. Nichi-Min kankei shi kenkyū nyūmon: Ajia no naka no kenminsen 日明関 係史入門：アジアのなかの遣明船. Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2015. Nagasaki kenshi henshū iinkai 長崎県史編集委員会. Nagasaki kenshi: taigai kōshō hen 長崎県史：対外 交渉篇. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1985. Pires, Tomé. The Summa Oriental of Tomé Pires and the Book of Francisco Rodrigues. London: Hakluyt Society, 1944. Reid, Anthony. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680: Expansion and Crisis. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. So, Billy K.L. Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China: The South Fukien Pattern, 946–1368. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Area Center, 2000. Tai, Yew Seng. “Ming Gap and the Revival of Commercial Production of Blue and White Porcelain in China.” Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 31 (2011): 85–92. Tashiro, Kazui. “Foreign Trade in the Tokugawa Period—Particularly with Korea.” In The Economic History of Japan: 1600–1990, vol. 1: Emergence of Economic Society in Japan, 1600–1859, ed. Akira Hayami, Osamu Saitō, and Ronald P. Toby, pp. 105–18. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Toyama, Mikio 外山幹夫. Matsura shi no Hirado bōeki 松浦氏の平戸貿易. Tokyo: Kokusho Kōbunkan, 1988. Tremml-Werner, Birgit. Spain, China, and Japan in Manila, 1571–1644: Local Comparisons and Global Connections. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015. Tsubone, Shinya 坪根伸也. “Namban bōeki jidai no Bungo Funai: shutsudo ibutsu yōsō kara mita kokusai bōeki toshi Bungo Funai no hyōka” 南蛮貿易時代の豊後府内：出土遺物様相からみた国際貿易 都市豊後府内の評価. In Ōuchi to Ōtomo: chūsei nishi Nihon no nidai daimyō 大内と大友：中世西日 本の二大大名, ed. Kage Toshio 鹿毛敏夫, pp. 181–218. Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2013. Uezato, Takashi. “The Formation of the Port City of Naha in Ryukyu and the World of Maritime Asia: From the Perspective of a Japanese Network.” Acta Asiatica 95 (2008): 57–77. von Glahn, Richard. “Chinese Coin and Changes in Monetary Preferences in Maritime East Asia in the 15th– 16th Centuries.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 57.5 (2014): 629–68. von Glahn, Richard. “Cycles of Silver in Chinese Monetary History.” In The Economic History of Lower Yangzi Delta in Late Imperial China: Connecting Money, Markets, and Institutions, ed. Billy K.L. So, pp. 17–71. London: Routledge, 2013. von Glahn, Richard. The Economic History of China from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. von Glahn, Richard. Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China,1000–1700. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. von Glahn, Richard. “The Ningbo-Hakata Merchant Network and the Reorientation of East Asian Maritime Trade, 1150–1300.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 74.2 (2014): 251–81. Wade, Geoff. “An Early Age of Commerce in Southeast Asia, 900–1300 CE.” Journal of South East Asian Studies 40.2 (2009): 221–65. Wang Zan and Cai Fang, eds., Hongzhi Wenzhou fuzhi弘治溫州府志. 1503; reprint Shanghai: Shanghai gu ji shu dian, 1990.

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Wicks, Robert S. Money, Markets, and Trade in Early Southeast Asia: The Development of Indigenous Monetary Systems to AD 1400. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Southeast Asia Programs Publications, 1998. Yamawaki, Teijirō 山脇悌二郎. Nagasaki no Tōjin bōeki 長崎の唐人貿易. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1964. Yokkaichi, Yasuhiro 四日市康博. “Chinese and Muslim Diasporas and the Indian Ocean Trade Network under Mongol Hegemony.” In The East Asian “Mediterranean”: Maritime Crossroads of Culture, Commerce, and Human Migration, ed. Angela Schottenhammer, pp. 73–102. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008. Yokkaichi, Yasuhiro 四日市康博, ed. Mono kara mita kaiiki Ajia shi: Mongoru Sō Gen jidai no Ajia to Nihon no kōryū モノから見た海域アジア史：モンゴル—宋元時代のアジアと日本の交流. Fukuoka: Kyushu Daigaku Shuppankai, 2008. Zhao, Gang. The Qing Opening to the Ocean: Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684–1757. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013.

About the author Richard von Glahn is a Professor of Chinese History at UCLA, where he began in 1987. He writes about the economic and social history of China, with a focus on the period 1000–1700 CE. His publications include four monographs in Chinese history, several edited books, and a co-authored textbook in world history. His research has been supported by a number of awards, including National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships (twice) and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His most recent book is The Economic History of China from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century (2016). Currently he is co-editing (with Debin Ma of the London School of Economics) The Cambridge Economic History of China, and serving as a senior editor for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia for Asian History, an online resource for scholars. He is particularly intrigued by the interrelationship between China’s monetary system and wider spheres of monetary circulation within Asia and on a global scale, and he is now embarking on a new project on the economic history of maritime East Asia from the ninth to the eighteenth centuries.

3. The junk trade and Hokkien merchant ­networks in maritime Asia, 1570–1760

James K. Chin Abstract This essay examines the role of the Chinese Hokkien merchants of South Fujian in maritime Asia from 1570 to 1760. The Hokkiens developed sojourning communities throughout East Asian and Southeast Asian ports. The Hokkien mercantile role on the Southern Japanese island of Kyūshū spans from about 1540 to 1760. In Manila, the Philippines, it is shown that diaspora Chinese markets were critical to the daily life of the city. In the ports of Bantam and Batavia on Java British and Dutch merchants invested in Chinese trade enterprises, and were supported in some cases by Chinese financiers. The importance of the Hokkien traders, and the intercultural aspects of daily life in these mercantile ports becomes abundantly clear in these cases. Keywords: Hokkien merchants; Fujian economy; Chinese maritime trade; Chinese diaspora culture; merchant networks; Chinese merchants in Indonesia

Situated on the southeastern periphery of China, Fujian has an area of 120,140 square kilometers with its coast extending about 3,051 kilometers dotted with 125 harbors and 1,202 islands. Throughout its history, Fujian has stood out from imperial China in many respects, regarding its orientation towards maritime activities overseas in particular. Thus, there is an old saying in China, “Min zai haizhong” (閩在海中) or Fujian is in the sea, implying that the local economy and daily life of Fujian have been closely tied to maritime trade. The people of south Fujian, better known as “Hokkiens,” have a long seafaring tradition. With the development of maritime trade, an increasing number of Hokkiens who sailed overseas for commercial reasons had to stay at foreign emporia temporarily, waiting for the monsoon winds for the return voyages. As a result, Hokkien sojourning communities gradually came into being in maritime Asia. While their commercial activities in some of the major ports of Southeast and East Asia have been examined, few studies have yet been done from the perspective of a regional maritime system, outlining the reach of the Hokkien

Bentley, Tamara H. (ed.), Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984677/ch03

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merchants overseas as a whole. The purpose of this chapter is thus to examine the Hokkien merchant group and their commercial activities in four leading emporia of Asia—i.e. Kyushu of Japan, Manila of the Philippines, and Bantam (also called Banten) and Batavia of Indonesia—with a focus on the far-flung Hokkien merchant networks.

The Hokkien trade with Kyushu The island of Kyushu of southern Japan, together with its natural harbors and numerous scattered islands, had since the early sixteenth century provided Hokkien maritime traders with excellent port bases for smuggling and sojourning. The history of the Hokkien trade with Kyushu can be divided into three periods. During the first, roughly from the 1540s to 1635, the Hokkien merchants were allowed to trade freely with their Japanese partners, and were able to sojourn at any port on Kyushu island with the encouragement of the local ryoshu or lord, which in turn created several sojourning communities, both large and small, in Kyushu. The second period was from 1635 to 1689 when the bakufu (幕府 shogunal government) ordered all foreign trading ships to use the port of Nagasaki, and restricted the Chinese merchants to that city. In 1689, the Tokugawa bakufu built a Tojin yashiki (唐人屋敷 Chinese quarter) in the village of Juzenji, Nagasaki, and ordered all sojourning Chinese to reside in this walled quarter under the close watch of the Tokugawa authorities. The third period after 1689 witnessed the decline of the Hokkien community in Kyushu with large numbers of Hokkien merchants moving to Taiwan and other major trade port polities of Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. In other words, the period before 1635 can be described as the golden age of trading activities of the private Hokkien merchants on the island of Kyushu as those scattered islands along the jagged coastline of Kyushu could be easily accessed from their home villages in south Fujian. In addition, their smuggling trade activities and sojourning on the island were welcomed and protected by the feudal lords of Kyushu within their respective han (藩 domains), as the latter were eager to strengthen themselves economically by fostering overseas trade with the Ming merchants. Gradually, at least seven Chinese sojourning communities emerged on the island of Kyushu, particularly in Bungo-no-kuni, Hirado of Hizen, and Satsuma, with merchants coming from south Fujian, Huizhou, and coastal Zhejiang. The earliest Chinese sojourning community of Kyushu was probably formed in Hakata. According to Riben kao (日本考 Records on Japan), one of the contemporary Ming sources on Japan, the numbers of Chinese maritime traders who sojourned in Hua-xu-ta (花旭塔 Hakata) were so large that the street where these merchants congregated was named Da Tang jie (大唐街 Great Tang street). Some of these merchants were even unwilling to leave the community; they established their families

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there and produced offspring.1 One thing is certain—the Chinese sojourning community of Hakata must have come into existence around the middle of the sixteenth century as the book of Riben kao was compiled and published before 1593 by Ming military officials dealing with the “Wokou,” or Japanese pirates. Satsuma was another important settlement for the sojourning Hokkiens. It seems that the first group of Hokkiens in Satsuma were the victims of Wokou in the early sixteenth century. Zheng Shungong (鄭舜功) affirms in his travel accounts that about 200 to 300 Hokkien people were living in Gao Zhou (高州 Takatsu) as slaves, and all of them were captured from Fuzhou, Xinghua (興化), Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou by the Japanese Wokou, and had been living in Takatsu for more than twenty years.2 Probably for this reason, the Shimazu family which had control of the Satsuma han enjoyed close commercial relations with Fujian by the end of the sixteenth century. In August 1600, when Shimazu Yoshihiro (島津義弘) was commissioned by the Gotairo (Five Regents) of the bakufu to repatriate the Ming general, Mao Guoke (茅國科) who had been taken hostage when the Japanese forces withdrew from Korea, this leading ryoshu appealed to the Fujian authorities through his family merchant, whose name was Torihara Soan (鳥原宗安), for the opening of the kango or tally trade relations between south Fujian and Satsuma. With the persuasion and assurance of the Shimazu family, a Quanzhou merchant named Xu Lihuan (許麗寰) anchored his junk off Satsuma in 1607. Xu traded at Satsuma for a year before returning to Quanzhou. The next year (1609) ten Fujian trading junks entered the harbors of Satsuma, obviously encouraged by the example of Xu Lihuan and the promise of safe passage provided by the Shimazu family.3 At about the same time, another Hokkien merchants’ sojourning community presented itself in Higo, modern-day Kumamoto. Similar to the community in Satsuma, the earliest residents of this Hokkien community also consisted mainly of common folk kidnapped by the Wokou from coastal Fujian. According to Kobata Atsushi’s study, this sojourning Hokkien community in Higo was established before 1589. The quarters of this Chinese community or Tojinmachi was moved twice in the following twenty-six years. Moreover, at Tamana, one of the flourishing foreign trade ports in Higo han, there was an additional sojourning Hokkien community during the Genna period (1615–23), as evidenced by several Hokkien graves such as

1 Li Yangong and Hao Jie, Riben kao, pp. 88–89. As a matter of fact, Riben kao was a reproduction of Riben fengtu ji (Accounts of Japanese conditions and customs) by Hou Jigao, another book providing information to Ming military officers, published one year earlier. Mao Yuanyi, Wubei zhi, c. 1628, also contains similar accounts of Great Tang street in Hakata. 2 Zheng Shungong, Riben yijian (Account of Japan), juan 4. 3 Shimazu kokushi (History of Shimazu han), vol. 23, quoted in Nanpo, Nanpo bunshu (Literary collection of Monk Nanpo), vol. 2; Sūden et al., Ikoku nikki (Accounts of foreign countries), bk. 2; Kagoshima-ken Shiryo Compilation Committee, Kagoshima-ken shiryo (Historical materials on Kagoshima prefecture), vol. 3, doc. 1025.

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those of Lin Junwu (林均吾) and Guo Binyi (郭濱沂) from Haicheng (海澄).4 As regards merchants, what we see from the contemporary records is that Si Guan, one of the famous Hokkien merchants engaged in the shuinsen bōeki (朱印船貿易 the red seal ship trade) with Southeast Asia, had his business base established in Higo, and as such was called Higo Siguan (肥後四官) by his fellow countrymen even after he moved to Nagasaki.5 The final case with regard to the Hokkien community on the island of Kyushu before 1635 concerns Hirado and the Goto islands, a group of isles southwest of this hub of commerce. According to local legend, the sojourning community of Hirado was initially made up of private maritime traders from Fujian around 1535.6 This sojourning merchant community was joined by Wang Zhi (王直), a well-known Huizhou smuggling merchant, and his associates in the early 1540s, before they were defeated by the Ming naval forces at Shuangyu, Zhejiang, in 1548. According to contemporary Japanese and Chinese sources, Wang Zhi and his associates constructed a Tojinmachi at yashiki (印山屋敷) of Hirado in the Chinese style. Encouraged by Matsuura Takanobu (松浦隆信), daimyo of Hirado, these adventurous traders not only induced many private Chinese maritime merchants to trade at Hirado, but also set up their large and secure bases on the Goto islands. It was only because of these Chinese smuggling traders led by Wufeng (五峰), or “Hui Wang” (徽王 king of Huizhou) as Wang Zhi called himself, that Hirado rose rapidly in Kyushu from the 1540s to the 1550s as a commercial port of the first importance, the “West Capital” as it was called in contemporary Japanese documents, with large numbers of merchants and a wide variety of goods moving through Hirado, either from Kyoto and Sakai or from South China and Portuguese Macau.7 It is intriguing to note that many of Wang Zhi’s leading associates and the greater part of his buccaneer group were composed of Hokkien private merchants. The notorious Wokou raid on Zhejiang in 1552, for instance, was led by Deng Wenjun (鄧 文俊) and Shen Nanshan (沈南山). Deng was from Fuqing with his base at Yobuku (呼子) in the same Matsuura han, while Shen was from Zhangzhou.8 When Wang Zhi was trapped and killed by the Ming court in 1559, some of his Hokkien contemporaries, such as Xie Ce (謝策), Hong Dizhen (洪迪珍), Zhang Wei (張維), and Wang Jingxi (王靖溪), shifted their bases to the coast of Fujian and east Guangdong while 4 Kobata, “Kinsei shoki chugokujin no dorai kika no mondai” (On the coming and assimilation of the Chinese during the early modern period), pp. 21–33. 5 Thompson, Diary of Richard Cocks,, vol. 2, pp. 17, 21. 6 Zheng Ruozeng, Riben yijian, juan 3, p. 4. 7 Daikyoku ki (Records of Daikyoku), quoted in Kimiya, Nikka bunka koryu shi, ch. 4; See Fu Weilin, Ming shu (History of the Ming dynasty), juan 162, “Biography of Wang Zhi.” As for Wang Zhi’s activities in Japan, see also Li Hsien-chang, “Kasei nenkan ni okeru sekkai no shisho oyobi hakusho Wang Zhi gyoseki ko” (Studies on Wang Zhi, smuggling trader and owner of trading junks during the Jiajing period), pp. 48–82, 163–203, and the excellent research published by Wills, “Maritime China,” pp. 203–38. 8 Zheng Ruozeng, Chouhaitubian (Illustrated seaboard strategy), pp. 491–598, 671–75.

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others continued their smuggling trade based in Hirado.9 In other words, during the period under review, the Chinese sojourning community of Hirado was virtually dominated by private Hokkien merchants who took over the leadership from the Huizhou merchant group and integrated the community into the overseas Hokkien merchant network. There is much evidence to show that the Hokkien community which settled on the northwestern coast of Hirado Bay reached its heyday in the early seventeenth century, especially under the leadership of Li Dan (李旦) or Andrea Dittis, as his name usually appears in the records of Western literature, a remarkable Hokkien merchant from Quanzhou.10 The diary of Richard Cocks and the detailed archival records of the English East India Company factory at Hirado from 1613 to 1623 give us a fragmentary but fascinating picture of this Hokkien captain. In a letter sent to the East India Company dated 25 February 1615, Cocks reports: These 2 Chinas brothers, Andrea Dittis & Whaw, are greate merchantes & will contynewally [bring more?] merchandiz in this place then all the Japons in Firando. Andrea Dittis was governor of the Chinas at Manilla in the Phillippinas and in the end the Spaniardes picked a quarrell on purpose to seize all he had, to the vallew of above 40,000 taies, [and put him?] into the gallis, from whence he escaped som 9 years since & came to Firando, where he hath lived ever since.11

It can be safely inferred from the above information that Li Dan had been a very rich merchant and the governor or leader in the Hokkien community of Manila before he escaped from the Spanish galleys in 1606, soon after the first Chinese massacre of 1603 in Manila. It also seems that Li Dan established himself at Hirado very quickly, and regained his influence among his fellow countrymen within a few years. We do not know exactly when he became the captain of the Hokkien community at Hirado. What we can gather from the English sources is that when the fleet of the English East India Company first reached the entrepôt in 1613, Captain John Saris had to ask Chinese captain Audassee (Li Dan) to rent one of his houses at Kibikida (木引田) for the purpose of setting up the English factory, at 95 reals for 6 months.12

9 Xie, Qiantai wozhuan (Records of the Wokou), juan 8, p. 11; Zheng, Chouhaitubian, pp. 671–75. See also Haicheng xianzhi (Gazetteer of Haicheng county), 1762, juan 18, p. 24. 10 For the pioneering and comprehensive study on Li Dan see Iwao, “Mimmatsu Nippon kyogu shinajin Kapitan Li Dan ko,” pp. 160–73. A slightly revised version was published in English twenty-two years later see Iwao, “Li Tan, Chief of the Chinese Residents at Hirado,” pp. 27–83. 11 Farrington, English Factory in Japan, vol. 1, p. 381. 12 Satow, Voyage of John Saris to Japan, p. 88.

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The beginning of the junk trade from South China to the port of Nagasaki can be dated back to 1562, according to Nagasaki historians Nishikawa Joken (西川如見) and Tanabe Mokei (田邊茂啓),13 although it was not until 1569 that the port was officially opened by Omura Sumitada (大村純忠) with the arrival of the Portuguese missionaries.14 Since the Portuguese vessels based in Macau only showed up at the port once a year for the first few years, the overseas trade of Nagasaki was in reality controlled by a small group of Chinese private merchants, which consisted mainly of sojourning Hokkiens as noted. However, the Hokkien junk trade with Japan suffered a serious setback when Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豐臣秀吉) invaded Korea in 1592, an invasion aimed directly at Ming China. Normal trade relations with Japan did not resume, although a few smuggling Hokkien junks entered the waters of Nagasaki in the autumn of 1600, shortly after the death of Hideyoshi in 1598.15 Perhaps because the Chinese junks trading in Nagasaki were predominantly from south Fujian, the year 1610 saw Honda Masazumi (本多正純), a roju or councilor to Tokugawa Ieyasu (德川家康), sending a friendly letter in the name of Ieyasu to Chen Zizhen (陳子 貞), governor of Fujian, in which he expressed his wish to welcome warmly the junks from Fujian to regularly trade in Nagasaki. Meanwhile, Hasegawa Fujihiro (長穀川 藤廣), the bugyo (commissioner or governor) of Nagasaki, also sent a letter to Chen Zizhen expressing his hope for a revival of the kango (tally) trade with Fujian.16 The Hokkien junk trade in Nagasaki fell into two categories: first the shuinsen bōeki trade conducted by red seal junks based in Japan (朱印船貿易 referred to earlier); and second the Tosen bōeki (唐船貿易), Chinese junk trade. The shuinsen bōeki that engaged in trade between Japan and commercial ports in Southeast Asia and Taiwan started in the early seventeenth century and remained the principal part of Japan’s foreign trade until 1635, when it was suddenly abolished by the bakufu. Some wealthy sojourning Hokkien merchants—such as Lin Sanguan (林三官), Wu Wuguan (吳 13 Nishikawa, Nagasaki yawaso (Evening talks of Nagasaki), “Tosen hajimete nyutsu no koto” (On the first arrival of Chinese junks); see also Tanabe, Nagasaki jitsuroku daisei (Complete authentic accounts of Nagasaki), p. 359. 14 Nagasaki, meaning “long cape,” is situated on the island of Kyushu at the southwestern extremity of Japan. Historically, it was also known as Fukaeura, Fukazue, Fukutomiura, and Tsurunominato. There are several accounts concerning the early history of Nagasaki, but it is widely agreed among Japanese historians that the beginning of Nagasaki can be traced back to the late twelfth century, when a samurai by the name of Nagasaki Kotaro Kasazuna arrived at this port from the village of Nagasaki in Izu, and became the local feudal lord. See Nagasaki shiyakusho (Government of Nagasiki), Nagasaki shi shi (History of the city of Nagasaki), vol. 5, pp. 1–3; Yanai, Nagasaki. Another well-written academic work of a Japanese historian on the early history of Nagasaki is Koga, Nagasaki kaiko shi (History of the opening of Nagasaki port). For a brief introduction to the history of Nagasaki in English see Plutschow, Historical Nagasaki. 15 Gaikoku nyutsu ki (Account of the arrival of foreign junks), quoted in Hayashi, Tsuko ichiran (Survey of foreign relations), ch. 158. 16 Both of these letters were in fact drafted by the famous Confucianist Hayashi Razan. See Tanabe, Nagasaki jitsuroku daisei, p. 84); Kyoto Shisekikai, Hayashi Razan bunshu (Collected writings of Hayashi Razan), vol. 12, p. 130.

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五官), Zhang Sanguan (張三官or Zhang Jiquan張吉泉), Ouyang Huayu (歐陽華 宇), Zhu Wuguan (朱五官), Er Guan (二官), and Si Guan (四官)—were actively involved in this trade. The shuinsen bōeki was mainly trade by bartering Japanese silver for Chinese silk. The availability of larger quantities of silver for export and the preference of an ever more affluent warrior class for silk rather than cotton boosted this kind of exchange. The major smuggling silk markets for shuinsen bōeki were in Tonkin (northern Vietnam), Faifo (會安), Luzon (the Philippines), and also Taiwan, especially when the Dutch set up a factory there in 1624. The private Chinese Tosen bōeki, on the other hand, was seen initially as a supplement to the Japanese shuinsen bōeki by the bakufu. However, with its rapid development in the 1610s, the Chinese junk trade gradually became the major importer of Chinese commodities to Japan, and finally replaced the shuinsen bōeki completely in 1635 when the bakufu forbade Japanese ships from sailing overseas and succeeded in forcing all the Chinese junks to trade in Nagasaki. With regard to the scale of the smuggling trade conducted by Hokkien merchants with Japan after the opening of Nagasaki port, a memorandum submitted to the throne by the Ming military board in 1612 is instructive. According to the memorandum: “People who are carrying out trade with Japanese are all Hokkiens. It is reckoned that their numbers are altogether several tens of thousands if we take the Hokkiens from Fuzhou, Xinghua, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou into account.”17

The Hokkien trade with Manila It was not until 1567, when the newly ascended Ming emperor Longqing (隆慶皇帝) approved the repeated pleas of the Fujian governor and the grand censor Tu Zemin (涂澤民), that the Hokkien junks began sailing from Yuegang, a well-known port for the smuggling trade in south Fujian, to trade overseas legally. Four years later, the Spaniards established themselves in Manila with American silver. In other words, it was only after the 1570s that the junk trade between Fujian and the Philippines, involving an exchange of exceptionally high value, emerged into its most flourishing form, which in turn brought China into the world commercial system, as argued by C.R. Boxer.18 According to the records of the Ming dynasty, 50 Hokkien junks a year were initially granted licenses to trade with different entrepôts in Southeast Asia. In 1589, the number of junks licensed for trade with maritime Asia was raised to 88. This was later raised to 110 licenses in 1592, and to 137 in 1597.19 Of these, about half were used for trade with Hispanic Manila. It was widely known that smuggling was 17 Ming shenzong shilu (see Ming shilu, Shenzong period), juan 498. 18 Boxer, Portuguese Seaborne Empire, p. 17. 19 Zhang, Dongxiyyang kao (A treatise of the Eastern and Western oceans), vol. 7, “Taxation”; Ming shenzong shilu (see Ming shilu, Shenzong period), vols. 210, 316.

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rampant in the Manila trade and the actual number of junks calling at the port of Manila was far in excess of the figure recorded in the official archives. A large number of Hokkien merchants visited Manila clandestinely. The licenses issued only allowed them to trade with polities other than the Philippine Islands such as Champa, Tonkin, Patani, and Taiwan. The main reason for their going to Manila clandestinely, as was pointed out by the Fujian grand censor Shang Zhouzuo (商周祚) in 1623, was that Manila was close by, and junks trading in silks for American silver turned out to be particularly profitable for these adventurous Hokkiens.20 In any case, the most remarkable growth of the Hokkien junk trade during this period was from the late 1570s to the mid-1640s, and the usual number of junks visiting Manila varied from twenty to forty each year. After 1645, however, the number of junks arriving at Manila decreased sharply as a result of the civil war in China. In the years that followed, the maritime trade of China fell into the hands of the Ming-loyalist Zheng regime based in south Fujian and Taiwan. Consequently, the junk trade with Manila experienced a considerable slump for more than three decades and almost all the arrivals in the 1650s, 1660s, and 1670s were in fact junks belonging to Zheng Chenggong (鄭成功) or Koxinga’s (國姓爺) family. A revival of the Hokkien junk trade to Manila began only in 1683 when the Qing government conquered Taiwan and put an end to the civil strife, followed by the lifting of the ban on overseas trade the following year. The junk trade expanded rapidly thereafter, with more than twenty-seven junks calling at Manila in 1686 and a peak of forty-three in 1709.21 With respect to the coming of the Hokkien junks, Antonio de Morga, then president of the Audiencia at Manila, gives a graphic account in his records: A considerable number of somas and junks (which are large ships) come as a rule laden with goods from Great China to Manila. Every year thirty, sometimes forty, of these ships come, though they do not enter together as a fleet or armada, but in squadrons, with the monsoon and in settled weather, which ordinarily comes with the March new moon. […] They make the journey to Manila in fifteen or twenty days, sell their merchandise and return in good time, before the strong south-westerly winds set in at the end of May, or the first days of June, so as not to run into danger on their voyage.22

Captain John Saris, of the English East India Company, also observed in 1613 that, “In the moneth of March, the Junckes bound for the Mannelies depart from Chanchu in Companies, sometimes foure, five, ten or more together, as they are readie.”23 20 Ming xizong shilu (see Ming shilu, Xizong period), vol. 28, entry of “the fourth month, the third year of Tianqi.” 21 For a detailed study on the topic see Qian, “1570–1760 Zhongguo he lusong de maoyi,” pp. 15–49. 22 Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, p. 305. 23 Satow, Voyage of John Saris to Japan, pp. 226–27. For a general account of the junk trade and its relations with the Manila galleons see Schurz, Manila Galleon, esp. pp. 63–98.

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Though there was a large variety in the cargoes of the junks, silks and textiles always comprised the bulk of the goods from Fujian. In fact, Manila would have been nothing without the south Fujian-Manila-Acapulco trading line. In the meantime, Hokkien merchants were the dominant participants in this vast silk-for-silver trade. Like elsewhere in the marketplaces of the South China Sea, Hokkien merchants knew how to maximize their profit by waiting for the right timing or skilfully adjusting the prices of their cargoes in accordance with the situation of the Manila market. The majority of the sagacious and thrifty Hokkiens would not, for instance, do their bargaining until the junks returned to Fujian, holding their cargoes over till the arrival of the following year’s galleon.24 When they saw the Spanish galleon laden with silver coins enter the port while there were not many Chinese goods left in the market, they would immediately raise the prices of their goods. Similarly, when they were informed that silver was scarce at Manila they would cut down their shipments accordingly that year for a profitable sale. The year 1628 thus saw the scarcity of silver from Acapulco induce a rise in the prices of the goods in Manila.25 Evidently what the Hokkien merchants aimed for was to trade for as much silver as possible and ship it back to China. It is clear that they played an important role in carrying massive amounts of American silver into China. It was estimated that on an annual basis, as much as 150 tons of silver crossed the Pacific from Acapulco via Manila to China. Of this, about 128 tons or 5 million pesos worth was sold ultimately to the Hokkien merchants annually, with a reported 307 tons being smuggled out in 1597.26 Considering that the Hokkien merchants kept coming and sojourning in Manila in spite of the repeated expulsions and slaughters by the Spaniards, the profits derived from the junk trade must have been enormously high. Two contemporary Chinese writers tell us that profits made by the Hokkien merchants were usually several times the capital they invested,27 which matches with the report submitted to the Spanish king Felipe III dated 21 July 1599. In the report, Hieronimo de Salazar y Salcedo, the Spanish royal fiscal, estimated that the profits made on Chinese silk could reach 400 percent.28 In fact, in some years when the market in Manila or Acapulco was starved for Chinese silk and other luxury items, the profits reaped could probably be as high 24 Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, p. 307. 25 “Letters to Filipe IV by Juan Niño de Tavora (4th August 1628),” in Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, vol. 22, p. 271. 26 For the relevant discussion and estimates, see Chuan, “Ming-Qing jian meizhou baiyin de shuru zhongguo” (The inflow of American silver into China from the late Ming to the mid-Qing period); Boxer, “Plata es Sangre”; TePaske, “New World Silver”; Qian, “1570–1760 nian xishu feilubin liuru zhongguo de meizhou baiyin” (On the inflow of American silver into China via the Spanish Philippines from 1570 to 1760); Attman, American Bullion. 27 He, Min shu (History of Fujian), vol. 39, “Banji Zhi” (On population and taxation); Fu Yuanchu, Qing kai yangjin shu (Memorandum on lifting the ban upon the overseas trade), vol. 96, “Fujian.” 28 “Letters from the Royal Fiscal to the King by Hieronimo de Salazar y Salcedo (Manila, 21st July 1599),” in Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, vol. 11, p. 111.

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as 1,000 percent.29 Since the distance from Fujian to Manila was relatively short and the voyage usually took only about 10 days, it was possible for the Hokkien merchants to make a number of trips each monsoon season. Considering the great risk on the sea, such as the loss of junks caused by typhoon or the plunder by the Dutch or the pirates, certainly the nearer the foreign ports were to Fujian, the smaller were the risks and the expenses and the larger the profits, as was argued by the Dutch historian Meilink-Roelofsz.30 Closely related to the junk-trade merchants was the group of Hokkien merchants who sojourned in Manila. As is well documented in the Spanish writings, Hokkien merchants or “sangleys,”31 as they were frequently called by the Spaniards, had a near-monopoly on retail business in the town. The “Parián” or Chinese market consequently became the nerve center of the colonial capital’s commercial life. In this colorful bazaar, people could find all kinds of goods and products of the East and the West. This sojourning merchant group grew rapidly. By 1588, the group regularly maintained 600 merchants and 150 shops in their quarter.32 William Dampier wrote of these sangleys: “the Chinese are the chiefest merchants, and they drive the greatest trade; for they have commonly twenty, thirty, or forty junks in the harbour at a time, and a great many merchants constantly residing in the city beside shop-keepers, and handy-craftsmen in abundance.”33 Various sources available suggest that the sale of foodstuffs and the supply of markets and homes were from the very beginning in these sangleys’ hands. Every morning, the Spaniards living within the walled town would rush into the Parián to shop as soon as the gate was opened. The customers of the Chinese goods in the Parián were not the Spaniards alone, but also included the 29 “Letters from the Archbishop of Manila to Felipe II by Ygnacio de Santibanez (Manila, 24–26 June 1598),” in Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, vol. 10, p. 143; “Early Years of the Dutch in the East Indies,” in Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, vol. 15, p. 303. 30 Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Influence, p. 265. 31 There have been many debates on the origin and meaning of the term sangley. Based upon a Manila manuscript of c. 1590 that contains a color picture of a Hokkien merchant couple with the title “sangleys” and two Chinese characters “chang-lai” (常來), the late Professor C.R. Boxer argued that the term means “constantly coming.” He even suggested that the term is probably of Tagalog and not of Chinese origin. On the other hand, Edgar Wickberg contends that the term probably derived from the Chinese vocabulary “Shanglü” (商旅), meaning “merchant traveler.” Undoubtedly these two explanations are both unconvincing. I am rather inclined to believe that the term sangley derived from the Hokkien dialect “sheng-li” (生理), meaning “trade” or “doing business.” As a matter of fact, the term sangley or “sheng-li” was and still is very popular among Hokkiens in the present Fujian province of China and Southeast Asia. For the relevant references, see Boxer, South China in the Sixteenth Century, p. 260; Wickberg, Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850–1898, p. 9; Zheng, Chouhaitubian, vol. 12; Juan de Medina, “History of the Augustinian Order in the Filipinas Islands, (1630),” in Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, vol. 23, p. 220; Laufer, “Relations of the Chinese to the Philippine Islands,” p. 268; Phillips, “Early Spanish Trade with Chincheo (Chang-chow),” p. 244, n. 3; Fuchiwaki, “Shina Hirippin tsusho-jo no ‘sangley’ ni tsuite” (On “sangley” in the China-Philippine trade). 32 Domingo de Salazar et al., “Relation of the Philippinas Islands” (Manila, 1586–88), in Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, vol. 7, pp. 33–34. 33 William Dampier, Dampier’s Account of the Philippines, in Pinkerton, General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages, vol. 11, p. 38.

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local Filipinos around Manila. Muslims from Mindanao and Sulu made regular visits to the Parián with bees’ wax and gold, and returned in their proas laden with Chinese silk, textiles and calicoes.34 According to the Dampier report, the annual sales of the 592 shops amounted to 647,832 pesos. Taking into consideration the fact that these figures were gathered during a period of economic depression, the business turnover of Hokkien shops in normal times at the Parián possibly would have been close to or more than 1 million pesos. It is remarkable that the sizeable Hokkien sojourning quarter had so many shops in the mid-eighteenth century. This would put the Parián at par with other contemporary large bazaars of Southeast Asia such as Bantam, Patani, Tonkin, and Melaka. Largely as a result of the developments described above, the Hokkien merchants became indispensable to the colonial capital, and the Spanish community could not actually subsist without the sangleys. As an example, note what happened after the massacre of 1603, “when the whole business over the city found itself in distress, for since there were no sangleys there was nothing to eat and no shoes to wear, no matter how exorbitant a price was offered. This was because the sangleys were the people most engaged in trade, and the ones who brought into the city all the necessary provisions.”35

The Hokkien trade with Bantam Bantam owed most of its prosperity to the purchase of its pepper by the Hokkien merchants and the silver that the Europeans had brought with them to this town. After the arrival of the Europeans, the Hokkien merchants increasingly shipped the silver obtained from the Europeans to their homeland instead of investing it in buying pepper. Thus the product the Hokkien merchants sought out in Bantam was initially pepper and subsequently silver. The Hokkien merchants trading in Bantam can be subdivided into two mutually supporting groups, namely the traveling merchants who transported their goods to and from China, and the resident merchants who made a living in Bantam and traded within the Indonesian archipelago. The traveling maritime merchants made the annual voyage to Bantam with cargoes of porcelain, iron pots, small coins, linen, silks, copper ware, radix China (a medicinal), fans, parasols, medicines, needles and thread, spectacles, combs, “and thousands of other trifling things too many to mention.”36 At the same time, resident Hokkien merchants settled at Bantam accumulated 34 Masefield, Dampier’s Voyages, vol. 1, p. 228; see also “Dampier’s Account of the Philippines,” in Pinkerton, General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages, p. 14. 35 Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, p. 225. 36 Rouffaer and Yzerman, De eerste schipvaart, vol. 1, pp. 122–23; vol. 2, p. 308; Keuning, De tweede schipvaart, vol. 1, p. 87.

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local products for export to China, such as pepper, along with Moluccan spices, sandalwood, camphor, nutmeg and cloves, ivory, and tortoiseshell.37 The commercial relations between Fujian and Bantam can be dated back as early as 1527, when Sunda Kalapa had just been occupied by the Muslim leader Fatahillah with his Javanese troops from Demak. According to the Portuguese historian, Diogo do Couto, when the Portuguese fleet under the leadership of Francisco de Sá went to Sunda Kalapa in 1527 to build a fort there, they found that each year about twenty junks, all of them from Chincheo—a term the early Europeans used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to describe the coastal area of South Fujian, including Zhangzhou and Quanzhou—visited Bantam and Sunda Kalapa, the main ports of the kingdom of Sunda, in order to load pepper, because this kingdom produced about 8,000 bahars of pepper annually.38 The Ming Chinese court issued eighty-eight navigation licenses to Hokkien merchants in 1589, of which eight were given to junks trading to Bantam and Sunda Kalapa.39 This figure tallies roughly with the number of junks that the Dutch saw on their first voyage. As stated by the Dutch, eight to ten small junks, with a maximum of 50 tons’ burden, came to Bantam each year. It was noted that their hulls tapered off sharply below decks, so that they did not have much cargo space.40 Another report from the same voyage mentions, however, the annual arrival of five to eight junks with a burden of 80 to 100 tons.41 The Englishman, John Saris, recorded in 1613 that each year there were three to four junks arriving at Bantam, with an abundance of raw and woven silk, silk thread, fine- and heavy-quality porcelain, and “China cashes”, in other words Chinese coins.42 This description of the Chinese cargo was requoted by Saris’ fellow countryman John Jourdain in February 1614.43 With respect to the trading situation in Bantam, Dongxiyang kao, a Chinese treatise on the Hokkiens’ overseas trade and its administration in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries published in 1618, leaves us the following account: When a Chinese junk arrives here, a chief comes on board to take information. The captain of the junk gives him a basket of oranges and two small umbrellas. The chief writes at once to inform the king, and on entering the roadstead, fruits and silks are sent as presents to this king. The king has four Chinese and two foreigners to be in charge of his overseas trade (i.e. the syahbandar), each of them keeps 37 Rouffaer and Yzerman, De eerste schipvaart, vol. 1, pp. 121–24, 145–50. 38 Couto, Da Asia (On Asia), bk. 3, ch. 1, p. 167. 39 Ming shenzong shilu (see Ming shilu, Shenzong period), vol. 210; Xu, Jinghetang Ji (Collected works of Xu Fuyuan), vol. 7. 40 Rouffaer and Yzerman, De eerste Schipvaart, vol. 1, p. 121. 41 Rouffaer and Yzerman, De eerste Schipvaart, vol. 3, p. 193. 42 Satow, Voyage of John Saris to Japan, p. 216. 43 Foster, Journal of John Jourdain, p. 316.

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king’s books, and Chinese who know the foreign language act as interpreters, one man for each ship. As regards the trade, the king has set up two markets outside the town, where the shops are set up; in the early morning everybody goes to the market to trade and at noon the market is closed. The king levies daily market duties. The red-haired barbarians (Dutch and English) have come to Xiagang (i.e. Bantam) and established their factories on the eastern side of the great river. The Fo-Lang-Ji (Portuguese) have done the same on the western side. These foreigners arrive at Xiagang every year with their large ships coated with iron. In trading, there people use silver money, but the natives use leaden coins; one thousand of these leaden coins form a “guan” (string) and ten Guans makes a “bao” (bundle); thus one bundle of leaden coins is said to be equivalent to one string of silver money. Xiagang is a center of general intercourse; our junks arrive there before the merchants of other countries and then our merchants sell their goods for silver or leaden coins; when afterwards the goods from other countries arrive, these are bought with the money received before. The Chinese merchants have to wait for the merchants from other countries, this is why Chinese junks sail back at different times, some are earlier while others might be later.44

The Hokkien junk merchants imported an enormous variety of goods into Bantam. Yet, before the coming of the Europeans, most of these goods consisted of daily commodities, as noted above.45 It was only after the arrival of the Europeans in Bantam that some changes took place in the kinds of commodities shipped to and from China. “Reals of eight,” or the silver coins brought by the Europeans, provided an immense stimulus to the Hokkien junk trade, as China was short of silver at that time. In fact, Hokkien merchants started to import into Bantam high-quality goods in greater quantities, particularly silk and porcelain, and instead of purchasing local products, they bought up almost all the silver coins stocked in the town and took them back to their homeland, because in their eyes the silver coins were seen not as currency but as a special commodity with high value. Thus it can be said with certainty that the arrival of the Europeans in Bantam, accompanied by the inflow of silver from Europe, and the demand that they created for Chinese silk and porcelain, had a stimulating effect on the expansion of the overseas trade of China in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both in terms of scale and quality. According to Jacob Corneliszoon van Neck, the commander of the second Dutch fleet to Southeast Asia, by the end of the sixteenth century, the Chinese junk merchants had already become the biggest exporters of pepper from Bantam. In 1598, 18,000 bags of pepper were shipped in 5 Hokkien junks, as against 3,000 bags in a Gujarati ship, while the Dutch could not manage to ship more than 9,000 bags.46 44 Zhang, Dongxiyang kao, p. 48. 45 Rouffaer and Yzerman, De eerste schipvaart, vol. 1, pp. 134–35. 46 Keuning, De tweede schipvaart, vol. 4, p. 92.

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Another contemporary report mentions that the pepper in Bantam was gathered in October each year, and the total output ranged from 30,000 to 32,000 bags.47 Thus it can be seen that nearly 60 percent of the pepper produced in the Bantam region was shipped away by the Hokkien merchants. Also, in order to barter for silver coins, Hokkien merchants brought vast quantities of silk to Bantam. In his letter of 10 November 1614 sent to the Heeren XVII (Gentlemen Seventeen), Jan Pieterszoon Coen mentioned that the six Chinese junks which came that year imported, in addition to diversified commodities and porcelain, much silk fabric, not to mention 5,000 to 6,000 catties of raw silk.48 However, according to a letter of Richard Westby dated 21 February 1614, the “Lankin” (Nanjing) silk brought by the Chinese junks amounted to 300 piculs, that is to say that there were about 30,000 catties of silk imported into Bantam in one single year by the Hokkien merchants.49 This situation is confirmed by another servant of the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or Dutch East India Company), Laurens Back, who reported from Bantam in February 1615 that five Chinese junks brought into the town 300 to 400 piculs of raw silk and silk fabrics.50 At the same time, the export of silver coins from Bantam by the Hokkien merchants caused a serious shortage of reals in the town. In his journal of 14 November 1614, John Jourdain complained that the Chinese carrie rialls of eight out of the country for them; soe that, notwithstanding soe much money as is brought to Bantam yearly by us and the Dutch, which wee paye for the pepper, there is great scarcity of money, by reason that the China junckes carrie it yearlie for China, which the King doth suffer because the China merchants doe bribe him, which he is content to take although itt be the overthrowe of his commons.51

Ten months later, the same Englishman grumbled again, “It is at present very bare of money, for that the China junks doth carry all for China, and the Hollanders all [are?] ill provided and we not altogether of the best.”52 Thus for want of capital the Dutch and English were periodically unable to buy the goods imported by the Hokkien merchants. For instance, in 1615, encouraged by reports of brisk sales at Bantam in the previous year and the considerable orders placed by the Dutch, a group of rich Hokkien junk merchants, who had for a long time been negotiating at Macau, came to Bantam, carrying with them a great quantity of fine silks and other commodities. 47 Satow, Voyage of John Saris to Japan, p. 214. 48 Colenbrander and Coolhaas, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, vol. 1, p. 65. 49 “Richard Westby to the East India Company: Banten, 21st February, 1614,” in Foster, Letters Received by the East India Company, vol. 3, p. 337. 50 Chijs et al., Daghregister gehouden int Casteel Batavia (Daily record kept at Batavia castle), p. 130. 51 Foster, Journal of John Jourdain, p. 316. 52 “John Jourdain to the East India Company. Bantam, the 30th of September, anno 1615,” in Foster, Letters Received by the East India Company, vol. 3, p. 171.

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Each Hokkien merchant brought goods worth 30,000 to 40,000 reals. Nevertheless, “because we and the English have lacked money this year, the Chinese are left with most of their ordinary silk cloth on their hands.”53 As was later the case in Batavia, the Hokkien merchants of Bantam probably had their own guild organizations to regulate the internal commercial affairs of their community. For example, the market price of pepper in Bantam was usually controlled by the resident Hokkien merchants. Whenever the pepper harvest happened to be a small one, or the Europeans needed a great amount of pepper within a short time, or several Chinese junks suddenly anchored at the roadstead of Bantam, the Hokkien merchants who had a large storage capacity would drive the price of pepper up. As a consequence, through the cooperation between junk merchants and resident merchants in Bantam, the Hokkiens secured a dominant position in the pepper trade of west Java. This they owed primarily to the Hokkien maritime trade network and to the leaden coins they had fabricated in their home villages and brought to Bantam.

The Hokkien trade with Batavia The great demand by the VOC for Chinese commodities, silks in particular, was without doubt the main factor contributing to the rise of the junk trade between Fujian and Batavia in the years following 1620. Chinese silk was among the most coveted goods and at par with pepper and other spices from the earliest days of the VOC. In accordance with the instructions of the Gentlemen Seventeen, the Batavian authorities made efforts to buy silk by all means available. They sent Dutch ships to the places frequented by the Hokkien merchants, and at the same time they successively opened factories at Patani, Siam, and Songkla with the aim of purchasing silks from Chinese junks.54 In addition to providing incentives, the VOC tried to force the Hokkien junks that sailed to Bantam, Japara, Jambi, Palembang, Makassar, Johore, and places within the archipelago other than Batavia to come instead to Batavia. To stimulate the junk trade to Batavia, the Dutch went so far as to send a fleet to cruise along the navigation routes plied by the Hokkien junks and forced them to sail to Batavia. As a consequence of such policing, the Dutch destroyed eighty Hokkien junks on the coast of south Fujian in 1622.55 In the early stages the Hokkien junk trade was basically to meet the demands of local residents, both the Dutch and the indigenous peoples, of Batavia. The goods imported by the Chinese junks were mainly the products of Fujian, consisting of sugar, porcelain from the kilns in Yongchun, silk fabrics from Zhangzhou, iron pans, nails 53 Colenbrander and Coolhaas, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, vol. 1, p. 167; vol. 2, pp. 20–21. 54 Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China (Netherlanders in China), vol. 48, p. 48; Glamann, Dutch-Asiatic Trade, pp. 112–14. 55 Colenbrander and Coolhaas, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, vol. 3, p. 958.

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and needles, fresh and dried fruits, umbrellas, gilded paper, and a great quantity of coarse textiles. The return cargo the Hokkien junks exported from Batavia comprised great quantities of silver coins and various tropical products such as pepper, nutmeg, cloves, sandalwood, buffalo horns, incense, edible birds’ nests, elephant tusks, drugs, and at a later date, tin and cloth. Among the items listed above, silver coins and pepper were the staple commodities sought by the Hokkien merchants. This was due to the fact that the Chinese economy in the Ming and the Qing dynasties was characterized by its autarky, and the markets within China showed little interest in the commodities from Europe except silver coins. Such coins were in great demand, especially after the “single-whip system” was implemented in 1581. Under this taxation system introduced by the Ming prime minister Zhang Juzheng, silver became the only acceptable form of land-tax payment in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century China. As a result, the Hokkien merchants tried their best to ship back to China as much silver as they could. This was, however, not unique to Batavia. In Manila, Melaka, Bantam, Patani, Tonkin, Faifo, or elsewhere in Southeast Asia, wherever there was a European factory, Hokkien merchants could frequently be found actively purchasing silver coins. According to the Dutch sources, Hokkien merchants did not ship back the coins in their original form to Fujian, but melted them down into silver taels first.56 It goes without saying that the continued export of silver constituted a serious drain on the treasury of the VOC, and the Dutch therefore tried their best to persuade the Hokkien merchants to accept payment in kind instead of payment in silver coins, but this attempt was not particularly successful. According to Leonard Blussé, on average about five Hokkien junks visited Batavia annually before 1680.57 The total tonnage of Hokkien junks which sailed to Batavia must have been quite large at that time, as J.C. van Leur, after having compared the junk fleet with the contemporary Dutch fleet, commented that the Chinese junks had “a total tonnage thus as large as or larger than that of the whole return fleet of the Dutch Company.”58 After 1645, the number of Hokkien junks trading with Batavia decreased sharply as a result of the Manchu forces’ invasion of China, which blocked the trade routes and led to the demise of the Ming dynasty. The situation was further exacerbated after 1655 when the Qing court imposed a ban on maritime trade. Consequently, the junk trade with Batavia experienced a considerable slump. However, this does not mean that this trade was completely cut off by the Qing court. On the contrary, all maritime trade fell into the hands of Zheng Chenggong, otherwise known as Coxinga or Koxinga, who remained loyal to the heir apparent of the Ming dynasty, because the isolationist policy of the Qing court excluded other merchants 56 Rouffaer and Yzerman, De eerste Schipvaart, vol. 1, pp. 122–23. 57 Blussé, Strange Company, p. 115. 58 Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society, p. 198.

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in China from competing with the Hokkien merchants who sailed under the flag of the Zheng family. In 1654 and again in the following year, a fleet of eight junks sent by Zheng Chenggong from Fujian unexpectedly appeared at the Batavian roadstead, bearing a serious warning to the Dutch not to interfere in his maritime trade in Southeast Asia.59 An interesting phenomenon to note is that in order to compensate in some way for their losses due to the decline of the junk trade from the homeland, the Hokkien merchants based in Batavia decided to fit out their own junks for trading expeditions to Taiwan and Japan.60 The first Hokkien junk from Batavia to arrive at Nagasaki, according to the Japanese records, anchored in 1649.61 Generally speaking, two or three Hokkien junks sailed from Batavia each year to trade with Japan. To distinguish these from other Chinese junks which had sailed from China or other places in Southeast Asia, they were registered by the Nagasaki authorities as “Ga-la-ba Chuan,” which means “junks from Kalapa.” This long-distance Hokkien junk trade reached its zenith in the period from 1669 to 1675, when four or five, or sometimes even seven junks from Batavia, sailed into the harbor of Nagasaki annually. During this time, the junk trade between Batavia and Taiwan also picked up, albeit for a short period. In 1653, nine Hokkien junks from Batavia visited Taiwan. Nevertheless, due to the opposition of the Dutch governor stationed in Taiwan, the VOC soon put a ban on the Batavian Hokkien junk trade with Taiwan. The opposition was occasioned by the fact that the Hokkien junks were buying and selling the same goods in which the VOC itself dealt, and it was considered that they were encroaching on the VOC’s proclaimed monopoly of this trade route.62 On their way to Nagasaki, the Hokkien junks usually called at ports in Southeast Asia and South China. For instance, when a Hokkien junk set out for Nagasaki from Batavia in 1685, it sailed first into the roadstead of Melaka to buy some tin, then it headed for Guangdong, where it bartered part of the tin for medical materials and silver for future use. It then left for the hometown of Xiamen, and there again bartered its remaining tin and other native products from Southeast Asia for sugar and deerskin. Since the Hokkien merchants were prohibited from exporting sugar and deerskins by the local authorities, they had no alternative but to put to sea first and then berth in Meizhou, a harbor close to Fuzhou, for several days. There the junk managed to covertly load the sugar and deerskins for which it had bartered in Xiamen, before finally departing from the port of Meizhou for Nagasaki.63

59 Coolhaas, Generale missiven (General correspondence), vol. 2, pp. 823–24. 60 Coolhaas, Generale missiven, vol. 2, p. 487; vol. 3, p. 112. 61 See Iwao, “Kinsei Nisshi bōeki ni kansuru suryoteki kosatsu” (An inquiry into the quantities of maritime trade between Japan and China during the early modern period), pp. 12–13. 62 Coolhaas, Generale missiven, vol. 2, pp. 605, 759. 63 Hayashi and Hayashi, Kai hentai (Changing conditions of Chinese and barbarians), vol. 10.

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What was most significant in this long distance trade was that the Batavian Hokkien merchants went to Taiwan or Japan not to purchase Japanese commodities but mainly to engage in trade there with their fellow villagers who were sailing back and forth between Fujian and Nagasaki. They thus completed the business circle and supplemented the Hokkien overseas trade network, which had been damaged by the prohibitive policies of the Qing court. It is in this sense that the long-distance junk trade initiated by the Hokkien community in Batavia was something new in character, for it not only exhibited the dynamics of the Hokkien overseas trade network, but also proved that those Hokkien merchants who sojourned in Batavia were already strong enough to carry out long-distance trade independently. Of particular importance to the revival of the junk trade with Batavia after 1683 was the sudden emergence of tea as the staple export commodity for the European market. The Dutch had become acquainted with Chinese tea in the 1630s, and they had also at intervals shipped it to Europe in small quantities through private Dutchmen in the service of the VOC.64 However, as late as January 1667, the Dutch did not know what to do with the great quantity of tea that was produced in Fujian and forced upon the Dutch factory in Fuzhou.65 The purchase and export of tea from Fujian on a large scale did not occur until the 1680s, when the VOC took more interest in this commodity, and issued an order to earmark tea as valuable merchandise specially reserved for the VOC. At the same time the Company servants were forbidden from carrying tea in their personal belongings on homeward vessels.66 The tea trade conducted by the Hokkien merchants developed steadily until March 1717, when the Batavian authorities decided to fix the purchase price of three different varieties of tea unilaterally upon the entry of the Hokkien junks into the port of Batavia. The purchase price of Singlo tea (ordinary green tea) was set at 40 rijksdaalders per picul, Bing or Imperial tea at 60 rijksdaalders per picul, and Bohea tea (produced in the Wuyi mountain area of north Fujian) of the first grade (Gongfu tea) at 80 rijksdaalders per picul. The Hokkien merchants maintained that they could not accept the prices fixed by the Dutch because they were very low compared with those of the preceding year, and the bottomry (using the value of the ship as collateral for shipping investment) was so high that they were unable to sell their green tea at less than 60 rijksdaalders per picul. The Batavian authorities refused to accept the arguments advanced by the Hokkien merchants, and insisted on the prices mentioned, and even suggested that the Hokkien junks return to China with the tea if they found the prices unacceptable. Consequently, the fourteen junks were forced to sell their tea, but in return they threatened that they would never return to Batavia to trade with the Dutch.67 64 Schlegel, “First Introduction of Tea.” 65 Jonge et al., De opkomst van het Nederlandsch gezag, vol. 6, p. 107. 66 Schlegel, “First Introduction of Tea,” p. 470. 67 Glamann, Dutch-Asiatic Trade, pp. 216–17.

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Coincidentally, on 9 December 1716, the Qing court imposed a new ban on the Chinese, especially aimed at the Hokkien merchants, prohibiting sailing to Nanyang (the South Sea) or Southeast Asia, in particular Batavia and Manila. The actual reason for the new maritime prohibition was that the emperor Kangxi felt anxious about the situation in Manila, Batavia, and other places which served as asylum centers for Chinese outlaws, and had been the headquarters of Chinese pirates since the Ming dynasty.68 In any event, the prohibition did bring about a halt to the junk trade. Coupled with the lowering of the purchase price of tea by the Dutch in Batavia, the maritime ban imposed by the Qing court constituted a blow to the Hokkien junk trade. As a result no junk from Fujian appeared in Batavia between the years 1718 and 1721. Under such forbidding circumstances, the Hokkien merchants were not only unwilling but were also unable to trade with Batavia. Whenever the Hokkien merchants were compelled to retreat from the junk trade, the Portuguese in Macau soon filled the void, as was the case, among other phases, from 1645 to 1683. The Dutch were obliged to buy what the Portuguese brought to the town in this emergency period in spite of the fact that the prices were much higher (in 1718 one picul of Bohea tea cost 115 to 125 rijksdaalders) while the quantities supplied were not large (in 1718 again only about half of the quantity ordered by the VOC was supplied).69 The cargoes shipped by the Portuguese from Macau, however, were not owned entirely by the Portuguese. Part of the cargoes were actually goods consigned for sale by Chinese merchants based in Macau, of whom the majority would likely have been the Hokkiens, if we take into consideration the fact that Hokkien merchants were the leading business community in Macau between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. In August 1640 Zheng Zhilong had even planned to move 150 families of weavers, probably all Hokkiens, from Macau to Anhai, his hometown in south Fujian. Also, a well-known Buddhist monk named Da Shan (1633–1705) had been invited and sponsored by the Hokkien merchants based both in Faifo in central Vietnam and Macau to visit Quinam between 1695 and 1696.70 This in all probability is what the Dutch sources mean when they repeatedly state that the Portuguese traders from Macau to Batavia carried goods mainly on behalf of Chinese merchants.71 The credit system which tied the Hokkien merchants and the Dutch together through their common economic interests, often placed the Batavian authorities in a dilemma, especially when the VOC attempted to manipulate the economic activities of the Hokkiens or to impose restrictions on them. In Bantam, the Hokkien merchants habitually borrowed money from or mortgaged their properties, such as 68 Daqing lichao shilu, vol. 270, pp. 15a–16b. 69 Glamann, Dutch-Asiatic Trade, p. 217. 70 Chijs et al., Daghregister gehouden int Casteel Batavia, 15 August 1640; Da Shan, Haiwai jishi (An overseas narrative), vol. 1, p. 1. 71 Glamann, Dutch-Asiatic Trade, p. 218.

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junk or cargoes, to the VOC, and in Batavia, to the Dutch burghers in particular.72 The considerable trade profit enjoyed by the Hokkien merchants was surely coveted by the Dutch who also wanted a share in it. The Dutch, therefore, stimulated the junk trade further by lending money at high rates to the Hokkien merchants or by simply investing in the junk trade themselves. According to the investigation of the Batavian authorities in 1639, the monthly interest on the loan, which was advanced to the Hokkien merchants by the Dutch burghers, ranged from 1.5 to 3 percent.73 Thus when the Batavian authorities set out to control the trade conducted by the Hokkien merchants, the restrictions imposed by them turned out to be a double-edged sword. If they really put the restrictions into force, they would inevitably hurt their own private interests; if they did not, they would injure the interests of the Company. Consequently, the Dutch were put in a quandary by the credit system. The involvement of the Dutch officials in the Hokkien junk trade did not, of course, remain unnoticed by the Batavian authorities. For some time the wealthy servants of the VOC were not allowed to advance money on bottomry. This prohibition, however, was abolished on 25 June 1650 upon the request of the Hokkien merchants, who complained that they were experiencing the greatest difficulties in raising capital for their trade.74 The above facts clearly indicate that not only the Dutch but the Hokkien community in Batavia also depended largely on the junk trade for their provisions and business. The VOC and the Dutch burghers provided the capital in advance to the Hokkien merchants who in turn purchased tea, silk, and other Chinese commodities with this money and delivered the commodities to their Dutch customers through different channels. As with the Bantam pepper market in the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, the credit system once again acted as an invisible hand behind the dynamic operation of the junk trade, and tied Dutch capital and the entrepreneurship of the Hokkiens together for their common economic interest. In other words, the Hokkien merchants and the Dutch had to depend upon each other for their commercial lives, and the junk trade was indispensable to the prosperity of the residents, both the Hokkiens and the Dutch. Such was the case in Batavia ever since the founding of the town in 1619. That is why when restrictions were imposed by the VOC in 1694 on purchasing and exporting tea and porcelain by the Company servants, the first ethnic group to be affected was not the Dutch, but the Hokkiens, particularly those established in the town. The same finding can also be used to account for the difficult situations in Batavia from 1718 to 1722 and during the years after the massacre of 1740, when the Hokkien junks ceased to appear in the roadstead of Batavia and the whole town was thrown into stagnation.

72 Vermeulen, “Some Remarks about the Administration of Justice,” p. 5. 73 Coolhaas, Generale missiven, vol. 2, p. 122. 74 Vermeulen, “Some Remarks about the Administration of Justice,” p. 5.

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The Hokkien networks Merchants from south Fujian had their own business networks which extended from Nagasaki in the east to Melaka in the west, covering most of the major trade ports in Southeast Asia and East Asia prior to 1800. Geographically speaking, the Hokkien business network prior to 1800 could be roughly divided into seven spheres based upon their maritime activities. If we start from Java, the first sphere was centered on Batavia, including the majority of the Indonesian archipelago, such as Maluku, Makassar, the southern part of Borneo, south Sumatra, and the island of Java. The second sphere was organized around Melaka and Patani, comprising the southern part of the Malay Peninsula and north Sumatra. The third sphere had its headquarters in Ayutthaya, covering the area of south Siam and Cochinchina. The fourth sphere was centered at the port of Faifo (present-day Hội An) in south Vietnam, and extended along the coast up to Tonkin, Hainan island, and Macau. The fifth sphere embraced the southern Philippine Islands and northern Borneo with Sulu as its leading entrepôt. The sixth sphere encompassed south Fujian, Taiwan, and Luzon island while the seventh sphere was focused in Nagasaki. The boundaries between or among the above-mentioned business-network spheres were not very rigid or clear; in fact they often overlapped one another. Thus, when the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British came to the Indonesian archipelago around 1600 to purchase pepper and other tropical products, they discovered that the entire trading market of the South China Sea was already controlled by the Hokkien merchants, who had a long-standing trading network there. These diversified Hokkien enterprises were linked with each other. Not only were the leaders of Hokkien communities scattered over various trade emporia familiar with each other, but the rank-and-file Hokkien sojourners also regularly communicated with their relatives and friends in distant sojourning communities. Apart from the business benefits of this vast network, the Hokkien merchants were sustained, even during periods of local hostility, by a variety of other types of network. These include family networks, lineage networks, native-place networks, guild networks, and networks built of personal connections. A telling example of a family network is provided by the family of Intje Moeda, which extended from Java to Melaka. Intje Moeda, a converted Muslim Hokkien, who was the deputy-shahbandar (the officer in charge of the affairs of foreign trade and of the customs) in Jaratan, eastern Java, in the early seventeenth century, had a brother in Jambi who oversaw their family business meanwhile maintaining close links with the local king. Intje Moeda was also related to the Hokkien merchant community in Batavia through his daughter’s marriage to Bencon (Su Minggang), the kapitan of the Hokkien sojourning community there. The business network of Intje Moeda’s family, nevertheless, was not only confined to the archipelago, as through the effort of

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Intje Moeda’s brother they extended this network further west to Portuguese Melaka, where another major Hokkien sojourning community existed.75 Equally spectacular was the story of Khouw Hong Liang (Xu Fangliang 許芳良) and his poor fellow clan member Khouw Hun (Xu Yun 許雲) in Batavia. In order to protect the reputation of their clans and to increase and consolidate their influence in the local sojourning community, Hokkien merchants of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who had successfully established themselves in countries overseas, in particular, would normally recruit poor fellow kinsmen into their overseas clan network by providing them with job opportunities or with capital to launch a small business. Khouw Hong Liang, the Hokkien Lieutenant of Batavia in the 1750s, provides an interesting case in point. During the mid-eighteenth century, the Khouw clan from Longxi (roughly the present Zhangzhou region) was very prestigious within the Batavian Hokkien community since many members of this clan were either rich merchants or highly esteemed officials in the town, of which Khouw Hong Liang, the Hokkien Lieutenant of Batavia in the 1750s, was always proud. Consequently when Khouw Hong Liang was told one day that a newly arrived poor fellow clan member named Khouw Hun was working as a day-laborer, he immediately summoned Khouw Hun to his home and told Khouw Hun, “As you belong to the younger generation of my clan, you should have come to see me straight away when you arrived in Batavia. Why should you stand in your own light?” He then took Khouw Hun into his own service, and a few years later his protégé became a rich merchant with support garnered from the Hokkien official.76 An extended Hokkien family network was thus formed in a sojourning community overseas with some influential commercial elite as its paterfamilias. And it was through strategies such as assisting poor clan members like Khouw Hun to achieve upward social mobility that wealthy Hokkien merchants gradually expanded their family networks among their fellow countrymen. The sojourning Hokkiens were highly conscious of clan ties and persistently kept alive their relations with the lineage. For instance, to support his big clan which consisted of several dozen families, a Zhangzhou merchant named Zheng Yuanfu (鄭 元縛) distributed regularly all the money he made from overseas trade among his relatives.77 When Lin Guangtian (林光天), a Quanzhou merchant who sojourned in Manila for a long period, returned to the home village of his family, the first thing he did was to donate several thousand taels of silver to his clan to rebuild the ancestral temple, and to purchase temple fields for his clansmen.78 In Longxi, a merchant called Yu Shiqian (余士前) used to trade in Makassar and sojourned there for almost forty years. During this period, he did not divide up the family property with his 75 Colenbrander and Coolhaas, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, vol. 2, pp. 152, 199, 306, 428. 76 Wang, Haidao yizhi, pp. 45–46. 77 Min, Zhangzhou fuzhi (Gazetteer of Zhangzhou prefecture), 1573, vol. 23, “Prominent Figures of the Ming Dynasty.” 78 Huai, Quanzhou fuzhi (Gazetteer of Zhangzhou prefecture), 1870, vol. 20, “Custom.”

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brothers in order to live apart. On the contrary, he individually supported the extended family and constantly consolidated the clan system.79 The same held true in other overseas Hokkien communities. In Batavia, after Bencon died in 1644, his wife Li Khoen Tsoe married another Hokkien merchant Conjock but the fortune she inherited from Bencon had to be left for Bencon’s grandson Souw Go Equa in accordance with Hokkien customs. What is more intriguing is that before her death in 1677, Li Khoen Tsoe tried very hard to arrange a marriage between Souw Go Equa and one of her nieces, Li Tsionio.80 Obviously, Li Khoen Tsoe hoped to retain the material wealth left by Bencon in her own clan. Another example of clan or family strength is provided by the Chinese sojourning community in Nagasaki. In his insightful paper on the overseas Chinese in premodern Japan, Nakamura Tadashi shows us how a Hokkien merchant named Lin Daorong (林道榮) successfully established himself in the community by acquiring the position of To Otsuji (Chinese: Tang da tongshi 唐大通事) in the seventeenth century. (Both the Japanese and the Chinese title are sometimes written without the term 大 (big) to read simply To tsuji or Tang tongshi.) What is interesting is that his sojourning family expanded rapidly thereafter and gradually became an influential settled clan in Nagasaki. About thirty members of his lineage—including nephews, brothers, and brothers-in-law—were found holding the post of To tsuji (唐通事) within the community power structure over the next 130 years.81 A complete family or lineage network was thus formed within this overseas Hokkien community. The Hokkien extended family network was organized mainly under the principle of common native place or clan ties, and was characterized by two distinctive systems. The first system involved the old Hokkien custom of adopting other people’s sons to help run the family business. Since the Hokkien community in Manila was extremely homogeneous, the significance of this system was demonstrated more clearly than in other communities. Habitually the wealthy Hokkien sojourners in the Parián would buy several boys from their poor relatives or fellow villagers as their adopted sons. When the adopted sons grew up, they would help their fathers to manage the daily family business in the Parián or trek into the remote villages to barter with the indigenous people. The practice of adopting sons was very common among the sojourning Hokkiens, and some of the rich Hokkien families in the Parián maintained a large number of such sons. Consequently the Spaniards had to specially issue an Act on 17 May 1599 to prohibit the sangleys or Hokkien merchants from adopting other people’s sons for their transactions, under the severe penalty of being sent to the Spanish galleons to work as oarsmen for four years without pay.82 However, as this 79 Min, Zhangzhou fuzhi, vol. 23, “Prominent Figures of the Ming Dynasty.” 80 Hoetink, “So Bing Kong,”, pp. 344–15, 380–81. 81 See the diagram presented in Nakamura, “Kinsei no Nippon kakyo,” p. 215. 82 “Ordinances Enacted by the Audiencia of Manila by Francisco Tello and Others (Manila, June 1598–July 1599),” in Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, vol. 11, pp. 75–77.

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long-established system formed part of an important network essential to the development of Hokkien business communities, and the links between Hokkien fathers and adopted sons were very close, it was impossible to wipe it out simply through one administrative order issued by the colonial authorities. Thus, 1603 still saw many of these adopted sons joining the Hokkien sojourners’ uprising. The other system involved the sworn-brotherhood partnership. The brotherhood partnership was deeply rooted in Chinese traditional culture, and every Hokkien would have been familiar with the famous historical legend of the “sworn brotherhood at the peach garden” (桃園結義) through village storytelling. Doubtless, this tradition left an indelible imprint on their minds, leading the early Hokkien sojourners to mold their new networks upon the model of sworn brotherhood in the overseas environment where the traditional family network was absent. For example, Li Dan, Niquan, Geequan, and Ouyang Huayu, the four leading Hokkien merchants in Hirado and Nagasaki of the seventeenth century, forged a sworn-brotherhood partnership to promote commercial cooperation among them. It is obvious that such an attempt to construct an aura of exclusivity would create a sense of unity and trust among the participants of the partnership. The symbolic significance of these systems, networks, and practices which were conducive to the extension and institutionalization of their overseas business thus gave further stimulus to their entrepreneurship. It should be added that aside from the networks within the Hokkien communities, some affinities were established by the Hokkien commercial elite with outsiders, the local authorities and nobles in particular. It was through such extended networks ­ ersecution that some of the sojourning Hokkien merchants were able to escape the p launched by the rulers of host countries; these contacts also helped in maximizing their business profits. Thus in Bantam, Western Java, Lim Lacco enjoyed some ­privileges in his capacity as “consultant” to the sultan of Bantam called Pangeran Ratu (d. 1651). In Batavia, Java, Bencon, Jancon, and Lim Lacco became favored entrepreneurs, and the Dutch governor-general, Jan Pieterson Coen, would periodically pay a visit to Bencon’s home at dusk. In Kyushu, Japan, Li Dan, Ouyang Huayu, Chen Chongyi, and Zhou Hezhi formed special links with the local ryoshu and the Nagasaki bugyo. In Manila, large numbers of Hokkien sojourners who lived at the homes of Spanish friars and Mexican merchants cultivated good relationships with their landlords, and were usually protected by them whenever there was a mass expulsion targeting the Chinese migrants. Based upon the above case studies and observations, it is possible to suggest using a multilayer ball-shaped model to depict the organizational network system of the Hokkien sojourning communities. In other words, the Hokkien sojourners were well protected by a number of different layers of networks. All of these networks were pliable and strong, and whenever the system was pressed by external forces, the interwoven networks would quickly respond and help the system recover its original status. Like a rubber ball, the heavier the strikes it received, the quicker it

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reacted. Sometimes several layers of the networks might be broken because of violent attacks, but still there were other networks left to function as protective layers for the sojourning Hokkiens. The Hokkiens’ experience in Manila confirms this theoretical model. It is widely known that the Hokkien sojourners of Manila experienced bloody massacres in 1603, 1639, 1662, 1686, and 1762. Added to these were periodic large-scale expulsions organized by the Spaniards. However, the Hokkien sojourners never yielded to pressure from outside, and after each of these events it was not long before another influx of sangleys was seen in Manila. With the help of various networks, a new Hokkien Parián was rapidly reconstructed and the insular metropolis again gained some measure of prosperity with the transactions and services of the dynamic Hokkien entrepreneurs. It is in this context that the resilient and diversified Hokkien organizational networks can be defined as one of the essential factors that contributed to the Hokkiens’ success overseas.

Conclusion This study of four cases (Hokkien merchants in Kyushu, Manila, Bantam, and Batavia) provides a detailed picture of the ship cargoes, daily life, and exchange transactions taking place in some of the premodern Asian maritime circuits under discussion. It has shown how active and adventurous Hokkien merchants were from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries in maritime Asia. Hokkien merchants successfully established themselves in a foreign environment that was often dangerous if not outright hostile. Though outnumbered in their adopted societies and overruled politically, they were economically pre-eminent, and time and again they defied the odds and prevailed in the end. Being isolated on the remote southeastern periphery of China, the Hokkiens cast their eyes beyond the sea and regarded the waters in front of their homes as what local history labels “the Hokkiens’ paddyfield.”83 As noted above, maritime trade conducted by the Hokkien merchants in the South China Sea was basically a trade in Chinese commodities being exchanged with precious metals shipped by the European companies to maritime Asia and tropical products collected from local societies. This trade pattern furnished premodern China with the silver urgently needed for its economic development, which in turn brought a significant social transformation to imperial China. What needs to be noted is that particular prominent Hokkien merchants emerged as the representatives of their communities overseas. As mediators, they were able to invoke personal ties with the local regime on behalf of their fellow villagers. These members of the commercial elite could also appeal to their compatriots for

83 See Fu Yuanchu, Qing kai yangjin shu, vol. 96, “Fujian.”

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cooperation and support. Due in part to structures such as these, the Hokkiens successfully established themselves in wide-ranging local societies. Although based in part on family networks and place-of-origin networks, the diversified Hokkien business enterprise was a complex machine that rivaled the organization of the East India companies. Indeed, the commercial success of VOC trade in Batavia, and the rich Spanish trade stemming from Manila, were largely dependent on the active engagement of Chinese merchants in both places. It is fascinating to see alliances between VOC or Japanese trade administrators and Hokkien merchant leaders. It is notable, as well, that Chinese businessmen and entrepreneurs from other nations overlapped socially and commercially at times, as when VOC officers advanced money to Hokkien traders. It was not an accidental phenomenon that so many adventurous Hokkien entrepreneurs traveled overseas at approximately the same time. Rather, this group of people was very much the product of a particular socio-economic situation in premodern Asia. Only by examining them in a broader historical context can we properly understand the roles they played both in the sojourning communities and in the history of maritime Asia.

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Li, Yangong and Hao Jie. Riben kao [Records on Japan]. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, c. 1593, 1983 reprint. Mao, Yuanyi, ed. Wubei zhi (Treatise on armament technology), c. 1628; reprint Beijing: Jiefang jun chubanshe, 1989. Masefield, John, ed. Dampier’s Voyages, 2 vols. London: E. Grant Richards, 1808, 1906 reprint. Meilink-Roelofsz, M.A.P. Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962. Min, Mengde, ed. Zhangzhou fuzhi 漳州府志[Gazetteer of Zhangzhou prefecture]. Xiamen: Xiamen University Press, 1573, 2012 reprint. Ming shilu [Veritable records of the Ming Dynasty]. Taipei: Academia Sinica, Lishi yuyan yanjiusuo, 1962–66. Morga, Antonio de. Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (Mexico, 1609), trans. J.S. Cummins. London: Hakluyt Society, 1971. Nagasaki Shiyakusho [Government of Nagasiki], ed. Nagasaki shi shi [History of the city of Nagasaki], 8 vols. Nagasaki: Nagasaki Shiyakusho, 1923–38. Nakamura, Tadashi 中村質. “Kinsei no Nippon kakyo” 近世の日本華僑. In Gairai bunka to Kyushu 外來文 化と九州, ed. Yanai Kenji, pp. 189–216. Tokyo: Heibonsha 平凡社, 1973. Nanpo, Bunshi. Nanpo bunshu [Literary collection of Nanpo Bunshi]. Edo: printed by a private temple, 1649. Nishikawa, Joken. Nagasaki yawaso [Evening talks of Nagasaki], 5 vols. (preface 1720), reprinted in Nagasaki sosho [Nagasaki Collectanea]. Nagasaki: Nagasaki Kobunsho Shuppankai, 1896. Phillips, George. “Early Spanish Trade with Chincheo (Chang-chow).” China Review 19 (1890): 243–55. Pinkerton, John, ed. A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World, 17 vols. London: Longman, 1808. Plutschow, Herbert E. Historical Nagasaki. Tokyo: Japan Times, 1983. Qian, Jiang [James K. Chin]. “1570–1760 nian xishu feilubin liuru zhongguo de meizhou baiyin” [On the inflow of American silver into China via the Spanish Philippines from 1570 to 1760]. Nanyang wenti [Southeast Asian studies] 3 (1985): 96–106. Qian, Jiang [James K. Chin]. “1570–1760 Zhongguo he lusong de maoyi” [The junk trade between China and Luzon, 1570–1760]. MPhil thesis, Xiamen University, 1985. Rouffaer, G.P. and J.W. Yzerman, eds. De eerste schipvaart der Nederlanders naar Oost-Indië onder Cornelis de Houtman 1595–97: journalen, documenten en ander bescheiden [The first voyage of the Dutch to the East Indies under Cornelis de Houtman, 1595–97: journals, documents, and other papers], 3 vols. ‘s Gravenhage, 1915. Satow, Sir Ernest M., ed. The Voyage of John Saris to Japan. London: Hakluyt Society, 1900. Schlegel, G. “First Introduction of Tea into Holland.” T’oung Pao (Leiden), 2nd ser., 1 (1900): 468–72. Schurz, William Lytle. The Manila Galleon. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1939. Sūden et al., eds. Ikoku nikki [Manuscript collection of diplomatic correspondence]. Tokyo: Yushodo, 1929. Tanabe, Mokei. Nagasaki jitsuroku daisei [The complete authentic accounts of Nagasaki]. Nagasaki: Nagasaki Bunko Kankokai, 1928. TePaske, John J. “New World Silver, Castile and the Philippines, 1590–1800.” In Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, ed. J.F. Richards, pp. 425–46. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1983. Thompson, Edward Maunde, Sir. Diary of Richard Cocks, cape-merchant in the English factory in Japan, 1615–1622, with correspondence. London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1883. Vermeulen, Johannes Theodorus. “Some Remarks about the Administration of Justice by the Compagnie in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Respect of the Chinese Community.” Journal of the South Seas Society (Singapore) 12.2 (1956): 4–12. Wang, Dahai 王大海. Haidao yizhi 海島逸志 [Miscellaneous jottings on the archipelago], ed. with annotation by Yao Nan 姚楠 and Wu Langxuan 吳琅璇. Hong Kong: Xuejin Shujian, 1806, 1992 reprint. Wickberg, Edgar. The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850–1898. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965. Wills, John E., Jr. “Maritime China from Wang Chih to Shih Lang: Themes in Peripheral History.” In From

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Ming to Ch’ing, eds. Jonathan D. Spence and John E. Wills Jr., pp. 203–38. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979. Xie, Jie. Qiantai wozhuan [Records of the Wokou]. Xuanlantang Congshu Xuji. Nanjing: Guoli zhongyang tushuguan reprint, 1947. Xu, Fuyuan. Jinghetang Ji [Collected works of Xu Fuyuan]. Preface 1611. Yanai, Kenji. Nagasaki. Tokyo: Shibundo, 1962. Zhang, Xie. Dongxiyyang kao [A treatise of the Eastern and Western oceans]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1617, 1981 reprint. Zheng, Shungong. Riben yijian [Account of Japan]. (1564), reprint of the old handwritten manuscript, Shanghai: n.p., 1939. Zheng, Ruozeng, ed. Chouhaitubian [Illustrated seaboard strategy]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1561–62, 2007 reprint.

About the author James K. Chin (錢 江) was born in Shanghai, China, and was trained at Fudan University (Shanghai), Xiamen University (Fujian), and the University of Hong Kong on the maritime history of China and Chinese diaspora communities. He has been teaching at Xiamen University, the National University of Singapore, and Hong Kong University over the past three decades and has recently joined the School of Overseas Chinese Studies at Jinan University (Guangzhou) as a Research Professor. He is the editor-in-chief of China’s Journal of Maritime History Studies and the author of more than seventy journal articles and book chapters on the maritime history of Asia and Chinese transnational migration and diaspora. Meanwhile, he serves the Hong Kong Maritime Museum as Board Director.

Plate 1: Unknown artist, tea-leaf storage jar, named Chigusa, China, Southern Song or Yuan dynasty, mid-thirteenth to mid-fourteenth century. Stoneware with iron glaze. Vessel, h. 41.6 × dia. 36.6 cm (16 3/8 × 14 7/16 in.). Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

 

Plate 2: Unknown artist, Foreign Factories in Guangzhou, China, c. 1795. Gouache on silk. Hong Kong Museum of Art Collection.

Plate 3: Designers Guy Louis Vernansal the Elder, Jean-Baptiste Belin de Fontenay the Elder, and Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer, “The Audience of the Emperor” tapestry from the tapestry series The Story of the Emperor of China. Produced in Beauvais, designed c. 1685–90, woven c. 1685–1740. Wool and silk, h. 123 1/2 × w. 183 3/4 in. (313.7 × 466.7 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Plate 4: Unknown artist, Arrival of a Japanese “Red Seal” Ship in Hội An, Japan, seventeenth century. Section of a hand scroll, ink and colors on paper. Jōmyō-ji temple, Japan. Banned from Chinese ports, Japanese merchants conducted trade with their Chinese counterparts at neutral ports such as Hội An in central Vietnam. This seventeenth-century hand-scroll painting depicts a ship dispatched by the Chaya merchant house of Nagoya being towed to anchorage at Hội An. The Japanese settlement (at top left) was located across a small river separating it from the Chinese quarter (bottom left). According to the inscription, the ship carried a complement of more than 300 sailors and merchants.

Plate 5: Unknown artist, Oido-type tea bowl, known as Sogyu, Korea. Nezu Museum, Tokyo.

Plate 6: Unknown artist, Shuko-type celadon tea bowl, China, thirteenth century. Nezu Museum, Tokyo.

Plate 7: Unknown artist, Totoya-type tea bowl, known as Kasugayama, Korea, sixteenth–seventeenth century. Nezu Museum, Tokyo.

Plate 8: Unknown artist, fragment of tea bowl with ash glaze, Korea, late sixteenth century, excavated at the Funai castle site.

Plate 9: Adrian Boot, Puerto de Acapulco en el Reino de la Nueva España en el Mar del Sur, drawing, Mexico; facsimile lithograph by A. Ruffoni, 1628. Colored inks on paper. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

Plate 10: Unknown artist, Virgen de Belém [Our Lady of Bethlehem], Cuzco, Peru, eighteenth century. Oil on canvas, h. 154.9 × w. 101 cm (61 × 39 3/4 in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Plate 11: Unknown artist, Young Woman with a Harpsichord, Mexico, 1735–50. Oil on canvas. Denver Art Museum.

Plate 12: Miguel Cabrera (Mexican, 1695–1768), Portrait of Don Juan Xavier Joachín Gutiérrez Altamirano Velasco, Count of Santiago de Calimaya, c. 1752. Oil on canvas, h. 81 5/16 × w. 53 1/2 in. (206.5 × 135.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum.

Plate 13: José de Alcíbar (Mexican, 1725–1803), From Spaniards and Black, Mulatto, Mexico, c. 1760. Denver Art Museum.

Plate 14: Amoy Chinqua, Joseph Collet, China, dated 1716 by inscription. Painted unfired clay portrait figure, h. 33 in. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Plate 15: Unknown artist, Figure of Thomas Hall, Guangzhou, China, 1715–30. Unfired clay, wood, velvet, straw, silk. Without base, h. 12 1/4 × w. 13 1/8 × 6 in. (31.115 × 33.338 × 15.24 cm). Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

Plate 16: Attributed to Chitqua (Tan-Che-Qua, Chinese, c. 1728–96), David Garrick, c. 1770–75. Painted unfired-clay portrait figure. Private collection.

Plate 17: Jan van Kessel “The Elder” (Flemish, 1626–1679), The Continent of America, 1666. Painting on panel, h. 48.6 × w. 67.9 cm (center panel). Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Plate 18: Michael Mietke (German, c. 1656/1671–1719) and Gérard Dagly (French, 1660–1715), harpsichord, 1702–4. Detail of painting on white lacquered case. Schloss Charlottenberg, Berlin.

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Plate 19: Madhu Khanazad, Plato Charming Animals with Music, c. 1595. Manuscript illumination in Khamsa of Nizami. British Library, MS Or. 12208, fol. 298a. The British Library, London.

Plate 20: Johan Zoffany (German, 1733–1810), Colonel William Blair and his Family, 1786. Oil on canvas, h. 965 × w. 1,346 mm. Tate Britain, London.

Plate 21: Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Playing Music, China, 1670s–1680s. Two parts of twelvefold incised lacquer screen (two parts currently separated). Left screen (upper), right screen (lower). Ham House, Richmond, England.

Plate 22: Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Loading Ships, China, c. 1700. Incised lacquer screen. Each panel, h.244 × w. 46 cm (96 1/16 × 18 1/8 in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Plate 23: Unknown artist, Dutchmen and Associates Loading Tribute, China, eighteenth century. Very large twelvefold incised lacquer screen. Overall, h. 2.66 × w. 5.96 m. National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet), Copenhagen.

Plate 24: Unknown artist, a pair of Namban screens, Portuguese Ship Arriving at the Port of Nagasaki, Japan, c. 1600. Namban Bunkakan, Japan. Source: Nanban bijutsu to yofuga, vol. 20 of the Genshoku Nihon no bijutsu series, ed. Akiyama Terukazu et al. (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1970), pp. 64–67.

Plate 25: Unknown artist, porcelain tea caddy, with overglaze decoration of the arms of Benjamin Tarin pictured on the scroll unrolled above the table, China, 1736–95, 4 1/2 × 3 in. (11.43 × 7.62 cm). Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

Plate 26: Unknown artist, porcelain teapot, with overglaze design, China, 1770–75. Detail of side of pot showing cobbler at work, with inscription “I must work for leather is dear,” 4 1/2 × 9 × 4 1/2 in. (11.43 × 22.86 × 11.43 cm). © 2010 Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Peabody Essex Museum, gift of Mr. Carl L. Crossman in memory of Priscilla Waldo Papin, 1983, E72796. Photo: Dennis Helmar.

Plate 27: Unknown artist, porcelain plate, with overglaze design of English tea inspector above and Chinese tea packer below, China, c.1770, 1 × 9 1/8 in. (2.54 × 23.178 cm). Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

Plate 28: Unknown artist, porcelain punch bowl, with overglaze enamel decoration of the Hongs of Canton, South China, eighteenth century. British Museum, London.

4. The trade activities of sixteenth-century Christian daimyo Ōtomo Sōrin

Hiroko Nishida



Translated by Joan E. Ericson Abstract In the sixteenth century, the Japanese Christian daimyō Ōtomo Sōrin, with his seat in Northeast Kyūshū, carried out a flourishing trade by sending ships to Ming dynasty China and the Korean peninsula. While the shogunal government stopped dispatching ships to Ming China in 1547, the Ōtomo clan continued to send its own trading ships. There was even a thriving “Chinatown” on the outskirts of Ōtomo Sōrin’s Funai Castle. Excavations at the site of Funai Castle reveal Christian artifacts and noteworthy finds of rare ceramics from Southeast Asian countries, such as present-day Thailand, Myanmar, and Vietnam. Many rings and pieces of Venetian glass have been discovered. Of particular interest is the evidence for Ōtomo Sōrin’s early interest in Korean tea bowls. Keywords: Early modern China-Japan trade; Ōtomo Sōrin; Kyushu trade; Christianity and Japan; Korean tea bowls; Funai Castle

In this chapter, I would like to clarify the historical importance of Ōtomo Sōrin’s trade activities with foreign countries during the sixteenth century, partly based upon what we are learning from archaeological materials unearthed at Funai castle, his Momoyama-period residence.

The Ōtomo clan and the Bungo Funai castle The old region of Bungo is a medieval city in the east of Kyushu, Japan. The city developed when the Zen temple Manju-ji was erected in 1306. From the Kamakura period (1184–1333 CE) forwards, the Ōtomo clan dominated the Bungo region, and by the fourteenth century the framework of the city was completed (Fig. 2.3).

Bentley, Tamara H. (ed.), Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984677/ch04

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The Ōtomo clan were given this land in the Kamakura period, and granted the hereditary title of daimyo (military governor) over the area. They set up Ōtomo castle as their headquarters in 1254. In addition to their governing role, they also began to put an emphasis on trade. By 1471, the Ōtomo clan took control of the port of Hakata, which had been a port of trade with the Korean peninsula and China from about the eighth century.1 They used this as their base for trade with the Korean peninsula. In the fifteenth century, when the Ashikaga shogun dispatched “kenminsen” ships for embassies to Ming China and other purposes, the Ōtomo clan actively participated, and in 1451 sent a ship to China. Even after the shogunate discontinued sending the kenminsen ships, the Ōtomo clan not only sent their own trading ships to Ming China, but also to Southeast Asian countries. In the Sengoku (Warring States) period in Japan (1467–c. 1570), several powerful feudal houses expanded their conduct of trade without being challenged by the weakened central government. In addition, sometimes multi-ethnic pirate groups found protection on offshore islands or inland waterways overseen by these daimyo. Ironically, the lack of central control allowed many fruitful ventures to take place. (See Richard von Glahn’s chapter and James K. Chin’s chapter in this volume for more on the trade opportunities at this time.) The Bungo region was particularly flourishing at the time of the twenty-first generation Ōtomo, Yoshishige Sōrin (Ōtomo Sōrin), during the latter part of the sixteenth century. In the center of the medieval city called “Funai” was the Ōtomo castle (also called Funai castle), as well as many houses, temples, and shrines. A “Chinatown” (Tōjinmachi) was created nearby, where Chinese and Koraijin (Koreans) resided. About 1551, there was a Christian building called Deus hall (most likely a reference to Jesus). Deus hall, a base for Christian missionary work, lasted until Ōtomo’s death in 1586. (For a map of Bungo Funai in this period, see Fig. 2.4.) When thinking about Ōtomo Sōrin, we must not forget that he was a Christian. In 1551 he invited Francisco Xavier to Funai when Xavier was visiting Japan and gave him permission to proselytize. While Xavier stayed forty-six days in Funai, Sōrin treated him respectfully. Fernão Mendes Pinto has written about the audience Xavier had with the Bungo ruler Sōrin in his book Record of Eastern Travels ( J: Toyo henreki ki, P: Peregrinacao).2 According to Mendes Pinto’s account, a 1641 painting of Sōrin was known in Europe as The King of Bungo. This painting is currently exhibited in 1 For more on the ancient port of Hakata in northern Kyushu, the main departure point for contact with the continent in the Nara and Heian periods see Fuqua, “Japanese Missions to Tang China and Maritime Exchange,” pp. 12–14. 2 The complete translation of Fernao Mendes Pinto’s Record of Eastern Travels was published in 1980. Chapters 209 through 212 describe how the lord of Bungo treated Xavier with respect and entertained him, and how he allowed Xavier to carry out his proselytizing during his forty-six-day stay. Incidentally, this book was translated into French in 1628 and in 1645, into Dutch in 1652, and into English in 1653, and served to spread knowledge about the East throughout Europe.

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Fig. 4.1: Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641), St. Francis Xavier before Ōtomo Sōrin, Daimyo of Bungo, 1641. Oil on canvas. The Graf von Schönborn art collection in Schloss Weissenstein in Pommersfelden, Germany.

Weissenstein castle in Pommersfelden, Germany, as part of the Graf von Schönborn collection (see Fig. 4.1).3 Ōtomo Sōrin is on the right. 3 Several scholars have researched this picture. Kimura Saburo demonstrated how the title of the work changed from Saint Francisco Xavier in an Audience with the Daimyo of Bungo, Otomo Sorin to The Daimyo of Bungo, and finally to The King of Japan (日本国王Nihon kokuo). As a provincial lord (daimyo), Otomo Sorin clearly was not the King of Japan. See Kimura, “Work by Van Dyke.”

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Fig. 4.2: Rosary beads, recovered from Bungo Funai, Japan. Datable to the late sixteenth century.

The Portuguese Jesuit Luís Fróis (1532–1597) has recorded that Sōrin was converted to Christianity from Zen Buddhism in August of 1578, and in honor of Saint Xavier, Sōrin selected Francisco as his name and started to live as a model Christian.4 Sōrin associated with European people, such as those from Portugal and Spain, he allowed Christian missionaries to proselytize, and he himself became a Catholic believer. For these reasons, rosaries and medallions indicating that there were Japanese Catholic believers in Funai have been excavated in large numbers from the castle ruins (see rosary beads, Fig. 4.2). In addition, shards of European Venetian glass cups have been excavated (see Fig. 4.3). In 1582, Sōrin sent four young men to Europe in his name in order to show obeisance to the Pope. The young men had an audience with the Spanish king Felipe II and Pope Gregorio XIII, and were able to return to Japan in 1590. However, by this time Sōrin had already passed away and Bungo Funai had been burned down during an attack by the Shimazu clan. It is apparent from the investigation of the ruins that by 1560 Portuguese ships had landed in Bungo Funai five times, and had brought with them ceramics from Thailand, Vietnam, and several provinces of South China. Sōrin had ordered a cannon and saltpeter from the Portuguese. Obtaining these items had been difficult, but it is clear from the excavated castle items that he had been successful. In Bungo Funai there were not only Portuguese merchants, but also Japanese merchants, such as Nakaya Muneyoshi. Muneyoshi had bases in Osaka, Sakai, and 4

See the Japanese translation of Fróis, Historia de Japam, pp. 141–52.

The trade activities of sixteenth- century Christian daimyo Ōtomo Sōrin

Fig. 4.3: Venetian glass, recovered from Bungo Funai, Japan. Datable to the late sixteenth century.

Fig. 4.4: Tricolor South China ware, recovered from Bungo Funai, Japan. Datable to the sixteenth century, or earlier.

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Kyoto, and engaged in a wide range of trade activities in Southeast Asia. Muneyoshi also worked with merchants from Ming dynasty China. Among items excavated from Funai castle, we find large quantities of three-color vessels from South China (see Fig. 4.4), four-eared Thai pots, and Vietnamese yakishime porcelain pots. These vessels suggest Sorin’s engagement with a wide variety of trade routes.

Trade with Hakata merchants Hakata was a hub of maritime traffic in the fifteenth century. Trade goods gathered in Hakata were sent to all regions of Japan. Furthermore, Hakata was the base for Japanese-Chinese trade, which made it an important cornerstone of both diplomacy and commerce. Due to its importance, there was a fierce fight over control of Hakata. In 1559, Ōtomo Sōrin was appointed local commissioner to serve as the guardian of both the Chikuzen and Buzen areas in Kyushu. As a result of this authority, he was able to govern Hakata. Through the agency of Hakata merchants such as Kamiya Sotan, who ran a silver mine, and Shimai Soshitsu, who had close ties with Soshi of Tsushima, Ōtomo Sōrin carried on trade with the Korean peninsula and Ming China. Trade goods such as silk thread, silk fabrics, and medicine predominated. Sorin also eagerly collected tea ceremony utensils. It can be said that the name of Shimai Soshitsu, a prominent merchant of the sixteenth century, has been recorded in history due to his association with Ōtomo Sōrin. We can see from the document The Shimai Records (Shimai bunsho) that Soshitsu was conducting a brisk trade during the Eiroku period (1558– 60).5 According to these records, the Shimai family territory included Tsushima and Iki in Japan and Quanzhou and Koriyama in China, and they conducted trade using their own commercial vessel, the Eijumaru. The records list the following trade items: “damask,” “Koryo dynasty tea bowl,” “woven silk,” “Ushikien, musk ox Chinese medicine,” “raw silver cod,” “saya figured silk,” “pongee silk,” “cotton,” “shining cloth,” “ship rope,” “wooden sword,” “ash strainer,” “undistilled cloudy sake,” and “galvanized iron” (釷 たん).6 It appears that Shimai Soshitu purchased such items at the request of Ōtomo Sōrin. This is evident from a letter in which Sōrin thanks Shimai for having placed an order for the prized Ushiki musk ox, used as a medicine, and woven silk.

5 Fukuoka-ken, Shimai Sorin bunsho, has been reproduced in Fukuoka-ken shi shiryō, vol. 6. The original text is currently archived in the Fukuoka City Art Museum. I have used nos. 6, 7, 8, and 10 in this chapter. 6 It may be useful to provide some of the technical terms here. “Donsu” is one kind of silk weave. The same goes for “Ori kinu,” “Saya,” and “hokken.” “Ushikien” is a type of medicine. It is thought that “Momen” and “Teru nuno” are wood fibers.

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It is conceivable that the most historically significant role Soshitsu played, in conjunction with Sōrin, was to firmly include the Korean peninsula among his trade destinations, and to purchase Koryo tea bowls, especially the “well bowls” (Ido jawan). The “well bowl” is one kind of Koryo bowl, made in the Korean peninsula. From the range of pottery imported from the Korean peninsula, the bowls that were used in the tea ceremony were called Koryo tea bowls. However, rather than having been made in the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392 CE), they were actually made during the Joseon dynasty (1392–1911 CE), and it is thought that they were transported to Japan in the early sixteenth century.7 The term “Korean bowl” (Koryo jawan) was seen for the first time in the record of a tea ceremony performed in 1537. This is the Matsuya Record of a Tea Ceremony (Matsuya kaiki) in which Matsuya Hisamasa, a lacquer merchant in Nara, recorded the utensils used at a tea ceremony to which he was invited. Through this journal it is clear that by the beginning of the sixteenth century, tea bowls imported from the Korean peninsula were being used as utensils for the tea ceremony.8 It is not clear what kind of “Koryo bowl” was used in that particular tea ceremony. However, the “Koryo bowl” was clearly different from the temmoku and celadon bowls used until that point (see Plate 5 for a Korean Oido-type tea bowl known as Sogyu in the collection of the Nezu Museum, Tokyo). Tea ceremony records from the early part of the sixteenth century include many black temmoku and celadon bowls, but there are also temmoku tinged with ash or yellow temmoku. There are notes about celadon bowls called Shuko-style bowls (referring to the type of celadon bowl favored by Murata Shuko) (see Plate 6 for a Shuko-type celadon tea bowl), yellow-colored bowls with an oxidized celadon glaze; “doll” tea bowls which had an embossed pattern of a doll; and reddish brown tinged glazed tea bowls. From these records, we can see that tea taste was slowly changing from the black or traditional celadon tea bowls. Up through the middle of the sixteenth century, there were opportunities to integrate new bowls alongside a growing interest in new things. However, regarding the import of Koryo tea bowls, the matter has primarily been studied from the viewpoint of wabi tea and the involvement of Sen no Rikyu, and thus there remain to this day many unknown aspects.9

7 Akanuma Takei provides a useful discussion of Koryo tea bowls, encompassing both the materials unearthed and the current scholarship. See Akanuma, Koryo Tea Bowls. See also Kageyama, Koryo jawan ni kuwawaru kinsei shiryō. 8 See Matsuya Hisamasa, Matsuya kaiki (Matsuya’s tea ceremony record), in Sen Soshitsu, ed. Chado koden zenshu, vol. 9. 9 From the ceramics imported from the Korean peninsula, it was thought that Sen no Rikyu chose the best Koryo tea bowls, especially the “well tea bowls,” for the tea ceremony from among the many ordinary pieces (the ones that were used for daily living and thrown away). However, the kinds of pieces he chose were not ordinarily seen on the Korean peninsula; of late there is a theory that these were festival pieces (special pottery used during a festival).

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Ōtomo Sōrin was acquainted with the Sakai merchant and tea connoisseur Ten’nojiya Doshitsu. In the “Shimai Family Documents” of the merchant Shimai Soshitsu we find a joint order placed by Sorin and Ten’nojiya for a “Koryo bowl,” and we find the document for the purchase.10 Furthermore, a letter included in the 1565 “Shimai Family Documents” is addressed to Priest Shimai Shinpei from Ōtomo Sōrin. The contents read: “The Koryo tea bowl arrived. I am extremely pleased.” The Koryo bowl is presumed to refer to a “well bowl”; it can be seen that it was a large bowl from the fact that it was called a “pot” (hachi). We can assume that it was a big tea bowl compared to the tea bowls used up until that time. Sorin was joyful about the “Koryo bowl,” not just because it had arrived, but because it must have been a good utensil, suitable for tea. Regarding the age of the letter, it is estimated that it is from the Eiroku period (1569–72 CE). We must be mindful of the fact that Sōrin already knew about Koryo tea bowls at this time. According to a survey of the recent excavations at the Funai ruins, we know that a large number of Korean ceramic bowls have been unearthed. We should note that: (1) the bowls do not only date to the first half of the sixteenth century; (2) there are many types of bowl among them that are not, to our knowledge, found contemporaneously in the Korean peninsula; (3) similar bowls have not yet been excavated from other Japanese ruins. It seems likely that, from the wide variety of Korean ceramics imported, Sōrin had the opportunity to order the tea bowls he liked—and the ones his tea friend, the Sakai merchant Ten’nojiya Doshitsu, liked. (See Plate 7 for a Korean Totoya-type tea bowl, known as Kasugayama. See Plate 8 for a fragment of a Korean tea bowl with an ash glaze from the late sixteenth century, excavated at the Funai castle site). We even know a little more about the merchant networks here. Yoshihiro Sojin, Ōtomo’s Hakata agent, was a close associate of Ōtomo Sōrin and of his son, Yoshimune; he gave instructions to Shimai Soshitsu of Hakata regarding supplying Ōtomo with tea utensils. We know that the supplier for these ceramics was a merchant of Tsushima. Shimai Soshitsu of Hakata put in the orders to Tsushima and supplied the finished goods to Ōtomo Sōrin.11 From the first time the Koryo tea bowl appeared in the tea ceremony record in the year Tenmon 6 (1537), it is only mentioned nine times in other records before 1569. However, when it comes to the Eiroku era (1558–69/70), the use of Koryo tea bowls rapidly increases. The beginning of this trend was a tea party held by Sorin’s friend Ten’nojiya Doshitsu (天王寺屋道叱) on 19 January 1558. As mentioned above, 10 The Shimai family documents may be found in Fukuoka-ken, Shimai Sorin bunsho. 11 We learn from this letter that, like Lord Ōtomo, Soshitsu was immersed in collecting tea ceremony utensils and suitable paintings. “Shimai Family Records” (Record no. 7), a letter from Yoshihiro Sojin from about 1576 (the year Tensho 4). See Fukuoka-ken, Shimai Sorin bunsho. Addressed to Shimai Soshitsu, the letter makes note of tea ceremony utensils, tea ceremonies, trade with Korea, and the fact that Tennojiya Doshitsu came to Bungo. In addition, there was a person named Baigan who was a Tsushima merchant. Baigan received a written permit to conduct trade with the Korean kingdom from both the Soshi of Tsushima and from the Korean kingdom.

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Fig. 4.5: Blue-and-white porcelain sherds, recovered from Bungo Funai, Japan. China, Yuan to Ming dynasty.

Doshitsu had frequently visited Kyushu for the purpose of buying goods from China and Korea, and had also been invited to Bungo by Sōrin. It is conceivable that Sōrin invited Doshitsu in order to learn about current fashions in the cultural centers of Kyoto, Osaka, and Sakai, as well as to learn about the tea ceremony that was popular in Osaka and Sakai. Regarding shifting tastes, we can imagine two scenarios. Either Sōrin’s heightened interest in the Koryo tea bowls of Sakai and Osaka was due to Doshitsu, through whom he was one of the first to learn about the Korean tea bowls and to place an order; or together with Doshitsu he was himself one of the trend setters.

Ōtomo Sōrin and trade with Ming China Another aspect of Ōtomo Sōrin’s overseas trade was to obtain goods from Ming China. As already mentioned, Sōrin had participated in the Muromachi shogunate’s kenminsen ships, and even after the Shogunate ceased dispatching ships, Sōrin had continued trading through independent routes. Blue-flowered porcelain dating from the Yuan to the early Ming periods, which was excavated from the Funai ruins, attests to this fact. All told, approximately fifteen pieces of various sizes of Yuan blue-flowered porcelain pieces have been excavated from the Funai ruins (see Fig. 4.5).

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Fig. 4.6: Blue-and-white porcelain fragment, recovered from Funai castle, Japan. China, Yuan to Ming dynasty.

Fig. 4.7: Blue-and-white porcelain fragment, recovered from Funai castle, Japan. China, Yuan to Ming dynasty.

Although they are small pieces, some can be seen to have been part of a large bottle or jar; part of the rim of a round flower-shaped dish; or from a bottle, tray, or jar. Bottles with a peony arabesque designs, jars with peony designs, bottles with lotus arabesque designs, bottles with phoenix designs (see Figures 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7)—when compared with items that have been transmitted from generation to generation, we

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are able to hypothesize many of the original shapes. All these patterns are carefully drawn and have features in common with the Yuan blue-flowered porcelain first excavated in Kyushu. The excavation site is known to be a part of the western ditch along Ōtomo’s mansion, an area that included both Zen temples and the Chinatown.

The meaning of the Yuan blue-flowered porcelain excavated from Funai Many of the excavated Chinese ceramics from the Funai castle ruins date from the sixteenth century and a few are from the Yuan dynasty. It is unclear whether the Yuan blue-flower porcelain excavated here was imported in the fourteenth century or imported by the end of the sixteenth century through merchants in the Ryukyus or Ming China. However, when the blue-flowered porcelain from the ruins of other castles is compared to the Yuan blue-flowered porcelain excavated from Funai castle, it is clear that these were types of porcelain that were exported to Japan. The Yuan dynasty blue-flowered porcelain exported to Southeast Asia and Near and Middle Eastern countries was different in type and size. Even if Ōtomo brought these Chinese ceramics in through his own trade routes, the Chinese ceramics favored by the Japanese were probably based on what Japanese in China had seen or learned about firsthand. The fact that smuggling was flourishing between Japan and Ming China, despite the ban on maritime activities, is evident from excavated pottery shards from all over Japan. (From 1374 to 1567 the Ming dynasty haijin policy forbade Chinese to travel across the sea or conduct maritime trade with foreign people.) Also, simply based on the fact that a Chinatown was present in Bungo Funai, it is clear that Ōtomo was involved with the China trade. Ming era white porcelain small plates, clearly fired to fill orders from Japan, have also been excavated. Many of these shards are stamped with the inscription “Made in the Year of Tenmon.” This Japanese dating suggests that Chinese ceramics were ordered through and purchased from merchants in an Ōtomo territory Chinatown. Ming era white porcelain bowl shards with gold-painted pictures, celadon-style plates covered with blue celadon glaze from the Jingdezhen kiln, tricolored (三彩 sansai) water pitchers and jars from South China, and other varieties of plates have been excavated from all areas of Funai. At this point it is not possible to clarify when or by what route the Yuan blue-flowered porcelain or the rare Ming gilt bowls were brought to Funai. In particular, the large amount of excavated tricolored pottery from the South China region is evidence of Ōtomo’s trade with Southeast Asia. Ōtomo Sōrin was attacked by the Shimazu in 1586, and Funai castle was destroyed in the ensuing fire. Following this, the castle and the castle town were relocated; the land where the castle stood has been abandoned to this day. Given these

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circumstances, we are able to date the excavated relics of Funai castle ruins to no later than 1586. In sum, then, the Funai ruins provide a fruitful topic for ongoing research regarding the activities of the Christian daimyo Ōtomo Sōrin.

Bibliography Akanuma, Takei. Koryo Tea Bowls [高麗茶碗 Koryo jawan]. Tokyo: Shibundo, 2001. Fróis, Luís S.I. Historia de Japam, trans. Matsuda Kiichi and Kawasaki Momota. Biblioteca da Ajuda cod. 49-IV-54. Tokyo: Chuokoronsha, 1978. Fukuoka-ken. Shimai Sorin bunsho, reprinted in Fukuoka-ken shi shiryō, vol. 6. Fukuoka: Fukuoka-ken, 1936. Fuqua, Douglas Sherwin, “The Japanese Missions to Tang China and Maritime Exchange in East Asia, 7th–9th Centuries.” PhD diss., University of Hawai’i, Manoa, 2004. Kageyama, Sumio. Koryo jawan ni kuwawaru kinsei shiryō. Tokyo: Kawahara Shoten, 2003. Kimura, Saburo. “Work by Van Dyke, alias ‘Saint Francisco Xavier in an audience with the King of Japan.’” In The Pictorial Record of the Great Xavier Exhibition [Dai zavieru ten zuroku]. Yamaguchi: Yamaguchi Prefectural Art Museum [Yamaguchi kenritsu bijutsukan], 1999. Matsuda Hisamasa, Matsuda kaiki, in Sen Soshitsu, ed., Chado Koten Zenshu, 12 vols. Tokyo: Dankosha, 1971. Pinto, Fernao Mendes. Record of Eastern Travels [ Japanese translation]. Toyobunko 393, Heibonsha, 1980.

About the author Hiroko Nishida received her PhD from the University of Oxford in Asian ceramics. She is the former Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Nezu Museum in Tokyo. She has written widely on the transnational movement of ceramics, on Japanese ceramics and the tea ceremony, and on developing a more nuanced view of ceramic history based on evidence from archival materials, archaeology, and shipwrecks. Among other books, she has published Japanese Export Porcelain During the 17th and 18th Century (1975). Her scholarship also includes topics such as “Nanban and Shimamomo: Southeast Asian Export Ceramics to Japan” and “White Porcelain Shards Found at Chokichidani Kiln Site in Arita.” Her essay “Rethinking Ido Tea Bowls” considers how these Korean bowls developed, how they were commissioned by Japanese patrons, and how they arrived in Japan.

Part II Commodities

5. From global to local

The diaspora of Asian decorative arts in colonial Latin America



Donna Pierce Abstract The Spanish conquest and occupation of the Philippines beginning in 1565, and the development of the Manila Galleon trade beginning in 1573, greatly enhanced Spain’s role as an importer of Asian commodities. Many of these goods came across the Pacific, and, in the sixteenth – eighteenth centuries, Mexico served as an important crossroads between East Asia and Europe. New products transforming daily life in colonial Latin America included silks, indianilla printed cottons, porcelains, ivory sculptures, lacquerwares, and folding screens. These Asian goods were not only used in aristocratic settings, but also in provincial areas and middle-class contexts. The hybrid aesthetics resulting from these imported commodities were a significant part of the culture of the Hispanic viceroyalties in Central and South America. Keywords: colonial Latin America; colonial Mexican visual culture; New Spain; ­Manila galleon trade; silk textiles; New World hybridity In thee Spain and China meet, Italy is linked with Japan, And now, finally, a world united In order and agreement. —Bernardo de Balbuena, La grandeza Mexicana, 16041

Balbuena’s epic poem about Mexico was published just over thirty years after the opening of Spanish trade with Asia (via Manila and Acapulco) and indicates an intellectual self-awareness in Mexico of its role as a major crossroads within the new global trade network. With the conquest and occupation of the Philippines by Spain in 1565, Spain finally had its own long-desired trade route to Asia and no longer had to 1 “En ti se junta España con la China,/ Italia con Iapon, y finalmente/ Un mundo entero en trato y disciplina.” Bernardo de Balbuena, La grandeza Mexicana, p. 72. Translated by the author. Bentley, Tamara H. (ed.), Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984677/ch05

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rely on the Portuguese-dominated route around the tip of Africa. In 1573, the famous galleon fleets began to sail annually from Manila to Acapulco laden with exotic trade goods such as porcelain, silks, and spices.2 There the goods were off-loaded onto mules for the long journey overland to the east coast of Mexico where in Veracruz they were again loaded onto ships for the trip across the Atlantic to Spain; or inland to Mexico City, as capitol of the viceroyalty of New Spain, for local consumption and distribution. Since Spain’s main trade artery with Asia crossed Mexico, the area served as the pivot point for all consumer goods from Asia bound for Spain as well as to all the Spanish colonies in the Americas. Merchant ships came to Acapulco from Peru, or to Veracruz from Cartagena (Colombia) and Porto Bello (Panama), in order to acquire Asian goods for distribution in South America. (For an image of the port of Acapulco, see Plate 9.) Mexican merchants also maintained ships for distribution to Central and South America. Beginning in 1593, the Spanish government attempted to prohibit direct trade between the viceroyalties, but enforcement proved impossible and contraband trade was rampant. (See Angela Schottenhammer’s essay in this volume for additional discussion concerning trade between the two viceroyalties.) The extensive trade through Mexico was described by the British Dominican friar Thomas Gage, who lived in Mexico and Guatemala from 1625 to 1637: “Two great carracks yearly come and go, returning from Manila to Acapulco richly laden with wares from China, Japan, and all the East Indies to enrich Mexico with far greater riches than are sent by the [Atlantic] from Spain.”3 Many European travelers commented on the beauty and wealth of Mexico City during the colonial era. Gage credited this to trade: Mexico is one of the richest cities in the world. By the North Sea [Atlantic] cometh every year from Spain a fleet of near twenty ships laden with the best commodities not only of Spain but of most parts of Christendom; by the South Sea [Pacific] it enjoyeth traffic from all parts of Peru. Above all, it trades with the East Indies, and from thence receiveth the commodities as well from those parts which are inhabited by Portuguese, [as well] as from the countries of Japan and China, sending every year two great carracks with two smaller vessels to the Philippine Islands, and having every year a return of such-like ships.4

2 Schurz, Manila Galleon, remains the best overall source on the topic. Also see Santiago Cruz, La nao de China; Yuste López, El comercio de la Nueva España con Filipinas, 1590–1785; Alfonso Mola and Martínez Shaw, El galeón de Manila; and more recently, works by Bonialian, including El Pacífico hispanoamericano, and China en la América colonial. 3 Gage, Thomas Gage’s Travels, pp. 7, 36. 4 Gage, Thomas Gage’s Travels, p. 65.

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In Mexico City, Asian goods were sold at a large trade market established in the main plaza of Mexico City and referred to as the Parián, after the market of the same name in the Chinese area of Manila. In 1777 the Parián in Mexico City was described by Fray Juan de Viera as: “the most handsome spectacle of the many boasted by this city […]! What a diversity of porcelains and ceramics from China and Japan! [...] What curiosities of ivory, silver, and metal […]! What sets of crystal from China!”5 Like Viera, most writers in Latin America referred to the objects generically as “from China” (much like we use “Asia” today), or occasionally as “from Japan.” This makes it difficult today to discern the actual source, even though we know goods also came to the Americas from India, Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and, of course, the Philippines, where a large contingent of Asian craftsmen (known as “sangleys”) had settled specifically to produce goods for the galleon trade. Latin America may have enjoyed a greater influx of Asian wares than did Spain. The first wave of the China trade (1570–1620) coincided with major silver booms in Mexico and Peru, making many colonists able and eager to buy the exotic goods.6 As a result, many Asian objects remained in the Americas including porcelain, silks and other fabrics, ivories, furniture, lacquerware, and folding screens, among others.7 The use of these goods in colonial Latin American homes and churches is documented in paintings of the colonial era (see for example an eighteenth-century painting from Cuzco, Peru, titled Virgin of Bethlehem, displaying blue-and-white porcelain vases at the base of the image, Plate 10). Asian commodities are also described in travelers’ commentaries and other written documents such as wills and estate inventories, and they have been found in modern archeological excavations.

Types of Asian goods in colonial Latin America Porcelain As early as 1582 the Englishman Henry Hawks wrote of the China trade: “They have brought from [China] gold, and much cinnamon, and dishes of earth, and cups of the same, so fine that every man that may have a piece of them, will give the weight of silver for it.”8 Indeed, some wealthy families accumulated large collections of Asian 5 Fray Juan de Viera quoted in Bailey, “Asia in the Arts of Colonial Latin America,” p. 58. 6 Mudge, Chinese Export Porcelain in North America, 47–50 and 63–84. Also see Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, and Miners of the Red Mountain. 7 Recent art historical studies have begun to analyze the specific Asian goods imported to Latin America and, in some cases, to explore their influence on local arts. See Martínez de Río de Redo, El galeón de Acapulco; Pierce and Otsuka, Asia and Spanish America; Carr et al., Made in the Americas; and Leibsohn and Priyadarshini, “Beyond Silk and Silver,” a special issue of Colonial Latin American Review. Portions of this chapter are based on Pierce, “Popular and Prevalent,” in that issue, and on Pierce, “By the Boatload.” 8 In Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. 6, p. 291.

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porcelain. As examples of the extreme, the young Doña Teresa Retes Paz Vera, Marquesa de San Jorge, in 1695 and the count and countess of Xala in 1784 had hundreds of pieces of fine Chinese and Japanese porcelain in their homes in Mexico City and the viceroy of Mexico Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa owned over a thousand pieces of fine Chinese porcelain when he died in 1779.9 As a result of the variety of porcelain available, it was accessible to many levels of society and often even the humblest household might have a piece or two of lesser quality, as reflected in some paintings (see for example a painting from about 1765 by Antonio Pérez de Aguilar titled The Painter’s Cabinet, Fig. 5.1). Possession of porcelain was not restricted to urban areas either: as early as 1604 a native Cora chieftain named Tonati ordered a set of Chinese dishes. They were off-loaded at San Blas (the first stop of the Manila galleons on their way to Acapulco) and then transported to his home on the Nayar Mesa in northwest Mexico.10 As we shall see, monks and nuns often owned vessels of porcelain as well. Thomas Gage described his arrival at Veracruz and his party’s reception in the quarters of the prior of the Dominican monastery in 1625: “His chamber was richly dressed […]; his tables covered with carpets of silk; his cupboards adorned with several sorts of China cups and dishes, stored within with several dainties of sweetmeats and conserves.”11 Chinese porcelain vessels became interwoven with the consumption of chocolate. A New World product—unknown in Europe before the encounter with the Americas—chocolate had been cultivated and consumed by ancient civilizations in the Americas for centuries before the arrival of Europeans.12 In the sixteenth century chocolate drinking spread rapidly among Spaniards and then from Spain across Europe in the seventeenth century. Women appear to have been the main proponents of chocolate consumption, both in the Americas and Europe. In Latin America and Spain the vessel of choice for drinking chocolate was the handle-less Chinese porcelain teacup. Small majolica cups made in imitation of the former, coconut cups set in silver (Fig. 5.1, lower shelf), and Mexican lacquered gourd cups known as jícaras made in the native pre-Hispanic tradition in Michoacán were also favored (Fig. 5.1, lower shelf on top of copper pot). In inventories accoutrements for the preparation and consumption of chocolate inevitably include at least one piece of porcelain. For example, on the northern frontier of New Spain in Santa Fe in the early 1660s, the governor and his wife took chocolate every afternoon at 3 o’clock and her personal

9 Curiel, “El efímero caudal; Romero de Terreros, Una casa del siglo XVIII en México, p. 16; and Archivo General de la Nación de México (AGN), Intestados, Inventario de los bienes de don Antonio de Bucareli y Ursúa (19 April 1779), partially transcripted in Curiel, “Customs, Conventions, and Daily Rituals,” pp. 30–32. 10 Curiel, “Customs, Conventions, and Daily Rituals,” pp. 30–32. 11 Gage, Thomas Gage’s Travels, p. 34. 12 Numerous publications address chocolate and its importance in colonial and European society. Two of the most comprehensive are de la Mota, El libro de chocolate, and Coe and Coe, True History of Chocolate.

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Fig. 5.1: Antonio Pérez de Aguilar (active 1749–69), The Painter’s Cabinet, Mexico, c. 1765. Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City, Instituto Nacional de Bella Artes.

chocolate chest included at least one Chinese porcelain cup, along with coconut cups and lacquered jícaras.13 Nor were monks and nuns immune to the combined pleasures of porcelain and chocolate. In fact, both were famous for the prodigious quantities of chocolate they consumed, and nuns were well known for the recipes they invented using chocolate. In convents and monasteries, vessels for chocolate and other uses were both communally and individually owned. To cite just one example of the latter, when 13 AGN, Inquisición 593, expediente 1, fol. 60; and AGN, Concurso de Peñalosa, vol. 1, fols. 395–400. See Pierce, “At the Ends of the Earth,” p. 165.

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Mother Catalina de San Juan died in 1692 in the Conceptionist convent of Santa Inez in Mexico City, she owned a leather chest for storing chocolate and its utensils that contained twelve cups, three saucers, and a small pitcher of Chinese porcelain.14 In spite of the fragility of porcelain vessels, they made their way to all areas of the Spanish territories in America. Recent archeological excavations have uncovered sherds of Chinese porcelain in Mexico City, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador, and Panama, as well as in the modern-day United States in Florida, Old Mobile (Alabama), New Orleans, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.15 Written descriptions verify the quantity of Asia goods in northern South America, such as that by the members of the royal scientific expedition of Antonio de Ulloa and Jorge Juan in Ecuador and Peru from 1735 to 1746 who noted that merchant vessels upon their return from Acapulco “flood the entire Peruvian coast with […] oriental goods.”16 Examples in private and public collections and archeological excavations in Peru indicate the abundance of Chinese porcelain there.17 Several surviving pieces also attest to the quality of at least some of the vessels that reached these areas such as an exquisite Ming ewer and several large jars (including a Japanese Imari example) that remain in private collections in Lima, Peru.18 A spectacular Chinese chrysanthemum jar survives in Cuenca, Ecuador;19 as do similar jars in Venezuelan and Mexican collections.20 Asian goods made their way to Ecuador either overland from Lima or Cartagena, or via the Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil. As early as 1601 an inventory mentions twelve plates “from China;” by 1707 a merchant from Quito had accumulated a significant collection of Chinese porcelain; and isolated examples such as chocolate cups and basins “from China” appear in other colonial documents in Ecuador.21 Again, nuns seem to have enjoyed the use of porcelain: examples were excavated from the convent of Santo Domingo in Quito, although not in huge quantities.22 A Poor Clare

14 Castelló de Yturbide and Martínez del Río de Redo, Delicias del antaño, p. 53. 15 For Mexico see Mudge, Chinese Export Porcelain; Kuwayama, Chinese Ceramics in Colonial Mexico; Rodríquez, “Early Manila Galleon Trade”; and Bargellini, “Asia at the Missions of Northern New Spain”; for Guatemala see Pasinski, Informe sobre la cerámica; for Peru see Kuwayama, “Chinese Porcelain”; for Ecuador see Kennedy and Ortíz Crespo, Convento de San Diego de Quito; for Florida see Deagan, Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean, 1500–1800; for the southeastern United States see Shulsky, “Chinese Porcelain in Spanish Colonial Sites,” and Shulsky, “Chinese Porcelain at Old Mobile”; for New Mexico see Fournier, “Ceramic Production and Trade on the Camino Real”; Hill and Peterson, “East Meets West on the Camino Real”; Pierce, “At the Ends of the Earth,” and Pierce, “Popular and Prevalent.” 16 Tepaske, Kingdom of Peru, p. 49; and Kuwayama, “Chinese Porcelain,” p. 166. 17 Kuwayama, “Chinese Porcelain,” documents these in Peru. 18 Reproduced in Kuwayama, “Chinese Porcelain,” figs. 1, 3–5. 19 It is in the collection of the Museo Remigio Crespo Toral in Cuenca and is reproduced in Kennedy, “Apuntes sobre arquitectura,” fig. 5. 20 For a photograph of one in a Venezuelan collection, see Duarte, Museo de Arte Colonial de Caracas “Quinta de Anauco,” p. 88. 21 Kennedy, “Apuntes sobre arquitectura,” and Kennedy, “Arte y artistas quiteños de exportación.” 22 Kennedy and Ortíz Crespo, El Convento de Santo Domingo de Quito.

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nun in Quito willed to a niece in 1704 “four plates from China, four large and five small cups or bowls from China, […] one small and three large bottles from China, one flask from China, two sprinkler vessels [for spices] from China.”23 Even though it did not have a port on the Pacific nor on the Caribbean, Argentina also received Asian goods. Legally, all such imports were supposed to reach Argentina via a long and complicated route overland from either Porto Bello or Cartagena, but smuggling from Mexico through Lima or the Atlantic port of Buenos Aires clearly occurred.24 Asian goods, particularly textiles in the first half of the eighteenth century and porcelain in the second half, were present in both Buenos Aires and the interior provinces such as that of Tucumán. As a case study of the range and quality of porcelains, New Mexico serves as an example since it was one of the longest occupied areas of the Spanish territories and was located in one of the most remote and inaccessible areas on the far northern frontier.25 Almost 2,000 miles north of Mexico City, it was landlocked and reached only by overland travel, much of it through desert. Archeological excavations and written documents evidence the presence of Chinese porcelains in the capital city of Santa Fe as well as in remote villages and mission establishments in Indian Pueblos from shortly after settlement in 1598 into the nineteenth century. One might expect that porcelains brought to such a remote area would be lower in quality than elsewhere, but that does not seem to be the case. When the initial Spanish settlement in New Mexico (northwest of present-day Santa Fe) at San Gabriel del Yunque (1598–1617) was excavated in the early 1960s, several sherds of porcelain suggesting high-quality pieces were located (Fig. 5.2).26 In particular, a small sherd (upper right) decorated in blue underglaze and red overglaze enamels has been dated between 1522 and 1566 during the Jiajing reign of the Ming dynasty and has been identified as an example of the high-end luxury ware known by the Japanese word kinrande (gold brocade), referring to the gilt decoration used in medallions or elsewhere on the sides of vessels.27 The other sherds from San Gabriel are decorated with blue underglaze designs and date from the reign of Wanli (1573–1620).

23 Kennedy, “Mujeres en los claustros,” p. 115. 24 In the latter part of the eighteenth century, Asian goods came to Buenos Aires through legal trans-Atlantic trade from Europe. See Bonialian, El pacífico hispanoamericano; Bonialian, China en la America colonial; and Bonialian, “Tejidos y cerámica de China.” 25 Portions of this section are based on Pierce, “At the Ends of the Earth,” and Pierce, “Popular and Prevalent.” 26 Ellis, San Gabriel del Yunque, and Ellis, When Cultures Meet. The recovered artifacts are on longterm loan from San Juan Pueblo to the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 27 Pers. commun., Linda Shulsky Pomper, Research Associate, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 1992, April 1993, March 2015, August 2016.

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Fig. 5.2: Porcelain sherds, China, 1522–1617. Excavated at San Gabriel del Yunque, San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico.

Other examples of kinrande porcelain were excavated—along with dozens of other Chinese porcelain sherds and ivory objects—from the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe (all dating before 1680).28 Two sherds from a cup or small bowl decorated with fern designs in gold leaf (now abraded) on a solid cobalt-blue background as well as two sherds also from a cup or small bowl with red and green overglaze that also bear areas of what appear to be abraded gold leaf were made before 1644 and represent especially fine and expensive examples of porcelain on the frontier.29 Although most kinrande luxury ware was made for the Japanese market and is quite rare in European collections,30 two galleons arrived in Acapulco in 1573 bearing “22,300 pieces of fine gilt China and other porcelain wares.”31 Perhaps one or all of the gilt pieces found in New Mexico were in this shipment. Throughout the remainder of the colonial period, estate wills and inventories mention examples of porcelain in private homes in New Mexico with chocolate cups and plates being the most frequent forms.32 Most people owned two or three of each, but when Juan Montes Vigil of Santa Fe died in 1762 he had nine plates, five soupplates, and eight handle-less cups of Chinese porcelain and in 1776 María Gertrudes 28 Snow, “Brief History of the Palace of the Governors.” The recovered artifacts are in the collection of the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. 29 Pers. commun., Linda Shulsky Pomper, Research Associate, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 1992, April 1993, March 2015, August 2016. Also see Shulsky, “Chinese Porcelain in New Mexico.” 30 Shulsky, “Chinese Porcelain in Spanish Colonial Sites.” 31 Schurz, Manila Galleon, p. 27. 32 These unpublished estate wills and inventories are located in the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives in Santa Fe, Spanish Archives of New Mexico (SANM) I and II.

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Armijo of Taos owned a dozen cups and six bowls of Chinese porcelain.33 Occasionally other vessels are mentioned such as a large “vase [tibor] from China” (along with three soup-plates) mentioned in the 1721 dowry of Luisa Luján of Santa Fe, and a small bottle of Chinese porcelain (along with one plate, two bowls and three cups) owned by her mother Juana Luján in 1762 on her ranch northwest of Santa Fe.34 Textiles Fabrics, particularly Chinese silk and East Indian printed cotton (indianilla), were the most abundant import items from Asia to the Americas.35 As early as 1594, the viceroy of Peru, Marqués de Cañete, stated that “Chinese silk and other textiles were so cheap that Indian caciques and even commoners were using them for clothing instead of cloth of local manufacture.”36 Sumptuary laws intermittently issued by the Spanish government were routinely ignored in the Americas and travelers from Europe often commented on the extensive use of Asian silks among all classes. In the 1620s in Mexico, Thomas Gage claimed that “both men and women are excessive in their apparel, using more silks than stuffs and cloth,” and described black and mulatto women in Mexico wearing skirts and headcloths of silk along with sleeves of “Holland or fine China linen wrought with colored silks” (see for example a 1711 painting by Manuel de Arellano titled Rendering of a Mulatta, Fig. 5.3).37 Gage also describes well-off Indian women in Guatemala wearing huipiles (native overblouses) made from “fine linen brought from China, which the better sort wear with a lace about.”38 A century later Ulloa and Jorge echo Gage in their descriptions of citizens of all classes in Ecuador and Peru. In one example, they stated that “[t]he usual dress of the men differs very little from that worn in Spain, nor is the distinction between classes very great; for the use of all sorts of cloth being allowed, everyone wears what he can purchase. They all greatly affect fine clothes, […] vanity and ostentation not being restrained by custom or law.”39 In the late eighteenth century, the traveler Alonso Carrió de la Vandera, who wrote under the pseudonym Concolorcorvo, described a Peruvian gentleman 33 Unpublished documents, 1762, Juan Montes Vigil, Santa Fe, SANM I: 1055; and 1776, María Gertrudes Armijo, Taos, SANM I: 48. 34 Unpublished document, 1762, Juana Luján, Santa Cruz, SANM II: 556. The dowry of her daughter, Luisa, is included in the will of Juana. Also see Ahlborn, “Will of a New Mexico Woman in 1762.” 35 Yuste, “Los precios de las mercancías asiáticas en el siglo XVIII,” p. 241. For general information on Asian textiles in colonial Latin America see de Aspe et al., La historia de México; Blum, “Textiles in Colonial Latin America”; and McKim-Smith, “Dressing Colonial, Dressing Diaspora”; and more recently Phipps, “Iberian Globe,” and Middleton, “Reading Dress in New Spanish Portraiture.” 36 Borah, Early Colonial Trade, p. 121; and Kuwayama, “Chinese Porcelain,” p. 163. 37 Gage, Thomas Gage’s Travels, pp. 68–69. 38 Gage, Thomas Gage’s Travels, p. 221. 39 Ulloa and Juan, Voyage to South America, vol. 2.7, pp. 55–56, et passim.

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Fig. 5.3: Manuel de Arellano (active 1691–c. 1722), Rendering of a Mulatta, Mexico, 1711. Oil on canvas. Denver Art Museum.

dressed according to the “current fashion in Peru” wearing elaborate clothing imported from many areas including a hatband of Chinese ribbon and a Chinese kerchief.40 Wealthy families acquired extensive wardrobes made from Asian fabrics such as that of the wealthy marquesa Teresa Retes Paz Vera in Mexico City in 1695. Documenting this custom, colonial portraits depict both men and women wearing what appear to be Chinese silks (see for example two Mexican paintings, Plate 11, an anonymous ­ eighteenth-century work titled Young Woman with a Harpsichord, and Plate 12, from c. 1752, by Miguel Cabrera, titled Portrait of Don Juan Xavier Joachin Gutiérrez Altamirano Velasco, Count of Santiago de Calimaya). 40 Weismann, Americas, p. 62.

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The 1736 manifest of a galleon sailing from the Philippines to Spain via Mexico provides a list of the types of textiles available through the trade including Japanese kimonos, brocades and silks interwoven with gold and silver threads, cottons and muslins from India, silks and other fabrics for interiors and upholstery, mohair, taffetas, glossy silks, embroidered velvets, damasks, and satins.41 The fact that these types of fabrics made their way to many areas of Latin America is documented in the interior province of Tucumán in Argentina and on the northern frontier of New Spain where such Asian fabrics are sometimes specified in wills and estate inventories. For example, in the town of Santiago del Estero in Tucumán José Díaz de Cáceres in 1703 owned a “waistcoat of floral Chinese silk lined with a [different] Chinese silk” and “another with sleeves of Chinese silk brocade with silver lace.”42 In the city of Córdoba in the same province, Catalina de Cabrera had a “hoop skirt of Chinese silk decorated with three gold and silver flounces or ruffles” in 1704.43 In New Mexico, Luisa Lujan had “a new cape of Chinese silk tissue (or lamé) with silver trim” in 1721, while Margarita Martín had a “hoop skirt of purple Piquín [Peking] cloth” and a skirt of “red Chinese silk” in 1744.44 Even a mestizo blacksmith from Taos, Antonio Durán de Armijo (killed by Plains Indians in 1748), left to his only daughter “10 varas [33 inches] of red Chinese silk” and “6 varas of ribbon from China woven with gold and silver,” among various men’s and women’s clothes of silk, brocade, and linen.45 One of the most impressive lists of Asian fabrics in New Mexico is found in the will of Juan Montes Vigil (mentioned above) of Santa Fe in 1762, which lists his wife, Nicolasa Lujan’s clothing including a green-striped dress, silk petticoat, and jacket of “Persian cloth” (persiana) and “an old short cape of black velvet from China.” But most surprising of all, it mentions “one fine kimono” (quimono fino). Whether this was an actual kimono imported from Japan (as mentioned in the 1736 inventory), or an imitation made in Mexico or New Mexico, or merely a name applied to some sort of robe or housecoat is unclear. In any case, it shows influence from Asia, even if only in language. As early as 1704 the estate inventory of the governor of New Mexico Diego de Vargas mentions “a new purple kimono from China” and is the only New Mexican document to attribute a kimono to Asian origin.46 When María Gertrudes Armijo (daughter of Antonio mentioned above) died in Taos in 1776, among her numerous items of clothing were “two kimonos” (dos quimones), again possibly from Asia. In addition, the dowry of María Magdalena Valdez included two kimonos, which were still on hand when her husband died many years later, indicating that 41 Guzmán-Rivas, “Reciprocal Geographic Influences,” p. 60. Also see Fisher, “Trade Textiles.” 42 Bonialian, “Tejidos y cerámica de China,” p. 655. 43 Bonialian, “Tejidos y cerámica de China,” p. 655. 44 For Luisa Luján see note 34 above. For Margarita Martín, see unpublished document, 1744, Margarita Martín, Santa Cruz de la Cañada, SANM I: 530. 45 Unpublished document, 1748, Antonio Durán de Armijo, San Gerónimo de Taos, SANM I: 240. 46 Unpublished document, 1704, Governor Diego de Vargas, Bernalillo, and Santa Fe, SANM I: 1027.

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they were prized possessions.47 Another kimono is listed in the will of a Santa Fe woman, María Micaela Baca, in 1832, eleven years after the end of the colonial period,48 bringing us to a total of seven kimonos mentioned in the documents in New Mexico. Others appear in inventories in Mexico City and San José del Parral (now known as Hidalgo de Parral) in northern Mexico.49 The word “indianilla” is used in Spanish documents to describe painted or printed cotton or muslin fabrics with large floral motifs imported from India, often referred to in English as chintz. Imitated in the fabric workshops of Europe and Latin America, indianilla was commonly used to make women’s skirts (Fig. 5.4) and men’s housecoats as can be seen in paintings of the era (see a Mexican painting from about 1760 by José de Alcíbar titled From Spaniard and Black, Mulatto, Plate 13). Whether the examples mentioned in documents were truly imports from Asia or imitation cloth from local textile workshops is unknown. But as late as 1822 Scottish tutor Maria Graham mentioned that Chinese silks and porcelains as well as “Indian muslins” were brought to Chile in South America, even though by this time European imports were more available (if restricted) and the Manila galleons had ceased operation.50 At the opposite end of the empire in New Mexico, Manuel Montes Vigil of Abiquiu, New Mexico in 1780 had a bedspread as well as several types of bolt cloth of East Indian chintz including 7 1/2 varas of fine multicolored indianilla and 6 each of red and blue indianilla.51 María de Sena of Santa Fe had a new skirt of indianilla when her husband died in 1784.52 The inventory of a mercantile store in downtown Santa Fe in 1815 begins with 29 3/4 varas of wide-bolt indianilla followed by 20 varas of narrowindianilla.53 The merchant who owned the store, Captain Manuel Delgado, made use of the popular fabric himself since he owned a “jacket and waistcoat of yndianilla” and a bedspread of lined indianilla. Accessories were also imported to the Americas from Asia including various types of jewelry, most notably items of coral as well as rings, bracelets, and necklaces made from tumbaga, an alloy of gold, silver, and copper. Both the wealthy marquesa de San Jorge in Mexico City and Juana Lujan on the frontier in New Mexico owned rings of tumbaga.54 Silk stockings were imported to Latin America from China and Europe; 47 Unpublished document, 1780, Manuel Montes Vigil, Abiquiu, SANM I: 1060. 48 Unpublished document, 1832, María Micaela Baca, Santa Fe, SANM I: 144. 49 For example, the wife of painter Miguel Cabrera had one kimono and his daughter had two, however, at least one of these appears to be an overrobe for use over a skirt and blouse, rather than a traditional Asian kimono. See Tovar de Teresa, Miguel Cabrera, pp. 265, 281. Tovar de Teresa publishes the entire will and estate inventory of Miguel Cabrera in his appendix. For kimonos in Parral see Curiel, “Cuatro inventarios de bienes,” pp. 249–79. 50 Graham, Journal of a Residence, passim. 51 Unpublished document, 1780, Manuel Montes Vigil, Abiquiu, SANM I: 1060. 52 Unpublished document, 1784, Juan Antonio Fernández, Santa Fe, SANM I: 280. 53 Unpublished document, 1815, Manuel Delgado, Santa Fe, SANM I: 252. 54 Curiel, “El efímero caudal,” p. 76.

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Fig. 5.4: Skirts of indianilla, Mexico, mid-eighteenth century. Current location unknown.

they were also manufactured locally in some areas. Even the expensive ones made it to the remote areas of the colonies, as indicated by the reference in 1789 to José Maldonado, paymaster and second lieutenant at the garrison of Santa Fe, who left a surprisingly extensive list of clothing when he died, as well as “two pair of Chinese embroidered silk stockings.”55 In close association with clothing was the ubiquitous female accessory: the fan. Although made in Europe and Latin America, fans from Asia were the most prized. At both ends of the economic spectrum, one of the 55 Unpublished document, 1789, José Maldonado, Santa Fe, SANM I: 598.

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ladies-in-waiting to the vicereine in Mexico, Bernarda de Torres y Mendiune, had sixty fans from Spain and China in 1691; Flora de Azcuenaga in Buenos Aires, Argentina, owned one made of “mother-of-pearl with gold encrustations”; while on the far northern frontier in New Mexico, Juana Lujan had one “painted ivory fan from China” in 1762.56 Furniture Chests were the most common furniture form in Spain and Latin America.57 ­Utilitarian chests held flour and other food products in the pantries and kitchens as well as clothes and bed linens in the bedrooms and dressing rooms. More elegant types of chests often had multiple drawers and drop fronts. Usually referred to as escritorios or papeleros (writing chests), they did not always hold writing supplies; they were used also to store other types of valuables such as the one described in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1661 with seven drawers full of gold, pearl, coral, and emerald jewelry.58 All types of chests were made locally in Latin America, but the most valued ones were imported, particularly from Asia. For example, in Mexico City the famous Mexican painter Miguel Cabrera had a writing chest from China in 1768.59 In Ecuador a 1719 will describes “a small chest from China decorated with silver, with a lockplate of the same,” and the Cortés del Rey family from Parral in northern Mexico had a “large cedar chest from China with iron hardware” in 1729.60 Although rarely described as such in documents, wood and ivory-inlaid furniture was imported from China and Japan as well as tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl pieces from Goa and Gujarat. In 1784 the counts of Xala had three “writing chests of fine wood, from China,” possibly of marquetry. Examples of Asian lacquerware inevitably bear high values in colonial documents. Polychromed and finished with a lacquered surface made from tree sap, the technique is purported to have been invented in China, but expanded and perfected 56 Curiel, “Customs, Conventions, and Daily Rituals,” p. 29; Socolow, “Women’s Fashion in Colonial Buenos Aires”; and Pierce, “At the Ends of the Earth.” 57 For furniture in Spain see Valgañon et al., Mueble español; and Burr, Hispanic Furniture from the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. For general discussions of furniture in Latin America see Rivas Pérez, “Of Luxury and Fantasy”; and Rivas Pérez, “Observations on the Origin, Development, and Manufacture of Latin American Furniture.” For Colombia see López Pérez and Bejerano Calvo, En torno al estrado; for Venezuela see Duarte, Museo de Arte Colonial; for Mexico see Aguilera et al. El mueble mexicano, Curiel, “Customs, Conventions, and Daily Rituals,” and Curiel and Rubial García, “Los espejos de lo propio”; for New Mexico see Pierce, “Furniture.” 58 López Pérez and Bejerano Calvo, En torno al estrado, pp. 18–20. 59 As well as being listed as “from China,” this chest is listed as “of” or “from Zongolica.” Tovar de Teresa, Miguel Cabrera, p. 276. 60 Kennedy, “Arte y artistas,” p. 190; and Curiel, Los bienes, pp. 21, 53.

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in Japan, where it was known as maki-e and was sometimes inlaid with mother-ofpearl on a black lacquer ground.61 A Mexican inventory of a middle-class household in 1688 describes “a little Chinese lacquer trunk, of half a vara, with its lock and key.”62 Lacquerware objects imported from Asia even made their way to remote areas: the Cortés del Rey family of Parral in northern Mexico had a “fine lacquerware writing chest from China” in 1729.63 In the same town in 1718, Doña Catalina de Salcedo owned a “finely painted lacquerware carriage,” probably imported from China.64 The marquesa de San Jorge in Mexico City owned four elaborate lacquer writing chests, three smaller lacquer chests, and a tall (3 varas in height) lacquered folding screen of twelve panels, all from China in 1695.65 In 1784 the Xala family in Mexico City had a table of “lacquer from China,” and two “chests from China with luster and colors” (probably lacquerware), as well as “four lacquer folding screens from China.” The Mexican painter Miguel Cabrera owned five folding screens when he died in 1768, including a short table screen of only three panels with gilded trim bearing the unusually high value of 100 pesos, indicating it must have been an imported Asian lacquerware example.66 Invented in China, elaborated in Japan, and introduced to the Western world through early modern global trade, folding screens appear to have been first imported to the Americas in the late sixteenth century by Spanish and Portuguese traders as well as Jesuit missionaries returning from Japan. The first officially documented ones were brought to Mexico as gifts to the viceroy in 1614 by the Japanese embassy of Hasekura Rokuemon, igniting a new fad in interior decorating.67 Known in Spanish as a biombo from the Japanese word byōbu, meaning wind break, they were used in homes to divide spaces, block drafts, provide privacy, and create a decorative backdrop. Most Asian screens were made of either painted paper mounted on wooden stretchers or polychromed and lacquered and/or gilded wood panels. In 1637, English merchant Peter Mundy described Chinese ones made in Macau for export: “They make a most Delightsome show, being painted with variety of colluers intermingled with gold, containing stories, beasts, birds, fishes, forests, flowers, fruites, etc.”68 61 The height of Japanese production occurred between 1580 and 1638 when direct exports ceased and subsequently production declined. Much has been published on Japanese lacquers but the most comprehensive source is Impey and Jörg, Japanese Export Lacquer, 1580–1850. For discussions of Japanese lacquer works in Latin America see Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions; and Nagashima, “Japanese Lacquers Exported to Spanish America and Spain.” 62 Toussaint, Colonial Art in Mexico, p. 168. 63 Curiel, Los bienes, pp. 22, 52. 64 Curiel, “Cuatro inventarios de bienes.” 65 Curiel, “El efímero caudal,” pp. 81, 84, 89. 66 Of the other folding screens in Cabrera’s possession, the closest in value was a large biombo of ten panels valued at 40 pesos. See Tovar de Teresa, Miguel Cabrera, pp. 274–85. 67 For folding screens in Latin America see Sanabraís, “Biombo or Folding Screen”; Castelló and Martínez del Río de Redo, Biombos mexicanos; and Castelló and Martínez del Río de Redo, Viento detenido. 68 Quoted in Sanabraís, “Biombo or Folding Screen,” p. 74.

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Fig. 5.5: Unknown artist, folding screen from the Palace of the Viceroys of Mexico, Mexico, 1676–1700. Oil on canvas, h. 184 cm × w. 488 cm. Museo de América, Madrid.

By at least the mid-seventeenth century local artists in Mexico were making imitations of Asian screens using oil-on-canvas paintings, local versions of lacquerware, and silk or less expensive fabrics on stretchers, with the latter making ownership available to poorer households. Even in remote areas a handful of biombos appear in inventories such as the “old, broken biombo” in the home of the Cortés del Rey family in Parral in 1729 and one made of cotton fabric mentioned in the inventory of Manuel Delgado in Santa Fe in 1815.69 An early example of an oil-on-canvas screen depicts the viceroys’ palace on the main plaza of Mexico City on five panels, with market booths in the foreground, and the nearby Alameda Park in three panels on the left (see Fig. 5.5). In this as well as other seventeenth-century Mexican examples, the two different scenes depicted on paired Japanese rakuchu rakugai (inside and outside the city) screens appear to have been conflated into one screen.70 Although painted in a general European style, the perspective is more tilted, almost to a bird’s-eye view, reminiscent of that used in Asian screens, particularly those showing scenes of the Japanese city of Kyoto. The central portion of each panel is overlaid by a patterned gold leaf “cloud” in imitation of those on Japanese screens. (The Japanese Kano school device of placing flat gold clouds behind foreground features to throw them into relief, to subdivide a composition, and to lend a sumptuous aura to painted scenes may be observed in the

69 Curiel, Los bienes, pp. 22, 25, 54; Pierce, “At the Ends of the Earth.” 70 Since the break between the three panels on the left and the other panels seems abrupt, this may have been originally two separate but paired screens (like Japanese prototypes). At some point they may have been joined into a single screen as a result of damage to parts of the originals. If so, this further emphasizes the similarity to their Japanese models and makes them the only partially surviving examples of paired inside/ outside screens produced in colonial Mexico. See México colonial, cat. entry 2.8, p. 110.

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set of Namban screens illustrated in Plate 24.) But rather than easing the transition from panel to panel and directing the flow of the narrative as in Japanese screens, here the clouds obscure the action and elements (such as the fountain in the park) and emphasize the disruption of the scene by the structural panels. Nevertheless, the influence of motifs from Japanese screens (if not their artistic purpose) on early Mexican examples is undeniable. Ivories Ivory was imported to the Americas from China, Ceylon, India, Goa, and the Philippines both in raw form and as carved sculptures. Figures of Christ, either depicted as a child or on the cross, were the most common subjects (for one seventeenth-century example see Fig. 5.6).71 At the end of the sixteenth century, the Bishop of Manila, Fray Domingo de Salazar wrote: The sangleys make marvelous things […] I think that nothing more perfect could be produced than some of their ivory statues of the Child Jesus which I have seen.72

Prominent examples of ivory carvings in Mexico City included twelve large images of saints brought from Manila to be installed in the Cathedral of Mexico in 177073 and others populating a large side-altar screen dedicated to Christ commissioned for the Santa Clara church in Mexico City by Asian immigrants in 1692.74 Raw ivory was carved by artists in the Americas; it is unknown if the Santa Clara images (now lost) were carved in Asia or in Mexico from imported raw ivory. Ivory carvings appeared in domestic as well as religious contexts with many private homes displaying ivory carvings of Christ and various saints. For example an ivory Christ on an ebony cross with silver tips hung in the salon of the counts of Xala in Mexico City. They also had a large ivory figure of Saint Michael, with helmet and sword of silver. The marquesa de San Jorge owned several carvings of saints including a Saint Michael, Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen as well as a Christ Child and several images of Christ on the Cross displayed throughout the house. Bernardo de Legarda, a well-known sculptor from Quito, owned four Asian ivories, including an image of

71 For ivories in Spain see Estella Marcos, La escultura barroca. For Mexico see de Pintado, Marfiles cristianos del oriente en México. For Latin America in general see Estella Marcos, Ivories from the Far Eastern Provinces of Spain and Portugal; and more recently Trusted, “Propaganda and Luxury”. 72 Salazar, Carta de relación de las cosas de la China […] (1590), quoted in Trusted, “Propaganda and Luxury,” p. 153. 73 Toussaint, Colonial Art, pp. 363–64. 74 Armella de Aspe, “La influencia asiática,” p. 72.

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Fig. 5.6: Unknown artist, Christ Crucified, Goa or Philippines, seventeenth century. Ivory sculpture. Collected in Mexico. Denver Art Museum.

the Immaculate Conception, on his death in 1773.75 Not all ivory carvings were religious in nature: the Xala family also had six ivory landscapes carved in relief and two large “towers” more than a vara in height carved in ivory “filigree.” Ivory carvings made their way to distant areas of the empire, such as those in the home of the Cortés del Rey family in Parral, in the churches of northern New Spain, as well as in many areas of South America.76 Many ivory objects were utilitarian. In New Mexico, ivory beads, probably from a rosary, were excavated at San Gabriel. 75 Will of Bernardo de Legarda, Museo del Banco Central del Ecuador, Quito, Inventory no. 12583, n. 42, fols. 103–105v. See Palmer, Sculpture in the Kingdom of Quito; Kennedy, “Baroque Art in the Audiencia de Quito,” p. 75; and Kennedy Troya, “La esquiva presencia indígena en el arte colonial quiteño,” p. 96. 76 Curiel, Los bienes, pp. 28, 53; Bargellini, “Asia at the Missions”; for South America see Bailey, “Asia in the Arts,” and Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions.

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Imported ivory objects discovered during modern excavations in the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe included turned finials that may be pieces of a miniature chess set or a piece of furniture, a turned ivory handle from a cane, and an ivory comb. Listed among the goods in Delgado’s mercantile store in Santa Fe in 1815 are a total of ninety-five “combs from China,” probably ivory combs such as the one excavated at the Palace of the Governors and dating from a century earlier.77 These utilitarian objects may have been imported from Asia ready-made, or made in Mexico from imported raw ivory.

Asian goods in colonial homes Implicit in colonial paintings and documents is the idea that ownership of “foreign” objects signaled social status. An analysis of these sources provides a glimpse into how Asian objects were used within the colonial context in the Americas. The Mexican scholar Gustavo Curiel has noted that Asian objects were interspersed within Mexican households along with objects from Europe and other areas of the Americas, in combination with pieces produced locally by both Spanish and native craftsmen.78 As an indication of how Asian goods were mixed with those from other areas, when Alonso de Herrera married in 1645 in Mexico, his inventory of household goods included: A desk and writing case from Germany; a writing desk of ebony and ivory; three desks of mahogany from Havana; twelve black chairs with gilded nails; two mahogany benches; two large chests from China; a large chest of cedar from Havana, with gilded corners and hardware; a single bed of West Indian ebony with gilded bronze; a blue damask canopy; a large cupboard; a glass mirror with its ebony frame; a Turkish carpet; five pillows of blue and green velvet from China.79

Lest it appear that only Spanish aristocrats had the wherewithal to own Asian luxury goods, in 1639 the well-known Mexican painter Luis Juárez left to his heirs “eight pillows of worked velvet from China, four blue and four red,” along with other household goods.80 In colonial homes two areas were furnished with the highest concentration of imported status objects: the salon and the master bedrooms. Similar in usage to the parlor or drawing room of Anglo and Anglo-American homes, the salon (or sala) was 77 Pierce, “At the Ends of the Earth.” 78 Curiel, “Customs, Conventions, and Daily Rituals,” pp. 23–43; and Curiel and Rubial García, “Los espejos de lo propio.” 79 Toussaint, Colonial Art in Mexico, p. 168. 80 Toussaint, Colonial Art in Mexico, p. 168.

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usually a long room located on the second floor that opened onto the main balcony of the house overlooking the street. Preserving a Spanish Muslim custom of sitting on or near the floor, an elevated dais called an estrado—covered with carpets, seat cushions, and low stools—was generally reserved for women and was often located at one end of the sala.81 Probably the most important furnishings for the estrado were seat cushions or ottomans, usually made from Asian silks and velvets, such as those mentioned above in the Herrera and Juárez inventories as well as the twenty-six gilt-trimmed red velvet and red silk cushions “from China” on the estrado of the governor of Caracas in the seventeenth century and the twenty-six cushions “from China” embroidered with gold and silver thread on the estrado of the marquesa de San Jorge in Mexico City.82 Inventories in seventeenth-century New Mexico also describe such cushions of Asian silk.83 Since women drank chocolate (often from Chinese porcelain cups), smoked cigarettes, or inhaled snuff, and embroidered while in the estrado area, low tables and small chests with drawers containing the necessary accouterments and personal items furnished the area. In addition, elegant chests with drawers were prominently displayed in the salas on stands against the wall as show pieces. Often a folding screen—either imported from Asia or made locally—was present to retain heat from the brazier and block drafts in winter, and to provide privacy and decoration. Some estrados also contained small altars such as the ones in the homes of the marquesa de San Jorge and the Xala family in Mexico City and the Cortés del Rey in Parral where ivory crucifixes hung over the estrado areas and were framed by fabric canopies. The estrado tradition was perpetuated in Spain and the Americas into the nineteenth century when examples are described in areas as distant as Chile and New Mexico.84 Estrados were used in middle- and lower-class homes as well. María Graham described the salon in a modest home in Valparaíso, Chile “where the women were lolling on the estrada [sic], or raised platform covered with carpet, supported by cushions.”85 They were even used in convents where one was described in the cell of a nun in the Conceptionist convent in Quito, Ecuador, as “an estrado of wood with its carpet of two and a half varas in length.”86

81 For information on the use of the estrado in Spain and Latin America see note 57 above and Farwell Gavin, “La Sala del Estrado.” 82 Duarte, Museo de Arte Colonial, p. 85. 83 At least one of the original settler families brought red silk cushions to New Mexico in 1598–1600. Hammond and Rey, Don Juan de Oñate, vol. 1, pp. 522–48. Later, the wife of the governor of New Mexico had yellow silk seat cushions in 1662. Unpublished document, AGN, Concurso de Peñalosa, vol. 1, fols. 395–400. See also Snow, “Headdress of Pearls”; Pierce, “At the Ends of the Earth,” and Pierce, “Popular and Prevalent.” 84 Graham, Journal of a Residence, p. 8, p. 33; and Magoffin, Down the Santa Fe Trail, pp. 136–37. 85 Graham, Journal of a Residence, p. 8. 86 Kennedy, “Mujeres en los claustros,” pp. 109–27.

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Although porcelain was used predominantly for containing food and drink, sometimes it served as decoration as well. In 1784 large pieces of porcelain were used in decorative ways throughout the home of the count and countess of Xala in Mexico City including paired vases (tibors) over a vara tall in locations such as on the balcony of main sala, in the window of the dressing room, and flanking the altar in the oratory. Sideboards or cabinets furnished with high-end and imported decorative arts were often displayed in the salon. A large variety of objects (as opposed to matched sets) was desirable during the Baroque era and was considered a testament to a family’s wealth and ability to acquire items from various sources. These frequently included Asian goods such as the modest one described in a Mexican inventory from 1688: a tall cupboard […] with three shelves decorated with an assortment of fine Chinese porcelain, the last displaying curiosities in silver; and on the top a great glass jar and small jars of Chinese porcelain.87

The two elaborate marquetry cabinets of the marquesa Doña Teresa de Retes held hundreds of items including numerous pieces of Chinese porcelain (some mounted in silver), objects made from silver and gold, Venetian glass, crystal, jewels, miniatures, ceramics from Chile, jet from Spain, and mounted coconut shells, among other Mexican products. Lower-class homes appear to have had similar, if more modest, display cabinets (see a painting from about 1790 by Francisco Clapera titled From Chino and Indian, Genizara, Fig. 5.7). The stairway and entryway to the sala were often elaborately decorated as well, particularly in upper-class homes. For example, the main staircase of the Xala home was lined with forty large porcelain jars of various colors and sizes planted with flowers and the large ivory carving of Saint Michael, mentioned above, occupied a niche on the landing. Master bedrooms often contained examples of imported Asian arts. Throughout the colonial era beds were often covered, curtained, and canopied with luxurious silks from China. Such beds are depicted in colonial paintings of the birth of the Virgin such as that painted by Luis Juárez (Fig. 5.8). Josefa Savina Villamonte, daughter of a wealthy family in Córdoba, Argentina, received in her 1717 dowry “a large bedcover from China embroidered and fringed in gold and silver thread” valued at a huge sum.88 The marquesa de San Jorge had numerous sets of bed hangings and coverings of embroidered silk from China in various colors for her ebony and ivory bed with solomonic columns. A more modest Mexican inventory from 1650 describes “a bed of West Indian ebony with bronze fittings, three coverlets, and a Chinese orange canopy.”89 The earliest settlers in New Mexico (1598–1600) brought such elegant silk 87 Toussaint, Colonial Art, pp. 168–69. 88 Bonialian, “Tejidos y cerámica de China,” p. 639. 89 Toussaint, Colonial Art, p. 168.

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Fig. 5.7: Francisco Clapera (Spanish, active in Mexico late eighteenth century), From Chino and Indian, Genízara, Mexico, c. 1790. Oil on canvas. Denver Art Museum.

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bed furnishings with them to the remote frontier.90 A later example is described in the bedroom of the wife of the governor of New Mexico in 1662 as furnished with “a canopy of silk from China” and “a bedspread from China of embroidered yellow silk.”91 In the eighteenth century lacquered headboards either from China or copied locally became popular and can be seen in some paintings of the era (see for example the headboard in the anonymous Ex-Voto with Saint Gertrude from about 1778, a provincial Mexican work, which also likely displays an indianilla bedspread and skirt, Fig. 5.9). As mentioned previously, biombos, various sizes of chests, and carpets— sometimes Asian in origin—were also used in bedrooms. Separate rooms for dining were unusual in the colonial era; rather tables were set up temporarily in various rooms, particularly in the sala or bedrooms, depending on the occasion and season.92 Chinese porcelains often factored into the dining experience: in some cases as merely a few cups and plates; in others as elaborate sets such as the ninety-piece coffee service and fancy serving pieces (soup tureens, large bowls, and vases in the shape of ducks, rabbits, fish, and dogs—probably Chinese Fo dogs/lions) in the home of the Xala family in Mexico City. Other types of Asian goods enhanced the dining experience in some instances. In 1640 a room was prepared temporarily for dining during the reception of the new viceroy, the Marquis of Villena: The table in this room was covered with a gauze tablecloth embroidered in gold, and set with the finest chinaware. At the far end there were two exquisite Chinese screens to shield the musicians and their instruments from view.93

Asian textiles were used not only to make clothing, but also as upholstery, wall coverings, wainscotings, curtains, bedding, cushions, pillows, valances, bed canopies, and as other forms of domestic decoration. For example, in 1640 an entire room at Chapultepec castle in Mexico City was decorated with “Mandarin damask.”94 Chinese hand-painted wallpaper was also brought to the Americas. The entryway to the sala in the Xala home in Mexico City in 1784 was entirely covered with eighty varas of painted Chinese wallpaper and the dressing room was papered with Chinese hunting scenes.95 At the other end of the geographic, economic, and temporal spectrum, 90 Several settler families brought elaborate silk bed furnishings to New Mexico in 1598–1600. See note 83 above and Pierce, “Popular and Prevalent.” 91 Unpublished document, AGN, Concurso de Peñalosa, vol. 1, fols. 396v–397r. See “At the Ends of the Earth”; and Pierce, “Popular and Prevalent.” 92 For discussions of kitchens and dining areas in Mexico see Artes de México 36 (1997); and Curiel and Rubial, “Los espejos de lo propio,” pp. 49–153. 93 Gutiérrez de Medina, Viaje de tierra y mar, pp. 73–75. Also see Curiel, “Customs, Conventions, and Daily Rituals,” p. 33. 94 Gutiérrez de Medina, Viaje de tierra y mar, pp. 73–75; Curiel, “Customs, Conventions, and Daily Rituals,” p. 33. 95 Romero de Terreros, Una casa, pp. 16, 68.

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Fig. 5.8: Luis Juárez, Birth of the Virgin, Mexico, 1615–25. Oil on copper. Denver Art Museum.

we know from documentary references from the colonial period, nineteenth-century photographs, and twentieth-century folklore that indianilla was used as wainscoting to line the lower half of walls in adobe homes in New Mexico, as seen in a photo of the interior of a home at Isleta Indian Pueblo in the late nineteenth century (Fig. 5.10).96 96 Captain Manuel Delgado had two wainscotings, one 16 varas long by 4 varas wide. See Pierce, “At the Ends of the Earth,” pp. 177–80, and Pierce, “Popular and Prevalent.”

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Fig. 5.9: Unknown artist, Ex-Voto with Saint Gertrude, Mexico, 1778. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society, Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In addition, carriages in Latin America were often upholstered with Chinese silks. Speaking of Mexico City in the mid-1620s, Gage describes the beauty of some of the coaches of the gentry, which do exceed in cost the best of the Court of Madrid [where Gage had visited] and other parts of Christendom, for they spare no silver, nor gold, nor precious stones, nor cloth of gold, nor the best silks of China to enrich them.97

Around a hundred years later in Córdoba, Argentina, both a military captain and the choirmaster of the cathedral had carriages upholstered with Chinese silk in the early eighteenth century.98 Another hundred years later, Maria Graham described a carriage in Santiago, Chile upholstered with yellow and red Chinese silk in 1822.99 And, finally, many homes had domestic altars, some set up in separate oratories or chapels, others with small altars in the sala or bedroom. Asian goods often figured in these locations as well. In addition to the canopied ivory crucifixes in the salas of 97 Gage, Thomas Gage’s Travels, p. 67. 98 Bonialian, “Tejidos y cerámica de China,” p. 639. 99 Graham, Journal of a Residence, p. 125.

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Fig. 5.10: Interior of Governor Lente’s house, Isleta Indian Pueblo, New Mexico, late nineteenth to early twentieth century.

their homes, the Xala family in Mexico City had an oratory in the house that included another ivory crucifix and the previously mentioned paired porcelain tibors next to the altar and the Cortés del Rey family in Parral had two Chinese Fo dogs of porcelain used as flower vases on the altar of the chapel on their hacienda.100 Travelers’ comments, colonial paintings, wills and estate inventories, and the archeological record document the diaspora of Asian goods through the global trade network into the homes of citizens throughout colonial Latin America. Ownership of Asian objects implied social and political status in the Americas, as it did in Europe. In fact, as we have seen, all households aspired to own Asian goods and many lower-class families may have had one or two pieces of inferior-quality porcelain or articles of clothing of Chinese silk or printed cotton from India. Furthermore, the range of Asian goods, including high-end luxury wares, was not limited to the urban and coastal areas, but reached some of the most remote areas of the Spanish viceroyalties.

100 Curiel, Los bienes, p. 32, p. 56.

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Estella Marcos, Margarita. La escultura barroca de marfil en España. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1984. Farwell Gavin, Robin. “La Sala del Estrado: Women’s Place in the Palace.” El Palacio 115.4 (2010): 48–55. Fisher, Abby Sue. “Trade Textiles: Asia and New Spain.” In Asia and Spanish America: Trans-Pacific Artistic and Cultural Exchange, 1500–1850; Papers of the 2006 Mayer Center Symposium at the Denver Art Museum, ed. Donna Pierce and Ronald Otsuka, pp. 175–89. Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2009. Fournier, Patricia. “Ceramic Production and Trade on the Camino Real.” In El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, 2 vols., ed. Gabrielle G. Palmer and Stephen L. Fosberg, vol. 2, pp. 160–172. Santa Fe: Bureau of Land Management, 1999. Gage, Thomas. Thomas Gage’s Travels in the New World, ed. J. Eric S. Thompson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. Graham, Maria. Journal of a Residence in Chile in During the Year 1823, and a Voyage from Chile to Brazil in 1823, ed. Jennifer Hayward. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2003. Gutiérrez de Medina, Cristóbal. Viaje de tierra y mar, feliz por mar y tierra, que hizo el excelentísimo señor marqués de Villena [1640], with introduction and notes by Manuel Romero de Terreros. Mexico City: Instituto de Historia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1947. Guzmán-Rivas, Pablo. “Reciprocal Geographic Influences of the Trans-Pacific Galleon Trade.” PhD diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1960. Hakluyt, Richard. The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation [1589], 16 vols. London/New York, 1907. Hammond, George P. and Agapito Rey. Don Juan de Oñate: Colonizer of New Mexico, 1595–1628, 2 vols. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1953. Hill, David V. and John A. Peterson. “East Meets West on the Camino Real.” In El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, 2 vols., ed. Gabrielle G. Palmer and Stephen L. Fosberg, vol. 2, pp. 147–52. Santa Fe: Bureau of Land Management, 1999. Impey, Oliver and Christiaan Jörg. Japanese Export Lacquer, 1580–1850. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2005. Kennedy, Alexandra. “Apuntes sobre arquitectura en tierra y cerámica en la colonia.” In Cerámica colonial y vida cotidiana. Cuenca, Ecuador: Fundación Paul Rivet, 1990. Kennedy, Alexandra. “Arte y artistas quiteños de exportación.” In Arte de la Real Audiencia de Quito, siglos XVII–XIX: Patronos, corporaciones y comunidades, ed. Alexandra Kennedy, pp. 185–203. Hondarribia, Spain: Editorial Nerea, 2002. Kennedy, Alexandra. “Baroque Art in the Audiencia de Quito.” In Barroco de la Nueva Granada: Colonial Art from Colombia and Ecuador, ed. Alexandra Kennedy and Marta Fajardo de Rueda. New York: Americas Society, 1992. Kennedy, Alexandra. “Mujeres en los claustros: artístas, mecenas, y coleccionistas.” In Arte de la Real Audiencia de Quito, siglos XVII–XIX: patronos, corporaciones y comunidades, ed. Alexandra Kennedy, pp. 109–27. Hondarribia, Spain: Editorial Nerea, 2002. Kennedy, Alexandra and Alfonso Ortíz Crespo. Convento de San Diego de Quito, Historia y Restauración. Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador, 1982. Kennedy Troya, Alexandra [Alexandra Kennedy]. “La esquiva presencia indígena en el arte colonial quiteño.” Procesos: Revista Ecuatoriana de Historia (Quito) 4 (1993): 87–101. Kuwayama, George. Chinese Ceramics in Colonial Mexico. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1997. Kuwayama, George. “Chinese Porcelain in the Viceroyalty of Peru.” In Asia and Spanish America: TransPacific Artistic and Cultural Exchange, 1500–1850: Papers of the 2006 Mayer Center Symposium at the Denver Art Museum, ed. Donna Pierce and Ronald Otsuka, pp. 165–74. Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2009. Leibsohn, Dana and Meha Priyadarshini, eds. “Beyond Silk and Silver.” Special issue of Colonial Latin American Review 25.1 (2016). López Pérez, María del Pilar and Carlos Bejerano Calvo. En torno al estrado: cajas de uso cotidiano en Santa Fé del Bogotá, siglos XVI al XVIII. Bogotá: Museo Nacional de Colombia, 1996.

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Salazar, D. Carta de relación de las cosas de la China […] [1590]. In Archivo del bibliófilo filipino […], 5 vols., ed. W.E. Retana. Madrid: Viuda de M. Minuesa de los Ríos, 1895–1905. Sanabraís, Sofia. “The Biombo or Folding Screen in Colonial Mexico.” In Asia and Spanish America: TransPacific Artistic and Cultural Exchange, 1500–1850; Papers of the 2006 Mayer Center Symposium at the Denver Art Museum, ed. Donna Pierce and Ronald Otsuka, pp. 69–105. Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2009. Santiago Cruz, Francisco. La nao de China. Mexico City: Jus, 1962. Schurz, William Lytle. The Manila Galleon. New York: Dutton, 1939. Shulsky, Linda, R. “Chinese Porcelain at Old Mobile.” In Historical Archeology 36 (2002): 97–104. Shulsky, Linda, R. “Chinese Porcelain in New Mexico.” In Vormen uit Vuur 53.3 (September 1994): 13–18. Shulsky, Linda, R. “Chinese Porcelain in Spanish Colonial Sites in the Southern Part of North America and the Caribbean.” Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society (London) 63 (1998–99): 83–98. Snow, Cordelia Thomas. “A Brief History of the Palace of the Governors and a Preliminary Report on the 1974 Excavation.” El Palacio 80.3 (October 1974): 1–22. Snow, Cordelia Thomas. “‘A Headdress of Pearls’: Luxury Goods Imported over the Camino Real during the Seventeenth Century.” In El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, ed. Gabrielle G. Palmer, vol. 1 of 4 volumes, pp. 69–76. Cultural Resources Series 11. Santa Fe: Bureau of Land Management, 1993. Socolow, Susan Midgen. “Women’s Fashion in Colonial Buenos Aires.” In Festivals and Daily Life in the Arts of Colonial Latin America, 1492–1850; Papers from the 2012 Mayer Center Symposium at the Denver Art Museum, ed. Donna Pierce, pp. 129–50. Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2014. Tepaske, John J. The Kingdom of Peru: Don Jorge Juan and Don Antonio de Ulloa, 1749. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978. Toussaint, Manuel. Colonial Art in Mexico, trans. and ed. Elizabeth Wilder Weismann. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967. Tovar de Teresa, Guillermo. Miguel Cabrera: Drawing Room Painter of the Heavenly Queen. Mexico City: Grupo Financiero InverMexico, 1995. Trusted, Marjorie. “Propaganda and Luxury: Small- Scale Baroque Sculptures in Viceregal America and the Philippines.” In Asia and Spanish America: Trans-Pacific Artistic and Cultural Exchange, 1500–1850; Papers of the 2006 Mayer Center Symposium at the Denver Art Museum, ed. Donna Pierce and Ronald Otsuka, pp. 151–63. Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2009. Ulloa, Antonio de and Jorge Juan. A Voyage to South America, 2 vols., ed. with annotation by John Adams. London: John Stockdale, 1806. Valgañon, José Gabriel Moya et al. Mueble español: estrado y dormitorio. Madrid: Consejería de Cultural, Dirección General de Patrimonio Cultural, 1990. Weismann, Elizabeth Wilder. Americas: The Decorative Arts in Latin America in the Era of the Revolution. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press/Renwick Gallery, 1976. Yuste, Carmen. “Los precios de las mercancías asiáticas en el siglo XVIII.” In Los precios de alimentos y manufacturas novohispanos, ed. Virginia García Acosta, pp. 233–34. Mexico City: Comité Mexicano de Ciencias Históricas, 1995. Yuste López, Carmen [Carmen Yuste]. El comercio de la Nueva España con Filipinas, 1590–1785. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1984.

About the author Donna Pierce is the Emeritus Frederick and Jan Mayer Curator of Spanish Colonial art at the Denver Art Museum and former Department Head for the New World Department at that museum. She has been one of the chief organizers of the highly

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successful Denver Art Museum Mayer Center symposia. Pierce came to the Denver Art Museum in 1999 from the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art in Santa Fe where she was Chief Curator. Pierce has organized, directed, and consulted on more than a dozen Spanish colonial exhibitions throughout the United States and has authored or edited over thirty publications on Spanish colonial art and history, including Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521–1821 (co-edited with Clara Bargellini and Rogelio Ruiz Gomar, 2004).

6. Trans-Pacific connections

Contraband mercury trade in the sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries



Angela Schottenhammer Abstract Mercury was an essential substance in the “patio” amalgamation method of silver refining. This essay focuses on the patio method for refining silver that was imported from Europe and the New World into Asia, and the associated export of mercury from China into Japan and New Spain. Spanish government officials were ambivalent about the import of mercury into the colonies, since the patio process allowed even more silver to flow out of these locations. These officials passed laws limiting mercury import, but the trade continued, often illegally. This essay extensively documents the role of Spanish merchants and investors in facilitating the illegal import of mercury into the Spanish viceroyalties from Asia. Considerable trade took place beyond the volumes officially recorded. Keywords: refining silver; mercury trade; patio process; colonial Latin American smuggling; Manila galleons; Japan and mercury Chinese merchandise is so cheap and Spanish goods so dear that I believe it impossible to choke off the trade to such an extent that no Chinese wares will be consumed in the realm, since a man can clothe his wife in Chinese silks for two hundred reales, whereas he could not provide her clothing of Spanish silks with two hundred pesos. —Letter from Marqués de Cañete, viceroy of Peru, to Philip II1

The discovery of 50.26 grams of mercury from an old shipwreck, the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha, that sank in 1622 off the Florida Keys, heavily laden with copper, silver, gold, tobacco, gems, jewels, and indigo, bound for Spain, has raised worldwide attention.2 One gets a “sense of the scientific practices that prevailed in 1622,” especially 1 Letter quoted in Borah, Early Colonial Trade, p. 122. 2 See, for example, “Nuestra Señora de Atocha,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuestra_Señora_ de_Atocha (accessed 27 February 2017). Bentley, Tamara H. (ed.), Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984677/ch06

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as related to mining and medicine, as Corey Malcom states.3 In 1554, the Spanish had just rediscovered a revolutionary new technique for the refining of silver, the mercury-amalgam “patio process.” First used by the Arabs in the twelfth century in North Africa, it allowed much greater quantities of silver to be obtained from the ore. This technology is ascribed to Bartolomé de Medina (born around 1504 in Seville, Spain). He first applied the process in Pachuca, New Spain (Mexico), and it was soon widely employed in the silver mines throughout the Spanish colonial empire in the Americas. This was especially the case after 1545, when a new source of silver was discovered, the famous cerro of Potosí (in the mountains of what is now Bolivia). The following year, in Mexico, Juan de Tolosa (fl. sixteenth century) discovered the great silver mines of Zacatecas. The discovery of these vast silver deposits in the New World coincided with the rediscovery of the mercury amalgamation method of silver refining. Bartolomé de Medina is said to have acquired knowledge of this technology from a German alchemist, known as “Maestro Lorenzo” or “Leonard,” who advised him: Grind the ore fine. Steep it in strong brine. Add mercury and mix thoroughly. Repeat mixing daily for several weeks. Every day take a pinch of ore mud and examine the mercury. See? It is bright and glistening. As time passes, it should darken as silver minerals are decomposed by salt and the silver forms an alloy with mercury. Amalgam is pasty. Wash out the spent ore in water. Retort residual amalgam; mercury is driven off and silver remains.4

Lubricated by water, the silver (or gold) ore was, thus, ground in circular stone mills worked by mules until it was a wet paste. The paste was spread out in the shade (on a patio) and sprinkled with mercury, salt, and copper sulphate, and men or mules walked over it, sometimes for weeks, until it was thoroughly mixed. It was then washed through, and the remaining amalgam was squeezed and then heated to drive off the mercury and leave behind the gold and silver. The patio process allowed lower grades of ore to be worked, and dramatically improved the yield from silver and gold mines. Most of the output from the New World was silver, but the process was used for gold too. (See an important book of 1640 outlining the patio process, Arte de los Metales, Fig. 6.1, and an illustration of the copper pots used for mixing mercury with silver, Fig. 6.2.) Where both metals occurred together, the resultant mixture of the two was called “doré,” and usually doré bricks were shipped, with the gold and silver being separated later during the final refining.5 3 Malcom, “Mercury on a Galleon.” 4 Probert, “Bartolomé de Medina,” quoted in Lynch and Rowland, History of Grinding, pp. 77–78. 5 The mercury amalgamation process required fine grinding and washing of the ore, and major reservoirs and canals were built in the dry hills and valleys round Potosí to provide year-round water for ore washing and for waterwheels that drove stamping mills. Production began to rise dramatically from 1573 onward, but the silver mines were now high-capital ventures that only large owners could construct. This essentially put the smaller-scale Indian miners out of business.

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Huge quantities of silver from Potosí and Zacatecas were shipped across both the Atlantic and the Pacific. (See a map of trans-Pacific trade routes, Fig. 6.3.) The real de a ocho, the Spanish “piece of eight” silver coin, became an international currency that was widespread in the world economy for more than two centuries. Since the second

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Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

Fig. 6.2: Alvaro Alonso Barba, Arte de los Metales, 1640. Printed illustration of a furnace designed to heat mercury-silver amalgam; the mixture was held in copper cauldrons. A 1770 reprint of the 1640 text.

half of the eighteenth century these silver coins also increasingly circulated in China’s coastal regions especially Fujian. Early modern China has repeatedly been described as the world’s largest silver sink, since enormous quantities of Spanish silver ended up in the Chinese empire. “This supply-side phenomenon,” as Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez put it, “was particularly fortuitous because it coincided chronologically with the extraordinary rise in the value of silver caused by the Chinese demandside forces culminating in the single-whip tax reform (yitiao bianfa 一條鞭法).6 The combination of low supply-side production costs in Spanish America and Chinese-led demand-side elevation in silver’s value in Asia generated probably the most spectacular mining boom in human history.”7 In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, however, Japan continued to serve as China’s most important source of silver. The Spanish empire possessed two major sources of mercury, Almadén in Spain and Huancavélica in Peru. During the colonial period, most of Almadén’s output was reserved for the silver mines in Mexico.8 In 1563, however, a major deposit of 6 This tax reform converted labor services and land taxes into payments in the form of silver. 7 Flynn and Giráldez, “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon,’” p. 209; see also their “China and the Manila Galleons”; Flynn and Giráldez, “Arbitage, China, and World Trade.” 8 Lang, “New Spain’s Mining Depression.”

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Fig. 6.3: Map of Manila Galleon trade between the Philippines and the Americas. Map by Inspiration Design House, Hong Kong.

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Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

cinnabar-mercury ore was discovered at Huancavélica in Peru. Silver could now be refined in Peru without having to import mercury from Spain at great expense. But in September 1572, Martín Enríquez de Almanza (c. 1510–1583), Viceroy of New Spain (r. 1568–80), prohibited the free trade in mercury and placed it under government control (see also below).9 During basically the whole colonial period the Spanish Crown subsequently maintained a monopoly on the production and distribution of mercury, as it became essential for effective silver mining. The crown, thus, directly controlled the famous mercury mines near Huancavélica on the Peruvian coast. At the same time, the shipping of mercury from Spain was extremely costly. Against this background, it is easy to understand the mostly illegal importation of mercury, mainly from China, into New Spain and Peru, as part of the Manila galleon trade between the Philippines and Acapulco. (Galleons running this route were also called “nao de China”—a designation that attests to the crucial role China played in this trade). The Manila galleon trade operated for more than 250 years, from 1565 to 1815, and mercury constituted a part of it. Although the Philippines provided a few products for this trade, it was primarily the cargoes of spices, silks, porcelains, gold, ivory, gemstones, jade, mercury, and other products from China and other parts of Asia that made this galleon trade so lucrative.10 Beginning in 1573, Chinese mercury was shipped to Manila on Fujianese junks, and it became a key item in most cargoes that left the Philippines for New Spain. Mercury was traded by merchants of a range of nationalities. “Mercury from China via the Philippines is an undervalued and mostly ignored contribution to New Spain’s rich mining history,” as Edward R. Slack emphasized in 2012.11 An early survey of the role of China in New Spain’s mercury monopoly has been provided by Mervyn F. Lang in his history of the Spanish state monopoly of mercury in Mexico.12

The Asia-Pacific macro-region and the interest in mercury Traditionally, mercury was used in Asia for medicinal and alchemical purposes to produce elixirs, for the conservation of corpses, and as a supplement for gunpowder. Definitely, it was still used for medicinal purposes in the sixteenth century, albeit in very small quantities. It was applied, for example, as ointment to treat syphilis or leprosy13 and considered a remedy for gonorrhea, toothache, constipation, or even 9 Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, p. 150. 10 For a brief overview with some important wreck sites see, for example, Singer, “Manila Galleons.” For the Manila Galleon trade in general, see Iaccarino, “‘Galleon System’ and Chinese Trade”; Bernabéu Albert, La nao de China; Fish, Manila-Acapulco Galleons; Bernabéu Albert, Un océano de seda y plata; Schurz, Manila Galleon; Obregón, El galeón de Manila; see also Bonialian, El pacífico hispanoamericano. 11 Slack, “Orientalizing New Spain,” p. 113. 12 Lang, El monopolio. 13 Rose, “Origins of Syphilis.”

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depression. People also thought that the poisonous effect would remove the disease from the body.14 As such, it may also have been part of the doctors’ medicine chest on board ships. But what interests us here is its use for the mining industry. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Japanese, like the Spanish, sought out mercury to improve their silver mining output. China Within these global interconnections China played a major role as a source for mercury. Mercury (Chinese “shuiyin” 水銀 or “gong” 汞) was available locally and was also extracted from cinnabar (Chinese “dansha”丹砂 or “zhusha” 硃砂).15 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries great quantities were to be found in the province of Guizhou 貴州. At the beginning of the Qing era (1644–1911 CE) the annual output of mercury from Guizhou surpassed 5,000 jin.16 Although, as Joseph Needham notes, amalgamation was known to the Chinese and used in China for extracting gold and silver from their ores or for gilding and silvering by means of mercury amalgams,17 interest in the amalgamation patio process seems to have been low. I have so far not been able to identify any source attesting to major Chinese interest in it. During the time under investigation here, China basically received its silver from Japan. China consequently disposed of rich silver sources from abroad, but did not possess very rich silver ores herself. Rather, China’s mercury became an object of trade in maritime Asia. It was traded of course by Chinese, but especially also Portuguese, Dutch, and later English merchants, as attested to by various sources. A voyage of great importance for the Dutch was that of Oliver van Noordt (1588– 1627). In 1598, a commercial company contracted him to sail five vessels through the Magellan Straits for traffic on South American coasts. After various misfortunes along the eastern South American coasts, as a result of which about 100 men were lost, the fleet entered the Magellan Strait on 5 November 1599. The vice-admiral and 14 Stübler and Krug, Leesers Lehrbuch der Homöopathie, p. 819. The entry for alchemy in the encyclopedia, Irshād al-qāşid ilā asnā al-maqāşid (Guide for the struggling on the highest questions), by Muhammed ibn al-Akfānī al-Sakhāwī (d. 1348), who wrote in Egypt, says that an elixir consisting of mercury, mostly combined with sulfur “changes substances just as a poison does in a living body, but it changes them to health”; “[t]he elixir is furthermore used in medical practice, bringing results beyond those of all ordinary drugs. It heals epilepsy and leprosy and suchlike diseases, just as Hunain ibn Ishāq (809–877) says it does in his ‘Discussion’ (Maqāla) on this question.” Berthelot and Houdas, La chimie au Moyen Âge, pp. 65, 67, quoted in Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5.4, p. 483. 15 During the Yuanfeng reign (1078–85), for example, 3,350 jin of mercury was produced in the Northeast (Gansu and Shaanxi) and 3,650 jin of cinnabar in Guangxi. See Ptak, “Almíscar, Calambaque e Azogue.” 16 Xia et al., Zhongguo gudai kuangye fazhanshi, pp. 110–11, 157–58, 194–95, 307–17. 17 Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5.2, pp. 243 and 247.

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his ship were lost on 14 March 1600, which, with other losses, reduced the fleet to but two vessels. But on 15 September 1600, eventually the Philippine Islands were sighted. Van Noordt observed the Chinese trade in mercury on the islands: The Chinese engage extensively in trade there. They take all kinds of merchandise there from China, namely, silks, cottons, china-ware, gunpowder, sulphur, iron, steel, quicksilver, copper, flour, walnuts, chestnuts, biscuits, dates, all sorts of stuffs, writing-desks, and other curiosities.

And he continues: The Spaniards load all this merchandise in Manila and export it to Nouvelle Espagne, whence more than one and one-half millions of silver in money and in bars is taken annually to the Philippines. This silver is exchanged for gold, giving four livres of silver for one of gold. But this traffic is not extensive, since there is enough gold in Perou and Chili. They prefer to traffic with the Chinese, for their returns reach one thousand per cent.18

This quotation attests to the active role of Chinese merchants and also to the extremely lucrative trade across the Pacific. It should be mentioned that in the seventeenth century the Zheng 鄭 clan on Taiwan, too, was involved in the trade of mercury to Japan.19 And the Dutch Deshima dagregisters contain numerous entries on Chinese and Dutch merchants shipping mercury to Japan (Nagasaki).20 On July 1639, for example, a Dutch ship (De Roch) left Taiwan for Japan with forty-eight cases of mercury.21 Southeast Asia Also in Southeast Asia—Melaka, Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia—mercury seems to have constituted a commodity of some importance. Melaka obviously played an entrepôt role in these connections, as the product was shipped from there to Pegu, Thailand, the Moluccas, and other regions in Indochina.22 Mercury was probably 18 Morga, History of the Philippine Islands, vols. 1 and 2. 19 Wills, Pepper, Guns, and Parleys, p. 54. 20 See, for example, Vialle et al., Diaries of Deshima, vol. 13, p. 271 (1668), p. 337 (1670: “the landlord told us that the mercury did not fetch more than 120 taels”), pp. 359, 360; Blussé et al., Marginalia 1740–1800, p. 334, for 17 October 1769: “Pepper, mercury, and other bulk wares have been delivered to the merchants. The barrels with provisions and lacquerware have been shipped to the Vrouwe Maria Jacoba.” 21 Laver, Japan’s Economy by Proxy, p. 101. 22 Ptak, “Almíscar, Calambaque e Azogue,” pp. 54–55, with reference to Cortesão, Suma oriental of Tomé Pires, vol. 1, pp. 93, 108, 111, 112.

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transported to Melaka from the Malay Peninsula or from other foreign sources. In 1510, we read in a letter from Rui de Araújo (fl. early sixteenth century), addressed to Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515): “Among the goods that you should bring here, to know, are the following: mercury […].”23 Mercury is listed first in this list of products. Japan The great importer of mercury in the early modern Asian world was Japan, a country which developed as Mexico’s competitor for Chinese mercury (see below). From the late sixteenth century, Japan sought a new, strong international status in the East Asian world. In this context, the Tokugawa 徳川 rulers in particular pursued an expansion of maritime trade, while at the same time attending to their security concerns.24 Lacking the technique of the mercury amalgam “patio process,” the Japanese ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu 徳川家康 (1543–1616) sought to acquire this knowledge from the Spanish, and to import New World miners as “human capital,” in order to make Japanese silver mining more efficient.25 Earlier, the Japanese had already introduced new mining techniques from China. One such process was called haifuki 灰吹, the “breeze of ashes,” where the compositions of silver and lead melt into an amalgamation, which, after being cooled down with water, are then melted together with ashes. These ashes on their part absorb the lead and leave the silver behind. Under the rule of Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊臣秀 吉 (1536–1598), another process employed was called nanbanbuki 南蠻吹, literally “breeze of the southern barbarians,” which applied some new European liquefaction techniques. This technology was introduced with the help of the Sumitomo 住 友 brothers, two copper-mining businessmen—especially Sumitomo Masatomo 住 友政友 (1585–1652), founder of the Sumitomo group—and Portuguese merchants. Japan possessed all the preconditions for adopting the efficient patio process mining technology—with the sole exception of sufficient mercury. It is clear why Ieyasu laid so much importance on obtaining this new technology. Especially after the discovery of the famous Iwami silver mines (Iwami ginzan 石見銀山) in 1526, Japan became a major producer of silver in Asia and wanted to strengthen its local economy to establish Japan as a leading political and economic power in the East Asian macro region. In 1609, the Japanese bakufu (幕府 shogunal government) established a cinnabar guild (za 座) in Sakai in order to monopolize the mercury imports, probably with the idea of controlling the profits from its resale. Another guild was established in 23 Basílio de Sá (ed.), Documentação para a história das missões, vol. 1, pp. 30–31; cf. Ptak, “Almíscar, Calambaque e Azogue,” p. 55. 24 Innes, “Door Ajar”;Toby, State and Diplomacy. 25 Laver, Japan’s Economy by Proxy, pp. 100–1. Ieyasu also imported highly developed shipbuilding techniques from the Spanish and, later, the Dutch.

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Nagasaki, where the bugyō 奉行 (magistrate or commissioner) appointed by Ieyasu resided, who could consequently control the mercury sales of the Portuguese.26

The China-Macau-Japan connection As the Portuguese merchant Alonso Vaez (i.e. Alfonso Paéz) reports concerning Macau, great quantities of mercury, apparently approximately 500 piculs, or even more, were annually carried to Guangzhou and Macau by “los yndios de la China, chincheaos y otros naturales de la gran China” (by Indians from China, people from Amoy and other people from great China) for sale in Japan.27 A Mexican trader who visited Macau, Melchor de Medano, noticed the large quantities of mercury in Canton and the city of “Chincheo.” (“Chincheo” may refer to Zhangzhou 漳州, or both Zhangzhou and Quanzhou or, in some cases, the general Fujian coastal area.) The Mexican Julián Gómez Escobar, who visited Canton in the 1580s, observed that in Canton, Chincheo, and “otros puertos y partes de la tierra firme de la China” (other parts of the Chinese mainland) mercury was collected to be shipped to Japan and to other places.28 Piedro Grifo, an Italian trader, in 1591, seems to have invested his capital in some quantities of mercury that he purchased in Macau, where he had lived for three years, for sale in Japan. After completing this transaction, he emigrated to Mexico. Of the trade in mercury he wrote: the gentile Chincheo Indians, vassals of the king of China, have by agreement and with profit brought to the cities of Macau and Canton, among other commodities, quantities of mercury that are put in pottery cans or bowls, and then again placed into wooden, very solid, hard, and round boxes, and in each of these half a picul of mercury is placed, which is 65 pounds of their [measurement]; and they transport it for sale and sell it to the Portuguese for Japan, whereto the largest portion of it is transported, with some to India. [L]os yndios gentiles chincheos, uasallos del rey de China, tienen por trato y grangería traer a la cuidad de macan y de canton, entre otras mercadurías, cantidad de azogue metido en unas uasos de barro y éstos en otros de madera muy fuertes y recios redondos, y en cada uno medio pico de azogue que son sesanta en cinco libras de las de acá, y que le traen para bender y lo benden a los portugueses para el Japón, donde se lleua la mayor parte y alguno para la yndia.29

26 Yosoburō, Economic Aspects, vol. 1, p. 366. 27 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, pp. 170–79. 28 Iaccarino, Comercio y diplomacia, p. 168. 29 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 176.

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This document not only confirms the trade between Amoy and Macau, between the Chinese and Portuguese, and the sale of mercury in Japan but also reports some details about transportation. The mercury was transported in pottery cans or bowls that were subsequently placed into firm round wooden boxes, each filled with half a picul of mercury. The examples above also attest to the great profit margins obtained by investing in this Japan trade. With Chinese silk and with mercury one could make at least a tenfold profit in Japan. In Canton, in the 1580s, one picul of mercury was sold for 28 to 33 taels (liang) of silver, on average approximately 30 taels (37.5 pesos) at that time.30 In Manila the prices oscillated between 60 and 70 pesos per picul. In 1592, Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas (in office as seventh governor of the Philippines, June 1590—October 1593) stated that the Chinese would request 100 ducats (ducados) for a picul, equivalent to 130 Castilian pounds.31 According to Chouhai tubian 籌海圖編, a text from 1562, under the entry “Preferences of the Japanese” (Wohao 倭好), mercury is mentioned as a product used to gild copper utensils, and it could be sold in Japan for about thirty times the price in China, that is, in this case, 300 taels.32 Around 1600, the Portuguese sent annually between 150 and 300 piculs of mercury from Macau to Japan. The local price at Canton was 40 taels per picul and 53 taels at Macau; one picul of mercury was sold in Japan for 90 to 92 taels.33 The Dutch also brought Chinese mercury to Japan. In 1636, for example, they took a quantity of 262.87 piculs—corresponding to a value of 33,864 taels—from Macau to Nagasaki.34 Various entries in the Deshima dagregisters also record the import of mercury into Nagasaki by the Dutch. Macau, Canton, and Amoy were some of the major ports of export. But in contrast to the Portuguese and Chinese, for the Dutch and Japanese it was more difficult to get access to Chinese mercury. Consequently, they purchased mercury also in Thailand or Indonesia.35 After 1640, when the English began to play a more important role in the region, they, too, purchased quantities of mercury in China to be sold in Japan.36 In 1637, a full 18,120.25 jin (i.e. 181.205 piculs), worth 15,715 taels, was sent to Japan; and in 1638, another 92.355 piculs, worth 8,762.20 taels. This means that the selling price in Japan lay between 86.70 and 121.80 taels per picul in these years—in 30 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 176. 31 AGI, Filipinas, 18B, R. 2, n. 5, “Carta de G.P. Mariñas sobre situación general” (31 May 1592). 32 Zheng and Hu, Chouhai tubian, p. 199. 33 Ptak, “Almíscar, Calambaque e Azogue,” p. 55. 34 Boxer, Seventeenth Century Macau, p. 26. 35 Roderich Ptak, “Almíscar, Calambaque e Azogue,” p. 56. 36 Roderich Ptak, “Almíscar, Calambaque e Azogue,” p. 56; Kato, “Japanese-Dutch Trade,” pp. 34–84, 66; Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company, vol. 1, passim.

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comparison to 90–91 taels in 1562.37 The most active merchants in this trade were the Chinese, the Portuguese, and later the Dutch. As Edward Slack points out, When Gemelli Carreri (1651–1725) “visited New Spain coming from Manila, he mentioned that the price of Peruvian and Castilian mercury ranged between 84 and 300 pesos, depending on supply, and attributed its high price to royal taxes on importation (10%), local production (20%), in addition to other viceregal [sic] duties.” Carerri remarked that “it is the lack of quicksilver which impoverishes Mexico,” a clever remark considering that he had sold some Chinese mercury in New Spain at 300 percent above its purchase price.38

The New Spain (Mexico)-Philippines-Japan connection Japan’s trade relations with the Portuguese and later the Dutch are well known. What is perhaps less known is that Tokugawa Ieyasu also established commercial relations with the Spanish and with New Spain—even though they were not granted a long alliance. In 1609, a Spanish galleon called San Francisco capsized close to Japanese territory on its return trip from Manila to Acapulco. Three hundred and seventy castaways were rescued by Japanese fishermen, among them Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco (Aberrucia) (1564–1636), who had just become governor-general of the Philippines (r. 1608–9). In Japan, he was able to travel to Tokyo and to establish direct commercial contacts between Japan and the Spanish empire, and then returned to Acapulco with some Japanese accompanying him on a ship built in Japan, the San Buenaventura. In Acapulco, he took his mission to Mexico City where they met with the viceroy Luis de Velasco, Marqués de Salinas (c. 1535–1617; r. 1590–95 and 1607–11). In 1595, Velasco was appointed viceroy of Peru (until 1604). Later he resumed his office in Mexico for a number of years, and was still there when Rodrigo de Vivero (his nephew) came back to Acapulco from Japan. After a series of complicated diplomatic advances and negotiations,39 Rodrigo de Vivero, in the summer of 1610, eventually—through the mediation of Luis Sotelo (1574–1624)—prepared and signed the first, and quite unique, cooperation agreement between Tokugawa Japan and Spain, a document entitled Capitulaciones con el emperador de Xapón (Agreements with the emperor of Japan).40 The contractual clauses are enumerated by Vivero in a supplement attached to one of his memoranda, dated 2 May 1610 and addressed to both the viceroy of Mexico and the king 37 Boxer, Great Ship from Amacon, p. 194. 38 See Carreri, Viaje a la Nueva España, vol. 1, p. 140, quoted by Slack, “Orientalizing New Spain,” p. 116. 39 These are nicely described in the PhD dissertation of Iaccarino, Comercio y diplomacia, pp. 189–217. 40 AGI, Filipinas, 193, n. 3. The text is reproduced in Iaccarino, Comercio y diplomacia, app. n. 5, pp. 331–32.

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of Spain (here Don Felipe).41 This document, however, has to be considered a kind of mutual-intention agreement, because in his function as resigning governor-general of the Philippines, Vivero did not possess the authority to conclude an official agreement; such a document would have had to be signed by both the king of Spain and the viceroy of Mexico to become valid. Interesting for us is that Point 5 of the agreement explicitly mentions that the Japanese “desire that Spanish miners come to Japan to assist them in the exploitation of the great quantities of silver that the kingdom disposes of.” Vivero, it may be added, was himself a mining specialist and had worked in the famous silver mines of Taxco (in Mexico) before leaving for the Philippines.42 Ieyasu, for example, asked for fifty miners from New Spain to assist in silver extraction. In exchange, Vivero suggested that it should be agreed, on the condition that the Spanish sent 100 or 200 miners, that half of the extracted quantity of silver, in all the mines that have not yet been discovered but will be discovered and operated by the Spanish with their technical knowledge and industry, would go into the possession of the Spanish and be free of charge, and the other half would be divided into two parts, one for his majesty, the king of Japan, and the other one for the Spanish king, Don Felipe. In fact this meant that the Spanish miners would get 50 percent, the Spanish king 25 percent, and only the remaining 25 percent would be left for Ieyasu and Japan. But, as Ubaldo Iaccarino has shown, Ieyasu was willing to grant the Spanish 75 percent of all the metals extracted, because this cooperation with Manila would provide him with the desired knowledge regarding this new silver-extracting technology from the New World. Also, in such a re-imagined system, Ieyasu himself would not have to change the exploitation of the mines. (These mines had been, until then, operating under private, local autonomy, and the owners just paid a certain percentage of the extracted metal to the government, although the latter was directly involved in the management of most of the mines by its own dealers and businessmen.)43 As far as the already operating mines were concerned, the mine owners would have to conclude new arrangements with the Spanish; and should it be necessary to use mercury, they would be responsible for transporting it there, and paying for it.44 While establishing these agreements, Ieyasu, however, rejected Vivero’s request to expel Dutch merchants from Japan.45 Letters of Ieyasu and his son, Tokugawa Hidetada 徳川秀忠 (r. 1605–23), to Francisco Gómez de Sandoval (1552/1553–1625), Duke of Lerma, in 1610 explicitly talk of the nao departing from Mexico sailing to Japan, entrusting everything to the Franciscan friar Luis Sotelo. Regardless of where exactly the ship from Mexico would reach 41 Vivero y Velasco, Relación que hace D. Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco, pp. 160–92. 42 Monbeig, Rodrigo de Vivero, p. 8. 43 Iaccarino, Comercio y diplomacia, p. 210; see also pp. 201–3 for a summarized survey of the agreement Velasco suggested. 44 Vivero y Velasco, Relación del Japón; AGI, Filipinas, 193, n. 3; Iaccarino, Comercio y diplomacia, pp. 202–3. 45 Testamento de Don Rodrigo de Vivero.

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the coasts of Japan, it would be welcomed with favor and gifts; everything else would be entrusted to Luis Sotelo. A letter of Honda Masazumi 本多正純 (1566–1637), who accompanied Tokugawa Ieyasu, dated 2 February 1610, mentions more details, although it does not mention the dispatch of Spanish miners to Japan nor make any reference to Philip III (r. 1598–1621).46 According to these agreements the advantages for the Spanish were more than evident: 75 percent of the gold and silver exploited in the mines of Izu 伊豆 and Kantō 関東would, for example, come into Spanish hands (as mentioned above); the mining areas would fall under extraterritoriality; all ports would be opened for the Spanish, ports would be demarcated; the Dutch should be expelled from Japan and the Spanish would even be granted rights to establish churches and to pursue missionary purposes.47 But eventually opposition from many sides, not only from within Japan but also from the Spanish crown—fearing that New Spain would establish its own, independent commercial trading route—and the Philippines rendered this ambitious advance obsolete. Surely it was also opposed by the Dutch, English, and Portuguese merchants who were active in the region. On the other hand, the intentions of Ieyasu in the Philippines and more generally in the Spanish colonies on the American continent are evident. He wished to establish a commercial connection with Mexico and perhaps even with Peru,48 and to profit from Spanish knowledge in the fields of naval engineering and mining technology. In addition, he intended to copy some of the Spanish institutions, such as the Mint of Mexico (Ceca de México) with its various techniques of minting, or the Contracting House (Casa de contratación) of Sevilla.49 Lacking his own ocean-going vessels for crossing the Pacific, in 1602 Tokugawa Ieyasu redirected a confiscated Dutch ship, the Liefde, to Sakai in order to use it for a voyage to New Spain.50 Ieyasu intended to make a voyage to Nueva España on an ocean-going ship he possessed, according to what we are told by the English who had arrived there two years earlier.51 The artillery of the Liefde was, incidentally, used for the battle of Sekigahara. With the intercession of William Adams (1564–1620), who promised Ieyasu that soon more Dutch ships would come to Japan, the Liefde was finally, in 1604, permitted to sail to Patani (a region on the northern part of the Malay Peninsula). The advent of the Dutch and the English, it is clear, greatly endangered the Spanish efforts with Japan. Especially when the Dutch had gained a footing in Japan after officially renouncing any missionary activities, the Spanish lost their once good relations with the Tokugawa. But it took a few years before these relations were finally discontinued. 46 This letter has only survived in the Spanish translation by Luis Sotelo: Vivero y Velasco, Testamento de Don Rodrigo de Vivero. 47 Iaccarino, Comercio y diplomacia, pp. 239–40. 48 In 1542, the Spanish had founded their viceroyalty of Peru with the capital Lima. 49 Iaccarino, Comercio y diplomacia, p. 240. 50 This is attested by friar Pedro Burguillos, who had been sent to Japan as an envoy. 51 Pérez, “Fr. Jerónimo de Jesús,” p. 143, quoted by Iaccarino, Comercio y diplomacia, p. 272.

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In 1614, one of Japan’s first locally constructed Western-style sailing ships, the San Juan Bautista—originally called Date Maru 伊達丸 in Japanese—crossed the Pacific for New Spain. It was a Spanish-galleon-type ship, called “Nanbansen” 南蠻船, literally “southern barbarian ship” in Japanese. The San Juan Bautista transported a Japanese diplomatic mission of 180 people headed by Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga 支倉六右衛門常長 (or Francisco Felipe Faxicura, as he was baptized in Spain; 1571–1622), and was accompanied by friar Luis Sotelo. They arrived at Acapulco and later continued their voyage to Europe departing from Veracruz as envoys to Pope Paul V (1550–1621) and the Vatican. This historic mission is known as the “Keichō Embassy” 慶長使節. The San Juan Bautista returned to Japan. Despite the start of anti-Christian measures and the initial executions of Christians around that time, Ieyasu intended to maintain good relations with Mexico, continuing commercial exchange, and he even announced a plan to send two other ships to America. This is clearly stated in a letter Ieyasu sent to the viceroy of New Spain.52 He desired to maintain this friendship, earlier established with the voyages of the naos San Francisco and San Buenaventura, as attested in letters he sent to the Philippines in October 1612 and 1613.53

The China-Philippines-Mexico-Peru connection Knowledge about cheap Chinese mercury reached Mexico via the Philippines. A text written by Miguel López de Legazpi in Manila on 11 August 1572, interestingly, already mentions mercury as a possible product that could be traded with China.54 Information about its very low price spread quickly among the local miners: one quintal (i.e. c. 49 kilograms) of Chinese mercury cost between 20 and 40 pesos, in contrast to the 77 to 100 pesos one had to pay for mercury from Almadén or Huancavélica. Already in 1584, the principal miners of Mexico signed a memorandum addressed to Philip II, asking the king to permit the import of mercury from China.55 One year later, the new governor of the Philippines, Santiago de Vera (16 May 1584 to May 1590) explained in a letter to the archbishop of Mexico, Pedro Moya de Contreras (1527–1591): “I have tried to make arrangements with the sangleys [Chinese craftsmen] here for them to bring me a quantity of quicksilver, according to Your Lordship’s orders.” Lately, however, the letter continues, the mercury has been taken “to the Japanese; in that country there are many silver mines, where they receive a good price for it. On this

52 AGI, Filipinas, 1, n. 151; Knauth, Confrontación transpacífica, pp. 242–43. 53 Iaccarino, Comercio y diplomacia, p. 290. 54 Ollé, “Estrategias Filipinas respecto a China,” p. 177. 55 Memorial de los mineros de Nueva España, quoted partly in Iwazaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 162; AGI, Patronato, 238, n. 3, “Petición de algunos mineros” (1584), quoted in Lang, El monopolio, p. 137.

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account, the quicksilver has increased in value.”56 In Mexico, the viceroy, Luis de Velasco (1534–1617),57 in 1591 ordered an investigation of all persons who had information on Peruvian mercury, in order to understand its costs and local prices, and to learn more about potential prices and costs of Chinese mercury, as well as quantities and where and from whom to purchase it.58 Despite the competition from Japan, members of the Spanish empire still found Chinese mercury incredibly inexpensive—even more so when considering the fact that it could be transported basically without cost on the Manila galleons.59 At that time there were no complaints about the quality of the Chinese mercury.60 The third Spanish governor of the Philippines (25 August 1575 until 1580), Francisco de Sande Picón (1540–1602), as early as 1576 mentions mercury in China in a letter to Philip II: “There are large quantities of wheat, there are gold mines, silver and mercury, copper, lead, and tin and all kind of metals” (“Hay mucha cantidad de trigo, hay minas de oro, plata y azogue, cobre, plomo y estaño y todos los metales”).61 He also dispatched a ship, the San Juanillo, to Mexico, under command of Captain Juan de Ribera; but his ship was lost at sea and never heard of again.62 He later came to Mexico and recorded that Chinese merchants originating from Chincheo frequently brought mercury to the Philippines for sale. He, too, suggested the possibility of reducing the cost of Chinese mercury by shipping it directly from Chincheo, China, to New Spain.63 The influential Castilian family of Ronquillo, as governors of the Philippines, decided to pursue contraband trade with China—despite prohibitions related to the Treaty of Tordesillas. Diego Ronquillo, the fifth Spanish governor of the Philippines (10 March 1583 until May 1584), as others before him—for

56 Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, vol. 4, p. 68. 57 He was in service as viceroy of Mexico between 1590 and 1595 and again 1607 to 1611 and as interim viceroy of Peru between 1596 and 1607. 58 AGI, México, 22, “Relación de azogues para la China” (México, 21 July 1591), quoted by Iwazaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, 163: “con las personas que en esta ciudad se pudieren hallar que tengan noticias de azogues del Pirú, contratación, precio y postas dellos, para que se pueda sauer y entender con claridad bastante las costas y precios que los dichos azogues tundra puestas en esta ciudad, y asimismo del que biniere de la China, para que tanbién se pueda entender el precio y costas que podrá tener y en qué cantidad estará puesto en esta ciudad y de dónde se le a de traer y contratar.” 59 The high price during Velasco’s times is also mentioned in a treatise by Alexander von Humboldt, who explains that “[i]n 1590, under the Viceroy Don Luis Velasco II., a cwt. of mercury was sold in Mexico for 40l. 10s. But in the 18th century the value of this metal had diminished to such a degree, that in 1750 the court distributed it to the miners at 17l. 15s.” Humboldt, Political Essay, vol. 1, p. 222. 60 Humboldt, Political Essay, vol. 3, p. 286: “The Chinese mercury obtained from Canton and Manila was impure and contained a great deal of lead; and its price amounted to 80 piastres the quintal.” 61 AGI, Aud. de Filipinas, 6, Sande, “Carta a Felipe II del Gobernador de Filipinas” (Manila, 7 June 1576), p. 13. 62 Morga, History of the Philippine Islands, p. 23. 63 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 177, from AGI, México, 22, Relación de Azogue para la China (México, 21 July 1591 to 12 February 1592).

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example Francisco de Sande—even had the keen idea of proposing to the Spanish crown the conquest of China.64 As we will see, despite the strong interest in Chinese mercury and various attempts to procure it on the Spanish side,65 its import was permitted only relatively late. The escape of silver to China remained the principal objection to buying Chinese mercury. The Consejo de Hacienda (Council of finance) particularly sought to stop the leakage of bullion from New Spain to China. In 1630, the Consejo de las Indias (Council of the Indies) raised the plausible counter-argument that much more silver could be produced with mercury from China than would be lost through the purchase of Chinese mercury. “And if spending silver in China on silks and other unproductive items was permitted, then how much more reason was there to spend it on mercury.”66 Only two years later, Don Rodrigo Pacheco y Osorio (1565–1652), Marqués de Cerralvo and viceroy of Mexico, raised an equally reasonable argument, saying that “if silver had to leave the lands of the Spanish Crown, nowhere could the loss do less harm than in China.”67 But the local authorities also remained suspicious of sending money to the Philippines because of its proximity to Portuguese Macau and “the easy passage [of silver] to England, and once money went to those parts it would go to enrich foreign and enemy nations, without a real’s passing to Spain […].”68 This attitude led to the failure of various attempts in the seventeenth century to provide the Mexican and New Spanish mines with Chinese mercury. Certainly most of the mercury that reached Mexico but above all, Peru, during this time came via illegal channels. To date we possess only a few names of “smugglers.” As vivid examples of the inefficiency of the Spanish monopoly laws and legal proscriptions Fernando Iwasaki Cauti cites the Mexican residents Melchor de Medrano (who had been in Chincheo and Macau), Julián Gómez de Escobar (who had resided in Canton for five years and also stayed in Chincheo and other Chinese ports), and Juan de Ortuño de Zavala (who tried “to disguise and obscure his fraudulent activities” by referring to the necessities of local miners in Mexico and Peru).69

64 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 62. The letter was written on 20 June 1583 in Manila, the same day the nao San Juan Bautista left again for New Spain. When the news of the conquest of the Philippine Islands by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, and of his death, reached Spain, his majesty appointed doctor Francisco de Sande Picón as the third Spanish governor and captain-general of the Philippines. He remained until Don Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñalosa came as the new governor and captain-general. For his plans of conquering China see Ollé, La invención de China, p. 101 et seq. 65 The critical lack of mercury in the seventeenth century forced the Spanish Crown to seriously consider an importation from China. See Lang, El monopolio, p. 138. 66 Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, p. 153. 67 AGI, México, 31, R. 1, “Cerralvo to Crown” (México, 20 March 1632), quoted in Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, p. 153. 68 AGI, México, 611, “Respuesta del Fiscal” (México, 13 March 1662), quoted in Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, p. 153. 69 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, pp. 206–7.

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One example of the smuggling trade from Manila to Peru may be narrated in some detail. In 1580, Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñalosa left from Panama (originally he embarked from Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain) for the Philippines with more than 450 staff on board to become the fourth Spanish governor there (1580–83). This position enabled him to use the trans-Pacific trade for his own private purposes.70 In 1581, he sent a nao from the Philippines to Peru, where he had stayed before, in 1561, as part of the entourage of the then viceroy of Peru, Diego López de Zúñiga y Velasco (c. 1500–1564), investigating the requirements of the Peruvian market.71 This ship, the Nuestra Señora de la Cinta, actually initiated the history of direct maritime relations between Manila and Lima.72 During this voyage Diego Ronquillo (Gonzalo Ronquillo’s nephew) served as captain, Francisco de Santa Ana as colonel (maestre de campo), and Pedro Rodríguez as pilot. Although the cargo consisted of silks, ceramics, pepper, cloves, and cinnamon, Ronquillo argued that its main purpose was the mutual support in artillery. Aware of the fact that many Chinese wares that arrived at Acapulco eventually ended up in shops in Lima, the Spanish Crown had actually prohibited direct trade between Peru and the Philippines on 14 April 1579. Gonzalo Ronquillo, therefore, needed an excuse to send his expedition. He was definitely aware of the problem of vagabonds and roamers in Peru and had been informed about the insufficient defense of Callao, the port of Lima, and consequently justified his naval expedition with the necessity to ship artillery to Peru. The first ships had been sent to Callao 70 After his arrival on the Philippines, Gonzalo Ronquillo first took the residence of Francisco de Sande Picón (1540–1602), the third Spanish governor and captain-general of the Philippines (25 August 1575 to April 1580), and sentenced the latter because of his supposed commercial inclinations. Subsequently he vested various family members with positions and authorities. See Iwasaki Cauti, “La primera navegación transpacífica,” p. 130. In 1582, Ronquillo also dispatched a nao to Macau under the pretext of submitting the Portuguese to the authority of Felipe II, in reality, however, desiring to stock up on Chinese commodities to take them to Peru. One of the passengers in this expedition was the Jesuit missionary Alonso Sánchez (1547–1593), who later wrote his account entitled Relación que trajo el padre Alonso Sánchez del estado de las cosas de la China (1583), which circulated widely among the Jesuit community (see also below). “Don Gonzalo Ronquillo, the governor of Manila, dispatched an emissary, the Jesuit Alonso Sánchez, to promote the new monarch’s acclamation at Macau, where he reached after shipwreck and detention in China.” See Historic Macau. Alonso Sánchez was dispatched to Macau in 1582 along with two Franciscan friars (Juan Pobre and Diego Bernal), who also visited Hirado that same year. For details see Ollé, “Estrategias Filipinas respecto a China.” 71 “For Peruvian commerce, the affect of opening of the Philippine trade was a rapid and eager adjustment to the new source of supply. Peru was short of manufactures and luxury goods in the very years that the silver output at Potosí was reaching previously unheard-of sums. Neither the galleons from Spain nor shipments of Mexican manufactures were able to meet the demands of the markets in Lima and Potosí. The Philippine trade offered a supply of luxury goods and even such necessities as iron and copper at prices far below those of imports from Spain or even cheaper wares of Mexico. Part of the first shipment to arrive at Acapulco in 1573 probably was bought by Peru-bound merchants for reshipment, and much subsequent cargoes must have been re-routed south.” See Iwasaki Cauti, “La primera navegación transpacífica,” p. 133, with reference to Borah, Early Colonial Trade, p. 117. 72 As Birgit Tremml-Werner has noted, these “developments have to be understood against the pretext of a quintessentially mercantile society in Peru, whose members often maintained close personal links with Spanish residents of Manila.” Tremml-Werner, Spain, China, and Japan, p. 130.

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in the summer of 1580, but never reached their destination. Investigations in Mexico then revealed that these ships had been redirected back to the Philippines after three months.73 The new governor of New Spain (r. 1568–80), Martín Enríquez de Almansa y Ulloa (d. 1583), knew about this situation, and explained it to the Spanish king. Ironically, Enríquez was then appointed governor of Peru (r. May 1581 to March 1583), and as such received the nao Ronquillo had sent from the Philippines in June 1581. In Mexico, the news about Ronquilla’s ship caused great discomfort, not only because it threatened the monopoly of Acapulco as the port of entry for commodities from Asia and the Philippines, but also because of the well-founded suspicion of evading taxes on the imported goods. The prohibition of direct navigation between the Philippines and Peru was, thus, repeated in a number of documents. Ronquillo of course continued to justify his expedition with the argument he had only intended to send artillery to Peru to support its local defensive strength. Investigations then brought to light the actual contents of the cargo of the Nuestra Señora de la Cinta—300 tons of silks, porcelains, and spices in addition to just one cannon of less than half a ton of weight.74 An analysis of the owners of the cargo and its value provides interesting insights into the conflicting loyalties and unofficial activities of Spanish bureaucrats. The owners were on the one hand public servants, bound to represent the Spanish king and the Spanish empire. On the other hand, they were private individuals who saw their chance to obtain wealth and a lofty social position. Gonzalo Ronquillo’s story nicely demonstrates the conflicting interests of Spanish officials as representatives of the Crown, on the one hand, and private persons on the other, as well as the extent of corruption and smuggling in the trans-Pacific trade. In 1582, the Nuestra Señora de la Cinta set sail at Callao (the harbor adjacent to Lima) for its return journey. This was just before another official decree, dated 11 June 1582, reached Lima; it prohibited direct commerce between Callao and Manila, and was issued by the Spanish king (based upon pressure from those who monopolized the trans-Atlantic trade in Spain). Against this background, Fernando Iwasaki Cauti introduces an unedited manuscript of a Peruvian clandestine passenger who boarded the Nuestra Señora de la Cinta on its return voyage, a certain Juan de Mendoza y Mate de Luna.75 Once the goods from Manila transported on the nao Nuestra Señora de la Cinta were sold in Peru, it was decided by Ronquillo that it should return to Manila and provide more Chinese products. The Nuestra Señora de la Cinta thus returned to the Philippines at the end of April 1583. After one of the ship’s captains had been captured in Macau, as well as some other incidents, this Juan de Mendoza y Mate de Luna compiled his experiences in a manuscript entitled Relación del viaje que hizo don Juan de Mendoza desde la ciudad de 73 Iwasaki Cauti, “La primera navegación transpacífica,” pp. 133–34. 74 The whole story is provided in Iwasaki Cauti, “La primera navegación transpacífica,” pp. 134–38. 75 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, pp. 55ff., 70ff.

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Lima en Pirú a la Manila en las philipinas y a la China, año 1583 (On the voyage made by Juan de Mendoza from the city of Lima in Peru to Manila on the Philippines, 1583).76 This Juan de Mendoza is not identical with the more famous Augustinian priest Juan González de Mendoza (1545–1618), who, in 1585, only approximately two years after the Nuestra Señora de la Cinta had left Peru, composed his Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China (History of the great and mighty kingdom of China and the situation thereof).77 Actually, Juan de Mendoza y Mate de Luna’s 1583 text constitutes one of the first descriptions of the Far East written by a European. Some information provided by the Augustinian priest, as Fernando Iwasaki emphasizes, even sounds implausible and non-credible after reading the book of Juan de Mendoza.78 And—in contrast to many other accounts describing China by missionaries—it is decidedly lacking in religious admiration, and reports little about Chinese beliefs; instead the author is interested in temple decoration, the clothing of officials, weapons of soldiers, iron, textile fabrics, and other mundane items, dedicating, for example, large commentaries to sexual practices, festivals, and secular activities of the Chinese—an observation that leads Fernando Iwasaki Cauti to the conclusion that it was probably written through the eyes of a merchant.79 Who, finally, was he? Was he perhaps even an associate of Diego Ronquillo, the governor of the Philippines who followed his uncle Gonzalo Ronquillo? Or a culprit sentenced in Peru? The surviving state of the documents does not permit us to arrive at a definite conclusion. 76 On 20 June 1583 another nao, San Juan Bautista, under the command of the captain Francisco de Mercado, left Manila for New Spain. But this ship was obviously sacked by Chinese and the crew mutinied, bribing the pilot to get passage to Macau. The captain, Francisco de Mercado, finally returned to Manila on 18 March 1584 and informed the local governor that the mutinies had prepared his ship to return to Peru. Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, pp. 61, 63. 77 An English translation is provided by Robert Parke, 1588, in an 1853 reprint by the Hakluyt Society (see González de Mendoza, History). For a new edition see González de Mendoza, Historia. A recent PhD thesis investigates his history of China in detail, see Sola García, “La formación.” This latter book is one of the first histories of China, and perhaps the most well-known early book written by a European, although the author himself had never set foot in China, but collected information from others who had visited the Heavenly Kingdom. It was soon translated in various languages and circulated widely in the Western world. Prior to Juan González de Mendoza’s book we already have Gaszpar da Cruz’s (c. 1520–1570) Tratado das cousas da China (1569) and a second book, written by Bernardino de Escalante (c. 1537–after 1605), entitled Discourse of the navigation made by the Portuguese to the kingdoms and provinces of the Orient, and of the existing knowledge of the greatness of the Kingdom of China (Discurso de la navegacion que los Portugueses hacen a los Reinos y Provincias de Oriente, y de la noticia que se tiene de las grandezas del Reino de la China), published in Sevilla in 1577. It is upon these two earlier accounts that a great deal of the first part of Mendoza’s book is based. As Manel Ollé explains, information in the first part of Mendoza’s book is mainly based on Portuguese texts and on various other witnesses. Ollé, “Estrategias Filipinas respecto a China,” pp. 26, 131, 283, n. 436. Obviously, however, the Augustinian priest had not consulted the Relación del viaje que hizo don Juan de Mendoza desde la ciudad de Lima en Pirú a la Manila en las philipinas y a la China, año 1583 manuscript by Juan de Mendoza y Mate de Luna, an unedited manuscript that is now preserved in the collection, “Salazar del Archivo de la Real Academia de la Historia de Madrid.” (I owe this information to Manel Ollé.) 78 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 70. 79 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 69.

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The fact is, however, that there are also other contemporary descriptions of China that do not focus on religion or missionary purposes. A text by Miguel de Luarca (1540–1591), a Spanish soldier who participated in an expedition to the Philippines in 1562 under Miguel López de Legazpi (1503?–1572; in service between 1564 and 1572), for example, is a non-religious document with a civil view or even a focus on commerce. The accounts by the friar Martín de Rada (1533–1578) and the contemporaneous Spanish Jesuit Alonso Sánchez (1547–1593) (published in Manila in April/June 1583), also talk little about religion.80 In his writings, Alonso Sánchez mentions gold, silver, mercury, copper, iron, and metals in general among the riches of China:81 Metals. There is much mercury, which is carried in buckets or containers to Japan, much copper, brass and pewter and white copper [copper-nickel] and that much iron that still after being carried to Luzon they give it for seven reales de a ocho per picul. Metales. Ay mucho azogue, que se lleva en herradas o barriles al Japón, mucho cobre, azófar y peltre y cobre blanco y tanto hierro que aún llevado a Luzón lo dan a siete y a ocho Reales el pico.82

In 1590, the lawyer and high-ranking official Antonio de Morga (Sánchez Garay) (1559–1636), Oidor of the Real Audiencia83 wrote a book entitled Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (Incidents from the Philippine Islands, 1609), which also constitutes one of the first non-clerical works on Philippine history and is considered one of the most important early works on the Spanish colonization of the Philippines.84 De Morga served as a judge in Manila from 1595 to 1602. According to Fernando Iwasaki Cauti, in 1590, he settled in Lima with his Asiatic belongings and some Asiatic servants.85 Iwasaki sees a direct link between Antonio de Morga and the Peruvian Juan de Solís 80 Alonso Sánchez, “Relación breve de la jornada quel P. Alonso Sánchez dela Compañía de Jesús hizo por horden y parezer del SR. D. Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñalosa, governador de Philipinas, y del Sr. obispo y oficiales de S.M. desde la Isla de Luzón y ciudad de Manila a los Reynos de la China,” AGI, Filipinas, 79, 2, 15, and ARAH, Colección Cortes, legajo 562, topográfico actual 9-13-7/2663. See Sánchez, “Relación breve,” ed. Manel Ollé; see also Ollé, La invención de China, pp. 51–64, where he discusses Sánchez’s treatises in detail. 81 Ollé, “Estrategias Filipinas respecto a China,” p. 556. 82 Alonso Sánchez, “Relación de las cosas particulares de la China, la qual escribio el P. Sanchez de la Compañía de Jesús que se la pidieron para leer a su Magestad el Rey Don Felipe II estando indispuesto,” Madrid, 1588, Biblioteca Nacional Sección, ms. 287, fols. 198–226. See Sánchez, “Relación de las cosas particulares de la China,” ed. Manel Ollé. 83 An oidor was a judge of the courts of the Spanish empire; the Real or Royal Audiencias became the highest judicial organs within the empire. 84 A first English translation was provided by Sir Henry Edward John Stanley of Alderley, published by Hakluyt Society of London, 1868; it is also reproduced in Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands, as vols. 15 and 16. Antonia de Morga also led the Spanish in one naval battle against Dutch corsairs in the Philippines, in 1600. 85 Officially, he was assigned president of the Audiencia of Quito in Peru only in 1615.

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who commanded a smuggling ship that left Callao in 1588 in all secrecy.86 Juan de Solís sailed via Panama with 6,000 ducats and reached Macau in 1590 where he intended to purchase silks from Chinese brokers. His money was confiscated by the Portuguese and he eventually ended up in Satsuma 薩摩藩, Japan.87 Direct trade between China and Latin America remained a major issue, and also Spanish merchants from the Philippines started to advocate for a prohibition of direct commerce.88 In his Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, Morga also wrote about contraband trade between Manila and Macau. He mentions, for example, amber, marble, Persian and Turkish carpets, and high-quality silks and textiles.89 By the late sixteenth century, a trading connection via the Philippines between China, Japan, and Peru had been established, a link that, from the perspective of the Spanish Crown, was initiated by Gonzales Ronquilla and was primarily illegal in nature. At the very start of this trans-Pacific route, principally one ship was allowed to sail to Peru from Cebu (Philippines). The exclusiveness of the Manila-Acapulco route was imposed in the early 1590s. The ship from Cebu sent principally Southeast Asian products but has never been seriously studied. In 1591, a limited trade in Chinese goods between New Spain and Peru was permitted, but in 1593 it was again prohibited. In 1604, the Crown decided to allow three ships of 300 tons each to sail annually between Acapulco and Peru, but in 1631, maritime trade between the two colonies was again strictly prohibited, in order to curb the flow of Chinese goods into Peru.90 But despite all official prohibitions, the lucrative trade of American silver for Asian, especially Chinese, goods could never be prevented—a fact that primarily points toward the trans-Pacific connections of colonial bureaucrats rather than the role of contraband traders.91 Official bureaucrats in the service of the Spanish empire were responsible for the control and management of the trade and, although they officially had to disallow many of the commercial activities going on in this trans-Pacific trade, the profits to be obtained from this trade were simply too large, the bribes too tempting, to give up this traffic because of a Crown policy.92 We consequently see an awkward intermingling of private and official trade activities, even overt competition between the two spheres, and contradictions between official administrative politics and private commerce. Actually, the trade in mercury between Acapulco and Callao never stopped, as some merchants continued the shipment of mercury from Mexico to Peru despite prohibitions. Corruption and favoritism severely undermined bureaucratic controls. 86 Iwasaki Cauti, “Primeros contactos entre Perú y Japón en el siglo XVI,” 4. In fact, in 1625, he was arrested for having been involved in corruption, but these charges were dropped in 1627. 87 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, pp. 131–33. 88 See, for example, Tremml-Werner, Spain, China, and Japan, pp. 129–33, for further background information. 89 Ollé, La invención de China, p. 153. 90 Borah, Early Colonial Trade, pp. 124–27. 91 Iwasaki Cauti, “Primeros contactos entre Perú y Japón en el siglo XVI,” p. 11. 92 See also Borah, Early Colonial Trade, p. 125.

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Perhaps the most scandalous incident was a concession agreed upon in 1585 by the Spanish Viceroy of Peru, Fernando Torres y Portugal (1584 to 20 November 1589) to a commercial society headed by Juan Pérez de las Cuentas,93 who for decades had been involved in the exportation of mercury and in contraband trade of Chinese goods in Peru.94 Chinese mercury for New Spain and Peru? Especially in the seventeenth century, Mexico produced ever-greater quantities of silver but simultaneously increasingly lacked mercury to process the abundant silver output. “The chief reason for the quicksilver shortage,” as Mervyn F. Lang has noted, “was that the Crown relied on the production of Almadén,” “almost all of which was reserved for New Spain and […] this mine rarely managed to produce the 5,000 quintals per year required.”95 Some mercury could be provided by the Huancavélica mines in Peru, but the royal authorities strictly curtailed Peruvian shipments to Acapulco.96 Consequently, China came to the fore. Around the turn of the century, also the Peruvian Huancavélica mines went through a serious crisis and the Spanish crown consequently decided to overcome the shortage of mercury by purchasing the product in China.97 Prices between Huancavélica and Chincheo in China differed tremendously: in contrast to the 77 pesos one quintal cost in Huancavélica and 100 pesos including transportation to Mexico, Chinese mercury cost only 20 pesos or 28 including transportation in Mexico.98 In 1605, the viceroy of Mexico, Juan de Mendoza y Luna, Marqués de Montesclaros (1571–1628; r. 1603–7),99 responded to a royal decree regarding the possibility of shipping Chinese mercury to Acapulco and informed the king that it was very pure and that an abundance of it could be found in Canton. He suggested that “1,000 to 1,500 quintals could be transported to Acapulco annually at the cost of 45 pesos 5 reales per quintal, of equal quality as that brought from the Almadén mine in Spain at less than one-half the cost [96 pesos 4 reales to mines per quintal for the latter]. 93 Iwazaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 200. This agreement was supported by the inquisitor Antonio Gutiérrez de Ulloa (1571–1597) who, coercing other candidates, managed to present himself as the only contractor. The society of Juan Pérez de las Cuentas subsequently authorized itself to transport 7,000 quintals (322 tons) of mercury annually to Potosí, from January 1586 to December 1589. A clause in the contract stated that as long as the company had not sold all its mercury, neither the Crown nor any private individuals were permitted to carry out any transactions with mercury. For the entire story see Orche and Amaré, “Transporte de Mercurio,” p. 66. 94 Iwazaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, pp. 207–8. 95 Lang, “New Spain’s Mining Depression,” p. 633. 96 Slack, “Orientalizing New Spain.” 97 AGI, Lima, 34, no. 30, “El Virrey a S.M.” (Lima 2.V.1601), quoted by Iwazaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 168. 98 AGI, México, 22, quoted by Iwazaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 164. 99 From 21 December 1607 to 18 December 1615 he was viceroy of Peru.

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Montesclaros therefore advised the king of the benefits of securing a steady supply of Canton’s mercury.”100 In 1606, he received another letter ordering him to ask the governor of the Philippines to provide him with 4,000 quintals (i.e. 400,000 kilograms) of Chinese mercury for Peru. A Portuguese merchant, Pedro de Baeza,101 offered himself to transport the required quantity of mercury to Mexico and Peru.102 But Spanish officials suspected “hidden means and trade” and that the Portuguese would bring other goods to New Spain together with mercury. Nevertheless, negotiations were initiated for a contract between Manila and Macau to facilitate the supply of mercury from Macau. Even the viceroy of New Spain, Marqués de Salinas, became an enthusiastic supporter of this cooperation. As a consequence, a “mercury contract” existed between the Portuguese and the Spanish for some time. In 1612, a significant increase in the quantity of mercury “purchased by the Spanish at Macau from the Portuguese and exported from China via Manila to the New World was recorded, [and] 200 quintals arrived in New Spain.”103 But, in the longer perspective, due to the opposition of Spanish colonial officials, who feared that the import of mercury from China would drain too much silver from New Spain, the procurement of larger amounts of mercury failed. The same viceroy of New Spain, Luis de Velasco, Marqués de Salinas, who had earlier launched the information about Chinese mercury, for example, frustrated this project.104 In 1631, the crown eventually authorized the import of Chinese mercury to Peru, but the viceroy of New Spain again boycotted this plan,105 this time arguing that the Chinese mineral would not meet with the required quality of local necessities.106 Almost thirty years passed before Martín Murga Ergaluz, a Peruvian miner, tried to demonstrate the excellent quality of Chinese mercury. He argued that the mineral itself was of excellent quality, it was just poorly refined. But his report was only received with mockery and incredulity.107 According to M.F. Lang, the first mercury that reached Mexico was imported between 1612 and 1618, perhaps as a result of instructions sent to the governor of Manila. One certificate issued by a certain Francisco Zupide, accountant of the “real caja” of Zacatecas, confirms that Chinese mercury was being distributed among the local miners for 80 pesos a quintal.108 This basically coincides with the quotations 100 Slack, “Orientalizing New Spain,” p. 115, with reference to AGI, México, 26, n. 69 (28 October1605). 101 Pedro de Baeza served the Portuguese court in the Moluccas, the Philippines, Macau, and Japan in different financial and administrative positions for thirty years around 1600. See Boxer, Great Ship from Amacon, pp. 179–84. 102 The story of Pedro de Baeza is recorded in Souza, China and the South China Sea, pp. 71–72. 103 Souza, China and the South China Sea, p. 72. 104 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 169. 105 AGI, Lima, 572, lib. 20, fol. 233. 106 AGI, México, 31, nn. 1 and 5; AGI, Lima, “El Virrey a S.M.” (Lima, 22 April 1634), quoted by Iwazaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 169. 107 AGI, México, 611, “Memorial del capitán Martín Murga Ergaluz” (México, 10 March 1662). 108 Lang, El monopolio, p. 138.

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introduced below. But I have also encountered evidence that suggests the importation of Chinese mercury already in the first decade of the seventeenth century. Another text deserves our attention. The Archivo General de Indias in Sevilla (AGI, México 22) contains a manuscript entitled Relación de Azogue para la China (On mercury for China).109 This document discusses the price and availability of mercury in China. In China, it states, you can get everything you request, because they have everything in abundance for a low price, and this can also be done with mercury if you request it. The Relación adds that everything you would like to use in this kingdom (Peru) could easily be transported from China, and such a cargo would not prevent the ships from loading fabrics and clothing. Because of all these advantages it would be very convenient to ship mercury here from there; and although it would not be untroublesome or cheap to transport things from Peru, one could easily transport 2,000 quintals annually without exhausting the mines there, because this witness has apprehended with certainty that one uses less (silver ore) with the new unction utilizing ground iron dust.110 The Relación asserts that the Chinese transport, among other merchandise, quantities of mercury to the cities of Canton and Macau in pottery cans or bowls that are subsequently placed into firm round wooden boxes, each filled with half a picul of mercury (a procedure we have also seen noted above). In Canton and Macau they sell the mercury to the Portuguese who then ship the greatest quantity to Japan but some also to India. The regular price is said to be 30 taels per picul; but one year the price rose and this apparently happened because India requested a higher quantity than normal.111 In order to ship mercury to New Spain, the Relación continues, one has to buy it from “Chincheo” (a location in Fujian), as it is cheaper, because buying it at Chincheo one can save the transportation costs to Macau or Canton, as the Chinese basically first ship it there from Chincheo. Buying it there, one should then load it on board one’s ships as ballast, thus avoiding these additional transportation costs of the Chinese. Those ships that take course to the Philippines could load 2,000 piculs each and then hand over this cargo to the masters who know about the port of the naos. In this way, there would be no freight charges or legal costs. If it was transported on private ships, freight charges would be low, as it could be loaded as ballast on top of other commodities that are purchased in Chincheo, taking advantage of their freight costs. And then, from the port of Acapulco it would cost an additional 4 gold pesos to transport it further (to Lima). The Portuguese merchant Alfonso Páez, residing now in Mexico City for three years but having spent twelve years in Macau, is subsequently mentioned as a witness.112

109 AGI, México, 22, Relación de Azogue para la China (México, 21 July 1591 to 12 February 1592), reproduced in Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, pp. 170–79. 110 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 172. 111 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 176. 112 Iwasaki Cauti, Extremo Oriente y Perú, p. 176.

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Don Juan Grau y Monfalcón, procurator-general of the Philippines, in 1637 in a memorandum to the king, discussing trade and commerce on the Philippines (Memorial al Rey sobre el comercio d Filipinas), also brought up the idea of shipping mercury from the Philippines to Acapulco to assist local mining. It could be sent to Mexico together with the cheap copper the Chinese and Japanese bring to the Philippines.113 What other evidence do we possess that Chinese mercury was shipped to New Spain? Early in 1613, the cleric Don Pedro Monroy, commissioner of the Inquisition in Acapulco from 1608 to 1616, wrote to the Inquisition Tribunal in Mexico: There appeared the admiral nao San Andrés with 200 quintals of mercury and furthermore clothes from China, it was a nao that had made a good trip. I visited it and did not find any reason to report to Your Majesty; I sent a paper to the Holy Inquisition of New Spain, in addition to a small box. Yesterday, there appeared the captain of the Philippines, Ángel de la Guarda, and he arrived very healthy with some dead persons. When I visited him, I only found a small box and a paper. Surgió la nao almiranta San Andrés con 200 quintales de azogue y la demás ropa de China, es nao de buen viaje, visítela no hallé en ella causa de que dar cuenta a V.S. Remite un pliego para la Santa Inquisición de la Nueva España más un cajoncillo. Surgió ayer la capitana de Filipinas Ángel de la Guarda y viene muy próspera con algunas personas muertas. Visítela solo halle un cajoncillo y un pliego.114

This entry definitely attests to the shipment of Chinese mercury to Mexico. The nao San Andrés had arrived at Acapulco on 5 January 1613,115 obviously with 200 quintals of mercury as part of the cargo. In December 1614, the San Andrés again arrived with mercury among its cargo.116 Also the Biblioteca Filipina by T.H. Pardo de Tavera (1857–1925) confirms the shipment of mercury from China via the Philippines to New Spain. He refers to Pedro Baeza (October 1607) who spoke of “ships that are sailing to the Philippines with silver in order to get this mercury of China.”117 Another entry (14 113 Luzon, and there in particular the territory of Pangasinan (in the mountains in the province of Benguet), he signaled, is rich in gold; and in Paracala (Camarines) new deposits had been found in 1626. Juan Grau y Monfalcón, Memorial dado al rey en su real Consejo de las Indias por Don Juan Gray y Monfalcón, procurador general de las islas Filipinas, sobre las pretensions de la ciudad de Manila y demás islas del archipiélago en su comercio con la Nueva España, Madrid, 1637, quoted in Torres de Mendoza, Colección de documentos inéditos, vol. 6 (1868), pp. 438, 379–80, and Iaccarino, Comercio y diplomacia, pp. 281–83. 114 Alberro, Inquisición y sociedad en México, p. 50, quoted in Palazuelos Mazars, “Acapulco y le galion de Manille,” p. 89. 115 Borao Mateo, “Arrival of the Spanish Galleons in Manila,” p. 16. The voyages of the San Andrés are provided on pp. 15–17. 116 Palazuelos Mazars, “Acapulco y le galion de Manille,” p. 115. 117 Pardo de Tavera de Manila, Biblioteca Filipina, entry 1406, 216.

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January 1608) repeats this statement: “It is particularly related to the question of mercury that is purchased in China and carried to Manila, whence it could be shipped to New Spain” (“Es relativo especialmente ú que el azogue que se comprase en la China se llevase á Manila, de donde se habría de embarcar para Nueva España”).118 A little bit later, in 1615, another ship, La Capitana, obviously also carried mercury on board.119 An entry in the Archivo General de Indias, Philippines, also mentions that mercury was being transported on the nao de Manila from the Philippines.120 During the entire seventeenth century the galleons of Manila and Peru carried Chinese mercury for the silver mines in New Spain on board.121 Black slaves from the provinces where metals were mined unloaded the bags of mercury and packed them into boxes of cow’s leather to prepare their transportation on mules to Mexico City.122 Almost nothing is known about these slaves, but Béatrice Palazuelos Mazars explains that those who were responsible for unloading the mercury in Veracruz were known as “esclavos de avería” (slaves of decay, deterioration, or usury) and were continuously replaced if they fell sick because of the saturation of mercury.123 In 1689, the lack of mercury once again forced the Spanish Crown to look to China. Deposits from the Almadén mine had been depleted of mercury and the Spanish court, thus, after negotiating with the Holy Roman Empire to purchase mercury for high cost from the mine at Idria,124 thought again of China. The governor of Manila, Gabriel de Curucelaegui y Arriola (d. 1689), was subsequently ordered “to arrange the purchase in China of up to 30 quintals of mercury and to remit them to the viceroy of New Spain” for immediate shipment to Mexico.125 The Franciscan friar Alonso de Benavente (c. 1629–after 1690) left Mexico for China in 1690, and was instructed to purchase the 25 to 30 quintals of mercury in China. But he failed and only forwarded the offer of a Cantonese merchant who promised to organize the exploitation in Guizhou and asked for an advance payment of 12 million pesos, an undertaking that was considered to be too risky. But negotiations continued. In 1692, the governor-general of the Philippines, Fausto Cruzat y Góngora (in office 1690–1701), procured a small amount (1.5 quintals) for testing in the Mexican mines of Guanajuato, 118 Pardo de Tavera de Manila, Biblioteca Filipina, entry 1412, p. 217. 119 Palazuelos Mazars, “Acapulco y le galion de Manille,” p. 115. 120 AGI, Filipinas, 212, n. 1, “Oficio de Juan de Larreo a Luís Cerdeño” (12 February 1693), quoted in Palazuelos Mazars, “Acapulco y le galion de Manille,” p. 193. 121 Palazuelos Mazars, “Acapulco y le galion de Manille,” p. 193, with reference to AGI, Filipinas, 212, no. 1, “Oficio de Juan de Larrea a Luis Cerdeño” (12 March 1693), for Mexico; and AGN, Hospitales, 054 (contenedor 06, vol. 15, exp. 06-1691, fol. 318), for Peru. 122 Palazuelos Mazars, “Acapulco y le galion de Manille,” p. 193, with reference to AGI, Contaduría, 902 (from 20 November 1612 to March 1614), “Caja de Acapulco: Cuentas de Real Hacienda.” 123 Palazuelos Mazars, “Acapulco y le galion de Manille,” p. 54. 124 AGI, Filipinas, 28, n. 153 (28 March 1689); AGI, Filipinas, 212, n. 1 (1692–94), quoted by Slack, “Orientalizing New Spain,” p. 115; Lang, “New Spain’s Mining Depression,” p. 637. 125 AGI, Filipinas, 212, “La Corona al Virrey” (21 May 1689), quoted by Lang, El monopolio, p. 141.

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which equaled “the best results of [mercury] from the mines of Almadén and were better than the purest from Peru.”126 In a letter dated 1 December 1692, Cruzat explicitly speaks of the good quality of Chinese mercury.127 Finally, the captain of a Chinese sampan (a flat wooden boat) sailed to Canton to purchase mercury in 1692 and returned to the Philippines in June 1693 with just 53 quintals on board. The whole undertaking including shipment to Mexico finally resulted in a price even higher than that of Almadén. And, still worse, the mercury in the end never reached Mexico, as the galleon that transported the cargo, the Santo Cristo de Burgos, caught fire on the open sea before entering the port of Acapulco.128 Over 112 quintals at a cost of about 63 pesos each (compared to 100 pesos for Peruvian quicksilver) were purchased in 1695.129 In 1697, a shortage of mercury again prompted the viceroy of New Spain (José Sarmiento de Valladares, 1643–1708; in office between December 1696 and November 1701), to write to the governor-general of the Philippines (Fausto Cruzat y Góngora), that he should purchase mercury in China and have it shipped to Acapulco. A letter by him, dated 3 June 1698, reports the purchase of mercury in Canton.130 The shortage of mercury was such that the price was 84 pesos per quintal.131 All these documents attest to shipments of Chinese mercury to Mexico and Peru, mostly via illegal channels. A certificate of July 1709, however, once again strictly prohibited the trade in and use of Chinese mercury. Ships coming from the Philippines to Acapulco were carefully examined to see if they had mercury on board, and smugglers could even be sentenced to death.132 For M.F. Lang, the results of all the Spanish attempts to arrive at a regular provisioning of Chinese mercury shed new light on the complete failure of the Spanish Crown in the administration of its mercury monopoly.133 A trade in mercury, in Lang’s eyes, could only have been developed through the investment of capital. But given the financial problems of the Crown, the entire undertaking remained more theoretical than actual. Had the Crown possessed the necessary capital, on the other hand, they would also have been able to invest it locally in Almadén or Huancavelica. So, the idea of getting cheap mercury from China reflected a kind of optimism without basis.134 Later documents from the eighteenth

126 AGI, Filipinas, 331, L. 9, fols. 71v–74r (8 February 1693); AGI, Filipinas, 15, R. 1, n. 43 (5 June 1695), quoted by Slack, “Orientalizing New Spain,” p. 115. 127 AGI, Filipinas, 15, R. 1, n. 8, “Carta de Fausto Cruzat sobre azogue de China” (1 December 1692). 128 The whole story is described in Lang, El monopolio, pp. 141–43. 129 Slack, “Orientalizing New Spain,” p. 115. 130 AGI, Filipinas, 17, R. 1, n. 25, “Carta de Fausto Cruzat sobre la compra de azogue de Cantón” (3 June 1698). 131 Rodríguez Gallano, “Notas para el Estudio del Azogue en México en el Siglo XVII,” pp. 226–27, with reference to the history of the friar Andrés Cavo, Los tres siglos, p. 373. 132 AGN, Cédulas Reales Originales, 34, exp. 33, fol. 66, “La Corono al Virrey” (9 July 1709). 133 Lang, El monopolio, p. 145. 134 Lang, El monopolio, p. 145.

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century, consequently, again attest to attempts to procure mercury from China, but in the end all attempts to develop a steady and sufficient procurement failed.135 We have seen that early, already in the late sixteenth century, the purchase of mercury from China and its further transportation as a part of the trans-Pacific trade via the Philippines to New Spain had been suggested. But due to problems of competing interests and the monopoly policy of the Spanish Crown it was legalized only much later. Exactly how much mercury from China crossed the Pacific during this period is unknown. Edward R. Slack Jr. is of the opinion that “it would appear that Chinese quicksilver was frequently delivered to Acapulco in amounts that had a beneficial yet meagre impact on New Spain’s silver refining capacity.”136 China’s contribution to the local mining industry, in his eyes, lay rather in provisioning local workers with cheap Chinese cotton fabrics, which, in contrast to the cloth from Spain, was more affordable and durable.

Conclusion In China, interest in the mercury amalgamation process seems to have been modest at most; this probably also explains why silver was sometimes poorly refined. The great “customer” for this technology in Asia and for mercury in general was Japan. Especially Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, and later also English merchants were engaged in this trade. In Mexico and Peru increasing silver production, accompanied by a lack of sufficient mercury, eventually turned local miners’ and merchants’ attention to the relatively cheap Chinese mercury that was being traded in the Asian waters. Despite the relative availability and cheap cost of Chinese mercury, the Spanish authorities for a long period prohibited the import of mercury, arguing that access to Chinese mercury would only exacerbate the escape of silver to China. The competing commercial interests of the Spanish Crown and local merchants also factored into these repeated prohibitions. Summarizing the information introduced above on shipments of Chinese mercury to the New World, we can arrive at the following conclusions: first, most of the mercury that crossed the Pacific originated from China; second, it was exported mainly via Fujianese ports (Chincheo), but also through Canton and/or Macau, first to the 135 In 1786, for example, a certain Don Vicente Vasadre (Basadre; c. 1750–1828) proposed to Carlos III (1716– 1788) a plan to establish trade relations with China and procure mercury in abundance by offering otter skins and sea lions from California to China in exchange. He initiated his plan, sailed to the Philippines and eventually lived in China for more than a year. He tried to convince the Qianlong emperor and local officials by offering excessive gifts in the negotiations (15,000 to 20,000 pesos to convince the emperor and another 10,000 to 15,000 pesos to bribe the mandarins and ministries), but his project finally failed because of the price of the mercury. AGN, Cédulas Reales Originales, 135, exp. 127 (21 November 1786); AGN, Cédulas Reales Originales, 141, exp. 152 (20 November 1788). 136 Slack, “Orientalizing New Spain,” p. 116.

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Philippines and from there to Mexico and Peru; third, basically it was loaded on ships that constituted part of the famous Manila Galleon trade and was, thus, first shipped to Acapulco, both as official and/or as a clandestine part of the cargo; fourth, we also have evidence of clandestine shipping directly from Asia to Peru; fifth, we can clearly observe competing interests between the official Spanish Crown and its local authorities. Local officials served as representatives of court interests on the one hand and as private persons seeking profit on the other. Regarding trade, it is not always easy to make a clear-cut distinction between the official (state) and the private sphere. Sixth, engaged in this trans-Pacific trade were Chinese, Philippine, and other Asian traders and “smugglers,” but also many Europeans, not only Spanish, Mexican, or Peruvian, but also traders from other nations, such as Portuguese (cf. Alfonzo Páez), Italian (cf. Pedro Grifo), Dutch, or, later in the eighteenth century, French and others. Further research will shed more light on the traders and networks involved. Although we possess a limited amount of concrete evidence showing how mercury reached the Latin American coasts of New Spain and who exactly was involved, the situation suggests that due to the prohibition and the monopolization of the mercury trade, most of the mercury shipments happened through clandestine channels. As far as the impact of Chinese mercury on New Spain’s silver production is concerned, we can only speculate. Information available to date does not indeed suggest a major impact. But the trade networks documented here certainly reveal a high level of international connectedness. Future archaeological evidence from wrecks of ships engaged in this trade as well as an analysis of hitherto neglected documents and manuscripts will provide us with more information on this multifaceted enterprise.137

Bibliography Unpublished documents AGI, Archivo General de Indias Aud. de Filipinas, 6, Sande, “Carta a Felipe II del Gobernador de Filipinas” (Manila, 7 June 1576) Filipinas, 1, n. 151. Filipinas, 15, R. 1, n. 8, “Carta de Fausto Cruzat sobre azogue de China” (1 December 1692). Filipinas, 17, R. 1, n. 25, “Carta de Fausto Cruzat sobre la compra de azogue de Cantón” (3 June 1698). Filipinas, 15, R. 1, n. 43 (5 June 1695). Filipinas, 18B, R. 2, n. 5, “Carta de G.P. Mariñas sobre situación general” (31 May 1592). Filipinas, 28, n. 153 (28 March 1689). Filipinas, 193, n. 3. Filipinas, 212, n. 1 (1692–94). Filipinas, 212, n. 1, “Oficio de Juan de Larreo a Luís Cerdeño” (12 February 1693). 137 Research for this article has been sponsored by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. I would like to thank my colleagues Manel Ollé Rodriguez from the Universidad Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, and Ubaldo Iaccarino from the Università degli studi di Napoli L’Orientale, Naples, Italy, for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

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Filipinas, 331, L. 9, fols. 71v–74r (8 February 1693). Lima, 34, no. 30, “El Virrey a S.M.” (Lima 2.V.1601). Lima, 572, lib. 20, fol. 233. México, 22. México, 22, “Relación de azogues para la China” (México, 21 July 1591). México, 22, Relación de Azogue para la China (México, 21 July 1591 to 12 February 1592). México, 22, Relación de Azogue para la China (México, 21 July 1591 to 12 February 1592). México, 31, nn. 1 and 5; AGI, Lima, “El Virrey a S.M.” (Lima, 22 April 1634). México, 31, R. 1, “Cerralvo to Crown” (México, 20 March 1632). México, 611, “Memorial del capitán Martín Murga Ergaluz” (México, 10 March 1662). México, 611, “Respuesta del Fiscal” (México, 13 March 1662). Patronato, 238, n. 3, “Petición de algunos mineros” (1584). AGN, Archivo General de la Nación de México Cédulas Reales Originales, 34, exp. 33, fol. 66, “La Corono al Virrey” (9 July 1709). Cédulas Reales Originales, 135, exp. 127 (21 November 1786). Cédulas Reales Originales, 141, exp. 152 (20 November 1788). Biblioteca Nacional Sección Alonso Sánchez, “Relación de las cosas particulares de la China, la qual escribio el P. Sanchez de la Compañía de Jesús que se la pidieron para leer a su Magestad el Rey Don Felipe II estando indispuesto,” Madrid, 1588, ms. 287, fols. 198–226.

Published works Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzalo. El negro esclavo en Nueva España. Obra Antropológica 16. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1994. Alberro, Solange. Inquisición y sociedad en México, 1571–1700. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993. Bakewell, Peter John. Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. Basílio de Sá, Artur, ed. Documentação para a história das missões do padroado portugûes do Oriente: insulíndia, 5 vols. Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1954–1958. Bernabéu Albert, Salvador, ed. La nao de China, 1565–1815: navegación, comercio e intercambios culturales. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, Secretariado de Publicaciones, 2013. Bernabéu Albert, Salvador. Un océano de seda y plata: el universo económico del Galeón de Manila. Sevilla: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2013. Berthelot, M. and M.O. Houdas, La chimie au Moyen Âge, vol. 3: L’alchimie arabe. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale Paris, 1893; reprint Zeller, Osnabrück, 1967. Blair, Emma and James Alexander Robertson, eds. The Philippine Islands, 1493–1803, 55 vols. Cleveland, OH: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1903–9. Blussé, Leonard, W.G.J. Remmelink, Cynthia Viallé, and Isabel van Daalen, Marginalia 1740—1800, ed. by L. Blussé and W.G.J. Remmelink. Japan-Netherlands Institute Scientific Publications of the JapanNetherlands Institute 21 (Deshima Series). Tokyo: Japan-Netherlands Institute, 1992. Bonialian, Mariano Ardash. El pacífico hispanoamericano: política y comerio Asiático en el Imperio Español (1680–1784); la centralidad de lo marginal. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Históricos Colegio Internacional de Graduados, 2012. Borah, Woodrow Wilson. Early Colonial Trade and Navigation Between Mexico and Peru. New York: ACLS Humanities e-book, 2015. Borao Mateo, José Eugenio. “The Arrival of the Spanish Galleons in Manila from the Pacific Ocean and their Departure along the Kuroshio Stream (16th and 17th Centuries).” Dili yanjiu 地理研究 [Journal of Geographical Research (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)] 47 (2007): 17–38.

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Boxer, Charles R. The Great Ship from Amacon: Annals of Macau and the Old Japan Trade, 1555–1640. Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1959. Boxer, Charles R. Seventeenth Century Macau in Contemporary Documents and Illustrations. Hong Kong: Heinemann Educational Books, 1984. Carreri, Gemelli. Viaje a la Nueva España, 2 vols. México City: Bibliotheca Minima Mexicana, 1956. Cavo, Andrés. Los tres siglos de Méjico durante el gobierno españolhasta la entrada del Ejérjito Trigarante. Mexico City: J.R. Navarro, 1852. Cortesão, Armando, ed. and trans. The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China, and the Book of Francisco Rodrigues, rutter of a voyage from the Red Sea to Japan, written in Malacca and India in 1512–1515, 2 vols. London: Haklyut Society, 1944. Fish, Shirley. The Manila-Acapulco Galleons: The Treasure Ships of the Pacific, with An Annotated List of the Transpacific Galleons, 1565–1815. Milton Keynes: AuthorHouse, 2011. Flynn, Dennis O. and Arturo Giráldez. “Arbitage, China, and World Trade in Early Modern Period.” In The Pacific World: Lands, People and History of the Pacific, 1500–1900, ed. Dennis O. Flynn, Arturo Giráldez, and J. Sobredo, vol. 4, pp. 261–72. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2001. Flynn, Dennis O. and Arturo Giráldez. “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon’: The Origin of World Trade in 1571.” Journal of World History 6.2 (1995): 201–21. Flynn, Dennis O. and Arturo Giráldez. “China and the Manila Galleons.” In World Silver and Monetary History in the 16th and 17th Centuries, ed. Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giráldez. Brookfield: Variorum, 1996. González de Mendoza, Juan. Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China [Rome, 1585], ed. Ramón Alba. Madrid: Editorial Miraguano y Ediciones Polifemo, 1990. González de Mendoza, Juan. The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China and the Situation Thereof, trans. Robert Parke (1588). 2 vols. London: Hakluyt Society, 1853. Internet Archive, vol. 1, https://archive. org/details/historyofgreatmi14151gonz; vol. 2, https://archive.org/details/historygreatand00mendgoog (accessed between March 2014 and March 2017). Historic Macau. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/historicmacau00jesugoog/historicmacau00jesugoog_ djvu.txt (accessed 1 March, 2017). Humboldt, Alexander von. Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, trans. John Black. New York: I. Riley, 1811. Vol. 3 is available online, www.avhumboldt.net/avhdata/Political%20Essay%20on%20the%20 Kingdom%20of%20New%20Spain/Vol3/Complete/Vol3_complete.pdf (accessed 27 February 2017). Iaccarino, Ubaldo. Comercio y diplomacia entre Japón y Filipinas en la era Keichō (1596–1615). East Asian Maritime History 13. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2017. Iaccarino, Ubaldo. “The ‘Galleon System’ and Chinese Trade in Manila at the Turn of the 16th Century.” Ming Qing Yanjiu (2011): 95–128. Innes, Robert L. “The Door Ajar: Japan’s Foreign Trade in the Seventeenth Century.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1980. Iwasaki Cauti, Fernando. Extremo Oriente y Perú en el siglo XVI. Madrid: Edición MAPFRE, 1992. Another edition is published by the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 2005; it has a slightly altered table of contents and different pagination. Iwasaki Cauti, Fernando. “La primera navegación transpacífica entre Perú y Filipinas y su transfondo socioeconomico.” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 47 (1990): 123–69. Iwasaki Cauti, Fernando. “Primeros contactos entre Perú y Japón en el siglo XVI.” Paper presented at the Peruvian Embassy in Tokyo, 11 October 2013. http://embajadadelperuenjapon.org/140/Presentacion%20Fernando%20 Iwasaki/Presentacion%20Fernando%20Iwasakies.pdf (accessed 28 August 2014 [no longer accessible]). Kato, Eiichi. “The Japanese-Dutch Trade in the Formative Period of the Seclusion Policy, Particularly of the Raw Silk Trade of the Dutch at Hirado, 1620–1640.” Acta Asiatica 30 (1976): 34–84. Knauth, Lothar. Confrontación transpacífica: el Japón y el Nuevo Mundo hispánico, 1542–1639. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, 1972. Lang, Mervyn F. El monopolio estatal del mercurio en el México colonial (1550–1710). Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1977.

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Lang, Mervyn F. “New Spain’s Mining Depression and the Supply of Quicksilver from Peru, 1600–1700.” Hispanic American Historical Review 48.4 (1968): 632–41. Laver, Michael S. Japan’s Economy by Proxy in the Seventeenth Century: China, the Netherlands, and the Bakufu. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008. Malcom, Corey. “Mercury on a Galleon.” Navigator: Newsletter of the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society 22.2 (2006). www.melfisher.org/pdf/Mercury-on-a-Galleon.pdf (accessed 27 February 2017). Monbeig, Juliette. Rodrigo de Vivero (1564–1636): du Japon et du bon gouvernement de l’Espagne et des Indes. Paris: SEVPEN, 1972. Morga, Antonio de. History of the Philippine Islands, vols. 1 and 2, trans. with annotation by José Rizal (1861– 96). Manila: José Rizal National Centennial Commission, 1962. Orig. publ. in Mexico in 1609. Morga, Antonio de. The Philippine Islands, Moluccas, Siam, Cambodia, Japan, and China, at the Close of the Sixteenth Century, trans. Henry E.J. Stanley, with notes and preface, and a letter from Luis Vaez de Torres describing his voyage through the Torres Straits. London: Hakluyt Society, 1868 [1778], reprint, Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 2009. Morse, Hosea Ballou. Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834, 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926. Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, part 4, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Apparatus, Theories and Gifts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Obregón, Gonzalo. El Galeón de Manila. Mexico City: Artes de México, 1953. Ollé, Manel. “Estrategias Filipinas respecto a China: Alonso Sánchez y Domingo de Salazar en la empresa de China (1581–1593).” PhD diss., Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, 1999. Ollé, Manel. La invención de China: percepciones y estrategias filipinas respecto a China durante el siglo XVI. South China and Maritime Asia 9. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2000. Orche, Enrique and María Pilar Amaré. “Transporte de mercurio desde Huancavelica a Potosí en el Perú colonial.” De Re Metallica 25 (2015): 53–74. Palazuelos Mazars, Béatrice. “Acapulco y le galion de Manille, la realité quotidienne au XVIIème siècle.” PhD diss., Université Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, 2012. Online version 1, 19 July 2013 (accessed on 2 July, 2014). Pardo de Tavera de Manila, T.H. Biblioteca Filipina: ó sea catálogo razonado de todos los impresos, tanto insulares como extranjeros, relativos á la historia, la etnografía, la lingüística, la botánica, la fauna, la flora, la geología, la hidrografía, la geografía, la legislación, etc., de las Islas Filipinas, de Joló y Marianas. Washington, DC: Library of Congress and the Bureau of Insular Affairs, Government Printing Office, 1903. http://archive.org/stream/bibliotecafilipi00pard/bibliotecafilipi00pard_djvu.txt (accessed 13 August 2018). Pérez, Lorenzo. “Fr. Jerónimo de Jesús, restauradoe de las misiones en el Japón, sus cartas y relaciones.” Archivum Fransiscanum Historicum 22 (1929): 139–62. Probert, Alan. “Bartolomé de Medina: The Patio Process and the 16th Century Silver Crisis.” Journal of the West 8.1 (1969): 90–124, reprint, Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas, ed. Peter Bakewell, pp. 90–127. An Expanding World: The European Impact on World History, 1450–1800. London: Variorum, 1997. Ptak, Roderich. “Almíscar, calambaque e azogue no comércio Macau-Japão e no comércio da Ásia Oriental (cerca de 1555–1640).” Revista de Cultura/Review of Culture 2 (2002): 47–61. Rodríguez Gallano, Adolfo. “Notas para el estudio del azogue en México en el siglo XVII.” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 8.8 (1985): 223–41. Rose, Mark. “Origins of Syphilis.” Archaeology 50.1 (1997). Archaeological Institute of America, http://archive. archaeology.org/9701/newsbriefs/syphilis.html (accessed on 22 March 2017). Sánchez, Alonso. Relación breve de la jornada quel P. Alonso Sánchez dela Compañía de Jesús hizo por horden y parezer del SR. D. Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñalosa, governador de Philipinas, y del Sr. obispo y oficiales de S.M. desde la Isla de Luzón y ciudad de Manila a los Reynos de la China, ed. Manel Ollé. www.upf.edu/asia/ projectes/che/s16/sanchez2.htm (accessed 19 April 2017).

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Sánchez, Alonso. Relación de las cosas particulares de la China, la qual escribio el P. Sanchez de la Compañía de Jesús que se la pidieron para leer a su Magestad el Rey Don Felipe II estando indispuesto, ed. Manel Ollé. www.upf.edu/asia/projectes/che/s16/sanchez.htm (accessed 20 April 2017). Schurz, William Lytle. The Manila Galleon. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1959. Singer, Steve. “The Manila Galleons.” Treasure Quest Magazine. www.treasureexpeditions.com/manila_ galleons.htm (accessed 27 February 2017). Slack, Edward R., Jr. “Orientalizing New Spain: Perspectives on Asian Influence in Colonial Mexico.” México y la Cuenca del Pacífico 15.43 (2012): 97–127. Sola García, Diego. “La formación de un paradigma de Oriente en la Europa moderna: la Historia del Gran Reino de la China de Juan González de Mendoza.” PhD diss., Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, 2015. Souza, George Bryan. China and the South China Sea 1630–1754. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Stübler, Martin and Erich Krug, eds. Leesers Lehrbuch der Homöopathie, vol. 2: Mineralische Arzneistoffe, 4th edn. Heidelberg: Karl Haug, 1988. Toby, Ronald P. State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Torres de Mendoza, Luis, ed. Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas América y Oceanía, 42 vols. Madrid: Imprenta Española, 1864–84. Tremml-Werner, Birgit. Spain, China, and Japan in Manila, 1571–1644: Local Comparisons and Global Connections. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015. Vialle, Cynthia and Leonard Blussé, with the assistance of Isabel van Daalen. The Diaries of Deshima, vol. 13: 1660–1670. Intercontinenta 27. Leiden: Institute for the History of European Expansion, 2010. Vivero y Velasco, Rodrigo de. Relación que hace D. Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco, que se halló in diferentes quadernos y papeles sueltos, de lo que se sucedió bolbiendo de Gobernador y Capitán general de las Philippinas, y arribada que tuvo en el Japón (1632). In El Pacífico, pp. 160–92, vol. 2 of Juan Gil, Mitos y utopías del descubrimiento, 3 vols. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1989, pp. 160–92. Vivero y Velasco, Rodrigo de. Testamento de Don Rodrigo de Vivero, gobernador y capitán general de la ciudad de Manila y sus Yslas, s.f. (c. 1608). http://bdmx.mx/detalle/?id_cod=55 (accessed 20 April 2017). Wills, John E., Jr. Pepper, Guns, and Parleys: The Dutch East India Company and China, 1662–1681. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974. Xia, Xiangrong 夏湘蓉, Li Zhongjun 李仲均, and Wang Genyuan 王根元. Zhongguo gudai kuangye fazhanshi 中國古代礦業發展史. Beijing: Dizhi chubanshe, 1980. Yosoburō, Takekoshi 竹越与三郎. The Economic Aspects of the History of Civilization of Japan, 3 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1930. Zheng, Ruozeng 鄭若曾 (1505–1580) and Hu Zongxian 胡宗憲 (1511–1565). Chouhai tubian 籌海圖編, ed. Li Zhizhong 李致忠. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2007.

About the author Angela Schottenhammer (蕭婷) is Professor of Non-European and World History at the University of Salzburg, Austria, and Research Director and Adjunct Professor (Chinese History) at the Indian Ocean World Centre, History Department, McGill University, Canada. She has been Professor of Chinese Studies at Ghent University, Belgium (2010–13), Professor of Premodern Chinese History at the Centro de Estudios de Asia y África (Center for Asian and African Studies), El Colegio de México (College of Mexico, 2009–10), Professor of Chinese Studies at Marburg University (2006–7 and 2008–9), and Research Director at the Department for Asian Studies,

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Munich University (2002–9). Prof. Schottenhammer is the editor of the online journal Crossroads—Studies on the History of Exchange Relations in the East Asian World and of the book series East Asian Maritime History. She has published widely on traditional Chinese history and culture as well as China’s exchange relations, and China’s integration into the Eurasian and global context.

7. “The Features are Esteem’d very just”

Chinese unfired clay portrait figures of Westerners



William R. Sargent Abstract This essay focuses on eighteenth century sculptural, unfired clay portraits of Westerners by Chinese artists. Only one bust and approximately thirty-seven full-length eighteenth-century unfired clay portrait figures of European and American men are currently known to have survived. This essay examines a series of South Chinese artists thought to have crafted such clay portraits: Chinqua (active 1716–1720), Chitqua (active 1769–71) and Tyune (active late 18th century). It looks at evidence connecting particular clay figurines with particular sculptors, and considers the likely European figure represented. The occasional use of such figurines in family contexts to “stand in” for a missing person becomes an interesting testimony to the peripatetic lives of those working for the East India companies, or pursuing private trade. Keywords: Chinese clay figurines; English East India Company merchants; American China Trade; Chinese sculptural portraits; Tyune; Tan Chitqua.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Western officials, ship captains, and merchants oversaw the voyages of private and company-owned ships, and the sale of goods for their employers. At the same time, they pursued private trade to enhance their incomes, and made personal purchases. Portraits created in Asia of European and American officials, merchants, ship captains, and crew provide compelling material evidence of their presence in foreign ports. In fact, Western merchants were represented in Chinese art for both the domestic Chinese and export markets with regularity and in innumerable ways: on screens, wallpaper, porcelain, ivory, jade, reverse paintings on glass, and on canvas. From within this large category of objects, this essay focuses on eighteenth-century sculptural, unfired clay portraits of Westerners by Chinese artists. Only one bust and thirty-seven full-length eighteenth-century unfired clay portrait figures of European and American men are currently known to have survived, with three others recorded but seemingly lost. Whether we have information about the subject

Bentley, Tamara H. (ed.), Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984677/ch07

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or not, they each intrigue us with a portrayal of an individual whose personality is well reflected in his face. Surprisingly little is recorded in primary sources or historic records about the production of these figures and much of what is written today assumes too much, particularly regarding the artists, dates of production, and sometimes the identity of the subjects. Three names of artists are known: Chinqua (active 1716–20), Chitqua (active 1769–71), and Tyune (active late eighth century). But these names are often assigned as the makers with too much abandon and not enough evidence.

Construction Pierre Sonnerat (1748–1814), the French naturalist and explorer, wrote a firsthand observation of the modeling of a portrait figure while he was in China between 1774 and 1781: “The artist first forms the head from his imagination, while his apprentice works separately on the body. He then endeavors to make the features like the original, and when the head is finished, it is put on the body, by means of a piece of wood, which goes through, and unites them.”1 Sonnerat recorded that after the modeling was finished, “a workman pasted several sheets of fine paper, and give the work to a third who alternately polishes it with layers of white and red.”2 The figures seem to be consistently modeled of a very fine clay of a light tan or gray-white color using coil and slab building techniques, around a bamboo frame with metal wires (especially for the fingers), then air dried, layered in part with a very fine paper, covered in white undercoating (gesso, chalk, or gypsum), painted with water-based gouache and occasionally gilding or silvering, and sometimes further adorned with fabric caps and with human hair.3 For one figure in the Victoria and Albert Museum, not illustrated here, chalk and gypsum were used as a ground for coloring, azurite of high quality was the original blue, and vermilion was the original red used in painting the garments. The couch bed (kang) for that figure is crudely made, compared to a Peabody Essex Museum example, but Chinese inscriptions on the couch legs indicating positions confirm that it was made in China.4

1 Clarke, “Chitqua,” p. 77. For Sonnerat’s comments see Sonnerat, Voyage to the East Indies and China. 2 Clarke, “Chitqua,” p. 78. 3 I thank Mimi Levesque for discussing the construction of several of these figures. Information has also been gleaned from the conservation report for the Thomas Todd figure conserved by Alexandra Kosinova, London, and the reclining figure in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 4 Ventikou, “ Chinese Figure in Unfired Clay.”

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Portrait figures of Westerners I have observed four distinct periods of production for clay figures of Western men: Period I: 1717–25, comprising fourteen subjects, standing or reclining, representing the work of Chinqua (three are signed by him) and possibly at least one other modeler; Period II: centering around nine figures seated in horseshoe-backed armchairs created 1731–42, and through to the 1750s; Period III: 1769–72, including seven fulllength figures and one bust, four of which I have attributed to Chitqua; and Period IV: 1784–92, composed of five standing male figures with diverse aesthetic qualities suggesting multiple modelers, some possibly by Tyune. I organize my discussion of ceramic figures below according to these four periods.

Period I: 1717–25 Standing figures Three figures are known with inscriptions and dates identifying the artist as “Amoy Chinqua.” The first European reference to a clay figure was recorded by Joseph Collet (1673–1725), a merchant and administrator of the English East India Company in Sumatra, and this figure is signed on the base “Amoy Chinqua” (see Plate 14). Collet was governor of Bencoolen, Sumatra, from 1712 to 1717, and President in Madras from 1717 to 1720.5 He wrote on 14 December 1716 to his daughter: “I also send by the Governor in requitall for your Pictures a sort of Picture or Image of my Self. The lineaments and the Features are Esteem’d very just but the complexion is not quite so well hit; the proportions of my body and my habit is very exact. I commit it to your custody till you see the originall.”6 The governor he mentions is Edward Harrison, whose reclining figure is discussed below. Inscribed on the front of the base is “AMOY CHINQUA fecit 1716,” suggesting the maker was Chinqua from Amoy, present-day Xiamen, in Fujian province. Amoy was, until the establishment of the canton system, a major trading port for Western merchants. It had been suggested that the artist may have lived in Canton and was identified as from Amoy, while the National Portrait Gallery states the figure of Collet was made in Madras, in Southeast India, which is more likely.7 The sculpture of Collet, the largest known to survive (33 in. × 83.8 cm h.), is depicted in what would become a standard pose for the rest of the century: feet firmly planted and slightly turned out, on a faux marble painted base with supports flared 5 This figure (33 in. × 83.8 cm h.) is in the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG.4005). It is well published, as is the quote from his letter, including in Charleston, “Chinese Face-makers.” 6 Charleston, “Chinese Face-makers,” pp. 459–61, and Dodwell, Private Letter Books, p. 140. 7 Howard, Tale of Three Cities, p. 146.

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down and out (after mid-century the base is squared), a tricorn hat held under the left arm, the right hand holding a walking stick, a small sword under the coat. A second figure, signed and dated on the base “AMOY CHINQUA FECIT 1719,” is of an unidentified man.8 The sculpture follows the prescribed stance and dress for the period. The condition report, when offered privately, stated that there was a “trace of Chinese inscription on reverse in gilt.”9 A third, previously unidentified, figure is marked, “AMOY CHINQUA fecit 1720.” It depicts a young man standing on a flared base typical of Chinqua’s work.10 The coat, with its gilt-lined pockets and sleeves, is similar to other Chinqua figures. He represents David Bosanquet II (1699–1741), who would have been 21 in 1720.11 Bosanquet is known to have been in Aleppo assisting his family mercantile operations there and was later “a merchant in London, and a learned antiquary.”12 He sports a moustache in the clay portrait and also in a c. 1730 oil portrait by Andrea Soldi (1703–1771). In the oil portrait he wears the costume of a Turkish merchant after he returned to London from Halab in the Levant (Syria) in 1729. He then became director of the London Assurance Company. There is no family record of him going to China, Sumatra, or Madras.13 A fourth example, similar in style and period to the Collet figure, but smaller, is also in the Victoria and Albert Museum and retains a lacquer case considered original.14 The case is a vertical box with a hinged door, locked in place with two hook catches, and decorated with gilt landscape and floral motifs. The black base is a replacement or has been repainted (which would have obscured any inscription). Without an inscription, we are left to assume by comparison of period clothing, pose, and base that this is also by Chinqua. The name “Chinqua” can be documented in Canton in the period 1723–24 as the name of a trader from whom a Captain Hall of the Marquis de Prié purchased the largest part of the 13,957 pieces of silk as his cargo.15 But Chinese names are notoriously variable in spelling and pronunciation and it is not at all clear that 8 Acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2014 (2014.569). This clay portrait has been compared to an oil portrait of captain Robert Knox (1641–1720), National Maritime Museum, London. If it were Knox this would have made him about 77 at the time of this portrait, an unlikely scenario. This figure was offered for private sale through Sotheby’s London in November 2005, then by A&J Speelman since 2008; see A&J Speelman, Chinese Works of Art, no. 71. 9 The signature should have been on the front, unless the base became disengaged and was replaced incorrectly. 10 Howard, Tale of Three Cities, p. 146, no. 187. 11 Bosanquet I (1661–1732) would have been 60 in 1720. 12 J. Burke, Genealogical and Heraldic History, p. 317. 13 Pers. commun. (correspondence), Anthony Bosanquet, 22 January 2013, in which he proposed, “The alternative, of course, is that the figure is not of a Bosanquet at all, and was acquired as a work of art either by David 2nd, or by another member of the family in the early [eighteenth century].” 14 Clunas, “Moulding a Physiognomy,” and Clunas, Chinese Export Art and Design, no. 1, FE.32-B-1981. 15 Clarke, Chinese Art and its Encounter, pp. 65, 91ff.

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these could be the same person, and it is in fact unlikely that a clay modeler would also be a silk merchant. A reclining portrait of a Captain Hall, possibly by Chinqua, is in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, as described in the following section. Reclining figures European men were often depicted in paintings and sculpture wearing banyans and turbans or nightcaps covering shaved or shorn heads. Dating to Period I, three reclining clay figures wearing slip-on mules and banyans have shaven heads: Captain Hall, Governor Harrison, and an unknown subject in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Peabody Essex Museum example is said to be Thomas Hall (1692–1748) of Goldings in Bengeo, Hertfordshire (see Plate 15).16 The figure came with papers with descriptions of the sitter and his history, including his death by poisoning “by eating sour cucumbers.”17He went to China as purser on the Essex in 1716–17. When sold at auction the figure was dated as about 1730,18 but if it is Hall he was in China in 1717 and back in England raising a family in the 1720s when his brother sailed on the Essex in 1722–23.19 It is likely to be Hall, but would date to about 1716–17. A third example of a reclining figure, known through a photograph in the National Portrait Gallery, London,20 is said to be of Edward Harrison (1674–1732), governor of Fort St. George, Madras, from 11 July 1711 to 8 January 1717, when he embarked for England (Fig. 7.1). He was succeeded by his friend Collet whose 1716 clay portrait figure, discussed above, is well known. There were five services of Chinese export porcelain commissioned within five years with either the coat or crest of Harrison of Balls Park in Hertfordshire, including what was probably the first with just his crest.21 When he returned to England he became a member of parliament, first for Weymouth, then for Hertford, and then in 1725 he became postmaster-general until his death in 1732.

16 Sargent, Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics, no. 267, pp. 485–87. 17 Salmonella from cucumbers has been recorded as killing one and sickening hundreds in the US in 2015. See https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/poona-09-15/ (accessed 30 October 2018). 18 Bonham’s London, 13 June 2002, lot 103. 19 In 1717 he would have been 25, which would seem plausible from his portrait. In 1730 he would have been 38, another possibility, but less likely. There are other possibilities: he may have traveled back to China around 1730, or this could be a portrait of his brother, or it could be someone entirely different. See B. Burke, Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary, p. 1152. 20 Clarke, Chinese Art and its Encounter, p. 57, fig. 20. 21 Howard, Chinese Armorial Porcelain, p. 126.

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Fig. 7.1: Unknown artist, Edward Harrison, China, 1715. Unfired clay portrait figure. Unknown Collection, National Portrait Gallery, London.

The figure of an unknown sitter in the Victoria and Albert Museum is reclining on a rosewood couch bed, like Hall and Harrison above.22 This figure was recorded to have once had a silk cap (now missing). He holds in his right hand a book with traces of black ink, but nothing is legible.23 Nothing else is known of the subject of this figure. The standing figures of Collet, Bosanquet, and the unidentified man are signed and dated; the reclining figures of Harrison, Hall, and the third unidentified man are not. Nevertheless, given that Collet and Harrison knew each other, and that the three figures were ostensibly created within a few years of each other, it seems reasonable to suggest that Chinqua created all six. However, the standing three signed “Chinqua” and the three reclining figures are stylistically quite different, and it’s difficult to imagine one artist working in two such different manners, which would imply two modelers. What happened to Chinqua after 1721? Did he simply stop working, or could he have moved to Guangzhou and continued his work? Clarke wonders if he could have continued to work into the 1750s and have become the face-maker referred to by Osbeck.24 22 It was conserved in 2001 (see Ventikou, “Chinese Figure in Unfired Clay”). 23 Pers. commun. (email correspondence) with Ming Wilson, Victoria and Albert Museum, 23 January 2013. 24 Clarke, Chinese Art and its Encounter, p. 65.

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Period II: 1731–59 A series of seated and standing figures dates from 1731 to as late as 1748, and were undoubtedly created in Guangzhou. They share stylistic features: the heads are larger in scale than the bodies, and while the faces seem to be done with individuality and sensitivity, their bodies are awkwardly modeled implying that a master worked on the heads while secondary artisans created the bodies. This evidence would confirm Sonnerat’s description of production. The most well-documented group of figures are those from one of three royal ships of the Danish Asiatic Company, the Kronprins Christian. The ship returned from Canton in 1732 with seated clay figures of six of the crew, all on horseshoe armchairs with foot rests.25 One of the figures, of Peter Mule (1693–1749), holds a book which reads (translated), “Manufactured in Canton in China in 1731” (see Fig. 7.2). Four of the ­figures were given in 1732 to the Danish Royal Art Collection (Kongens Kunstkammer) and, with a fifth, are now in the Maritime Museum of Denmark (Museet for Søfart) at Helsingør.26 The sixth figure, of the third officer, is in the collection of descendants.27 Captain Michael Tønder (1692–1755) commanded the Kronprins Christian on her initial voyage to China.28 He is depicted at about age 35, wearing a (replacement) hair wig. Supercargo Pieter von Hurk (van Hurk) (c. 1697–1775) was the commercial councilor and first supercargo. He is depicted in a fabric nightcap and wearing mules and a banyan wrapped tightly around his waist. He holds a book in his right hand (no inscription recorded). Fredrik Zimmer (1702–1774), the third officer, was first a cadet in 1720 on voyages to the East Indies. He journeyed to China 1730 and again from 1738 to 1741. The third supercargo was Joachim Severin Bonsach (b. 1688–d.?) who was the chief assistant. He has what appears to be his original human hair wig. When Bonsach returned from China in 1735 aboard the Schleswig, he brought twelve lacquer chairs, six of which were inscribed with the king’s name and six with the queen’s. They were sold to King Christian VI (1699–1746), of Denmark, and placed in Fredensborg castle where they remain.29 He kept a journal of his first voyage, in which he records taking 25 Lubberhuizen-van Gelder, “De factorijen te Canton,” pp. 168–69, figs. 4–8. Tønders (EBc255), van Hurk (EBc256), Mule (EBc257), and Bonsach (EBc258) are in Dam-Mikkelsen and Lundbaek, Ethnographic Objects, pp. 179–80; Tønder and van Hurk are in Charleston, Magazine Antiques, p. 460; Tønder is in Wirgin, Från Kina till Europa, pp. 208–9, no. 228; Olgod is in Crossman, Decorative Arts of the China Trade, p. 313, col. pl. 110. The figures are further referenced in Thomsen 1942, p. 71; Henningsen, “Kineske ‘ansigtsmagere’ og deres figurer,” pp. 132 and 134. 26 Charleston, “Chinese Face-makers,” pp. 459–61; Lubberhuizen-van Gelder, “De factorijen te Canton,” pp. 168–69. 27 Charleston, “Chinese Face-makers,” pp. 459–61; Lubberhuizen-van Gelder, “De factorijen te Canton,” pp. 168–69. 28 Parmentier, “Søfolk og supercargoer.” https://mfs.dk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Artikel1989s.142173Soefolkogsupercargoer.pdf (accessed 29 December 2012). 29 Clemmensen, “Some Furniture,” p. 175 and figs. 1–2, p. 178.

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Fig. 7.2: Unknown artist, Peter Mule (1693–1749) with book reading “manufactured in Canton in China in 1731,” China, 1731. One from a group of painted, unfired clay portraits of crew members from the Kronprins Christian Danish ship in horseshoe-back chairs. Approx. h. 10 in. Maritime Museum of Denmark.

on board in Canton “a chest with portrait” for “Monsieur Muhle” and another for “Monsieur Bonsach.”30 His clay portrait, in the collection of descendants in Oslo, Norway, retains a glazed wood case and aligns with others of this genre in both style and dating. Another seated figure is the merchant, ship owner, and captain, Guillaume de Brouwer (1693–1767) of the Royal Danish Asiatic Company frigate Schleswig, the first ship sent by the new Asiatic Company.31 He had previously been the chief officer 30 Charleston, “Chinese Face-makers,” p. 460, quoting Zimmer, Av Viceadmiral Frederik Szimmers optegnelse, pp. 55–57. 31 Nothomb, “Guillaume de Brouwer.”

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aboard the Kronprins Christian. The Schleswig was in Guangzhou in 1733–35 and again in 1736–37. King Christian VI acquired a pair of Chinese lacquer cabinets for the royal collection in 1738 from Captain Brouwer, for which a bill of sale describes them as “Schrif Contors” (writing desks).32 Zacharias Allewelt (1682–1744) was also aboard the Schleswig, as chief officer. There are two figures of Allewelt: a life-size bust portrait and a small standing portrait. The standing figure was undoubtedly commissioned on one of his three trips to China between 1735 and 1742, at which time he would have been between 53 and 59. The standing figure of Allewelt is in the Aust-Agder Cultural History Center in Arendal, Norway. His wig is sculpted. The base has the flared silhouette of the earlier figures and may be a replacement. It was possibly made during his voyage on the Kongen af Danmark (The king of Denmark), from 1735 to 1737; upon returning from that voyage he sold to Christian VI a “Chinese table which can be arranged in three ways, made in rosewood and a good and ingenious piece of workmanship, 80 rix-dollars.”33 The bust portrait of Allewelt, in the Maritime Museum of Denmark, depicts what was described by Charleston as “a masterpiece of realistic portraiture.”34 The Kongen af Danmark arrived at Canton in 1738 when captain Allewelt is presumed to have had his nearly life-size (19 1/4 in. h.) bust sculpted. This portrait would seem to have been created by a different hand than the one who created the standing figure, and is so unlike any known clay portraits that it begs the question of its origins. Another seated figure in a horseshoe armchair is said to represent the English captain, Isaac Pyke (1672–1738) (Fig. 7.3).35 Pyke was a captain on the Stringer when it was in China in 1706–7.36 He returned to China in 1709–10, then became governor of St. Helena in 1714–19. From 1719 to 1723 he was deputy governor of British garrison Bencoolen, in Bengkulu, Southwest Sumatra, after Collet. He took up his post as governor of St. Helena again, in 1731.37 The comparison of Pyke’s portrait with those from the Kronprins Christian would place the manufacture as around 1731, just as he left Sumatra and was assuming his role as governor of St. Helena for the second time, at the age of about 59, an acceptable age for the portrait of this serious, pock-marked, full-faced gentleman who had spent most of his adult life in the service of the East India Company in Southeast Asia.

32 Clemmensen, “Some Furniture,” pp. 174–80, fig. 7. 33 Clemmensen, “Some Furniture,” p. 175 and figs. 4 and 6. 34 Charleston, “Chinese Face-makers,” p. 460. 35 See Sargent, Copeland Collection, pp. 108–111. 36 Register of the Eugene Fairfield McPike (1870–1946) Collection, 1898–1946, MSS 2390, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University, box 10, folder 5, ms folder, “Isaac Pyke’s Journal in the Stringer Galley, 1712–1713, Bombay to England.” 37 Hill, Catalogue of the Home Miscellaneous Series, recs. 1713, 30; 1732, 73. Eugene Fairfield McPike, a descendant, wrote a book about the subject, Isaac Pyke Family.

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Fig. 7.3: Unknown artist, Captain Pyke, China, 1730–35. Unfired clay portrait figure, h. 11 × w. 6 1/2 × dia. 5 1/4 in. (27.94 × 16.51 × 13.335 cm). Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

Jacob van Dam (dates unknown) became captain of the Pasgeld in 1753.38 His figure, now in Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam, has been dated 1750 and 1754, but it is close in style to all the others of the 1730s, and it is possible he was in Guangzhou earlier than his known voyages between 1746 and 1748. A figure of Michiel Westpalm (1699–1734) retains all the usual props, including a colorful and intricate waistcoat.39 His posture, clothing and especially the elaborately decorated waistcoat have much in common with the Chinqua figures of 1717–20. Is this the portrait of a 22-year-old, which would put the figure at having 38 Schokkenbroek, “Versteend verleden,” pp. 2–13, fig. 5. 39 Private collection (1999), in Eliëns, Zilver uit de tijd van de Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, no. 7.

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been made around 1721, or of someone closer to 32, so giving a date of 1731 for the figure? Sadly, the original Chinese base, which may have given us a clue to the date and maker, has been replaced with what appears to be a nineteenth-century stand. Figures attributed to the 1750s Thus far I have been able to find only three mid-eighteenth-century references that give us a too-brief insight as to the modelers of these figures. Aside from Sonnerat’s observations, Peter Osbeck (1723–1805), a Swedish explorer and naturalist, was in Canton in 1751 and later related, “In a Place like this, the famous Face-maker was at work, who makes men’s figures, mostly in miniature. Europeans often go to this man to be represented in their usual dress; and sometimes he hits them exceedingly well […].”40 Olof Toreen (1718–1753), a Swedish clergyman, remarked in his Voyage to Suratte, “Their painters would acquit themselves very well, if they knew how to shade. You met with very fine drawings painted on paper and glass, and likewise the very worst […] I have not heard of any carvers in wood or stone, images and busts of clay are cheap.”41 A figure of Captain Jacob Beckman (1719–1771), of Denmark,42 has been said to have been made on his first visit to Guangzhou in 1751–53 and has been described as very similar to the 1730–60 possible portrait of Beckman as an older man. He has also been dated as c. 1775, but surely must be of the earlier period. Could Beckman have been modeled by one of the “face-makers” visited by Osbeck or Toreen? Louis Bernard Tribou (1741–1831) is said to be the subject43 of another clay figure that is now on a splayed stand which seems to be a replacement. He wears a cotton wool wig which replaces either a human hair wig or silk cap. When he first seems to have appeared on the market, he was described “by family tradition” to represent Tribou, a ship’s ensign, later a master mariner of the Admiralty of Calais in 1767, and then captain of the port.44

40 Charleston, “Chinese Face-makers,” pp. 459–61, also Lubberhuizen-van Gelder, “De factorijen te Canton,” pp. 168–69. Osbeck’s account published as Dagbok öfwer en Ostindisk Resa, 2 vols., 1753; see the 1771 volume in English, trans. from the 1753 German volume, Osbeck, Voyage to China, vol. 1, p. 221, for the quote. 41 Clarke, Chinese Art and its Encounter, p. 19. From Osbeck, Voyage to China, 1771 English translation (see above). 42 See Clemmensen and Mackeprang, Kina og Danmark, figs. 114 and 115. 43 With Jorge Welsh, London, November 2005; previously, Sotheby’s London, 9 June 2004, lot 115; Tajan, Paris, 12 March 2003, lot 33. 44 Tajan, Paris, auction catalog of 12 March 2003, lot 33 (not illustrated). The figure was later offered by Sotheby’s London, 9 June 2014, lot 115, where it was attributed to Chitqua.

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Another unknown subject retains a tantalizing clue to his identity on the chest of his jacket.45 The figure has on his chest a large medallion containing a cross, which may represent the Danish Order of Donneborg.46 The figure has been described as an officer in the Danish Asiatic company and dated 1730–60,47 and Chinqua has been attributed as the artist.48 But these are not certain facts, although that the figure was acquired in Ostend, a Belgian city in the Flemish province of West Flanders, at least supports the first of these theories. He may have been a member of the Oostendse Compagnie (Ostend Trade Company), an Austrian-Flemish private trading company founded in 1722.

Period III: Chitqua in London, 1769–72 The English lawyer William Hickey (1749–1830) wrote an account of his stay in Canton and recorded for July 1769, “There was a China man who took excellent likenesses in clay, which he afterwards coloured and they were altogether well executed.”49 Hickey visited the modeler with a shipmate, Bob Pott, and watched while another sitter, Mr. Carnegie, surgeon of the ship Nottingham, rejected his portrait as unflattering. Hickey noticed when he returned to the shop that they “saw Mr. Carnegie tucked up, hanging by a rope round the neck, to a beam, among several others.” The modeler called all those represented by the figures “Ladrones” (thieves) and that none of them had paid or taken the figures away “so must ee hang up.” But Hickey and Potts “had good likenesses taken,” the former “in scarlet with buff facings and silver lace, being the madras regimentals,” and the latter “in a midshipman’s uniform.”50 Hickey may have been referring to Chitqua (c. 1728–c. 1796) who was in England from 1769 to 1772. In 1769 Chitqua obtained permission to visit Batavia in Java, but he ended up sailing to London. Chitqua arrived in August of 1769 and was quickly introduced to the highest levels of British society. Thomas Bentley (1731–1780) wrote to his partner Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) on 4 November 1769, “A Chinese portrait modeler lately arrived from Canton, one of those Artists that make the mandarin figures that are brought to England […] He […] makes portraits (small busts in clay which he colours), and produces very striking likenesses with great expedition […].”51 45 Provenance: with Jorge Welsh, London, 2005, European Scenes on Chinese Art, no. 22, pp. 100–4, dated 1730–45; from the collection, Robert and Melanie Gill, New York; Oriental Art Gallery Ltd., Oriental Jewelry and Works of Art, no. 86; Christie’s Amsterdam, 27 October 1994, lot 175. 46 The depiction of this medal, to my thinking, is awkwardly painted and not modeled in clay, as are the buttons, button holes, and pocket. The medal is seen in the 1994 auction catalog and has the same coloration (before conservation) as the face. Is it possible that the medal was added in Europe. 47 Pers. commun. (correspondence) from the Oriental Art Gallery Ltd., 11 April 1995. 48 Christie’s London, 7 April 1997, lot 135. 49 Spencer, Memoirs of William Hickey, vol. 1, p. 227. 50 Spencer, Memoirs of William Hickey, vol. 1, pp. 227–28. 51 Meteyard, Life of Wedgwood, vol. 2, p. 231; Charleston, “Chinese Face-makers,” p. 460.

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Chitqua was the first man from China many had encountered, so he was described at length by various writers. The architect William Chambers (1723–1796) stated that Chitqua was born in 1728 in Guangdong province. In a letter by Gough he was described in some detail as being “above or about forty,”52 and in the May 1771 issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine as a “middle-aged man, of a proper stature, his face and hands of a copperish colour.”53 Bentley wrote on 4 November 1769 that “[h]is complexion is very swarthy, the eyelashes almost always in motion. His arms are very slender, like those of a delicate woman, and his fingers very long; all his limbs extremely supple, his long hair is cut off before, and he has a long tail hanging down to the bottom of his back.”54 Chitqua attended the first official dinner of the Royal Academy, held in the Pall Mall Gallery, 23 April 1770. He is known to have met other attendees such as the Duke of Devonshire and five other peers, as well as Horace Walpole, Johann Zoffany, David Garrick, James Boswell, William Chambers, and Richard Gough. Gough (1735–1809), a noted antiquary, wrote in a letter of 3 August 1770 that Chitqua was an independent businessman who had shops at Canton specializing in trade with foreigners, and that, “[t]his man is so well known by our people who have been at Canton, where he keeps a shop for making figures.”55 The day after the dinner Chitqua displayed one of his figures at the Royal Academy, where the cost of each portrait figure was ten guineas, a not inconsequential amount.56 Number 25 in the catalog to the second exhibition of the Academicians was, “Chitqua […] Sculptor, Arundel Street, No. 245. A portrait of a Gentleman, a model.”57 The Gentleman’s Magazine wrote at the time that Chitqua was “very sensible, and a great observer […] He steals a likeness, and forms the busts from memory.”58 According to Bentley, Chitqua “has ten guineas for a piece for his little portraits, which are very small,” while Gough says his prices were “for a bust on a pedestal ten guineas; and for the whole figure but five more.”59 Gough recorded that Chitqua told 52 Clarke, Chinese Art and its Encounter, p. 22. 53 Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 5, p. 318, quoting a letter by R. Gough to Forster, dated 3 August 1770, and p. 319 for the latter reference. 54 Jewitt, Wedgwoods, pp. 209–10. 55 Clarke, Chinese Art and its Encounter, p. 21, quoting Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 5, p. 318. No known figures of Chinese individuals are understood to have a Chitqua signature. 56 Whitley, Artists and their Friends in England, vol. 1, p. 270. Ten guineas in 1771–72 was worth an estimated US$1,260.20 in 2015: “UK Inflation Calculator,” What’s the Cost website, www.whatsthecost.com/cpi.aspx (accessed 30 September 2015). Clarke, Chinese Art and its Encounter, p. 229, n. 108, references Grosley, Tour to London, that a “cook-maid” would earn an annual wage of twenty guineas at that time. 57 Royal Academy, Council Minutes, 10 July 1770, 85. See also https://chronicle250.com/1770. 58 Fenton, School of Genius, p. 76. 59 Whitley, Artists and their Friends in England, vol. 1, p. 270. Ten guineas in 1771 was worth an estimated US$1,260.20, and fifteen guineas was worth an estimated US$1,900 in 2015: “UK Inflation Calculator,” What’s the Cost website, http://www.whatsthecost.com/cpi.aspxwww.whatsthecost.com/cpi.aspx (accessed 30 September, 2015).

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him “he could get no earth here for his work […] Whence I conclude he brought over a cargo.”60 Chitqua was included in a 1771/72 group portrait, The Academicians of the Royal Academy (The Royal Collection), by Johann Zoffany (1733–1810),61 peering out between the shoulders of Benjamin West and Jeremiah Meyer, his face added as an afterthought. He was not only included in Zoffany’s painting but also in several other works based on the Zoffany: a 1772 watercolor and ink painting by John Sanders (1750–1825), a pencil drawing of 1773 by Sanders, and a mezzotint published 1773 by Richard Earlom (1743–1822). Chitqua also appeared in drawings by Charles Grignion II (1754–1804, see Fig. 1.1), and in A Portrait of Chit Qua, the Chinese Modeller by John Hamilton Mortimer (1740–1779), which was exhibited at the Society of Artists exhibition in 1771.62 Chitqua63 is therefore the only Chinese sculptor of unfired clay portrait figures known by name through period documents. He was recorded by his English contemporaries during his several-year stay in London, and has since been discussed in many publications.64 Chitqua had planned to leave for China in August of 1770, after a year’s stay, but that failed in a well-recorded incident in the May 1771 issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine: “Mr. Chitqua, the ingenious Chinese artist, whose models after the life have been so justly admired, has been disappointed of a passage this year to his native country […].”65 He was finally able to depart in 1772. No further news of Chitqua is known until his death was reported in The Gentlemen’s Magazine, December 1797: “Lately, at Canton, in China, Chitqua, or (as some write the name) Shykinqua, the ingenious artist, who was formerly in this country, and of whom some account was given in our vol. XLI, p. 237. The news of his death,

60 Clarke, Chinese Art and its Encounter, p. 76. 61 The Royal Collection, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, RCIN 400747. 62 Toppin, “China Trade and Some London Chinamen,” p. 150. Location unknown. An oil portrait of a Chinese man with a fan in the Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons of England, London, may be of Chitqua, Clarke, Chinese Art and its Encounter, p. 36. 63 Also recorded in his day as Chit Qua, Chit-qua, Che Qua, Chet-qua, Chetqua, Tan Chet Qua, Tanchetqua, and Shykingqua. Chetqua is also the name of later silk merchant, much referenced in volumes on the English East India Company trade. 64 The most recent and comprehensive investigation is Clarke, “Chitqua.” Yi-chieh Shih, of the Universté de Genève, presented a paper on Chitqua at the 14th International Congress for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2015, Shih, “Chitqua.” Jack Lee Sai Chong, discusses Chitqua in a doctoral thesis, Chong, “China Trade Paintings.” The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry of September 2014 on Chitqua was written by Pat Hardy, “Chitqua (Tan-Che-Qua) (c. 1728–1796),” www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/106191 (accessed 7 August 2015), and she presents an overview using the figure of Todd in a video: “Writing for the Oxford DNB: Pat Hardy on Chitqua & Chinese art,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ug7OHExDic (accessed 7 August 2105). 65 Gentleman’s Magazine (London) 41 (1771), pp. 237–38; and Dodsley, Annual Register, entry on Chitqua’s attempt to leave England, p. 107.

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and of its having been occasioned by his taking poison, was brought to Madras by ships that arrived there from Canton in December, 1796.”66 Although he was much noted during his stay in England, the ultimate paucity of details and surviving works, or records of those works, suggests that his attendance at the Royal Academy dinner, his inclusion in the exhibition, his meeting of royals and others in high society, was ultimately not much more than a curiosity factor. Chitqua’s work Only one example of his work is known with an acceptable provenance, that of Anthony Askew (1722–1774), aged 48 when he posed.67 This portrait figure was given to the College of Physicians by Lady Pepys, the daughter of Askew, and had the family tradition associating it with an artist named “Cheque.”68 The conceit of a figure seated on a grotesque rock is frequently used in Chinese ceramics and sculpture.69 The identity of the sitter can be confirmed by comparison with his mezzotint portrait by Thomas Hodgetts (dates unknown), also in the Royal College of Physicians. That Askew sits upon a grotesque rockwork may tie this figure, and its maker, to another figure with a Dutch association, as well as to nodding head figures of Chinese that Chitqua may have modeled in Guangzhou for Westerners. There are five likely portraits by Chitqua that have some historical record or provenance: the figures of William Hickey, Bob Pott, Mr. Carnegie, a “portrait of a gentleman, model” (the example exhibited at the Royal Academy),70 all untraced, and the figure of Dr. Anthony Askew.71 The portraits of Hickey, Pott, and Carnegie are not documented to be by Chitqua, but it is a safe assumption that they were by him as well, given what we know of their production. A figure seated on rockwork is identified as the Dutch merchant Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest (1739–1801) (Fig. 7.4).72 Van Braam was in China in 1758 and remained for eight years, trading in Guangzhou and Macau. In 1783 he settled in Charleston, South Carolina, becoming an American citizen in 1784. But he returned 66 Gentleman’s Magazine (London) 67 (1797), p. 1072. Shykinqua was the name of a leading merchant of Canton who died in 1790 and it’s possible this was a misappropriation of the name and it does not otherwise appear to be a name connected to Chitqua. 67 Conner, China Trade 1600–1860, p. 58, no. 58; and Howard, Tale of Three Cities, p. 147, no. 189. 68 Macmichael, Gold-Headed Cane, pp. 165–67. 69 See, for example, a sculptural figure of a mandarin seated on and leaning against a rock in the Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden, dated between 1765 and 1807. It is inventory number RV-360-5 in that museum. 70 Graves, Royal Academy of Arts, p. 60. 71 Roscoe et al., Biographical Dictionary, where only three portraits are listed as by Chitqua: Askew, Hickey, and the example exhibited at the Royal Academy. 72 Attribution is by comparison to the portrait of c. 1795. Braam Houckgeest, “Leven en bedrijf van Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest (1739–1801).” I thank Jan van Campen for this information.

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Fig. 7.4: Attributed to Chitqua (Chinese, 1728–1796), A Dutch Merchant, possibly Andreas Everard van Braam Houckgeest, 1765–75. Painted, unfired clay portrait figure, h. 36.5 × w. 31.5 × dia. 20.0 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

to China as head of the Dutch East India Company factory in Canton from 1790–95, taking part in the Titsingh embassy to Beijing in 1795. He returned to the US in 1796 and brought with him a collection of Chinese art and curiosities that he installed in his home, China’s Retreat, in Bristol, Pennsylvania. In 1798 he sold the house and departed for London, selling his collection at Christie’s in London in February 1799. He died in Amsterdam in 1801. The figure of Van Braam has been attributed to Chitqua. It is only the second known example of a Western figure seated on grotesque rocks, after that of Dr. Askew. There is a reverse painting on glass that is thought to be of him, still in the family, and although done at an older age, the resemblance is strong enough to support the supposition that it is van Braam.

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There is a figure73 presumed to be of David Garrick (1717–1779), actor, playwright, theatrical manager, connoisseur, and collector (see Plate 16). Garrick met Chitqua at the Royal Academy dinner on 23 April 1770, when Garrick was 53. Bust portraits in oil on canvas of Garrick by a number of artists including Zoffany and, particularly, Angelica Kauffmann (1741–1807) bear, I think, a striking resemblance to the clay figure. In one of a pair of conversation pieces Garrick commissioned from Zoffany, he is shown with his wife at the Shakespeare Temple in a pose and in attire not unlike that of the clay figure, although that pose was a conceit used at the time by many portrait artists in England and elsewhere.74 The figure, which I do think is of Garrick, is detailed down to a cobbler’s trade stamp on the sole of one foot. A figure in the identical pose is said to be of Henry Talbot (1700–1784), commissioner for collecting the salt duties and sheriff of Surrey in 1754. Talbot traveled to China with the East India Company, making four visits between 1719 and 1730.75 This figure, which has been accepted as being Henry Talbot, has been “securely dated” to 1730, when Talbot was in China between 1728 and 1730.76 But the clothing is typical of the 1760s–70s and not prior to 1730. The comparison to the figure thought to be of Garrick would imply that the Talbot figure dates to the time of Chitqua (if one accepts that Garrick is the other subject), and begs the question if this is actually of Talbot or perhaps another member of the family, or someone mistaken for Talbot.77 This figure holds a book in his outstretched left hand and wears a silk cap and garments nearly identical to Garrick’s. It may have been that Garrick’s hand also held a book at one time. A standing figure of about 1770, identified as Thomas Todd (1726–after 1783), may have been by Chitqua.78 If of Todd, it would have been done when he was about 44. Thomas Todd was born in 1726 in Sunderland, County Durham, and as an adult he set up as a Salter, and later became a druggist and tea dealer at 70 Fleet Street, London. His brother Richard was a sail maker in London.79 The figure may date to 1765–70, as 73 Known provenance: Christie’s London, 10 May 2006, lot 175; Christie’s London, 8 June 2004, lot 472; exhibited, Holburne Museum of Art, Every Look Speaks, p. 70, no. 30; private collection, 1996; Sotheby’s New York, 18 January 1996, lot 234; with Ian G. Hastie, Salisbury, illustrated in an ad in Grosvenor House catalog 1986; at Ralph N. Chait Gallery, New York, January 1987 (New York Times, 23 January 1987), identified as Garrick, acquired from Sparks, July 1986; Sotheby’s New York, 31 January 1981, lot 63, identified as a “European gentleman,” property of the Estate of Marjorie Wiggin Prescott. 74 Sotheby’s London, 7 December 2011, lot 38. 75 Brayley, Topographical History of Surrey, vol. 5, p. 79. 76 Clarke, Chinese Art and its Encounter, pp. 48–51. 77 Now on loan to the National Trust and exhibited at Clandon Park, West Clandon, Guildford, Surrey, the figure is depicted in reverse on their website. 78 Sold at Christies London, 7 April 1997, lot 135. It was erroneously stated in a Cambridge Library Collection Blog that this is “the only firmly attributed sculpture” by Chitqua: “Mr Chitqua, an Ingenious Chinese Artist,” 29 September 2014, https://cambridgelibrarycollection.wordpress.com/2014/09/29/mr-chitqua-an-ingeniouschinese-artist/ (accessed 7 August 2015). Conserved in 2009 by Alexandra Kosinova. 79 Email, Richard Todd to Karina Corrigan, 6 October 2009.

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the style of clothing suggests. According to a descendant, Richard Todd,80 Thomas Todd was always known as Captain Thomas Todd, although there appears to be no documentation of his having been a ship’s captain. Common sense, circumstantial evidence, and some stylistic comparison suggest Chitqua as the artist, but there is no documentation. With all the information that is available to us on Chitqua and the obvious fame he encountered, there is, maddeningly, no list of his subjects by him or anyone else, nor were the sittings or results recorded by his subjects. David Garrick, Henry Talbot, Thomas Todd, Dr. Askew—none of his attributed subjects seem to have left us a record of their posing for this artist.

Period IV: the late eighteenth century, including Tyune, an “image maker” Inexplicably (as so much of this is), we jump from the period of 1769–72, and the works of Chitqua, to four figures created in Canton, only one of which is as yet unidentifiable. The records of the Empress of China, the first American ship to reach China in 1784, contain the latest dated reference on record to a sculptor: “Tyune, Image Maker.”81 He charged John Green (1736–1796), captain of the ship, $38 for “a box of Chow Chow Articles,” and $76 for another crate. Chow Chow is described as many things, but is also a term applied to the chop-boat carrying private stores for the officers and crew.82 There was “One box contg 4 Images” at $16 billed to the account of Mrs. Morris, and “A box contg 3 pr small Chinese images” at $9. There were additionally marble and enamel images and a pagoda. Could there have been an image (or images) of Westerners by Tyune in that box?83 Johannes Jacob van Harpen (1761–1792), a lieutenant captain of the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or Dutch East India Company), fell overboard and drowned off the Cape of Good Hope on the night of 22 March 1792.84 His portrait figure, Figure 7.5, now in the History Museum of Amsterdam, is the only one known wearing the tricorn hat rather than having it tucked under his arm; although his left arm is bent as if he we holding it there—so it could be that the figure has been repaired and the hat placed on his head. This is the only figure with what may be a 80 Pers. commun. (email correspondence), Richard Todd, 18 December 2007. 81 Smith, Empress of China, pp. 260–61, “Recd at Canton Decr 16th 1784 of F. Molineux for Accot of Capt Green Thirty Eight Dollars in full for a box of Chow Chow Articles bought this day. [Chinese characters] Tyune, Image Maker.” 82 Holman, Travels, p. 131. 83 The value of $38 in 1784 is equal to an estimated $900 in 2015: https://www.measuringworth.com/ calculators/uscompare/ (accessed 30 September 2015). 84 “22 maart 1792: Johannes van Harpen overboord,” Hart van Amsterdam, 22 March 2010, https://hart. amsterdam/nl/page/3298 (accessed 31 January 2017).

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Fig. 7.5: T’ai-Yuan (Chinese), Johannes Jacob van Harpen (1761–1792), officer of the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, Dutch East India Company), 1782–1802. Painted unfired clay portrait figure, late eighteenth century. History Museum of Amsterdam.

maker’s mark preserved on the original carrying case, a tall, slide-front wood case with a slat handle on the top: the Chinese characters have been translated as Tyune (T’ai-yuan). Jacob Ariesz. Arkenbout (1766–1834) joined the Dutch East India Company as an apprentice seaman in 1779 at the age of 13, rising in the ranks until he became a commander in 1792, when he captained the Zeeland.85 Between 1779 and 1795 he had made five voyages to Asia with the East Indiaman Rozenburg. He was in Canton in 1792 when he ordered an armorial porcelain service86 and, possibly, the portrait sculpture in his official VOC uniform before departing China on 8 April 1793. 85 Schokkenbroek, “Achttiende-eeuws portretbeeldje van klei,” p. 6. 86 Kroes, Chinese Armorial Porcelain, pp. 484–85.

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Fig. 7.6: Amoy Chinqua (Chinese, active 1716–19), Figure of a European Merchant. Painted unfired clay portrait 1719. Height of figure only: 11 9/16 in. (29.4 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Another figure of a man, dressed casually in dark brown frock coat, with his hat under his left arm, his right hand in his light-brown spotted waistcoat, can be set, I feel, within the period of the later eighteenth century (Fig. 7.6).87 His identity is unknown, although if an oil portrait of him exists he would be easy to identify: his unusual hair style, high forehead, and dramatic cheekbones would be readily discerned. 87 Christie’s London, 10 May 2011, lot 329 (bought in).

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Fig. 7.7: Unknown artist, Portrait of the American Captain Daniel Sage (1759–1836), China, late eighteenth century. Private collection.

There is only one known clay figure of an American, Captain Daniel Sage (1759– 1836) (Fig. 7.7).88 Sage, born at Greenock, Scotland, served as a seaman aboard the brigantine Ranger during the Revolutionary War, and is recorded on 12 June 1780, as 88 Private collection, Boston; William R. Sargent, “Figure of Capt. Daniel Sage.”

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“age 19 years, stature 5 ft. 4 inches complexion dark, residence Salem.”89 The description alone supports the identity of the figure as Sage who eventually went to sea and reached the status of captain. The figure of Sage accurately depicts the mature captain, judging from a 1795 miniature of him by Antoine Trignart (active 1783–1810), painted while he was in Quiberon, France. Three years after that voyage, Sage captained the ship Elizabeth to Canton in 1798, departing there 8 January 1799, and arriving in Boston on June 7th. It is likely that the portrait figure was done in late 1798, before his departure from Canton. A wood and glass display case for the figure is inscribed, “November 1798,” and on the base a paper is inscribed, “[…] Canton in China/ in resemblance of Daniel/ Sage Master of the Ship/ Elizabeth of Salem Mass/ in November 1798.” The year he returned from China, Capt. Daniel Sage was ninth on the list of the thirty members who joined the East India Marine Society in October of 1799, the forerunner of the Peabody Essex Museum.90 Could Tyune have worked until 1798 and have been the modeler of the portraits of Arkenbout and Sage?

Conclusion That less than forty clay portrait figures would have been created over a nearly eightyyear period is inexplicable. The known popularity of “face-makers” with Westerners mentioned by Hickey, and that of Chitqua in London, and the period references to these sculptors confirm that many more were produced than survive, or are recognized. Attributions to specific artists when no solid provenance or historical reference is known must be considered shaky ground, and this puzzle has yet to be fully unwound. But connoisseurship and historical accuracy are what curators and collectors strive for. This exercise has been an attempt to correct some of the assumptions that have been printed as fact, to put as many of the facts as possible on the table for discussion and to open the field for further correction.

Bibliography Unpublished documents Register of the Eugene Fairfield McPike (1870–1946) Collection, 1898–1946, MSS 2390, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University, box 10, folder 5, ms folder, “Isaac Pyke’s Journal in the Stringer Galley, 1712–1713, Bombay to England.” The Royal Collection, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, RCIN 400747. 89 “Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War,” Ancestry website, https://search.ancestry. com/search/DB.aspx?dbid=7726 (accessed 31 January 2017). 90 Whitehill, East India Marine Society, p. 160.

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Published works A & J Speelman Auction Catalog: Chinese Works of Art, no. 71. London: A & J Speelman, 2008. Braam Houckgeest, J.P.W.A. van. “Leven en bedrijf van Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest (1739–1801).” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 35.1 (1987): 22–31. Brayley, Edward Wedlake. A Topographical History of Surrey. London: Dorking Robert Best Ede, 1842. Burke, John. A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland. London: Colburn, 1836. Burke, Sir Bernard. A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland. London: Harrison, 1863. Charleston, R.J. “Chinese Face-makers.” Magazine Antiques (May 1958): 459–61. Chong, Jack Lee Sai. “China Trade Paintings: 1750s to 1880s.” PhD diss., University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2005. Clarke, David. Chinese Art and its Encounter with the World. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011. Clarke, David. “Chitqua: A Chinese Artist in Eighteenth-Century London.” In Chinese Art and its Encounter with the World, pp. 15–84. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011. Clemmensen, Tove. “Some Furniture Made in China in the English Style, Exported from Canton to Denmark, 1735, 1737, and 1738.” Furniture History 21 (1985): 174–80. Clemmensen, Tove and Mogens B. Mackeprang. Kina og Danmark 1600–1950. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 1980. Clunas, Craig, ed. Chinese Export Art and Design. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1987. Clunas, Craig. “‘Moulding a Physiognomy’—A Chinese Portrait Figure.” V & A Album 3 (1984): 46–51. Conner, Patrick. The China Trade 1600–1860. Brighton: Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery and Museums, 1984. Crossman, Carl L. The Decorative Arts of the China Trade: Paintings, Furnishings, and Exotic Curiosities. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1991. Dam-Mikkelsen, B. and T. Lundbaek. Ethnographic Objects in the Royal Danish Kunstkammer 1650—1800. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 1980. Dodsley, Robert. The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1771, 4th edn. London, 1786, entry on Chitqua’s attempted departure from England, pp. 107–8. Dodwell, H.H., ed. The Private Letter Books of Joseph Collet. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1933. Eliëns, Titus M., J.H.J. Leeuwrik, and S.M. Voskuil-Groenewegen, Zilver uit de tijd van de Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie. Zwolle: Waanders, 1999. European Scenes on Chinese Art. London: Jorge Welsh Books, 2005. Fenton, James. School of Genius: A History of the Royal Academy of Arts. London: Royal Academy, 2006. The Gentleman’s Magazine (London) 41 (1771), entry on Chitqua’s attempted departure from England, pp. 237–38. The Gentleman’s Magazine (London) 67 (1797), entry on Chitqua’s reported death, p. 1072. Graves, Algernon. The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors. London: H. Graves and Co., 1905–6. Grosley, Pierre Jean. A Tour to London, or, New Observations on England and its Inhabitants, trans. Thomas Nugent. London: Lockyer Davis, 1772. Henningsen, Henning. “Kineske ‘ansigtsmagere’ og deres figurer.” Handels –og Søfartsmuseet på Kronberg Arbog (1959): 131–45. Hill, Samuel Charles. Catalogue of the Home Miscellaneous Series of the India Office Records. London: H.M. Stationery Off. for the India Office, 1927. Holburne Museum of Art. Every Look Speaks: Portraits of David Garrick. Bath: Holburne Museum of Art, 2003. Holman, James. Travels in China, New Zealand, New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, Cape Horn, etc., etc. London: G. Routledge, 1840. Howard, David Sanctuary. Chinese Armorial Porcelain, 2 vols. London: Heirloom & Howard, 2003. Howard, David Sanctuary The Choice of the Private Trader: The Private Market in Chinese Export Porcelain Illustrated in the Hodroff Collection. London: Sotheby’s, 1994.

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Howard, David Sanctuary A Tale of Three Cities: Canton, Shanghai and Hong Kong; Three Centuries of SinoBritish Trade in the Decorative Arts. London: Sotheby’s, 1997. Jewitt, Llewellynn Frederick William. The Wedgwoods: Being a Life of Josiah Wedgwood; with notices of his works and their productions. London: Virtue Brothers, 1865. Kroes, Jochem. Chinese Armorial Porcelain for the Dutch Market. Amsterdam: Waanders, 2007. Lubberhuizen-van Gelder, A.M. “De factorijen te Canton in de 18de eeuw.” Oud-Holland 70.3 (1955): 162–71. Macmichael, William. The Gold-Headed Cane. London: Thomas, 1828. McPike, Eugene Fairfield. Isaac Pyke Family: Twice Governor St. Helena. London: Taylor & Francis, 1937. Meteyard, Eliza. Life of Wedgwood, 2 vols. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1866. National Portrait Gallery, entry on Joseph Collet figure https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/ mw01401/Joseph-Collet%20 (accessed 21 December 2012). Nothomb, Pierre. “Guillaume de Brouwer.” Les Cahiers historiques 41 (1966): 17–25. Nichols, John. Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, 5 vols. London: Nichols, Son, and Bentley, 1828. Oriental Art Gallery Ltd. Oriental Jewelry and Works of Art. London: Oriental Art Gallery, 1995. Osbeck, Peter (Pehr). A Voyage to China and the East Indies, by Peter Osbeck […] together with A Voyage to Suratte by Olaf Toreen, 2 vols., trans. John Reinhold Forster. London: Benjamin White, 1771. Original in German, 1753. Parmentier, Jan. “Søfolk og supercargoer fra Ostende i Dansk Asiatisk Kompanis tjenesste 1730–1747” [Seamen and supercargoes from Oostende in the service of the Danish Asiatic Company 1730–1747]. https://mfs.dk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Artikel1989s.142-173Soefolkogsupercargoer.pdf (accessed 29 December 2012). “The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769 – 2018.” See https://chronicle250.com/1770 Roscoe, Ingrid, Emma Elizabeth Hardy, and M.G. Sullivan. A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain, 1660–1851. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Sargent, William R. The Copeland Collection: Chinese and Japanese Ceramic Figures. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum, 1991. Sargent, William R. “A Figure of Capt. Daniel Sage Discovered.” Magazine Antiques 182.5 (2015): 54–58. Sargent, William R. Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics: From the Peabody Essex Museum. Salem: Peabody Essex Museum, 2012. Schokkenbroek, Joost C.A. “Achttiende-eeuws portretbeeldge van klei verworven!” [Eighteenth-century clay portrait image acquired!]. Zeemagazijn 30.1 (March 2004): 6. Schokkenbroek, Joost C.A. “Versteend verleden: Chinese portretbeeldjes in de collectie van het Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum Amsterdam” [The past in stone: portrait figures in the collection of the Dutch Maritime Museum]. Vormen uit Vuur 203 (2008/4): 2–13. Shih, Yi-chieh. “Chitqua: A Chinese Modeler’s Business in London Rediscovered.” Paper presented at the 14th International Congress for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oxford, 2015. Smith, Philip Chadwick Foster. The Empress of China. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985. Sonnerat, Pierre. Voyage to the East Indies and China, Undertaken at the King’s Command, from 1774 until 1781: In Which the Religious Mores, Sciences, and Arts of the Indians, the Chinese, the Pegouins, and the Madegasse are Discussed, trans. Francis Magnus. Calcutta: Stuart and Cooper, 1788–89. Spencer, Alfred, ed. The Memoirs of William Hickey, 4 vols., reprint, New York: Knopf, 1913. Orig. publ. 1804. Toppin, Aubrey J. “The China Trade and Some London Chinamen.” English Ceramic Circle Transactions 3 (1935): 36–45. Toppin, Aubrey J. “Chitqua, the Chinese Modeller, and Wang-Y-Tong, the Chinese Boy.” English Ceramic Circle Transactions 8.2 (1942): 148–52. Ventikou, Metaxia “A Chinese Figure in Unfired Clay: Technical Investigation and Conservation Treatment.” Conservation Journal (Victoria & Albert Museum, London) 38 (Summer 2001). www.vam.ac.uk/content/ journals/conservation-journal/issue-38/a-chinese-figure-in-unfired-clay-technical-investigation-andconservation-treatment/ (accessed 20 August 2015).

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Whitehill, Walter Muir. The East India Marine Society and the Peabody Museum of Salem—A Sesquicentennial History. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum, 1949. Whitley, W.H. Artists and their Friends in England. London: Medici Society, 1928. Wirgin, Jan. Från Kina till Europa: Kinesiska konstföremäl från de ostindiska kompaniernas tid. Stockholm: Östatasiaska Museet Stockholm, 1998. Zimmer, Oberst A. Av Viceadmiral Frederik Szimmers Optegnelse, 1717–56. Horten, 1927.

About the author William R. Sargent is an independent curator. He is former H.A. Crosby Forbes Curator of Asian Export Art at the Peabody Essex Museum (1978–2009); Senior Consultant in Chinese Art, Bonhams (US); and Consulting Curator, Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore. He has given over 300 lectures around the world, consulted with 27 museums in Europe and America, and contributed over 43 chapters or articles for various publications. His books include The Copeland Collection: Chinese and Japanese Ceramic Figures (1991), Views of the Pearl River Delta: Macau, Canton and Hong Kong (1996), Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics from the Peabody Essex Museum (2012, winner of the American Ceramic Circle Book of the Year Award 2013), and Chinese Porcelain in the Conde Collection (2016).

Part III Hybrid aesthetics

8. The global keyboard

Music, visual forms, and maritime trade in the early modern era



Victoria Lindsay Levine Abstract The circulation of musical culture reflects the broader economic, social, and political trends that emerged through maritime trade during the early modern era. Two examples of the connection between musical forms and early modern global encounter would be the global diffusion of specific musical instruments such as harpsichords and clavichords, and the spread of music notation in printed scores and manuscripts. Visual representations of musical performances also provide insight on the substance of such encounters. Focusing on the complex interfaces among the musical cultures of Europe, South Asia, and China, this analysis explores the introduction of keyboard instruments and keyboard music in the East as a result of maritime trade routes during the early modern era. Keywords: keyboard instruments; Jesuits in Asia; English East India Company; musical circulation; Mughal keyboard music; European transcription of Indian music

The contemporary scholar Joseph Roach, writing about seventeenth-century methods for signifying cultural others on the British stage and in British atlases (particularly those published by John Ogilby, 1600–1676), notes that parasols held by attendants over important figures signified “otherness.”1 He observes that, in these settings, the “global parasol” became a European visual trope for human cultural difference.2 It may be instructive to expand Roach’s analysis even further, and look at this trope from the other side of the world in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The Dutchman Joris van Spilbergen (1568–1620), arriving in Indonesia in the 1590s, noted that distinguished local figures were attended with parasols; the

1 The focus of this essay is a bit removed from my typical work. I am an erstwhile harpsichordist, but my primary research focus is the music of Native Americans. Here, I apply my familiarity with ethnomusicology to matters of global exchange. In this respect, I am playing a synthesizing role, and I wish to note at the outset my debt to the work of the scholars cited in my reference list. 2 Roach, “Global Parasol,” pp. 94–96. Bentley, Tamara H. (ed.), Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984677/ch08

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Fig. 8.1: Unknown artist, Dutchman Taking a Walk with his Javanese Slave Holding an Umbrella, and a Dog, Japan, late eighteenth century. Woodblock print, Nagasaki school, h. 32.2 × w. 22.9 cm.

Dutchman Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563–1611) noted the same of Indian dignitaries in the Indian coastal city of Goa. But Linschoten added that the Portuguese in India took up the practice of having umbrellas held over the well-to-do. Furthermore, Japanese artists of 1600 and beyond clearly showed Portuguese and Dutch maritime traders accompanied by attendants holding parasols (see Fig. 8.1 for one such image). In sum, though the practical employment of sun-shielding umbrellas may have started in India or Indonesia, the custom of being accompanied by

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attendants in this way was adopted by a variety of Europeans in Asia by the 1600s and 1700s. Roach’s observation that the parasol signified “otherness” to the British could well be mirrored by images produced in other countries, employing attendants with parasols to signify a mode of procession understood (for example in Japan) as theatrical and European. Building upon the range of interpretations accorded particular forms, this essay examines the movement of musical instruments through trade and cultural contact, as well as depictions of musical practices regarded as foreign. In my analysis, instruments can demonstrate the movement of cultural goods and forms from one place to another; they can also serve as a trope representing a particular cultural tradition. In some cases, they also provide opportunities for cultural collaboration. This essay offers examples of all three scenarios. I begin by touching upon some images of Indonesian instruments, as well as the broad circulation of the Central Asian ‘ūd, which transformed in the West into the lute. I then gravitate, in the body of my essay, to the global circulation of keyboard instruments in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.

Music, visual forms, and global trade The painting America (1666) depicts a cabinet of curiosities as imagined by the Flemish painter, Jan van Kessel the Elder (see Plate 17).3 Part of a series representing four continents, this composite painting, ostensibly representing the continent of America, includes sixteen small oil paintings on copper surrounding a large central painting, each discrete part enclosed within an ebony grid-work frame.4 Although purely two-dimensional, van Kessel’s painting alludes to the baroque wunderkammer or kunstkasten, a three-dimensional cabinet of curious objects. Typically, these cabinets were crammed with miniature paintings and specimens of exotic flora and fauna. They proclaimed the collector’s intellectual sophistication and material wealth, while simultaneously testifying to the global circulation of material culture during the early modern era.5 Benjamin Schmidt offers an insightful key to the jumbled assemblage portrayed in America:

3 Jan van Kessel (1626–1679), a leading artist in Antwerp during the second half of the seventeenth century, continued the artistic style of his grandfather, Jan Brueghel the Elder. In creating The Four Parts of the World, van Kessel transformed subjects previously depicted in print media in an innovative way. These works “elevate the status and value of van Kessel’s miniature paintings by literally extracting them from the context of furniture and transforming them into costly easel paintings that were admired in their own right and displayed on the walls of the most esteemed art collections in Antwerp and abroad” (Baadj, “World of Materials.”) 4 Baadj, “World of Materials,” pp. 203–12. 5 Baadj, “World of Materials,” p. 218.

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One of a number of Indians sits in the foreground, though she is coupled with a dark-skinned African clad in feathers. To the woman’s left stands a cherubic Indian boy, also decked in feathers and armed with an iconic bow and arrows; yet at her feet kneels another child—naked and less fair than the ‘Indian’—who plays with a set of Javanese gamelan gongs. The woman dancing through the door, meanwhile, wears East Indian costume, and to the right is a depiction of a Hindu suttee. Numerous other visual devices, in much the same manner, point to the subtle blending of races and the nonchalant bleeding of regions that occur throughout the panel. Next to the Javanese drummer boy struts an African crowned crane whose curving neck guides the viewer’s eye toward a perched macaw and toucan—two birds closely associated with Brazil. Between these glamorously tropical fowl, a whiskered opossum heads toward a sturdy anteater—we are, once again, in the landscape of America—yet the framed (and framing) insects and butterflies […] derive from both Old and New World habitats. The background statuary bracketing the open door features Tapuya Indians […] while the niches on the right display a pair of Brahmins. Between these stone figures, in the corner, rests a suit of Japanese armor whose sword points plainly toward a Brazilian agouti and a centrally placed armadillo.6

Van Kessel’s painting is not especially representative of the Americas, but it does illustrate heterogeneous European collecting practices in the early modern era, and the ways in which Europeans transformed their curiosity cabinets, as Bleichmar and Mancall point out, “into models of the larger world.”7 As an ethnomusicologist and a gamelan player, my eye is drawn to the Javanese gongs foregrounded in the painting (Plate 17). Bronze gongs circulated throughout Southeast Asia by the ninth century CE, when Arab, Persian, and Indian traders dominated the maritime trade routes connecting China, Indonesia, mainland Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and India.8 As the gongs moved, they transformed Asian soundscapes and acquired new layers of meaning. Gongs had commercial value because of the highly specialized knowledge and skilled craftsmanship required to produce them, but also because they symbolized status and prestige among Asian rulers.9 Under the Mataram Sultanate, for example, bronze gongs became associated with Javanese rulers because they were believed to possess powerful magical properties.10 Displaying and performing bronze gamelan instruments in court ceremonies enhanced a Sultan’s authority “by concentrating these items around him.”11 By the 6 Schmidt, “Mapping an Exotic World,” pp. 32–33. 7 Bleichmar and Mancall, “Introduction,” p. 3. 8 Nicolas, “Gongs, Bells and Cymbals”; G. Wade, “Early Age of Commerce.” 9 Nicolas, “Gongs, Bells and Cymbals,” p. 87. 10 Sumarsam, Gamelan, p. 7. 11 Sumarsam, Gamelan, p. 7.

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time van Kessel painted America in the seventeenth century, Dutch traders would have been familiar with Javanese gongs and their symbolic associations, although they must have been something of a rarity in Europe at the time. We can therefore understand why van Kessel included a set of Javanese gongs in his painting; a wealthy Dutch collector could demonstrate his taste in fine art, as well as his knowledge of the world, its inhabitants, and its musical cultures, by displaying this kind of painting at home. The Javanese gongs in America hint at the ways musical instruments constitute a kind of visual form that can illuminate some of the social, political, and economic dimensions of transoceanic encounters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Eliot Bates argues that as aspects of visual and material culture, musical instruments help to construct and shape social interactions.12 He explains that “[m]uch of the power, mystique, and allure of musical instruments […] is inextricable from the myriad situations where instruments are entangled in webs of complex relationships— between humans and objects, between humans and humans, and between objects and other objects. Even the same instrument, in different socio-historical contexts, may be implicated in categorically different kinds of relations.”13 Along with musical instruments, other visual forms of musical culture also enter the social networks that constitute and mediate human relations. These visual forms include transcriptions and arrangements of musical performances written in various notation systems, treatises on music, and depictions in diverse media of performers and performances. Musical instruments and related visual forms circulate widely among human societies, undergoing multiple transformations in their construction, decoration, playing technique, repertory, and meaning; sometimes they become iconic of larger cultural and historical trends. Like Javanese gongs, the‛ūd offers an important example of this process. The ‛ūd is a plucked stringed instrument with a short neck and pear-shaped sound box. Having originated in Central Asia, it became a highly revered musical instrument among Arabic, Turkish, and Persian peoples. Moving east through Asian trade routes it became the pipa (China), biwa (Japan), gambus (Malaysia and Indonesia), and sarod (India); moving west through Mediterranean trade routes it became the lute and theorbo in Europe. Having undergone centuries of reinterpretation, this chordophone stands as a visual and sonic emblem of more than 2,000 years of global trade and musical exchange. European keyboard instruments, to which I now shift my focus, provide another example of this process. As we shall see, during the period 1550 to 1800, keyboard instruments became a visual trope for European culture wherever they landed, but the instruments and their associated visual forms in fact accomplished different social, political, and economic goals in different places. 12 Bates, “Social Life,” p. 372. 13 Bates, “Social Life,” p. 364.

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Keyboard instruments and maritime trade Keyboard instruments circulated widely through maritime trade routes beginning in the sixteenth century, becoming icons of European musical identity, technology, and craftsmanship. Keyboard instruments of the early modern era included organs, clavichords, and harpsichords. The organ descends from a mechanical wind instrument known as a hydraulis, invented in Alexandria in the third century BCE; early versions of the organ were played in secular, court settings and only entered church use between 900 and 1200 CE. By the early modern era, they existed in several forms: portatives and positives, which were small, portable instruments with a range of about two octaves and one or two rows of pipes, and larger fixed instruments with a greater compass and multiple rows of pipes.14 A stringed keyboard instrument called the clavichord was well-established in Europe by the mid-fifteenth century and remained popular until the late eighteenth century. Clavichords, which originated as mechanical monochords, have a rectangular wooden case about 4 feet wide and 2 feet deep. The cases of early instruments were often decorated lavishly and the inside of the lid could feature a painting (see Fig. 8.2 for an example). They generally have a range of about three octaves; the strings run parallel to the keyboard and are struck from below with brass wedges called tangents. The clavichord’s sound is too soft for performance in large rooms or with other instruments, and it is therefore intended for personal and essentially private musical expression. The harpsichord, another stringed keyboard instrument, probably originated in the fifteenth century as a mechanized psaltery. The instrument remained popular through the eighteenth century. Harpsichord strings are plucked by plectra attached to wooden jacks that rise to pluck the string when a key is depressed. Harpsichords appeared in three forms: harpsichords proper, virginals, and spinets. Harpsichords proper resemble grand pianos but are lighter, narrower, and more angular; they may have one, two, or three keyboards, called manuals. Each manual may have one or two sets of strings, allowing the instrument to produce different timbres. Virginals (also called a pair of virginals) are smaller and rectangular in form; spinets are wing-shaped. Both virginals and spinets are usually single-manual.15 Harpsichords and clavichords fell out of favor by the early nineteenth century, undergoing revival 100 years later. But in the early modern era, all three kinds of keyboard instruments—organs, clavichords, and harpsichords— were circulating through maritime trade, becoming one of the most visible aspects of European musical culture at the time.

14 Owen et al., “Organ.” 15 For additional information on harpsichords and clavichords see Russell, Harpsichord and Clavichord; and Schott, Playing the Harpsichord.

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Fig. 8.2: Unknown artist, clavichord, Italy, with painting on inside of clavichord lid of the battle of Lepanto, c. 1571. Museum de la Musique, Paris.

Keyboard instruments began to play a role in European diplomacy as early as 757 CE, when a hydraulis, a precursor to the organ, was given as a gift of state to Pepin, the king of the Franks by the imperial court of Constantinople.16 An organ also appears to have been sent by an Arab ruler to the emperor of China as early as the thirteenth century.17 Thus when Europeans sought to establish missions and trading stations abroad during the early modern era, they continued a tradition of presenting keyboard instruments as gifts to open negotiations with the ruler whose favor they sought. Geoffrey Hindley writes that “western technology and the West’s peculiar tradition of classical music are a symbiotic pair, released in the human psyche by a cultural transformation heralded by the introduction of the organ into Western Europe in the tenth century. […] The linkage of music and mechanism, unimagined elsewhere, became part and parcel of the western European experience.”18 Ian Woodfield further explains that in choosing suitable presentation gifts, European missionaries and merchants had to strike a balance between the need for goods that displayed the best aspects of European artistry, craftsmanship and mechanical ingenuity and the need to keep costs to a reasonable level. The musical gift which most closely matched these requirements was a keyboard instrument of some kind: a harpsichord, for instance, could be painted attractively 16 Woodfield, “Keyboard Recital in Oriental Diplomacy,” p. 34; Hindley, “Keyboards, Crankshafts and Communication,” p. 173. 17 Woodfield, “Keyboard Recital in Oriental Diplomacy,” p. 34. 18 Hindley, “Keyboards, Crankshafts and Communication,” p. 167.

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and displayed as an objet d’art; with its method of sound reproduction, it could also be presented as a mechanical device; it was certain to be regarded as a novelty; and most important of all, the costs of its manufacture and transportation and the wages of the single musician hired to accompany it would not be prohibitive.19

Thus, in the sixteenth century, Portuguese traders began to take keyboard instruments as presentation gifts to Africa and India, and Queen Elizabeth I is said to have sent an organ to the Sultan of Turkey in 1598.20 The Spaniard Francis Xavier, who co-founded the Society of Jesus, brought the first stringed keyboard instrument to Japan in 1551.21 He presented the instrument to the daimyo Ōuchi Yoshitaka, among other gifts, to obtain permission to open Jesuit missions in Yoshitaka’s lands. Yoshitaka’s biographer described the gift as “a musical instrument producing the go-chōsi and the jūni-chōsi quite correctly but in a different way than plucking the thirteen-stringed koto.”22 It is unclear whether the instrument was a clavichord or harpsichord, because the Spanish word clavicordio referred to either clavichords, harpsichords, or spinets at the time. Eta Harich-Schneider suggests it was most likely a spinet because its sound is louder than that of a clavichord, and the instrument was used to accompany a mass Father Xavier celebrated before he left Japan.23 Portuguese traders had already introduced organs and other European instruments to the Japanese prior to Father Xavier’s arrival. By 1557, organs were used to accompany masses in Japan and some Japanese musicians learned to play organs and other keyboard instruments. Within about twenty years, several Catholic churches in Japan had acquired organs.24 Organs were built in Japan between 1606 and 1613;25 these were most likely portable bamboo organs similar to those made at Catholic missions in other parts of the world, such as Latin America.26 Some European traders and missionaries demonstrated reciprocal interest in Japanese music. A sixteenth-century painting depicts a Portuguese ship with a sailor on-board playing a syamisen (plucked lute). The Portuguese missionary Father Lourenço Mexia learned to play the biwa, and two other Portuguese missionaries wrote treatises about Japanese life and customs, providing information on Japanese music and musical instruments.27 Four Japanese men, accompanied by a church official, visited Europe between 1584 and 1585; while in Spain, they received the gift of a valuable harpsichord, which they took back to Japan. The men had already learned how 19 Woodfield, “Keyboard Recital in Oriental Diplomacy,” p. 33. 20 Kraus, Pianos and Politics in China, p. 4. 21 Harich-Schneider, History of Japanese Music, p. 448. 22 Harich-Schneider, History of Japanese Music, p. 448. 23 Harich-Schneider, History of Japanese Music, p. 448. 24 Harich-Schneider, History of Japanese Music, pp. 450, 457. 25 Malm, “Music Cultures of Momoyama Japan,” p. 174. 26 Harich-Schneider, History of Japanese Music, p. 474. 27 Harich-Schneider, History of Japanese Music, pp. 476, 458, 477–79.

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to play keyboard instruments before their trip to Europe, and while there they met several composers and attended concerts.28 Beginning in the 1630s, when the Iberian Catholics were expelled and the Japanese period of limited trade engagement began, European music ceased to be performed for the most part until its reintroduction during the Meiji Restoration. Beyond serving as gifts presented by missionaries and traders to foreign rulers, settler-colonists also took keyboard instruments and printed or manuscript music scores when they settled abroad. Plate 11 is a Spanish colonial painting of a woman with a single-manual harpsichord. As was typical in European portraiture at the time, the harpsichordist appears in three-quarter view. Donna Pierce explains, This portrait depicts a young Mexican woman, probably from Mexico City, during the early 1700s. She wears a powdered wig and a spectacular red dress of embroidered silk imported either from China on the famous Manila galleon ships used in the Asian trade across the Pacific, or from Spain, possibly Valencia, known for its luxurious silk production in the eighteenth century. She stands in front of a harpsichord and points to a page of sheet music, indicating that she was a musician, and possibly a composer herself. Scholars in Mexico suspect the sheet music may be a composition written specifically for the Cathedral of Mexico.29

The woman also wears what must have been costly, seven-strand pearl bracelets on her wrists and a bejeweled golden necklace and earrings; she carries a fine, lacetrimmed handkerchief and what appears to be an ivory fan in her right hand. Thus the painting represents the woman’s wealth, social status, and musical accomplishments. It also suggests the desire among the elite in New Spain to own global trade goods, and the establishment and continuation of European cultural life abroad. By the late eighteenth century, keyboard instruments were known in urban centers around the world. From a musicological perspective, then, the questions raised by the contributors to this volume may be reframed as follows. How did keyboard instruments, music, and performance contexts change through global circulation? What notable changes in musical thought occurred through the movement of keyboard instruments? How did the meanings of keyboard instruments shift with geographic movement? What social, political, and economic networks were activated through the circulation of keyboard instruments? I attempt to address these questions through a comparison of the circulation of organs, clavichords, and harpsichords, with their associated visual forms, from Europe to China and India and back again.

28 Harich-Schneider, History of Japanese Music, pp. 463–66. 29 Pierce, “Young Woman with a Harpsichord.”

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Early keyboard music in China Jesuit missionaries introduced keyboard instruments and music to the Chinese imperial family beginning in the early seventeenth century. Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) traveled to China during the latter part of the Ming dynasty to request permission to open a mission, presenting a clavichord to the Emperor Wanli in 1601. The emperor called the clavichord xiqin,30 which translates as “Western qin.”31 The qin is a seven-string, plucked board zither historically played by elite men of the upper classes. As a symbol of the Chinese literati, the qin is associated with quiet music played for personal cultivation in private settings, and in this way it resembles the clavichord. After emperor Wanli accepted the gift, he ordered four musicians from the imperial palace to learn to play it. The men each received a daily lesson from Ricci’s companion, Father Diego Pantoja, for a period of one month.32 As a method of introducing the Chinese to Christianity, Ricci wrote “Eight Songs for Western Qin.” Ricci himself was not a musician, and therefore the music for these songs was probably borrowed from the pieces in a collection of Roman laudi and madrigali spirituali that was among the volumes available in the library […] [used] by the Italian and French Jesuits. The Chinese words were underlain on pre-existing music. This procedure known as paraphrase, extremely widespread both in China and Italy in the sixteenth century, cannot have surprised either the missionaries or their well-educated interlocutors.33

Among other missionary-musicians who served the Ming court was Father Johann Adam Schall von Bell (1591–1666). Emperor Chongzhen asked Schall to restore the clavichord Ricci had brought some four decades earlier, and to interpret the Latin inscription on the name batten. Joyce Lindorff explains that Schall “returned the tuned, repaired clavichord with a psalm melody to practise, as well as a keyboard instruction book he had written out in Chinese.”34 Later missionary-musicians serving the Qing court included Father Teodorico Pedrini (1670–1746) and Father Joseph-Marie Amiot (1718–1793). Pedrini, who arrived in Beijing in 1711, was a composer, harpsichordist, and harpsichord builder. He taught emperor Kangxi’s sons to play keyboard instruments and also taught them European 30 Lindorff, “Missionaries, Keyboards, and Musical Exchange,” p. 405. 31 Pers. commun., Tamara H. Bentley, 9 July 2014. 32 Lindorff, “Missionaries, Keyboards, and Musical Exchange,” p. 405. 33 Frisch and Picard, Chine, p. 9. The French ensemble, XVIII-21 Musique des Lumières, recorded a reconstruction of Ricci’s lyrics set to laudi collected in 1599 by Giovenale Ancina and published in Rome (Frisch and Picard, Chine, p. 9; Lindorff, “Sweet Sound of Cultures Clashing,” p. 539). The reconstruction features a baritone accompanied by a harpsichord and viola da gamba. 34 Lindorff, “Missionaries, Keyboards, and Musical Exchange,” p. 406.

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music theory. He completed a treatise in Chinese on Western music theory begun by another missionary, and he tuned all of the harpsichords and clavichords in the emperor’s collection, which was extensive by this time.35 Pedrini composed twelve sonatas for violin, harpsichord, and bass during his service in China; the sonatas may have been used for the instruction of Kangxi’s sons, as a presentation manuscript for the emperor, or for performance by other missionaries.36 Lindorff points out that the sonatas “are the only known original compositions left by a musician priest who lived in China during this period.”37 Father Joseph-Marie Amiot (1718–1793) was among the last missionary-harpsichordists in Beijing. He published a treatise on Chinese music that was widely read in Europe and played an important role in developing European scholarship on Chinese music.38 The treatise included transcriptions of Chinese melodies in European staff notation.39 Chinese musicians and audiences belonging to certain social strata therefore had opportunities to see, hear, study, and perform European music and musical instruments during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The emperor Kangxi himself was known to play the melody of a Chinese song, “Pu’an Zhou” (The incantation of Pu’an), on the harpsichord. The melody is attributed to the Buddhist meditation master Pu’an,40 and may have been transcribed in European staff notation by the missionary-musician, Father Tómas Pereira (1645–1708).41 Other Chinese performers also created music in European genres. For example, a Chinese convert to Christianity, the painter and poet Wu Li or Yushan (1632–1718), became a priest in 1688.42 Wu Li performed both Chinese and European music on the qin; in 1710, he wrote the words for what are thought to be the earliest sung mass and Christian hymns written in the Chinese language by a Chinese lyricist.43 The music to which his words were set would have come from extant sources.44 Other than the missionaries in China, Europeans in the early modern era had little opportunity to hear Chinese music, aside from renditions of Amiot’s transcriptions. Yet Chinese visual forms and aesthetics inspired the application of chinoiserie decoration to the exterior of harpsichord cases by the late seventeenth century, reflecting 35 Lindorff, “Missionaries, Keyboards, and Musical Exchange,” p. 409. 36 Lindorff, “Missionaries, Keyboards, and Musical Exchange,” p. 409. 37 Lindorff, “Missionaries, Keyboards, and Musical Exchange,” p. 409. An audio-recording of Pedrini’s sonatas demonstrates that they represent the musical style of the European baroque (Frisch, Teodorico Pedrini). 38 Lindorff, “Missionaries, Keyboards, and Musical Exchange,” p. 410. 39 An audio-recording of the transcriptions may be heard on Frisch, Teodorico Pedrini. 40 Frisch and Picard, Chine, p. 21. 41 Lindorff, “Missionaries, Keyboards, and Musical Exchange,” p. 408. The piece was reconstructed and recorded from a qin tablature made by Zhang Dexin in 1592 in an arrangement for soprano, zheng (zither), sheng (mouth organ), and pipa (pear-shaped plucked lute) (Frisch and Picard, Chine). 42 Frisch and Picard, Vêpres à la Vierge en Chine, p. 10. 43 Frisch and Picard, Vêpres à la Vierge, p. 10. 44 An audio-recording of a reconstructed performance of this piece arranged for trombone, bass trombone, cornet, harpsichord, wood block, and drum is available on Frisch and Picard, Vêpres à la Vierge.

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widespread European interest in Asian decorative trade goods. Perhaps the most famous chinoiserie instrument is the double-manual harpsichord built in Paris by Jean-Antoine Vaudry in 1681 (Fig. 8.3). The following information on the Vaudry harpsichord comes from the online collection guide for the Victoria and Albert Museum, which preserves the instrument. The Vaudry features a finely japanned [walnut] case and framed stand of seven spiral-turned legs […] decorated with vaguely chinoiserie scenes and figures in gold, silver and bronze tones [with some color] on a black ground based on engravings by Jacques Stella [published in Paris in 1667]. The crudely executed red and gold ornamentation inside the [lid] is said to have been added to match the decorative colour scheme of the room in the Chȃteau de Savigny-les-Beaune, where the harpsichord was housed until shortly before it was acquired by the Museum.45

The soundboard is painted with flowers, in the style of Flemish harpsichords of the period. The painted figures on the case represent European peasants, including two ladies on a swing surrounded by attendants in various poses. However, pagodas, exotic birds, and a bridge over a flowing stream evoke a Chinese landscape. With its japanned case and chinoiserie decoration, the Vaudry harpsichord represents a mode of import substitution; the instrument’s case imitates Asian lacquerware, which was in high demand at the time and could be reproduced domestically. The music played on chinoiserie harpsichords was European, but as visual forms, they copied coveted Asian imports. Another chinoiserie harpsichord, made c. 1702 by the German builder Michael Mietke (c. 1656/1671–1719), features paintings of Chinese musicians and dancers (Fig. 8.4). Known as “The White Mietke,” the instrument belonged to Sophie Charlotte, queen of Prussia, who was herself a harpsichordist.46 The harpsichord’s case was decorated by Gérard Dagly. The inside of the lid depicts bronze vessels, jade objects, and a crackleware porcelain bowl, each with a small bouquet of flowers, probably selected from the “Hundred Antiquities.” The lower border of the case features blue and red flowers interspersed with greenery and scrollwork. The painting on the body of the instrument case shows Chinese women in a scholar’s garden, although a group of men toward the case’s tail appears ready to enter the garden gate.47 A detail of the painting on the keyboard block of the instrument’s bent side features six richly dressed professional female musicians and dancers performing in the garden (Plate 18). The two women on the left play a zheng (fifteen-string plucked 45 The information was found at the Victoria and Albert Museum webpage, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/ item/O71019/harpsichord-vaudry-jean-antoine (accessed 8 June 2017). See also Wagner et al., Sophie Charlotte. 46 Krickeberg, “Mietke.” 47 Special thanks to Tamara Bentley for helping me “read” the chinoiserie harpsichords, paintings with harpsichords, and title page of Hindoostanie Airs as visual forms.

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Fig. 8.3: Jean-Antoine Vaudry (French, c. 1680–1750) and Vaudry family, harpsichord, 1681. Painting on Japanned walnut case. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

board zither) and a dizi (transverse bamboo flute), while the two on the right play a sheng (mouth-blown free reed instrument) and small hand cymbals. The two dancers in the center accentuate their graceful hand movements with their long, flowing sleeves. The idyllic scene suggests that even if most Europeans had no idea of how Chinese music actually sounded, they valued the idea of it as depicted in Chinese trade goods. Most importantly, the White Mietke represents another mode of import substitution, in this case imitating Chinese porcelain rather than lacquerware. The keyboard instruments imported to China by Jesuit missionaries, the theoretical treatises and transcriptions of Chinese music they published, and the chinoiserie harpsichords produced in Europe all contribute to an understanding of the social, political, and economic dimensions of transoceanic exchange between Europe and China in the early modern era. From social and political perspectives, the role of the Church in gifting keyboard instruments to Chinese imperial rulers as a means of obtaining protection reflects the drive to proselytize on a global scale. The collection of information on Chinese knowledge, life, and customs by Jesuit missionaries enabled them to provide guidance to those who might follow, and to garner financial support in Europe for their work abroad. The interest shown by Chinese

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Fig. 8.4: Michael Mietke (German, c. 1656/1671–1719) and Gérard Dagly (French, 1660–1715), harpsichord, 1702– 4. Painting on white lacquered case. Schloss Charlottenberg, Berlin.

rulers in European musical instruments, performance practices, and theory reflects a reciprocal desire to acquire knowledge of European technology and culture. Qing dynasty rulers maintained positive attitudes toward foreign trade in the early modern era, and viewed “China and the outside world as closely intertwined.”48 These interactions appear to have belonged to an exclusively male domain of learning, cultivated music, and scientific exchange, since both the missionaries and members 48 Zhao, Qing Opening to the Ocean, p. 1.

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of the imperial court were men. By contrast, the chinoiserie harpsichords produced in Europe belonged to a largely female domain of amateur musicianship, domestic musical performance, and interior decoration. Owning a chinoiserie harpsichord must have been an emblem of fashion, taste, and wealth, and the ability to play the instrument further demonstrated female accomplishment and elevated social status. The role of import substitution in the production of chinoiserie harpsichords suggests something of the economic dimensions of the process. Chinoiserie harpsichords also signified European modernity and an awareness of the wider world.49 The circulation of keyboard instruments in India took parallel routes initially, but changed course in striking ways by the late eighteenth century.

Early keyboard music in India As in China, missionaries were the first Europeans to bring keyboard instruments to South Asia as part of their efforts to proselytize. The first keyboard instrument to arrive was an organ brought in 1500 by Portuguese missionaries who accompanied Pedro Alvares Cabral on his voyage to establish trade with South Asia.50 The Portuguese continued to present organs to South Asian rulers as part of diplomacy throughout the sixteenth century, and in 1579, when the Mughal emperor Akbar summoned Portuguese missionaries to his court, they presented him with an organ as one of their gifts.51 According to Akbar’s chronicler, the emperor liked the gift, and organs were depicted subsequently in some Mughal illuminated manuscripts. Plate 19, painted by Madhu Khanazad in c. 1595, depicts Plato charming the wild beasts by playing an organ. Bonnie Wade explains that “Akbar heard of ‘novelties’ that Europeans had brought with them to India and in 1578 dispatched an agent to Goa expressly to undertake a close investigation of the arts and industries there and, if possible, to purchase examples.”52 Akbar’s agent did purchase an organ, which he took back to the Mughal court along with the European missionary-musicians, but Plate 19 most likely depicts a different instrument brought to Akbar from Italy.53 “The spirit of this painting remains puzzling to me,” Wade comments. Some details lead one to wonder whether a compliment to anyone was intended. On one of the “Italian” panels of the organ, the painting of a man with a tipped derby hat, looking like a sad sack, inserts an element of humor (or sarcasm?) to the scene. Most striking, however, are the animals. They are badly drawn and look 49 Kraus, Pianos and Politics in China, p. 3. 50 Woodfield, “Keyboard Recital in Oriental Diplomacy,” p. 34. 51 Woodfield, “Keyboard Recital in Oriental Diplomacy,” p. 46. 52 B. Wade, Imaging Sound, p. 153. 53 B. Wade, Imaging Sound, p. 153.

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positively dead. Akbar’s painters were masters at illustrating animals, and these creatures would surely not have qualified as well-drawn unless there was some real intent to the rendition. Taken at face value visually, the implication could be that the sound of the organ has deadened the animals beyond just a swoon.54

Although Akbar may have liked the sound of the organ, maybe Khanazad did not. Akbar’s successor, Jahangir, also appreciated the organ’s sound, and took a Portuguese organist into his service.55 Since they knew that Jahangir enjoyed music and European novelties, representatives of the British East India Company presented him with a virginals in 1612. A harpsichordist named Lancelot Canning accompanied the English delegation to Agra, where he played the virginals for Jahangir, who apparently lost interest in the instrument within a few weeks.56 Envoys of the British East India Company continued to present Jahangir with European musical instruments,57 without stimulating the same level of interest or inclination to learn how to play them as had been demonstrated by the Chinese emperors. Likewise, there is little evidence that Europeans developed much interest in learning about South Asian music during the seventeenth century. The situation changed dramatically in the second part of the eighteenth century, when keyboard instruments became central to the lives of families associated with the British East India Company in South Asia. Robert, Lord Clive went to India in 1764 to serve as the governor of Bengal; he brought along musicians and musical instruments, including at least one harpsichord, and soon thereafter regular shipments to India of harpsichords, fortepianos, and organs commenced.58 Paintings, engravings, and drawings from the period depict musical gatherings in Lucknow and Calcutta, including family recitals as well as music parties to which both Indians and English guests were invited. Figure 8.5 is a hand-colored engraving published c. 1832 in London. The picture is based on a drawing by Sophie Charlotte Belnos (1795–1865), engraved by Alexandre-Marie Colin 54 B. Wade, Imaging Sound, pp. 153–54. 55 Woodfield, “Keyboard Recital in Oriental Diplomacy,” p. 48. 56 Woodfield, “Keyboard Recital in Oriental Diplomacy,” p. 52. 57 Indian rulers also collected musical automata during the early modern era. Perhaps the most famous of these is “Tipu’s Tiger,” a mechanical organ housed inside a life-size painted wooden sculpture of a tiger mauling a European. Tipu was Sultan of Mysore from 1782 until 1799. The wooden sculpture was most likely made by an Indian artisan, whereas a French artisan in Tipu’s employ probably made the inner mechanism. Veronica Murphy explains that “[c]oncealed in the bodywork is a mechanical pipe-organ with several parts, all operated simultaneously by a crank-handle emerging from the tiger’s shoulder. Inside the tiger and the man are weighted bellows with pipes attached. Turning the handle pumps the bellows and controls the airflow to simulate the growls of the tiger and cries of the victim […] Another pair of bellows, linked to the same handle, supplies wind for a miniature organ of 18 pipes built into the tiger, with stops under the tail. Its structure is like that of European mechanical organs, but adapted for hand operation by a set of ivory button keys reached through a flap in the animal’s side” (Murphy, “Tipu’s Tiger”). 58 Myers, “India,” p. 256.

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and printed by Jean-Jacques Belnos, who was a lithographer in India.59 The engraving depicts a nautch, where an English or Indian patron hired a troupe of professional musicians then known as a “nautch set” to perform at a music party. A contemporary observer wrote the following description of a nautch: On entering the magnificent saloon, the eye is dazzled by a blaze of lights from splendid lusters, triple wall shades, chandle brass, etc., superb pier glasses, sofas, chairs, Turkey carpets, etc., adorn the splendid hall: these combined with the sounds of different kinds of music, both European and Indian, played at the same time in different apartments; the noise of native tom-toms from another part of the house; the hum of human voices, the glittering dresses of the dancing girls, their slow and graceful movement; the rich dresses of the Rajah and his equally opulent Indian guests; the gay circle of European ladies and gentlemen, and the delicious scent of attar of roses and sandal which perfumes the saloon, strikes the stranger with amazement; but he fancies himself transported to some enchanted region and the whole scene before him is but a fairy vision.60

In Figure 8.5 the nautchni, a female singer, is accompanied by a male sarangi (bowed lute) player; the other male accompanists seated behind the singer play two kinds of long-necked plucked lutes and a tabla (pair of drums). The English ladies seated to the left of the singer are elaborately dressed and coiffed in the European fashion of the day, as are the two English gentlemen standing behind them. The clothing of the well-dressed Indian gentlemen on the far left suggests their elite status. The engraving conveys a sense of conviviality in social relations between upper-class Indians and English employees of the East Indian Company in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, the musicians are portrayed as occupying a lower social status because the elites tower above them looking down instead of sitting at the same level. In addition, the fact that the elite gentlemen and the English ladies wear shoes indoors, while the lower-status instrumentalists are barefoot, reflects the class and ethnic distinctions practiced among Anglo-Indians at the time. A conversation piece painted by Johan Zoffany in 1786 shows William Blair, a colonel in the East India Company, with his wife and daughters enjoying music at their home in India (Plate 20). English families were advised against taking heavy or fragile furniture on the voyage to India,61 but this and similar paintings suggest that many ignored the advice. Here, the elder daughter is playing a square fortepiano;62 an open music book apparently brought or imported from England rests on the stand, while 59 This information was found at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Twenty-four_plates_by_S._C._ Belnos_018.jpg (accessed 8 June 2017). 60 Chapman, “Oriental Miscellany,” p. 25. 61 MacMillan, Women of the Raj, p. 70. 62 Myers, “India,” p. 257.

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Fig. 8.5: Mrs. S.C. Belnos, Twenty Four Plates Illustrative of Hindoo and European Manners in Bengal, engraving by A. Colin, hand-colored. Reprint. Bengal (India): Riddhi-India, 1979, pl. 18 of 24.

another music book sits open atop the instrument to the player’s left. The younger daughter feeds or pets a cat held by a young Indian servant. Similar conversation pieces depicting domestic musical performances in India provide little clue as to geographic location. This painting, however, reveals the Indian setting in two ways. First and most obvious is the servant, whose placement to the far right and slightly behind the younger daughter suggest her lower status in the grouping. In addition, her head is covered, her feet are bare, and her simple clothing appears to be made of cotton homespun compared to the expensive, voluminous silks and satins worn by the Blair ladies. Second, three paintings of South Asian scenes hang on the wall behind the family. The painting on the far left depicts preparations for a suttee (widow burning), whereas the one on the far right shows a charak puja (a sacred ritual in which a man is suspended from wire inserted between his shoulder blades).63 The center painting is a landscape featuring a Mughal tower atop a hill in the background, and an elephant with laborers working in the foreground. The painting suggests that British culture—and music—had landed in India.64 Indian music contributed a vivid, aural component to British social life in South Asia. In the 1780s, some colonists developed an intense interest in local music, resulting in the creation of a genre known as “Hindoostanie airs,” which Woodfield defines 63 The information comes from https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/zoffany-colonel-blair-with-hisfamily-and-an-indian-ayah-t12610 (accessed 3 July 2014). 64 Chapman, “Oriental Miscellany,” p. 24.

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as “short pieces derived from original Indian tunes and arranged in a European idiom.”65 The pieces “functioned as exotic mementoes of a culture far from home; but they also represented the first serious attempts to transcribe Indian music.”66 British residents of Benares or Lucknow invited Indian performers to their homes, where transcriptions could be made from live performance.67 A professional European musician could be hired to write the Indian melodies in staff notation, but some accomplished amateurs transcribed the music themselves. British song collectors worked with a munshi (clerk or secretary) and a linguist to transcribe song lyrics and translate them into English. Once the melody had been transcribed, a bass line was added and the song was adapted to the conventions of late eighteenth-century European music.68 Hindoostanie airs could then be performed at recitals and music parties in Calcutta as well as in England. At the center of the development of Hindoostanie airs were three individuals based in Calcutta: Margaret Fowke, a harpsichordist whose father was a diamond merchant; Sophia Plowden, a singer whose husband worked for the East India Company; and William Hamilton Bird, a conductor and concert promoter.69 Perhaps Fowke and Plowden, who were friends, first heard Indian music at nautch parties.70 As a harpsichordist, Fowke had a keen interest in the music of contemporary composers of the day, including Johann Christian Bach and Franz Joseph Haydn.71 Fowke transcribed and most likely performed arrangements of Indian songs herself; her brother Francis published a treatise on the vina (a plucked lute) in Asiatick Researches (1788), produced by the Asiatick Society founded by Sir William Jones in 1784. Plowden collected 77 Indian songs transcribed and arranged by John Braganza, illustrated with paintings of Indian musicians (the unpublished manuscript is preserved at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge). In 1789, Bird produced a collection of Indian music transcribed in staff notation and arranged for performance on the harpsichord and other European instruments. Published initially by subscription in Calcutta, Bird’s Oriental Miscellany contained thirty Hindoostanie airs.72 Plowden subscribed to The Oriental Miscellany and may have contributed to it.73 She is known to have performed some of 65 Woodfield, “Collecting Indian Songs,” p. 73. 66 Farrell, Indian Music and the West, p. 28. 67 Woodfield, “Collecting Indian Songs,” p. 74. 68 Woodfield, “Collecting Indian Songs,” p. 85. 69 Chapman, “Oriental Miscellany,” p. 25. 70 Additional information on Fowke, Plowden, and other participants in the musical life of Anglo-Indians appears in Woodfield, Music of the Raj; see also Clayton and Zon, eds., Music and Orientalism. 71 Chapman, “Oriental Miscellany,” p. 27. 72 Chapman, “Oriental Miscellany,” p. 25. A harpsichord performance of The Oriental Miscellany is available on Chapman, Oriental Miscellany. A song from Plowden’s collection, titled “Rektah,” has been reconstructed by Lux Musica Ensemble in an instrumental arrangement for flute, harpsichord, and viola da gamba (Phillips and Burman-Hall, Raga and Raj). 73 Chapman, “Oriental Miscellany,” p. 27.

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these songs at music parties, sometimes masquerading as a nautch.74 The cover art for The Oriental Miscellany combines classical motifs in the laurel garland and wreath at the top and bottom, with what appears to be an Indian botanical motif on either side (see Fig. 8.6). Thus the cover art, synthesizing European and South Asian visual imagery, mirrors the cross-cultural synthesis attempted within the musical arrangements. The circulation of keyboard instruments and related visual forms between Europe and India was similar in many ways to the parallel process in China. The early gifts made by missionaries of keyboard instruments to South Asian rulers in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries reflect the project of global proselytizing. Interest shown by some Mughal emperors likewise indicates reciprocal curiosity about European technology and cultural practices. As the seventeenth century unfolded, however, interest in European music and musical instruments appears to have waned among South Asian rulers. Although Europeans valued South Asian cloth and other trade goods, those textile design elements did not transfer to the decoration of keyboard instruments. British colonizers maintained their own separate musical culture in India during the second half of the eighteenth century, while also learning about and, to some degree, participating in Indian music through their research, transcriptions, and arrangements. Women were the main driving force here, and the descriptive letters they sent to their families at home, as well as paintings of Indian musical life and the transcriptions and arrangements they helped produce and perform, all played a role in defining European concepts of Indian music. Thus the social and political dimensions of transoceanic trade are reflected more strongly than economic trends in the circulation of keyboard music between India and Europe.

Conclusions In our attempt to understand maritime trade in the early modern era, musical instruments and related visual forms offer one kind of tangible evidence of how Europeans ­ uropean represented themselves to other peoples, how other peoples reacted to E musical imports, and how global understandings of music and musical identity were transformed. I have suggested that musical cultures in general, and keyboard music in particular, became the nexus of heterogeneous systems linking E ­ uropean musicians, instrument makers, composers, theorists, and connoisseurs with their ­counterparts in China, India, and other parts of the world. Like the Javanese gongs in van Kessel’s curiosity cabinet, keyboard instruments acquired new layers of meaning through global circulation. Just as Europeans used curiosity cabinets in the seventeenth century to model the larger world, so did they use what we might call musical curiosities—or the material aspects of diverse musical cultures—to model 74 Chapman, “Oriental Miscellany,” p. 27.

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the musical world. The occupation, gender, and individual or organizational motivation of those involved in the process of circulating musical instruments affected the nature and dynamics of the resulting exchange. Musical instruments, along with transcriptions, arrangements, treatises, and depictions of performance contexts, contributed to emerging European and Asian cultural identities in the early modern era and became part of the prehistory of music scholarship, especially the discipline of ethnomusicology. It is hard to know whether, or how, European keyboard instruments and ways of hearing music may have influenced Asian concepts and perceptions of music in the early modern era, but European ways of hearing—and their concepts and perceptions of music—would never be the same.75

Bibliography Baadj, Nadia. “A World of Materials in a Cabinet without Drawers: Reframing Jan van Kessel’s The Four Parts of the World.” In “Meaning in Materials, 1400–1800,” special issue of Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek/ Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 62 (2013): 202–37. Bates, Eliot. “The Social Life of Musical Instruments.” Ethnomusicology 56.3 (2012): 363–95. Bird, William Hamilton. The Oriental Miscellany; Beeing a Collection of the Most Favourite Airs of Hindoostan, Compiled and Adapted For the Harpsichord, &c. Calcutta: Cooper, 1789. Bleichmar, Daniela and Peter C. Mancall. “Introduction.” In Collecting across Cultures: Material Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlantic World, ed. Daniela Bleichmar and Peter C. Mancall, pp. 1–11. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Chapman, Jane. The Oriental Miscellany: Airs of Hindustan by William Hamilton Bird. SIGCD415. Perivale: Signum Classics, 2015. Chapman, Jane. “The Oriental Miscellany and the Hindustani Air: ‘Wild but Pleasing when Understood.’” Harpsichord and Fortepiano 17.2 (2013): 24–30. Clayton, Martin and Bennet Zon, eds. Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s–1940s: Portrayal of the East. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. Farrell, Gerry. Indian Music and the West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Frisch, Jean-Christophe. Teodorico Pedrini: Concert baroque à la Cité Interdite. CD AS 128609. France: Auvidis, 1996. Frisch, Jean-Christophe and François Picard. Chine: Jésuites et Courtisanes. CD 1984872. Paris: Buda Records, 1999. Frisch, Jean-Christophe and François Picard. Vêpres à la vierge en Chine. CD K 617. Paris: Disques Le Couvent St.-Ulrich Sarrebourg, 2003. Harich-Schneider, Eta. A History of Japanese Music. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. Hindley, Geoffrey. “Keyboards, Crankshafts and Communication: The Musical Mindset of Western Technology.” Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology 3 (1997): 167–80.

75 Acknowledgements: I dedicate this chapter in loving memory to my father, Lyle T. Lindsay (1922–2017), who helped me build a harpsichord, and to Eileen McCall Washington (1907–1994), who taught me to play it. I am deeply grateful to Colorado College for the Mellon Faculty/Student Collaborative Research Grant that supported this research. For their help and friendship during various phases of the project, I wish to thank research assistant Emily Kohut, music librarians David Dymek and Daryll Stevens, curator of visual resources Meghan Rubenstein, and art department administrative assistants Guyda Marr and Karen Britton. I would never have attempted such a project without the enthusiastic encouragement of Tamara Bentley; thank you, dear friend and colleague.

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Kraus, Richard Curt. Pianos and Politics in China: Middle-Class Ambitions and the Struggle over Western Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Krickeberg, Dieter. “Mietke.” Oxford Music Online: Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2007. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/abstract/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo9781561592630-e-0000043250 (accessed 2 June 2017). Lindorff, Joyce. “Missionaries, Keyboards, and Musical Exchange in the Ming and Qing Courts.” Early Music 32.3 (2004): 403–14. Lindorff, Joyce. “The Sweet Sound of Cultures Clashing.” Early Music 33.3 (2005): 538–39. MacMillan, Margaret. Women of the Raj. London: Thames & Hudson, 1996. Malm, William P. “Music Cultures of Momoyama Japan.” In Warlords, Artists, and Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century, ed. George Elison and Bardwell L. Smith, pp. 163–85. Honolulu: University Press of Hawai’i, 1981. Mulholland, James. Sounding Imperial: Poetic Voice and the Politics of Empire, 1730–1820. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. Myers, Minor, Jr. “India.” In The Harpsichord and Clavichord: An Encyclopedia, ed. Igor Kipnis, pp. 256–57. London: Routledge, 2007. Nicolas, Arsenio. “Gongs, Bells and Cymbals: The Archaeological Record in Maritime Asia from the Ninth to the Seventeenth Centuries.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 41 (2009): 62–93. Owen, Barbara, Peter Williams, and Stephen Bicknell. “Organ.” Oxford Music Online: Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2007. www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/ omo-9781561592630-e-0000044010 (accessed 17 June 2017). Phillips, Barry and Burman-Hall, Linda. Raga and Raj. CD EMWM 1011. Encinitas, CA: East Meets West Music, Inc., 2013. Pierce, Donna. “Young Woman with a Harpsichord, 1735–1750.” Denver Art Museum Online Collections, 2015. https://denverartmuseum.org/object/2014.209 (accessed 5 June 1017). Richards, Jeffrey. Imperialism and Music: Britain 1876–1953. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. Roach, Joseph. “The Global Parasol: Accessorizing the Four Corners of the World.” In The Global Eighteenth Century, ed. Felicity A. Nussbaum, pp. 93–106. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Russell, Raymond. The Harpsichord and Clavichord: An Introductory Study, 2nd edn., revised. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1973. Schmidt, Benjamin. “Mapping an Exotic World: The Global Project of Dutch Geography, circa 1700.” In The Global Eighteenth Century, ed. Felicity A. Nussbaum, pp. 21–37. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Schott, Howard. Playing the Harpsichord. London: Faber & Faber, 1971. Sumarsam. Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Victoria and Albert Museum. “Tipu’s Tiger.” https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/tipus-tiger (accessed 15 July 2014). Wade, Bonnie C. Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Wade, Geoff. “An Early Age of Commerce in Southeast Asia, 900–1300 C.E.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40.2 (2009): 221–65. Wagner, Gunther, Martin Kirnbauer, and Dieter Krickeberg. Sophie Charlotte und die Musik in Leitzenburg. Berlin: Staatliches Institute für Musikforschung, 1987. Woodfield, Ian. “The Keyboard Recital in Oriental Diplomacy, 1520–1620.” Journal of the Royal Music Association 115.1 (1990): 33–63. Woodfield, Ian. “Collecting Indian Songs in Late 18th-Century Lucknow: Problems of Transcription.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 3 (1994): 73–88. Woodfield, Ian. Music of the Raj: A Social and Economic History of Music in Late Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Indian Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Zhao, Gang. The Qing Opening to the Ocean: Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684–1757. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013.

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About the author Victoria Lindsay Levine is Professor of Music at Colorado College, located on traditional lands of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples. An ethnomusicologist, she has produced numerous publications, including Choctaw Music and Dance (with James Howard, 1990), Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notations, and Arrangements (2002), This Thing Called Music: Essays in Honor of Bruno Nettl (co-edited with Philip V. Bohlman, 2015), and Music and Modernity among First Peoples of North America (co-edited with Dylan Robinson, 2019). Her research interests include music in Indigenous ceremonial life, musical revitalization, historical ethnomusicology, and the circulation of music along trade routes. Levine has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Society for Ethnomusicology, among others.

9. Barbarian tropes framed anew

Three Qing dynasty Chinese lacquer screens of Europeans hunting



Tamara H. Bentley Abstract This essay focuses on three Qing dynasty Chinese incised lacquer screens ­picturing Europeans hunting and parading. Overall, the organization of these ­compositions, and the treatment of the Europeans, is derived from earlier Japanese ­Nanban ­imagery of 1580 to 1640 showing the Portuguese in Japan. The latter two Chinese screens ­considered here clearly readapt such imagery in order to depict Dutch ­figures. The gestures of hunting on horseback, meanwhile, are tied to earlier C ­ hinese and ­Japanese images of Mongols hunting. Considering these layered references, and the mix-and-match quality of lacquer screen production, the essay argues for a broad range of coexisting associations, including humor, fear of “­uncivilized” behavior, and the assertion of European political subservience by way of pictured ­tribute ­parades. Keywords: Chinese barbarian imagery; Mongol hunt imagery; Nanban art; Chinese kuancai folding screens; tribute imagery; lacquer screens in Europe

Beginning in the sixteenth century, we have records of Chinese folding screens produced in the kuancai incised lacquer technique.1 Cut into a surface of pigmented lacquer (usually black or brown) with fillers below, the recessed forms were then colorfully pigmented to create pictorial scenes.2 By the late Ming period (1573–1644 CE), such objects had become impressive gifts for ceremonial occasions within China. A large number of Chinese lacquer screens meant to honor the Chinese recipient pictured a wealthy household from above the walls of the estate, enhanced by 1 Joan Hornby notes that the Xiushi lu text (Records for lacquer decoration) from the Ming dynasty Longqing period (1567–72) records the technique for the first time. See Hornby, Chinese Lacquerware, p. 58. As Hornby notes, this text states kuancai works were made in Wenzhou in Zhejiang province. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century kuancai screens with inscriptions refer to additional places of manufacture, including Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, and Fujian province. 2 This method is distinct from the various techniques used in Japanese lacquer production. Bentley, Tamara H. (ed.), Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984677/ch09

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Fig. 9.1: Unknown artist, Estate Reception, China, 1670s. Twelvefold incised lacquer screen. Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne, Germany.

diverse recreations within the compound, and, in some cases, guests bringing gifts (see Fig. 9.1). Carved inscriptions show that many screens were dedicated at the time of an academic success, or to celebrate a stately elder’s birthday or retirement gathering. Most lacquer screens had an elaborate “primary” face, and a more formulaic “verso” set of images, often bird and flower arrangements. Like the compositions in elite printed books in the late Ming and Qing dynasties, the central imagery is often enhanced with decorative pictorial borders. Beginning in the seventeenth century, incised lacquer folding screens were also exported from East Asia to Europe, European colonial outposts, and the New World. The subject of this essay concerns a Chinese screen genre less common than the “estate celebration” compositions—that of hunting foreigners, which picture Europeans and their multi-ethnic cohort hunting on horseback and on foot. These hunting compositions found a ready audience in Europe, and in European colonial milieus, given the pan-European cachet of ritual hunt activities; we also find domestic Chinese interest in screens of Europeans hunting, probably due to their exotic flavor. Three lacquer hunt screens will be examined here. The earliest screen, held in the historic Ham House in Richmond, near London, is dated between 1670 and 1685, and split into two six-panel halves. When the two halves are joined, the composition reveals Europeans and diverse associates hunting real and mythical creatures (see Plate 21). The second composition, in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and dated about 1700, reveals at right a European castle or fort; at center a scene of Europeans and others of wide-ranging ethnicity hunting and parading; and at left a group of European boats at anchor being loaded with goods (see Plate 22). The multi-banded flag flying from the assembled ships most resembles the “triple

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Princeflag” of the Dutch Republic.3 The third screen, datable in this author’s opinion to the second half of the eighteenth century, is held in the National Museet Copenhagen (see Plate 23). It shows a ceremony in a fanciful semi-Westernized building at upper right, two streaming European processions and a few European hunters at center, and ships loading goods at left. Infrared analysis has shown that the small red flag on one foreground vessel reads in Chinese “Dutch Tribute [ship]” (荷蘭朝貢 Helan zhaogong). Because lacquer screens were popular in both Europe and China in the ­seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is useful to outline the differing reception contexts of these three works. Most importantly, in all three works, the adaptation of earlier ­Chinese tropes for Mongols hunting in order to portray Europeans on horseback visually associates these “new” outsiders with the practices of earlier “barbarians.” Taking into account this issue alongside the broader sweep of the screens’ imagery, I will argue for a discontinuous set of significances within these compositions. Some of the imagery surrounding the Europeans suggests the simple curiosity or amusement of Chinese viewers, while other aspects conjure threatening dimensions. It is significant that the Europeans in our three examples begin as reinventions of Japanese Nanban (“southern barbarian”) depictions of Portuguese, and then transition towards representing the Dutch (a shift in representing Westerners which also occurred in Japan). Some of the Chinese lacquer screens which seem to portray Dutch hunts—such as our third example—suggest, through the insertion of Chinese written characters in the flag and a cartouche, that peace can be maintained through the payment of tribute. How might we best situate the inclusion of messages such as this? In addition, what can we learn—in terms of envisioning East Asian trade interactions—from the visual dialogue between the Chinese screen images and Japanese Nanban images of a slightly earlier period? Do Chinese visual appropriations from successful Japanese products suggest a degree of export competition? Lastly, these screens make it clear that, in the early modern period, European merchants and missionaries were confronting a well-established Far Eastern ethnography regarding outsiders, though the Europeans may have been unaware of this fact. Their reception as peculiar foreigners with strange and novel practices parallels the way in which outsiders to European cultures faced an ethnography constructed from a European perspective.

3 In about 1598 triple-banded flags began to be used for the Dutch Republic, usually orange, white, and blue or red, white, and blue. As a website attributed to Andrew Weeks and Mark Sensen explains, these three colors were sometimes multiplied: “[The] [nine-band version] is a so-called ‘triple Princeflag.’ ‘Princeflag’ is the early name for the Dutch tricolor. […] It was not uncommon to have the stripes twice (double Princeflag) or even three times (triple Princeflag). And sometimes an extra white stripe was added.” See “The Princevlag (The Netherlands),” CRW Flags, www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/nl_prvlg.html#pr (accessed 15 June 2017). Although in screens such as the Boston screen the flags were carved to replicate the multi-banded Dutch flags, it appears that the artists filling in the colors were relatively unconcerned about matching the flag colors properly.

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This essay begins by offering some information about the movement of luxury objects, particularly lacquer screens, from East Asia to England and the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Following these introductory remarks, the chapter turns to close observation of the imagery in the screens. Each of the three screens under discussion shares the imagery of Europeans working alongside their multi-ethnic cohort, rounding up quarry or hunting with birds of prey. The chief goal of this chapter will be to look deeply into the Mongol/European resonances implied by the visual rhetoric in the hunt screens. The essay delineates as well many other source materials cited in these screens, including Japanese pictures of Europeans, earlier Chinese images of foreigners bearing tribute,4 and Chinese literati paintings of the late Ming period. The essay concludes by comparing the mixed messages in the lacquer hunt screens to the mixed messages appearing in European works of a comparable time frame—in particular one of the works within the French Emperor of China tapestry series, dated to about 1700. In both cases we find a composite of exotic references, many of these lifted from print materials or other artworks. Both the European and Chinese compositions reveal a fascination with exotic goods and people, alongside a fear of what is construed as uncivilized, at times almost demonic, strangeness.

The trade routes for luxury lacquer screens Given the British patronage of the Ham House screen and the apparent transition from picturing non-specified Europeans to rendering Dutch figures in the Boston and Copenhagen screens, it is helpful to outline what we know about ports in Asia where Chinese and British or Dutch were in contact in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although the British chartered their East India company (under Queen Elizabeth) in 1600, and the Dutch chartered their East India Company (the VOC, Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) in 1602, the Dutch expanded into Asia ahead of Britain, and dominated the trade through Bantam, Java—later shifted to Batavia, Java—as well as Japan and the island of Taiwan, which the Dutch took over in 1624. On western Java, the British traded through Bantam from about 1610 until the port was taken over by the Dutch in 1682, with a few interruptions. 4 In the imagery of “foreigners bringing tribute” in China, foreigners of the periphery brought gifts to the Chinese emperor, ritually honoring his superior status. They were given gifts by the Chinese court in return, confirming their connection, although their relationship remained an unequal one. For much of the Ming period in China, for example, this ritual was required before trade could be sanctioned. In 1684, the Kangxi emperor endorsed trade with nations outside the tribute-bearing countries, disentangling the economic issue of trade and the foreign-policy issue of tribute status. Traditional ethnographic concepts and categories, developed by the much earlier Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) in relation to tribute imagery and delineated in early Chinese encyclopedias, are conjured up by the “Europeans parading with offerings” portions of the hunt imagery examined here.

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The situation in India was very different. Partly due to the fact that the British were not strongly ensconced in other locations, in the seventeenth century England set up three significant factories in India: one in Surat, one in Madras, and one in Calcutta. For British ships, goods from China were routinely transshipped through these Indian locations and others. Both the Dutch and British were also involved with trade developments on the island of Taiwan, bordering the Southeast Chinese province of Fujian. After taking over control of the island in 1624, the Dutch were later displaced in Taiwan in 1662 by the half-Chinese, half-Japanese maritime general Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga). (Koxinga died of malaria in 1662.) Following the 1662 Dutch expulsion, there was an opportunity for Britain to trade with Koxinga’s son Zheng Jing until 1684, when the mainland Chinese Qing dynasty conquered the Zheng regime, and the Kangxi emperor lifted the long-standing embargo on Chinese private maritime trade, greatly expanding trade through South China.5 In 1699 the British finally got a ship through to Canton (today Guangzhou),6 and made that location a central trade base. In 1758 they were at last allowed to lease the same Cantonese hong (wharfside building/factory) for consecutive two-year leases. As a 1784 porcelain punch bowl in the collection of the Shelburne Museum demonstrates, by this time other European and American powers interested in the China trade were likewise renting hongs in Canton, including: the United States, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Spain.7 In the late seventeenth century, Dutch stadtholder Henry Casimir II of Nassau Dietz (1657–1697) and his wife Henrietta Amalia von Anhalt Dessau (1666–1726) had built in their Leeuwarden residence a room lined with Chinese lacquer screens. This lacquer screen room, composed of an “estate” composition screen and a southern Chinese port landscape, was recreated in recent times in the Rijksmuseum. Seventeenth century records indicate that the Chinese word “壽” (shou: long life) was written in many different forms on one screen, as well as an inscription conveying warm wishes from the governor-general of Fujian to a friend.8 By the 1680s, the Dutch fascination with lacquer screens seems to have dovetailed with a similar interest in England.

5 The Kangxi emperor in 1684 lifted the Chinese private maritime trade bans in part because, after Koxinga’s death, the emperor felt less fearful of a rebel assault from Chinese loyal to the prior Ming regime, as Koxinga had been. He also saw the practical need for encouraging trade—for example to bring in silver and copper and other commodities. 6 Jaffer and Jackson, Encounters, p. 145. 7 This information is from a Boston Globe description of a 1784 Hong Bowl in the collection of the Shelburne Museum. See Sebastian Smee, “‘Hong Bowl’ Tells Tale of Rich, Rigid China Trade,” Boston Globe, 16 July 2013. https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/2013/07/15/frame-frame-hong-bowl-shelburne-museum/ mmkYDvtHmbyKgEr02JIBUL/story.html (accessed 1 June 2017). 8 Campen, “Reduced to a Heap,” p. 137.

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As modern scholar Jan van Campen has shown, notices in the Amsterdamse Courant from the late seventeenth century, recording the cargoes of arriving Dutch and foreign ships, indicate that the English were importing the bulk of lacquer screens at this time, although it is notable that in 1690 a Dutch ship carried 198 screens on board.9 One of the earliest Chinese lacquer hunt screens with secure dating is a screen sent by Elihu Yale (the British founder of Yale University) to Grace Delves in England. She was the wife of Joshua Edisbury, the founder of Erdigg Estate in Wales, where the screen still stands. A preserved letter written by Elihu Yale mentioning the gift of the screen is dated 1682, providing a terminus ante quem for the work. The pictured scene shows exotic hunters on horseback and on foot with camels and hunting dogs. However, unlike, for example, the Ham House screen, dating to a similar period, the hunters appear to be ethnically Asian. At the time Yale sent this screen to England he was head of the British East India office in Madras, India, so clearly it was possible to acquire such screens in Madras, whether they were made there or shipped there from elsewhere.10 The possibility of a Chinese art object being produced by a Chinese craftsman in Madras is strengthened by the Chinese clay portrait artist Chinqua mentioned in William Sargent’s chapter in this volume—a portrait artist spoken of as living in Madras and producing works there.11 Early on, British importers referred to the kuancai screens as “Bantam work,” indicating the port in Java where the British conducted trade up until 1682. Much later, in 1782, we find French references to such screens as “Coromandel screens.” By this time, the French had their own factories and transfer points on the Coromandel coast, such as Pondicherry. In terms of screen production in China itself, based on the inscriptions on Chinese kuancai lacquer screens of the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries, it is evident that there was at least one lacquer screen production studio in Hunan, one (or more) in Fujian, and one in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province. After 1757, these production areas likely sent a portion of their goods to Canton, where the exchange with Europeans was managed by Hong merchants. It is probable that South Chinese maritime merchants, such as the Hokkien merchants considered in James K. Chin’s essay in this volume, brought luxury goods such as kuancai screens to Batavia and the Coromandel coast of India and sold these commodities there. 9 As van Campen writes: “That the quantities could be very large is evident from the notice [in the Amsterdamse Courant] of 4 February 1690, stating that De Regenboog from Tonkin [northern Vietnam] had 198 screens on board, as well as 222 panels ‘dito grootte’—of the same size. In October 1696 the Sara brought 47 lacquered panels for a room and ‘8 schutten’ (eight screens) to London.” Campen, “Reduced to a Heap,” p. 140. 10 The British governors in Madras were avid participants in trade. As one modern scholar, P.J. Marshall, writes: “The governors of Madras were the greatest private traders there. Several of them made huge fortunes, Elihu Yale and Thomas (‘Diamond’) Pitt attracting the most attention, but all the governors were heavily involved in trade.” Marshall, “Private British Trade,” pp. 247–48. 11 At times, some of the Chinese traders came to the British factories in India.

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In Japan, the Iberian Catholics—the Portuguese and Spanish—were expelled in a series of orders culminating in 1639, and after that only the Dutch, among the Europeans, were allowed to conduct trade in Japan. In relation to Chinese craftsmen seeing Japanese Nanban products, it should be remembered that both Chinese and Korean merchants were conducting business with their Japanese counterparts during the Edo period (1615–1868). Since both the Chinese and the Dutch were based in the port of Nagasaki, this may be another location where goods could have exchanged hands, even indirectly. In broad terms, it appears that British ships imported Chinese goods by way of Bantam, possibly through VOC or Chinese merchant mediation, in the earlier 1600s, then also by way of ports in India such as Madras, which may have also involved Chinese merchants. Beginning in the 1680s, Britain also shipped such goods directly from South China to key port cities in India, and thence back to England. Regarding Chinese-European contact in Asian port cities, it is clear that there was a large community of Chinese merchants in the port cities of Java already when the Dutch arrived there, and contact between the two communities was prolific in Batavia, as James K. Chin’s essay makes clear. Chinese merchants would also have brought descriptions of Batavia back to South China on a regular basis. In addition, there was a large Chinese community in the city of Manila in the Philippines.12 Indian merchants, Indonesian merchants, Arab merchants, and Chinese merchants, would all have mixed with European merchants in Malaysian ports such as Melaka. Multicultural exchanges would have occurred in Bengal, on the southeastern Coromandel coast of India, and Surat as well.

Deciphering the wide-ranging visual citations in the three hunt screens It is useful here to consider some of the valances of meaning established for these hunt screens by way of visual citations. As noted, when the two halves of the twelve-panel Ham House screen are joined together, it shows white Europeans and multi-ethnic companions, some on horseback, some not. Collectively, these exotic others wield guns, pitchforks, spears, swords, and banners as they energetically hunt rare and mythical creatures (see Fig. 9.2 for a detail of the hunted creatures in the Ham House screen). Some of the figures wear flattened hats and some sport taller hats with ribbons. The majority of figures without hats reveal bald spots on top of their heads. Their hair is depicted in a range of colors—black, brown, red, and yellow. For the most part, these foreign, slightly comical, figures have prominent noses and thick eyebrows, and they wear 12 As P.J. Marshall has pointed out, although European ships sailing from points west to Manila were required to sail under the Portuguese flag, at times beginning in 1674 British merchants sent their own cargo ships from Indian ports to Manila and back under Portuguese colors. Marshall, “Private British Trade,” p. 246.

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Fig. 9.2: Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Playing Music, China, c. 1670–80. Detail of hunted creatures. Incised lacquer folding screen. Ham House, Richmond, England.

ankle-length pantaloons. Their features and attire seem primarily derived from earlier Japanese Nanban (“Southern Barbarian”) images of the Portuguese (see Fig. 9.3 for a detail of the Ham screen figures; see Plate 24 for both screens in a Japanese Nanban screen set from the Namban Bunkakan). Thin red lines have been painted in places on top of other colors to fill in, for example, textile patterns or saddle blankets. There are other significant narrative details. One successful European hunter carries a dead rabbit and a goat tied to a stick slung over his shoulder. One figure carries a shield painted with a fearsome tiger (a traditional Chinese shield motif), positioned in such a way that the tiger appears to clamp down its fangs on the arm of the figure just in front. (Another figure holds a similar shield at the right of the screen.) At the foot of the waterfall to the upper left, there are three oddly shaped buildings, somewhat resembling Tibetan Buddhist stupas. At the right, two European men present prepared meat dishes, while another man blows air through a tube into a coal-burning brazier, and a third and fourth man attempt to fan the flames, intending to warm food or possibly drinks. Two men truss up a seemingly dead creature (see Fig. 9.3). One man sits fishing. On the borders of the screen we find alert and comical looking dragons holding red and green branches which may be thunderbolts or flames. As noted above, one important East Asian precedent for scenes of horsemen hunting was the depiction of Mongols (and in the Qing dynasty Manchus too) engaged in steppe hunt traditions. These included hunting with bow and arrow, and the practice

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Fig. 9.3: Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Playing Music, China, c. 1670–80. Detail of figures trussing up dead creatures. Incised lacquer folding screen. Ham House, Richmond, England.

of rounding assorted animals into a qamargah (this word is used by Persians, Arabs, and the Mughals in India; in imperial-era Mongolian the term jerge is used). Once the prey were encircled, horsemen were sent into the center of a wall of fencing, netting, or side-by-side riders to spear or otherwise finish off the panicked, enclosed animals.13 Reference to this mode of hunting appears in the Ham House screen; at the center a tiger, a floppy-eared lion, something like a tapir and another strange blue creature with a dorsal fin have been surrounded on four sides in preparation for the final attack (see Fig. 9.2 for a detail of three of the creatures; another strange animal is pulled on a chain along the bridge at the far right). The mixture of comic and demonic qualities in some of the animals suggests odd and fearsome qualities about the Europeans themselves.14 13 For more information on this practice see Koch, Dara-Shikoh Shooting Nilgais, p. 15. In her essay, Ms. Koch is focused on the Mughal Indian experience, and on Mughal images. She notes that, while qamargah-style hunts often involved species of antelope and gazelle, lion and tiger hunts particularly underscored the valor of the leader. Roslyn Lee Hammers notes that, under Mongol ruler Khubilai Khan of the Yuan dynasty in China, those without special privileges were banned from hunting, including the Chinese. See Hammers, “Khubilai Khan Hunting,” p. 14. Also, as Hammers notes: “In theory, Chinese were not legally granted the right to carry bows and arrows during the Yuan.” Hammers, “Khubilai Khan Hunting,” p. 14. 14 It is important to note here that there is a possibility, by way of the hunt theme, that Chinese artists were commenting negatively on the Qing dynasty Manchu regime. The Manchus were northeastern steppe people taking authority over the majority indigenous Han Chinese population (the Hanzu); the Manchus imported their love of hunting on horseback even as they adopted traditional Han Chinese administrative structures. For the Han Chinese, by the eighteenth century the Manchus were, in a sense, dually positioned as “inner” and “outer,” though still primarily “outer.” We might argue that, due to their love of hunting, the European barbarians may have appeared to some Chinese rather like the Manchu overlords. There are many different visual mechanisms by which Han Chinese artists protested Manchu rule, but that complex subject goes beyond the scope of this essay.

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Fig. 9.4: Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Playing Music, China, c. 1670–80. Detail of figures blowing air on stove at right. Incised lacquer folding screen. Ham House, Richmond, England.

In the center background of the Ham House screen we find a rounded white textile tent featuring flower roundels, akin to a yurt; within are relaxed figures visiting a Western king—they are all seated on the ground. At his shoulder we find pictured a woman and a child holding a rosary. The introduction of the yurt particularly suggests Central Asian practices.

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Fig. 9.5: Attributed to Chen Hongshou (Chinese, 1599–1652), Gathering of Hermits, c. 1650. Detail of attendant fanning stove. Handscroll, ink and colors on silk. C.C. Wang Family Collection.

The figures to the right poking or blowing through a tube into the coals in the brazier (Fig. 9.4) seem to be borrowed from paintings by the late Ming Chinese artist Chen Hongshou (1599–1652), which show attendants seated in front of stoves fanning the flames (Fig. 9.5). Since Chen’s work was copied broadly in Qing dynasty figurative painting (and sometimes set down in copy books) it is not surprising to find those high-art references showing up here. His work was, in fact, particularly suitable for this context because he focused on figure painting, and he often introduced comic elements. The more formulaic reverse side of the screen shows pairs of birds and flowers each composed within individual vertical panels, such as ducks with lotuses, phoenixes with magnolias, pheasants with hydrangeas, white mynah-type birds with peonies, and a peacock with a blossoming plum tree. It may be significant, in terms of the screen’s production, that none of these birds seems very well understood in terms of overall appearance, feathering, or coloring. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts screen presents a much more expansive composition (Plate 22). To the right, a European fort is shown with thick outer walls topped by crenellations, pierced by deeply recessed windows, rendered using perspective lines. There is a stone bridge crossing from that building to the center landscape. Before the fort, one boy blows into a conch shell, a traditional Indian and Tibetan instrument.

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In the hunt section of the Boston screen, some of the foreign figures are on foot, and some are on horseback. Hunters lunge at the assorted creatures (a tiger, a lion, horned deer, a goat, and possibly a fox) with spears or rounded axes; others aim at birds with guns. One man leans down from his galloping horse, grabbing a rabbit by its rear leg—he appears to have scooped it up on the run.15 As scholars Kesel and Dhont have noted, the overall composition, with a European residence at right, a procession at the center, and loading or unloading ships at left, appears to be borrowed from Japanese Nanban images of Portuguese and Spaniards arriving at the port of Nagasaki (Plate 24).16 Japanese Nanban (also called Namban) paired sets of screens, painted on paper, were produced from about 1580 to 1620, considerably earlier than the Chinese lacquer screens examined here. In addition to the overall three-part composition, the Boston lacquer screen is also akin to Japanese Nanban painted screens in the attention paid to the daily habits of the Europeans, for example waving to each other, tipping their hats, or getting into a fist fight on the ship. In an interaction taken directly from Nanban works, in the Boston screen a man in the larger ship at port looks down at a man looking up from a rowboat below (see the left (upper) Nanban screen in the Namban Bunkakan, Plate 24).17 In the Japanese Nanban screens, the man in the larger galleon often hands down goods to the rowers below to bring to shore, but that aspect is omitted in the Chinese work. The top of the head of the man looking up in the Boston screen is shown in foreshortening, as it is in the Nanban painting. Likewise, in the Boston screen, the man in the crow’s nest on the main mast, handing his hat to a man below him, is very like the scene of a man in the topmast dropping down a hat for another man on deck in the Japanese Nanban screen in the Namban Bunkakan (Plate 24). The lead European figure in the Boston hunt section emerges from the mountains on horseback, with a darker-skinned attendant holding a parasol over his head (Fig. 9.6), and other figures on foot surrounding him. This equation mirrors almost directly the depictions of Portuguese captains with attendants holding parasols over them in the Japanese Nanban screens (see right hand (lower) screen, Plate 24). In both the Japanese and Chinese works, the markings and colors of the horses in the “foreigners parade” sections are depicted carefully; and the cocky, almost arrogant small dogs strike piquant notes. 15 Another kuancai screen of similar organization is held in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, though that composition places the viewer closer to the action than the Copenhagen screen does. The Rijksmuseum work is dated by that museum to c. 1685–c. 1700. In the Rijksmuseum work, the fort is concentrated in the upperright corner and clearly renders thick walls with an entrance gateway employing lines of recession. The bridge from the fort is not stone, as in the Boston screen, but wooden, and thinner. Two hunters scoop up prey by the foot, and the prey consist mainly of small animals, including foxes and rabbits. One tiger is speared at the center. The moored ships at left fly the multi-banded flag of the Dutch. The Rijksmuseum screen was acquired by a French collector in China in 1906, so it appears to be a screen of foreigners destined for domestic consumption, like the Copenhagen work. 16 Kesel and Dhont, Coromandel Lacquer Screens, p. 83. 17 This screen is documented in Terukazu, Genshoku Nihon no bijutsu, vol. 20, fig. 55.

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Fig. 9.6: Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Loading Ships, China, c. 1700. Detail of lead European figure on horseback with attendant alongside. Incised lacquer screen. Each panel, h. 244 × w. 46 cm (96 1/16 × 18 1/8 in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Modern scholar Yukio Lippit has convincingly argued that the “unloading goods” portion of Japanese Nanban screens was indebted to earlier Japanese pictures of Chinese junks (called “white ships,” as opposed to the Portuguese “black ships”) arriving in Japan with goods for trade. He states that the Chinese scenes of boats arriving heralded abundance and prosperity, in a somewhat ritualistic fashion.18 The interest, in the Boston lacquer screen, in the colorful textile patterns worn by the Europeans accords with the interest in textiles shown in Japanese Nanban works. There are, at the same time, some slight changes in costume by the time of the Boston screen, produced roughly 100 years later than the Nanban screen paintings. In the Boston work most of the European figures wear tall flat-topped, widebrimmed hats and mid-thigh tunics with a skirted section at the bottom, defining long torsos. The figures wear their tunics over knee-length pantaloons. (This attire is unlike the European clothing in the earlier Ham House screens, or the costume in earlier Japanese imagery picturing Portuguese; in both of these earlier cases the Europeans are shown wearing ankle-length pantaloons.) To a man, the Europeans in the Boston screen all have curly brown hair, usually shoulder length. Their shoes have slight heels, and wide oblong closed-toe fronts. Some of them wear scarfs, but none of them have the Elizabethan lace collars worn by Nanban Portuguese figures.19 Except for the tall hats, the foreigner attire pictured in the Boston screen roughly accords with that of the Dutch in the Far East in the eighteenth century. (See for comparison an eighteenth-century Nagasaki print of a Dutchman with an attendant for a comparable costume, Fig. 8.1.) At the same time, incongruously, many of the light-colored pony-size horses (seemingly too small for their riders) wear red tassels ornamenting their trappings, a feature used in earlier Chinese pictures to signify tribute horses (meant as gifts for the Chinese emperor), and in steppe traditions perhaps stretching back to the time of Christ to decorate horses.20 In addition, several of the Europeans blow long bannered horns as part of the hunt procession. This detail makes the hunt procession appear somewhat like a Chinese Qing dynasty imperial hunt, which, according to Qing images, had a parade quality. Japanese images other than Nanban works—for example Japanese paintings derived in part from Chinese images of steppe peoples hunting—exist as well. Beginning in the sixteenth century, in the late Muromachi period in Japan, it became

18 Lippit, “Japan’s Southern Barbarian Screens,” p. 248. Modern scholar Oka Yasumasa confirms Lippit’s interpretation: “Even after [Portuguese] namban vessels disappeared from screen paintings, they and Dutch vessels were seen as treasure ships that brought wealth. Such perceptions lasted into the early nineteenth century.” Yasumasa, “Hollandisme in Japanese Craftwork,” p. 154. 19 Kesel and Dhont in Coromandel Lacquer Screens describe the Boston Europeans Hunting screen as being in twelve parts with a black background and bird and flower imagery on the verso (p. 83). The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, however, states that there is no bird and flower composition on the other side of their “Europeans hunting” kuancai screen (pers. commun., June 2015). 20 Ilyasof, “Covered Tail and ‘Flying’ Tassels,” p. 270.

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popular to pair scenes of Tatars (also called Tartars),21 hunting and playing polo in Kano school paintings. Two early images of this sort, both attributed to Kano Motonobu, are dated to the early sixteenth century. One is in the Seikado Bunko Bijutsukan (Seikado Bunko Art Museum) in Tokyo,22 and one is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.23 In the Boston Motonobu hanging scroll, a group of galloping horsemen, some of whom ride with bows, spears, or standards, surround a diverse group of fleeing animals on a rugged plain. The well-rounded Arabian-style horses of varied coloration appear to be streaming very fast on well-articulated, thin, dark legs. One horse-rider turns back to take a Parthian shot into the huddle of a running deer, rabbit, and bear with his bow. Another prepares a spear to strike. The horse-riding men all wear knee-high black boots. A Mongol ruler or leader sits looking down from his kingly position atop a plateau under a tent, enjoying the sport. The similarity between the “Motonobu” Tartars hunting scene and the Boston Chinese lacquer screen is not in the attire of the figures, but in the larger composition; in both cases we find horse-riders in a space defined by the landscape corralling their prey and preparing to spear the animals, or dispatch them with arrows. The European figures have different hair, different hats, and different features than the Japanese rendition of Tartars, and, as noted, some of the Europeans are shown to have guns. In the Chinese lacquer screen, the Europeans also have a number of attendants on foot, and there is a processional scene added to the hunting scene itself. The composition of the Boston lacquer scene makes use of very green hill forms with patterned leaves, reminiscent of Chinese Tang style landscapes, whereas the Boston Motonobu painting more closely resembles a Chinese Song dynasty rugged-style landscape—such as one by Fan Kuan with a sudden plateau of trees rising from a flat plain—rather than the decorative enclosed space cells of activity common to Tang works and these later screens. But large-scale similarities in the action of horse-riding barbarians hunting and spearing diverse wild prey certainly exist. In Japan, there are also a number of later, Momoyama and Edo period, paired screens attributed to Japanese Kano-school artists of Tartars hunting,24 or paired compositions of Tartars playing polo and hunting, such as those held in the San Francisco Asian Art Museum;25 the Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, DC;26 and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (see Fig. 9.7 for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Tartars Hunting half of the pair of two compositions). Compared to the Kano 21 Here Tatars or Tartars refers somewhat ambiguously to Mongolians or Turkic tribes of Central Asians. 22 See Gerhart, “Classical Imagery and Tokugawa Patronage,” col. pl. 12, for an image of the polo-playing scene by Kano Motonobu. 23 See Japanese Art in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, vol. 2, pl. VII-9, for the Kano Motonobu “Tartars hunting” scene. 24 See, for example, one such Kano painting in the Musée Guimet. 25 See the San Francisco Asian Art Museum online collection for this image. 26 See the Freer and Sackler Galleries (Washington, DC) online collection for this image.

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Fig. 9.7: Unknown Kano school artist, Tartars Hunting (paired with screen of Tartars playing polo), Japan, seventeenth century. Ink and color on gold-leafed paper, h. 154.2 × w. 358.6 cm (60 11/16 × 141 3/16 in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Motonobu painting described above, these later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Kano-school works were often conceived as folding screens, and they make more use of flat gold clouds, and greener landscapes. They overlap in time with the actual arrival of Europeans in Japan, and one group of exotic foreigners (the Iberians) may evoke the exoticism of the other (the Mongols).27 One author has argued that some Japanese interiors were planned to pair images of the Mongols, evoking the concept of northern barbarians, with, on an opposite wall, the arrival of the southern barbarians (the Portuguese). An interior program of this kind would implicitly place the Japanese patron in the classical role of the Chinese court, at the civilized center with barbarians at the margins.28 27 The Japanese “Tatars hunting” works use the term “Dattanjin” for the Mongols. Recent work by He Yuming on Chinese printed householders manuals of about 1600 also shows that sections of such works laid out the “foreigners” surrounding China and their cultures. (See He, “Book and the Barbarian in Ming China and Beyond.”) In the Chinese c. 1600 manuals describing foreign peoples such as the Luochong lu, the term “Dattanjin” (DaDa ren in Chinese) is used for the Mongols—reviving a term that the Mongols had ceased using during the Yuan dynasty because they thought it derogatory. Since other printed books, such as the Mirror for Emperors, had made it to Japan by about 1600, it is not impossible that Chinese householder’s manuals were imported to Japan as well, possibly accounting in part for the name change in the word used for the steppe hunters in Japan. 28 Karen Gerhart has recently written on the visitation rooms prepared for the Japanese emperor when he visited the Edo shogun in 1624. Among other Chinese subjects painted on the walls of this visitation palace, there were scenes of Dattanjin (Mongols) hunting. Gerhart admits that this imagery is ambiguous. Possibly Mongols hunting had been depicted earlier to represent the northern barbarians, paired in interiors with parallel scenes of other barbarians, such as southern barbarians. By the early Edo, though, it seems likely that the name of the depicted northern foreigners was changed from Mongol to “Dattanjin” in order to avoid overly explicit praise for a people who almost invaded Japan. Given the latitude provided by this more ambiguous ethnic designation, there appears to be a sort of appreciation for the military exercises and horsemanship of the Dattanjin, even as the Japanese emperor is cast as akin to the Chinese civilizing ruler by being placed at

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Fig. 9.8: Unknown artist, Europeans and Associates Hunting and Loading Ships, China, c. 1700. Detail of a few of the border antiquities. Incised lacquer screen. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

There are many compositional elements in these Japanese Kano school paintings of Central Asians that mirror elements in the Boston Chinese lacquer hunting screen. Among them would be the inclusion of tigers and leopards, the huntsmen taking aim at birds, the horse-rider leaning down to scoop up his prey by a foot (two riders in the Freer Tartars painting show this gesture from two different angles),29 the careful rendering of pinto, dapple, and other colorings among the horses and hunted animals, processional elements with attendants, and the prominent use of dogs to assist in the hunt. Unlike the Europeans, the Tartars in the Japanese paintings are often bareheaded, or they have scarf-like hats tied around their heads, and they wear a separate cloth belted around their midsection. In addition, the Tartars lack guns. The border of the Boston lacquer screen shows the “one hundred” antiquities.30 These scholarly antiquities are designed in ways that make some vases and sculptures seem like living creatures, rather than fixed objects. (See for example the eyes looking out of a Shang bronze vase, and the playful slender spiraling green dragon and the puffy white lion sculpture from the border section, Fig. 9.8.) The playful tone in the treatment of antiquities in the Boston screen again evokes the Chinese artist Chen Hongshou’s earlier treatment of scholarly objects. the center of outlying societies. In such a program, Gerhart suggests, the comparison to the Chinese emperor is ennobling—suggesting learning and cultivation—while the vision of hunting and military exercises sets up a veiled allusion to shogunal military power surely not lost on the Japanese emperor. See Gerhart, “Classical Imagery and Tokugawa Patronage,” pp. 169–86. 29 See Japanese Paintings from Collections Outside Japan, Fig. 14.

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Let us now turn to the third and final screen of Europeans examined here—a lacquer screen from the National Museum of Copenhagen (see Plate 23). Set further back from the viewer, this screen seems to elaborate with considerable fanfare upon the core ideas in the previous screens. The lower section of the screen reveals a parade of Europeans transporting animals in cages, and goods loaded on oxen carts and a water-buffalo cart, accompanied, for no visible reason, by a pair of camels. The implication of the camels seems to be that they, like the other exotica, will serve as tribute gifts. Behind the camels there is a large, blue, lion-like animal, like a demon reincarnation of a Chinese fu dog (Fig. 9.9). It is probable that the blue lion-dog pictured is an imaginary version of the mastiffs the Dutch and other powers gave to various Asian rulers.31 There are other Chinese lacquer screens in which this sort of dog is offered as part of a gift-giving parade—in a screen dated 1674 in a private collection in Toronto, one such dog, with curling green mane and tail and bat-like ears, is held on a chain by a European.32 As in the case of the Boston screen, the two streams of foreigner parades in the Copenhagen screen both evoke the gift-bearing Portuguese processions in Japanese Nanban screens, and reproduce the Chinese “foreigners bearing tribute offerings” paintings dating as far back as the Tang dynasty (Fig. 9.10).33 In the left center of the Copenhagen work we see the second exotic foreigner parade with one European horse-rider wearing pheasant feathers such as one sees in Beijing opera and a number of foreigners on a white elephant, playing music. The elephant composition directly reprises Tang dynasty images of Central Asian entertainers riding elephants and playing music.34 The Copenhagen figures converge at the shoreline to the left, where seven relatively large boats are shown, three with sails down loading goods, and four with sails up heading left and off the screen. The tusk-like projectiles at the fore and aft of these peculiar ships are clearly imaginary, though East India ships did at times have long wooden projecting prows. As for the distant rounded building at top center, it seems a hybrid of a Renaissance-style, three-tiered building (such as the small Tempietto dedicated to Bramante in 1502) and a mosque with a minaret at the side. The stepped 30 As Joan Hornby points out, the Chinese phrasing “one hundred antiquities” (bo gu) actually connotes a large number of valued antique objects, and is not meant to signify literally 100. Hornby, Chinese Lacquerware, p. 67. 31 In 1625 the Dutch requested two or three “splendid mastiffs for the Grand Mogul” in India. See Zandvliet, Dutch Encounter with Asia, p. 166. Zandvliet adds “in 1637 Batavia once again requested large mastiffs which ‘were highly sought-after by several Indian princes,’” p. 166. 32 A detail of this screen is illustrated in Jaffer and Jackson, Encounters, p. 201. 33 In fact, the foreigners’-procession element in the Japanese Nanban screens should also be seen as a reinvention of the earlier Chinese paintings of foreigners bearing tribute to the Chinese court. 34 For one image of Central Asians playing music while riding on an elephant see an eighth-century painted plectrum guard on a lute in the Shosoin collection, Todaiji temple, Nara, Japan: figure entitled, “Entertainers Riding an Elephant,” in Impact of China and Buddhism on Japan, Crafts and Art website, http://crafts-art.com/ impact-of-china-and-buddhism-on-japan/ (accessed 31 July 2017).

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Fig. 9.9: Unknown artist, Dutchmen and Associates Loading Tribute, China, eighteenth century. Detail of blue dog at center foreground. Incised lacquer screen. National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen.

Fig. 9.10: Yan Liben and Yan Lide, Foreigners Bringing Tribute, China, Song dynasty (960–1279 CE) copy of Tang dynasty (618–906 CE) scroll. Hand-scroll painting, ink and colors on silk. National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan.

building also looks similar to the new Dutch church in Batavia, built in the 1730s, as seen in prints of the time.35 35 An image of a 1738 print of the New Dutch Church on Batavia is available on Wikimedia: “View of the New Dutch Church on Batavia,” Wikimedia Commons, file AMH-7029-KB, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:AMH-7029-KB_View_of_the_new_Dutch_church_on_Batavia.jpg (accessed 13 August 2018). In addition, for an article connecting Japanese Momoyama-period painted Nanban screens with some European print sources see Hioki, “Visual Bilingualism,” 23–44.

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The fanciful island-like land at upper left in the Copenhagen screen recalls images of Chinese immortal islands, such as Fanghu. Interestingly, the Copenhagen composition ostensibly renders Europeans sending exceptional goods from their lands as tribute to the Chinese paradise in the distance. At the same time, there is a palpable sense of Europeans taking all sorts of exotic goods from China, and loading them onto their ships to return home to their far-away land. The screen seems to recognize both scenarios. The Copenhagen screen incorporates two direct inscriptions, one stating that we are looking at Dutch tribute ships (in the red flag at lower left), and the other, in the book in the lower border, stating in Chinese “This screen was commissioned to [demonstrate events] aligning with the peace in [our] society” (定冊帷幕有安 社稷之整).The flag inscription in particular clearly suggests that the Dutch should pay or are paying homage to the Chinese court. The thin inner floral border and the outer dragon and “shou” character (“long life”) border on this work match that of the “estate-themed” lacquer screen pictured in Fig. 9.1, held in the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst in Cologne, dated by inscription 1672. A few elements in the larger middle border are common to both screens, such as the three-legged toad emitting smoke wafting towards a moon, representing most likely an incense burner in the form of the toad emanation of the mythical moon goddess Chang-e. While the Chinese “aligning with the peace in our society” wording in the booklike cartouche on the border of the Copenhagen work is not featured in the Cologne screen, it is evident in a third Chinese lacquer screen held in Münster. The Münster screen also pictures other identical elements from the Copenhagen border, such as the three-legged toad and the nearby cross and ceramic water dripper, though it pictures the latter objects in reversed order. It is clear that drawings, prints, or stencils (or some combination of these tools) assisted in reproducing design features from screen to screen, making reconfigurations and reproductions commonplace. Given these workshop practices, which may have extended across generations, we cannot securely date the Copenhagen screen based on the date of the Cologne work or the Münster work. Why might there be such a central focus on Dutch tribute in this screen? The only Dutch tribute missions to Beijing were dated 1656, 1667, 1686, and 1795, leaving a long hiatus between 1686 and 1795. (This hiatus may have been partially caused by the fact that Kangxi’s 1684 lifting of trade restrictions, and discontinuing the coupling of tribute and trade, made tribute missions less necessary for commercial interchange.) The Dutch mission of 1795 followed on the heels of the unpleasant British Macartney mission, in which the British ambassador agreed to kneel on one knee and bow his head, but apparently would not perform the expected sangui ketou (three kneelings and nine touchings of forehead to the floor) before the Chinese emperor. To this researcher, it seems that the Copenhagen screen may have been timed to align with the Dutch 1795 embassy, or as a public statement just after that event, providing

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public relations cachet for the Chinese court by declaiming in symphonic richness the valuable gifts brought by the Dutch. The possibility of the Copenhagen screen being dated about 1795 is reinforced by the enthusiastic tone taken by the Qianlong emperor and his ministers towards the Dutch tribute embassy arriving at that time. As translated by J.J.L. Duyvendak, part of a memorandum of late 1794 from the Junjiqu to the Qianlong emperor concerning events in progress, waxed eloquent about the upcoming Dutch mission, stressing that it was a sign of the state of peace, including the control of flooding, the Qianlong emperor had brought about. The memorandum, citing the laudatory memorials of other officials, emphasizes that the Dutch tribute mission is in itself an omen demonstrating positive rule. The Junjiqu’s memorandum, which is worth citing in some detail, reads: We received a statement from Shun-ying etc. in which it was unanimously declared: “The virtue of our Emperor is complete and the felicity [brought about by Him] is exalted, so that the [countries in] the corners of the sea have distantly [been] affected by [Chinese] culture. The country of Holland is remotely located, more than a hundred thousand li away in the Outer Ocean. The fact that at present it specially sends an ambassador and, having discovered that next year the Great Emperor will celebrate the sixtieth year of His Reign, it has respectfully prepared a complimentary letter and tribute, and [intends] to proceed to the capital in order to bow down and present its congratulations—the wording of the complimentary [Dutch] letter manifesting an extreme respect and obedience—really is a happy omen and an excellent thing. With respect to the statement in Su-leng-o’s memorial, about the Flood-prevention works in the Hoarfrost-period, that this year rain has been rather superabundant, and that the rivers were swollen, but that, owing to the vast felicity [brought about] by the Sacred Ruler, [the people] obtained [the good fortune of being] preserved [from calamities] and of having rest and peace, and the works [i.e. the dykes] [proved] solid—all these things are the result of the diligence and firmness in action of Our Emperor, whereby we received [Heaven’s] August Compassion. Thus it is that scaling [mountains] and sailing [the seas], [the barbarians] come to assemble [at Court], and that the sea is quiet and the River clear, and all the most important portents appear in a way as has been but rarely recorded in the histories. We, while respectfully reading these memorials, truly went so far that we stamped with joy. […]36

The reference to the Qianlong emperor’s achievement of peace (“[the people] obtained [the good fortune of being] preserved [from calamities] and of having rest and peace”) reflects the articulated function of the tribute screen “aligning with the 36 Duyvendak, “Supplementary Documents,” pp. 330–31.

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peace in [our] society.” The fact that in Beijing in early 1795 the Dutch envoys were to join a larger group for the celebration, including Mongolian princes and Korean envoys, matches the panoply of exoticism in the large Copenhagen screen (although the Mongolian princes and Korean envoys are not specifically represented). An image of the 1795 Dutch embassy under Isaac Titsingh in Beijing, commissioned by the Dutch, shows large lacquer screens against the wall in two places in the Chinese palace rooms, though the screen imagery is different from the Copenhagen screen considered here.37 It is possible that the Copenhagen screen was intended to hang against a wall in the court somewhere. Since the very large Copenhagen screen is not decorated on the back, it seems to have been produced for a location where it would be viewed from one side. The screen was purchased in the early twentieth century in China, where it was rumored to have come from elite circles. Curator Joan Hornby argues it may have been produced for members of the Qing court. While this screen apparently carries a peacemaking message, it also makes room for fears and reservations, such as the grotesque blue dog, mentioned above, with a human-like nose (Fig. 9.9). Let us sum up, and extend, some of the visual precedents recast in these three hunt screens. These would include: (1) tropes developed in earlier “steppe” hunting scenes, such as the practice of the qamargah and the corralling of a variety of exotic prey—the multi-ethnic nature of the Mongol regime is also here recast in terms of the multi-ethnic nature of European ship crews and hunting parties; (2) tropes such as the loading and unloading of ships which had been key features in Japanese screens of the Portuguese unloading at Nagasaki; (3) associations between the auspicious aura of European (sometimes Dutch) ships at port in China or preparing to go to China with the richnesses brought by Portuguese Nanban ships to Japan, themselves reinventions of earlier scenes of Chinese junks unloading at Japanese ports; and (4) the association of long-standing Chinese and Japanese central-empire concepts with compositions framing outlying barbarians bringing gifts—revealing an ethnographic interest in such people and their attire (as texts and pictures documenting foreigners had done for some time), while also delineating barbarian practices (such as the use of attendants with parasols or tipping one’s hat). In Japan, we note the structural tendency, in early modern times, to parallel the northern steppe barbarians with the southern (European) barbarians—in part because the Europeans arrived at southern Japanese ports by way of the ocean. In the Japanese case, this spatial construction asserts, implicitly, that Japan is the enlightened central kingdom. This essay contends that all these layerings are significant in linking the European foreigners in the three hunt screens with earlier “barbarian” imagery. It is notable too that all three screens contemplated above, alongside picturing hunts 37 A rather blurry copy of this image is available on Wikipedia in the article, “Isaac Titsingh,” https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Titsingh#/media/File:Houckgeest.JPG (accessed 13 August 2018).

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and somewhat comical, fanciful processions, conjure up aspects of fearful violence (caging, slaying, trussing, and spearing), and demonic beasts.

Competition and the circulation of motifs in export lacquers As suggested earlier, the Chinese borrowings of Japanese Nanban elements evident in the hunt screens suggest considerable circulation of visual motifs from one country to the other; these adaptations also suggest export substitution, highlighting Chinese-Japanese competition in the marketing of Nanban wares to Westerners, especially in the eighteenth century. We have some evidence to suggest that, while the initial fascination with Nanban imagery in Japan (from about 1580 to 1620) was primarily directed at a domestic market, in particular towards patrons in the upper echelons of the shogunal military structure, later Japanese Nanban images may have been produced as well for markets in Europe and the New World.38 Particularly beginning with the trade relaxations of the Kangxi period, a similar dual market, both domestic and export, applies to Chinese lacquerwares, including incised screens. As discussed in the Introduction to this book, one clear example of Chinese-Japanese export competition may be seen in the field of porcelains. Porcelains were first produced in Japan in the 1610s or 1620s. As Oliver Impey has recently pointed out, in the 1630s Chinese craftsmen exported porcelain to Japan in the style preferred by the Japanese markets, while simultaneously Japanese-created Arita porcelains were geared at the same market.39 As Impey describes of the Tianqi Chinese wares and the Ko-sometsuke Japanese wares: “Each product stimulated and imitated the other in this competitive environment, producing sophisticated wares of good enough quality for the tea ceremony as well as for ordinary use.”40 During the chaotic Ming-Qing transition in the 1640s and 1650s in China, the exports of the Chinese Jingdezhen kiln lessened, allowing the Japanese Arita kiln to begin exporting porcelains into the world market.41 Why do we see a transition to picturing the Dutch in Chinese eighteenth-century lacquer hunt screens? Is it because Japanese works had transitioned to depicting the Dutch in the middle 1600s and the Chinese artists were, in part, looking at Japanese imagery? This is possible, if we think of the ongoing transnational circulation of visual motifs as a prominent factor in their development.

38 For Japanese exports to New Spain see Rivero Lake, Namban. Apparently Japanese lacquerwares did not always sell at first because of their high price, and the Dutch repeatedly negotiated with the Japanese to produce them more cheaply. 39 Impey, Japanese Export Porcelain, p. 13. 40 Impey, Japanese Export Porcelain, p. 13. 41 Impey, Japanese Export Porcelains, p. 13.

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Comparing the rhetoric of ambivalence in two works For perspective, it is useful to compare the ambivalent rhetoric regarding foreigners in the Chinese lacquer hunt screens with the ambivalent rhetoric concerning foreigners seen in roughly the same period in European works, such as the Emperor of China tapestry series commissioned by members of the court of Louis XIV, and produced in Beauvais, France from about 1697–1705. There are many parallels. Like the Chinese screens, the French tapestries are large compositions, brought together of diverse elements often taken from a variety of sources, including prints.42 If we take the “Audience of the Emperor” tapestry from the series as an example (see Plate 3), we find a plethora of exoticizing imagery. At lower left is pictured a darker-skinned attendant holding a peacock-feather-lined parasol above the arriving empress of China, and two male servants wearing red-feathered outfits pausing from pulling her carriage, bowing low on the steps before the emperor. The empress holds a fluffy multicolored ostrich-feather-like fan. The airy gazebo is only loosely modeled on Chinese garden pavilions, and it is supported by dragon-twined columns. Lifted above the roofline of this structure on small parasols to right and left, we find two fearsome dragons; it is not clear if these dragons are sculptures or actual creatures. The emperor sits on the ground in front of a throne, underneath a gold and blue tapestry that is draped to create a semblance of a tent. The emperor’s throne itself features an evil-looking gremlin above his head, and winged sphinx-like hybrid animals at either arm. For added novelty, there is an elephant behind his throne. Four more figures abase themselves in front of the emperor on an oriental carpet. Blueand-white porcelains are seen off to the right. The dragons placed throughout the composition seem to suggest that the Chinese emperor worships dark forces. In addition, the totally subservient figures to left and right make him appear to be harsh and despotic, beyond the rule of law. Like the goods being loaded onto ships in the Chinese lacquer screens, the insertion of blue-and-white porcelains and fine silk fabrics within the exoticizing Emperor of China tapestry highlights the flow of desirable products from one place to another. In large compositions such as this French tapestry and the Chinese lacquer screens, there is room to convey a broad range of meanings, some positive and hopeful and inquiring (many positive and rare fruits may come of this connection), and some repulsive and threatening (keep in mind that these foreigners consort with demons). The uncivilized, even barbaric, practices attributed to these foreigners will naturally concern local viewers. In both the French tapestry and the Chinese screens, we find 42 I am grateful to my Colorado College student Willa Hanf for her insights on the Emperor of China tapestries and their rhetoric. Hanf’s baccalaureate thesis was centered on the Emperor of China tapestries; in one section of which she traces the motifs in the set which are derived from printed books. See Hanf, “Story of the Emperor of China Tapestry Series.”

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the civilized home government elevated as against these colorful but peculiar foreign powers. In both cases, there is fascination with foreign practices. The buildings are exotic, the unusual clothing is of interest. In the French tapestry, there is a self-reflexive quality to rendering Chinese silks in a textile medium; and this applies to the woven rendition of oriental carpets of unspecified derivation as well. In the French and Chinese images, the visions of foreign architecture mirror each other. The French create an airy garden gazebo architecture conflated with a tent; while the Chinese become interested in Central Asian tents, minarets, bell towers, scalloped doorways, and crenellated battlements. The Chinese ruler is shown to have a harsh, authoritarian aspect; the Europeans are pictured slaying small animals and cutting them up.

Conclusion In conclusion, the different elements in the three Chinese hunt screens, and the precedents these motifs conjure up, point the viewer in a number of different directions. The screens are composites, not only in their mix-and-match production, but also in their joined-together compositions, different parts of which may derive from associations positive, negative, or indifferent. The Chinese screens are unlike Japanese Nanban compositions in the sense that the Europeans are not unloading luxury goods at an Asian port, but rather loading up goods (it is generally suggested) to take elsewhere. (In the Copenhagen case they appear to be loading exotic goods in Europe or in Batavia to bring as tribute to China, though, as noted, this is not the only possible scenario.) It is important to consider that the tropes of steppe-hunt imagery in seventeenthand eighteenth-century China and Japan may have had very different connotations. In Japan, it is possible that military patrons had some sympathy for, or at least a fascination with, Central Asian skilled military horsemen, especially as the ethnicity of the Central Asians became more vague and the years since the attempted Mongol invasions of Japan lengthened, dimming the episode. In China, hunt imagery evoked ruthless barbarian steppe horsemen, but various comical devices used in the screens (such as a haughty frowning dog resembling the frowning Europeans, or the dubious virility of a European gunman aiming at a tiny rabbit) called into question the actual authority of such people. Classical elements in the margins, such as vessels seeming to come alive, underscore this ironic, humor-filled approach. Bringing together a very broad range of sources, such as blue-and-green Tang dynasty-style hills, Tang and later tribute processions, Japanese Nanban port scenes, Mongol hunting scenes, and even what information was available about European forts, hunts, and exotic locations such as Batavia, these Chinese incised lacquer scenes of Europeans hunting

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were assembled to appeal to Europeans even as they lightly mock them. Some hybrid hunt/tribute screens, as we have seen, celebrate the Dutch offering of tribute, recognizing the weight of Chinese moral authority. Many latent messages and references were present, and they did not all conform in their meaning. To the extent that these Chinese screens take their cue from Japanese Nanban art, the overall positive overtones of trade are likely to inhere in the Chinese-produced images too. In the end, the complex feelings of the Chinese towards new forms of trade and cultural contact were shared on the other side of the globe.

Bibliography Duyvendak, J.J.L. “The Last Dutch Embassy to the Chinese Court (1794–1795).” T’oung Pao, 2nd ser., 34.1–2 (1938): 1–137. Duyvendak, J.J.L. “Supplementary Documents on the Last Dutch Embassy to the Chinese Court.” T’oung Pao, 2nd ser., 35.5 (1940): 329–53. Fu, Lo-shu. A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations (1644–1820). Tucson: Association for Asian Studies/University of Arizona Press, 1966. Gerhart, Karen. “Classical Imagery and Tokugawa Patronage: A Redefinition in the Seventeenth Century.” In Critical Perspectives on Classicism in Japanese Painting, 1600–1700, ed. Elizabeth Lillehoj, pp. 169–86. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004. Hammers, Roslyn Lee. “Khubilai Khan Hunting: Tribute to the Great Khan.” Artibus Asiae 75.1 (2015): 5–44. Hanf, Willa. “The Story of the Emperor of China Tapestry Series: Decoding Images of the East in 17th Century French Court Art.” BA Art History thesis, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, 2015. He, Yuming. “The Book and the Barbarian in Ming China and Beyond: The Luochong lu, or ‘Record of Naked Creatures.’” Asia Major 24.1 (2011): 43–85. Hioki, Naoko Frances. “Visual Bilingualism and Mission Art: A Reconsideration of ‘Early Western-Style Painting’ in Japan.” Japan Review 23 (2011): 23–44. Hornby, Joan. Chinese Lacquerware in the National Museum of Denmark. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 2012. Ilyasof, Jangar. “Covered Tails and ‘Flying’ Tassels.” Iranica Antiqua 38 (2003): 259–325. Impey, Oliver. Japanese Export Porcelain. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2002. Jaffer, Amin and Anna Jackson, eds. Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500–1800. London: V&A Publications, 2004. Japanese Art in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2 vols., ed. Anne Nishimura Morse and Nobuo Tsuji. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Kodansha, 1998. Kesel, W. de and Greet Dhont. Coromandel Lacquer Screens. Chicago: Art Media Resources, 2002. Koch, Ebba. Dara-Shikoh Shooting Nilgais: Hunt and Landscape in Mughal Pictures. Occasional Paper 1. Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art/Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1998. Lippit, Yukio. “Japan’s Southern Barbarian Screens.” In Essays, vol. 3 of Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Jay A. Levenson et al., pp. 244–53. Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2008. Marshall, P.J. “Private British Trade in the Indian Ocean before 1800.” In European Commercial Expansion in Early Modern Asia, ed. Om Prakash, pp. 247–48. Aldershot: Variorum, 1997. Rivero Lake, Rodrigo. Namban: Art in Viceregal Mexico. Madrid: Turner, 2005. Prakash, Om, ed. European Commercial Expansion in Early Modern Asia. Aldershot: Variorum, 1997. Terukazu, Akiyama, ed. Genshoku Nihon no bijutsu, vol. 20: Namban to Yoga [European-style art in Japan and Western-style painting]. Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1966–94.

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Campen, Jan van. “‘Reduced to a Heap of Monstruous Shivers and Splinters’: Some Notes on Coromandel Lacquer in Europe in the 17th and 18th Centuries.” Rijksmuseum Bulletin 57.2 (2009): 137–48. Yasumasa, Oka. “Hollandisme in Japanese Craftwork.” In Japan Envisions the West: 16th–19th Century Japanese Art from Kobe City Museum, ed. Yukiko Shirahara, pp. 135–63. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2007. Zandvliet, Kees. The Dutch Encounter with Asia, 1600–1950. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2002.

About the author Tamara H. Bentley is Professor of Asian Art History at Colorado College, where she has taught since 2001. She is also currently the Director of the Asian Studies program at Colorado College. She received her PhD in Asian art from the University of Michigan in 2000. She is the recipient of a Fulbright from the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange for study in Taiwan. Together with colleague Katharine P. Burnett, she also applied for, and received, generous funding from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for the 2014 Picturing Commerce symposium at Colorado College, which preceded this volume. She has published broadly on Chinese painting and prints, as well as intercultural connections in the early modern period. Her first book considered the works of seventeenth-century Chinese artist Chen Hongshou in a social context (2012).

10. Chinese porcelain, the East India Company, and British cultural identity, 1600–1800

Stacey Pierson Abstract Porcelain from China became a globally traded product in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The British East India Company, chartered in 1600, was both an importer and a consumer of Chinese products like tea and porcelain, transforming life in Britain and in the British Empire more broadly. The Chinese ability to harness advanced technology to provide a bespoke product ensured that British taste was eventually imposed on some Chinese export wares. Intriguingly, porcelain services in England at times became material representations of personal or national identity. This study centers on the impact and consequences of the representation of British cultural and social identity through foreign goods, and the implications for studies of object movement and object design histories. Keywords: Chinese export porcelain; English East India Company porcelains; hybrid designs; global design history; early modern ceramic trade; tea drinking in Britain

Chinese ceramics have been part of domestic and public life in Britain since the sixteenth century. The first examples that arrived were often given metalwork mounts that transformed them into luxurious objects.1 Subsequently, imported ceramics were used without adornment in daily life, particularly at table, becoming a familiar domestic object. As a result of their incorporation into British life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these ceramics have been extensively studied and much is known about the consumption of Chinese ceramics in Britain, particularly in domestic life as well as in specific locations such as public inns or at court. The sources for information about the consumption of Chinese ceramics in Britain range widely, from archaeology, to diaries and literature, household inventories, and cultural histories of dining

1

See Pierson, Collectors, Collections, and Museums; also Pierson, “Movement of Chinese Ceramics.”

Bentley, Tamara H. (ed.), Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800, Amsterdam University Press, 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984677/ch10

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and drinking.2 Information about the stylistic features of the porcelains, often classified as “export wares,” is also widely published, generally in survey histories of Chinese export porcelain, as well as more specialist texts on aspects of Chinese export wares such as “armorial porcelain.”3 The mechanics of this export trade, and the movement of Chinese porcelain in general, are explored in histories of the global commodity trade, especially from Asia.4 An important mechanism for the movement of Chinese porcelain was the merchant trading companies that were established in Britain and Europe after 1600. The English company, known as the East India Company (EIC), was responsible for the movement of hundreds of thousands of Chinese porcelains, as well as their distribution in Britain and its overseas colonies. The literature on the EIC is vast but some works are particularly focused on the trade in objects and commodities and the lifestyles of company employees.5 What none of these texts address, however, is what these Chinese porcelains represented for British consumers. The general assumption is that they were simply exotica, and a mirror for attitudes about China.6 However, as this chapter will demonstrate, they were also a representation of Britain and British people. Through consumption and design, a change in identity was imposed on the porcelains used in Britain and by British consumers in other locations. An account of the global reception and consumption of Chinese porcelain of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and its impact on the objects was published in my book From Object to Concept, but the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have only been lightly touched upon from this perspective.7 As a case study for the role of objects in shaping and affirming cultural and national identities, Chinese porcelain and EIC would seem to be ideal in light of the documented use of Chinese porcelain at most EIC outposts around the world, and its commissioning by identifiable consumers both directly and indirectly associated with the company.

2 For evidence regarding the consumption of Chinese porcelain in England, for sources in archaeology see Bracken, “‘Chyna’ in England before 1614”; Allan, Medieval and Post-medieval Finds; for diaries and literature see Bray, Diary of John Evelyn; Defoe, Tour ‘thro the Whole Island of Great Britain; Lamb, “Old China”; for household inventories see Nishida, Munroe and Richard, Burghley Porcelains; MacGregor, Late King’s Goods; and for cultural histories of dining and drinking see Glanville and Young, Elegant Eating, and Day, Eat, Drink and Be Merry. 3 For survey histories of Chinese export porcelain see Sargent, Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics; Kerr and Mengoni, Chinese Export Ceramics; and Fuchs, Made in China. For more specialist texts on aspects of Chinese export wares, such as “armorial porcelain,” see Howard, Chinese Armorial Porcelain. 4 See Berg, “Asian Luxuries and the Making of the European Consumer Revolution”; Batchelor, “On the Movement of Porcelains”; Pomeranz, Great Divergence. 5 See, for example, Farrington, Trading Places; and Erikson, Between Monopoly and Free Trade. 6 Chang, Britain’s Chinese Eye. 7 I touched on these issues in Pierson, “Movement of Chinese Ceramics.”

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Private commissions and armorial wares Some Chinese porcelain was available in Britain before the establishment of the EIC but certain types were not, particularly privately commissioned wares, such as what are known as “armorial wares,” decorated with family crests, and bowls from India for the drinking of punch. The popularity of these types, which were associated with commodities from Asia, suggests that the EIC’s imports and its fulfilling of private commissions had a notable impact on British daily-life activities of the late seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. The imported products provided a physical link to the provider of Asian goods, particularly tea and porcelain. The private trade, accessory to official company trade, is quite important in this because it was through this secondary trade mechanism that special commissions were carried out. Recent research in the records of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC) suggests that the private trade was more substantial by volume than company trade, but, while significant, that was not the case for the EIC.8 Nevertheless, EIC private trade played a central role in specially commissioned objects. It is these works that are most often dated, and tell us the most about how they were used and what they represented to their consumers. Initially, the EIC private trade was tolerated, rather than actively encouraged. According to Anthony Farrington, who has written extensively about the EIC, later in the seventeenth century, […] the English Company began to concede regulated opportunities for private enterprise. Rules drawn up in 1674 allowed its servants […] to trade from port to port within Asia in all but a few commodities which were entirely reserved for the Company. […] Once the regular trade at Canton was established the Company came to concentrate on three principal commodities—tea, silk textiles, and inexpensive porcelain. All the “fancy” goods and special orders, for example for armorial porcelain or large decorative pieces, were left to the private trade of their servants and ships’ officers.9

If we turn now to a few examples of Chinese porcelains produced for and used by individual members of the EIC, we can get a sense of how they were incorporated into and shaped the material and social worlds of mercantile Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As noted above, one major, well-known category of what might be called “British Chinese porcelain” was armorial ware (porcelains decorated with family or company crests, for an example, see Fig. 10.1) The first English armorial porcelains were commissioned in the late seventeenth century, the earliest 8 See Campen and Eliens, Chinese and Japanese Porcelain for the Dutch Golden Age; Erikson, Between Monopoly and Free Trade. 9 Farrington, Trading Places, pp. 77, 87.

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Fig. 10.1: Unknown artist, armorial porcelain plate, decorated with the Arms of Pitt, with Ridgeway in pretense, China, c. 1720. Jingdezhen kilns, Qing dynasty. Porcelain painted in overglaze enamels and gilt. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

known example being a planter for an EIC shipbuilder, Henry Johnson of Blackwall in Middlesex.10 In simple terms, through their decoration, armorial objects declare both the personal identity of the consumer and ownership of the vessels (and they were almost always vessels instead of figurines). With the armorial decoration, the vessels are no longer anonymous. Making such vessels from porcelain in China was much easier (and cheaper) than doing so in other materials such as silver, which would have been one of the few alternatives available in Britain at that time as porcelain was not yet manufactured as a product in England before the 1750s. The availability of porcelain armorial vessels also coincided with (or perhaps stimulated) a fashion in Northern Europe for large dinner services with matching sets of vessels, which began to appear around 1700, a fashion made possible as a result of EIC trade in Chinese goods.11 For example, dinner services represented a certain approach to dining which moved beyond central serving vessels and few courses to multiple courses and individual servings, a practice which first emerged in the mid-seventeenth century 10 Howard, Tale of Three Cities, p. 95. 11 Pierson, Collectors, Collections and Museums.

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but was very expensive before the availability of porcelain dishes in quantity. These armorial dinner services (or pieces from them) can tell us much about dining habits, therefore, but also about who was dining in this way and where. The earliest surviving porcelain dining service was made for governor (Thomas) Pitt of Madras (1653–1726) in 1705, who went to India with the EIC.12 This service is decorated with underglaze blue and overglaze enamel designs in a style known as “Chinese Imari,” after the Japanese ware which was copied in China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (see Fig. 10.1). The figurative decoration on these pieces is primarily Chinese but with the addition of a foreign crest, demonstrating a desire for the “Chineseness” of the vessels to be retained. This visual hybridity provided information about the consumer and his access to trade goods from afar, as well as his desire to be represented as a member of the British elite who would be in possession of a family crest.

Dining and drinking From the early eighteenth century, a wider consumer group for such porcelains developed, interestingly moving from EIC members and investors (merchants) to aristocratic families, then other companies and businesses, and finally even to women as individual commissioners. This pattern of consumption would appear to contradict the usual assumption that taste passed from the top down and was reinforced visually by stylistic developments in this ware. For example, from the 1720s, the decorative style of British Chinese porcelain began to change, minimizing Chinese designs and patterns, so that its Asian origins were all but eliminated. The new domestic-style designs prominently reflected the tastes and lifestyles of the newer consumers, from multiple levels of society. A typical example is the coffee pot in Figure 10.2 which takes its form from English silver and dates c. 1730–40. It features as its main decoration the arms of the Clifford family of Chudleigh, members of the aristocracy whose ancestral home is Ugbrooke in Devon, England.13 Not only does this piece prominently represent that particular elite consumer group but it also reveals the continuation of fashionable drinking practices from the previous century (coffee) and the origins of the forms for such vessels, which were not Chinese. In the analysis of these wares, the absence of Chinese designs or forms in Chinese porcelain is something that is often seen as surprising from both an art historical and a consumer perspective, as the objects were of Chinese manufacture and seemingly desirable by association. But the absence is not unusual if it is considered from a sociocultural perspective. The key is that once porcelain from China became readily available in Britain after the 1720s, and therefore not exclusive, it no longer needed to be visually Chinese, 12 Howard, Chinese Armorial Porcelain, p. 176, B1. 13 Lu et al., Passion for Porcelain.

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Fig. 10.2: Unknown artist, porcelain coffee pot, overglaze decoration with the arms of the Clifford family of Chudleigh (Devon, England), China. Jingdezhen kilns, Qing dynasty, Yongzheng period.

declaring its exotic origins. Instead, by a certain date, Chinese porcelain merely provided the medium for the making of a visually British object, which therefore is only materially Chinese. It was also not limited in design by its producers. Any design could be made in or on Chinese porcelain and therefore consumers had a choice. When given this choice, they did not, for the most part, choose Chinese designs. In another example, also representing an elite pastime, yet one which was reserved primarily for the upper classes (unlike coffee drinking), fox hunting is illustrated. Such scenes were popular in visual arts at this time, and therefore it is not surprising that they should also appear on armorial porcelains (see Fig. 10.3). Designs for these scenes could easily be sent to China where they were readily copied. The ability to copy any design or form in porcelain is an indication of the role that advanced manufacturing

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Fig. 10.3: Unknown artist, porcelain plate, with overglaze enamel design of fox hunting paired with armorial shield, China, c. 1755–60. Fox-hunting scene derived from a print of a painting by James Seymour, 1702–1752. Jingdezhen kilns. Hard-paste porcelain, lime glaze. Winterthur Museum.

technology played in this type of cross-cultural material translation. On this vessel, there is a narrative scene as well as an armorial which are signifiers of identity. The hunting scene is further derived from a print of a painting by James Seymour (?1702–1752), whose work was admired by the gentry.14 The image on the porcelain dish therefore has been translated through several media. There are layers of meaning embedded in this dish centered around the armorial, which declares that this piece was made for the May family of London and Sussex who can be seen to embody the aristocratic lifestyle through their consumption of individualized Chinese porcelains. Interestingly, women of the gentry sometimes had their own armorial porcelain, indicating that they too were commissioners, not just passive consumers as is commonly assumed. The sauce tureen in Figure 10.4 (pictured with additional parts of the service) was made for the countess of Macclesfield (Dorothy Nesbitt, d. 1779), who was a widow as can be seen from the shield which has a lozenge or diamond shape. The vessel itself was copied from an English creamware version which in turn took its form from silver.15 Visually there is nothing remotely Chinese about this 14 Fuchs, Made in China, p. 75. 15 Fuchs, Made in China, p. 97.

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Fig. 10.4: Unknown artist, porcelain sauce tureen and elements from a larger service, made for the countess of Macclesfield (d. 1779), with overglaze decoration of shield, China. Private collection.

tureen. Even materially, it is disguised to look like another type of ceramic. While it may have been ordered as a replacement piece, this imitation is significant on several levels. Firstly it is further evidence that from the 1720s, Chinese porcelain was not always associated visually with China in Britain. In fact, its origins or place of manufacture were deliberately obscured in this case. Its identity as an imitation was part of its appeal and represents a form of intellectualized taste. Secondly, this was facilitated by the fact that one of the attractions of ordering porcelain from China, apart from cost, was the advanced technology that could be utilized to make almost anything a customer desired, including an imitation “British” ceramic. This tureen is part of a dinner service, but it should be noted that such services were used not only by wealthy individuals or families but also by companies, including the EIC. As an example in the Victoria and Albert Museum demonstrates, “grand services […] decorated with arms taken from the bookplate of the Company, were used by senior staff in India.”16 The pieces from the service shown in Figure 10.5 “came from Fort St. George, Madras (now Chennai), the center of British trade in Asia, and may have been ordered to celebrate the Company’s centenary. Many EIC governors took parts of services back with them at the end of their tenure in office.”17 They were therefore portable personal and company goods for British consumers overseas that happened to be made in China and the service was also commemorative, celebrating a key event in company history. Another slightly earlier service for the EIC in the collection at Winterthur was clearly a more generic one in that it was made in a standard form in rather plain blue and white,18 and was either for use on the company ships or for one of its trading settlements in the East, thus preserving the British way of life away from Britain using Chinese goods. This set was nonetheless exclusive, 16 Kerr and Mengoni, Chinese Export Ceramics, pp. 9–10. 17 Kerr and Mengoni, Chinese Export Ceramics, pp. 9–10. 18 Fuchs, Made in China, p. 84.

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Fig. 10.5: Unknown artist, porcelain service, with overglaze arms of the English East India Company, China, eighteenth century. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

branded as it was with the company crest. The company was therefore following the same taste and consumption patterns as individuals, declaring and presenting its identity with goods ordered through its commercial access and consuming these goods in its many locations.

Tea and porcelain Dining habits and armorial wares are only one area of Chinese porcelain consumption facilitated by the EIC. Porcelain was also found to be essential for certain drinking practices, as we have seen with the earlier example of coffee. Another stimulant drunk from porcelain vessels, tea, was also distributed by the EIC. Unlike coffee it was a Chinese product and its trade and consumption was arguably one of the most important social, material, and economic developments of the later seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. The history of tea consumption in Britain is well known, but what is less well understood is the relationship between tea and porcelain. As a medium, porcelain was an important facilitator for both the simple drinking of tea but also the presentation, shipping, and storage of it, thus contributing to both trade in the commodity and the social practice of tea drinking which initially was heavily gender-and-class driven. Until the mid-eighteenth century tea drinking was mainly reserved for the upper classes and controlled by the women of the family. Eventually, with changes in taxation, tea drinking was also to become part of everyday life at lower levels of British society.

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Tea became a valuable and profitable commodity from the late seventeenth century onward and large quantities of tea were only available from China at that time. Most bulk tea was transported by sea and porcelain was a useful accessory product that could weight the ships as additional ballast and line the bottom holds to protect the tea above from damp and odor contamination.19 In this context, tea was the profitable commodity and porcelain was an additional (but desirable) product which facilitated the tea trade. Its usefulness was further enhanced by its abundance. No other manufactured product was so readily available in the tea-producing area, mass-produced and therefore relatively cheap, durable, and then saleable in Europe after serving its shipping function.20 As tea was predominantly a Chinese product (until the nineteenth century), vessels made from Chinese porcelain would have seemed a natural accompaniment to the drink. Once again, the EIC made accessible and more widely available the material considered essential for the practice of tea drinking, as well as the tea itself. The porcelain tea wares transported, consumed, and indeed collected by members of the EIC and its employees reveal much about the material worlds of Britain—both their practical sides as well as their visual and cultural dimensions. Many tea porcelains associated with the EIC survive, and like the general category of “armorial porcelains,” they often reflect similar trends in design, identity expression, and social practices, especially those with family or company crests. At first, tea wares were individual items but these later developed into more complete services, as the practice of tea drinking became more elaborate and thus materially more complex. A complete tea service consisted of a teapot, milk jug, sugar bowl, slop bowl, tea caddy, spoon tray, cups, and saucers (usually twelve).21 One surviving tea caddy features the armorial of Benjamin Torin who served as a supercargo and EIC council member in Canton in the mid-eighteenth century (see Plate 25). Its design cleverly adopts the Chinese convention for representing scholars examining scrolls as a frame for the armorial, which appears on the scroll alongside the left figure poised with a paintbrush, visually and symbolically inserting the owner of the vessel into the scene. This is analogous to pictures within pictures in ­Chinese painting, such as the famous portrait of the Qianlong emperor shown viewing objects with his own portrait behind him.22 A teapot of a similar date features the arms of a captain in the Royal Navy (Richard Latham), and like the caddy, it still features very Chinese-style designs, in this case a traditional watery landscape scene with monumental rocks in the background, of a type featured on many domestic and export porcelains from the late Ming 19 Jacobs, Merchant in Asia, p. 189. 20 Pierson, “Production, Distribution, and Aesthetics”. 21 Fuchs, Made in China, p. 107. 22 See One, or Two? in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing.

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Fig. 10.6: Unknown artist, porcelain teapot, with overglaze enamel design of coat of arms, China, 1755–85. Jingdezhen kilns. Hard-paste porcelain, lime glaze. Winterthur Museum.

period onward.23 It is painted in blue and white but with a polychrome armorial crest placed centrally on the shoulder of the pot, an incongruous Western design element inserted into a Chinese vista. As we have seen with armorial dishes, this approach to design, retaining a Chinese style by utilizing stock Chinese decorative patterns, would change shortly after the first quarter of the eighteenth century to reflect new fashions outside of China, including neoclassical styles and the forms of contemporary silver. For example, the teapot in Figure 10.6 belonged to a member of the gentry, and in design terms could easily be English or European. There are no Chinese elements and the most prominent motif is the coat of arms. Other members of the British elite also commissioned tea wares, including the painter Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) who even designed his own monogram for his service which clearly post-dates his knighthood.24 Decorated in a style popular in the American market, with a so-called “Fitzhugh border” and rose palette, the centrally placed monogram imitates the stylistic conventions for armorials, thus demonstrating the visual power of such imagery for British cultural identity. Certainly it can be argued that the popularization of armorials was facilitated by Chinese porcelain which enabled them to be readily reproduced and importantly displayed in quantity. 23 The teapot has collection number Winterthur L03.2775.76a,b. It is published in Fuchs, Made in China, p. 117. 24 Reynolds’ service is housed in the Peabody Essex Museum, with collection number PEM E83352.AB.

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Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

Popular visual culture and politics British Chinese porcelains could also feature more topographical designs and reveal not only more widespread consumption of personalized sets of porcelain vessels but also what such sets might be used for beyond their basic function as vessels. One very interesting example was made for and presented as a gift for a cobbler who had looked after a gentleman who had escaped from a sinking East Indiaman ship off the coast of Rye in East Sussex, England (see Plate 26 and Fig. 10.7). The design features the initials of the cobbler, R.P. or Richard Philcox, in the style of an armorial, thus further demonstrating that this was considered a standard and desirable visual style for such wares. On the other side of the pot there is also a little vignette of a cobbler at work, with a common expression of the time, “I must work for leather is dear,” painted above. Scenes of working life were quite fashionable in later eighteenth-century prints and some trade cards, which might have provided a source for the design.25 But working life associated with the China trade, particularly tea, was also depicted on some of these porcelains, such as the dish in the next example (see Plate 27). Like the previous pieces, this dish also features a kind of pseudo-armorial, here as a frame for the design, but the imagery is not of an English craftsman at work. Instead it depicts an English inspector at work above a Chinese tea packer—an unusual scene on porcelain but one seen in paintings of the time. The motto, “labor itself is a pleasure,” is seen in armorials of three families and the border decoration of the dish is borrowed from Viennese porcelain of the first half of the eighteenth century.26 Thus this dish combines imagery from multiple sources but more importantly, it also features a stylized visual reference to the work of the tea merchant in the form of an armorial—a new approach to design which too was facilitated or inspired by the activities of the EIC. It literally brought these activities into the home, on the dinner service—referencing tea and trade in another context. A final type of British Chinese porcelain which we need to consider is also one associated with a drink brought to England by the EIC. This drink was punch, which was first drunk fairly widely from the 1680s. Its “name derived from Hindi, and was a drink brought back from India to England by sailors and employees of the EIC in the early 17th century. The drink was a mixture of a wide variety of elements, including spirits and fruit juice, with early ones based on wine or brandy, and then rum after the mid-17th century, as well as Jamaican sugar cane.”27 Like tea, punch required special vessels, but unlike tea, these were large and communal. When porcelain became more readily available, porcelain punch bowls became fashionable, especially from the 1740s onward. This medium also enabled (or partly inspired) the use of the wide expanse of space available on large punch bowls for a different type of visual imagery than on tea vessels—imagery related to social and political commentary. Some 25 Murphy and O’Driscoll, Studies in Ephemera. 26 Sargent, Treasures of Chinese Export. 27 Kerr and Mengoni, Chinese Export Ceramics, p. 36.

Chinese porcelain, the East India Company, and British cultural identity, 1600–1800

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,..~'4r*·f:.r. h~ . -=

Fig. 10.7: Unknown artist, porcelain teapot, with overglaze design of cobber’s boot and the initials “RP” for “Richard Philcox,” China, 1770–75, 4 1/2 × 9 × 4 1/2 in. (11.43 × 22.86 × 11.43 cm). Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

punch bowls featured simple armorials or scenes of gentry life, such as fox hunting, which we saw earlier, but many others were used to make a statement or to commemorate an event, possibly because the drinking of punch was a very public and social activity. One example of a punch bowl with overtly nationalist decoration is in the collection at the Winterthur Museum. This bowl features the arms of the Anti-Gallican Society which was founded to “discourage the Introduction of French modes and the Importation of French commodities.”28 The most famous punch bowls with anti-French, and therefore pro-British decoration, are those featuring designs copied from Hogarth (1697–1764) prints such as one with a scene from The Gate of Calais29 (Fig. 10.8). This particular version has replaced the arms of England that originally appeared above the gate in the print with those of Sir Thomas Rumboldt, from an EIC family, who served with Robert Clive at the Battle of Plassey and later as governor of Madras. If this bowl were part of a larger service used by Rumboldt while overseas, it would have been a good example of how Chinese porcelain enabled both the representation of British identity and culture outside Britain as well as the movement of British visual and material culture around the trading world of Britain. Through this bowl and its counterparts, Hogarth’s designs were disseminated through another medium. Rumboldt’s ability to participate in and crucially appreciate both trade and domestic art production is represented visually in this porcelain punch bowl, wherever he was located. 28 Fuchs, Made in China, p. 135. 29 The prints were based on the painting of the same name that was produced by Hogarth in 1748. It is now in the Tate Gallery in London, coll. no. N01464.

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Fig. 10.8: Unknown artist, export porcelain punch bowl, with overglaze enamel design including the arms of the Anti-Gallican Society, China, c. 1750–55. Picture taken from a Hogarth print of the Gate of Calais. Jingdezhen kilns. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

From China but not in China The final object examined in this chapter is another punch bowl that is political in nature but relating visually to the commercial aspects of the British empire. It demonstrates visually that 1757 was an important year for the EIC, not just in India (the Battle of Plassey), but also in China, for it was in this year that the Chinese government finally agreed to make Canton the only port open for official trade with Europeans and the British (see Plate 28). The warehouses (or “factories”) for six nations, including Britain, are depicted on this bowl as they were built along the Pearl River. The design translates architectural renderings onto a curved surface and represents the acquisition of a small amount of power over the Chinese by Europeans and the British. However, the location depicted, the port at Canton, is where British traders lived only during the season (not being allowed into Canton itself). Here they nonetheless maintained a British way of life, with “British” material goods and practices because they were not permitted to live in China. They were physically present in China, the source of some of the primary material goods and provisions consumed in eighteenth- to nineteenth- century Britain, but they were not living in China so their own way of life came with them. Through their material goods, their national and personal identities came too. This form of social and object movement demonstrates one of the many ways in which Chinese products were incorporated into and shaped the material worlds of Britain, wherever they were located.

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Conclusion That Chinese porcelain could be British and a representation of British national and cultural identity, is clearly a function of its role in trade, particularly trade in Chinese commodities. We think very little today of bringing our material selves with us when we travel or move abroad, and this is what members of the EIC did when they moved around the world. They also utilized these channels to bring goods home and present to the world their significance. What is seemingly unusual is the use of a foreign raw material, porcelain, and foreign producers, to make the goods that represented Britain and British life. It is less unusual however when viewed from the perspective of the global nature of daily life in Britain after the advent of EIC and the empire. Britons drank tea and wore silks from China, they ate off porcelain dishes from China and flavored their food with spices from South and Southeast Asia and sugar from the West Indies. A study of the relationship between the EIC and porcelain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries provides evidence for this, but an examination of the porcelains themselves also demonstrates the impact of consumption on objects and the role that objects play in identity formation and representation. The impact on the objects is often visible, in terms of signs of wear or even decoration, but it is more often than not invisible and conceptual. These foreign-made objects helped consumers to define themselves and represent their actual or desired ­position in society. Through this mechanism, porcelain from China could become a British ­product, but one made in China, much like many consumer goods today.

Bibliography Allan, John P. Medieval and Post-medieval Finds from Exeter, 1971–1980. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1984. Batchelor, Robert. “On the Movement of Porcelains: Rethinking the Birth of Consumer Society as Interactions of Exchange Networks, 1600–1750.” In Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges, ed. John Brewer and Frank Trentmann, pp. 95–121. Oxford: Berg, 2006. Berg, Maxine. “Asian Luxuries and the Making of the European Consumer Revolution.” In Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods, ed. Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger, pp. 228– 44. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Bracken, Susan. “‘Chyna’ in England before 1614.” Oriental Art 47.2 (2001): 8–10. Bray, William, ed. The Diary of John Evelyn, Esq., F.R.S., from 1641 to 1705–6, with Memoir. 2 vols. London: J.M. Dent, 1818. Campen, Jan van and Titus Eliens, eds. Chinese and Japanese Porcelain for the Dutch Golden Age. Amsterdam: Waanders, 2014. Chang, Hope. Britain’s Chinese Eye: Literature, Empire and Aesthetics in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Day, Ivan, ed. Eat, Drink and Be Merry: The British at Table 1600–2000. London: Philip Wilson, 2000. Defoe, Daniel. A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724–27, ed. G.D.H. Cole and D.C. Browning. London: J.M. Dent, 1962. Erikson, Emily. Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company, 1600–1757. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

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Farrington, Anthony. Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia, 1600–1834. London: British Library, 2002. Fuchs, Ronald W., II. Made in China. Delaware: Winterthur Museum, 2005. Glanville, Philippa and Hilary Young, eds. Elegant Eating: Four Hundred Years of Dining in Style. London: Victoria & Albert Publications, 2002. Howard, David Sanctuary. Chinese Armorial Porcelain. London: Faber, 1974. Howard, David Sanctuary. A Tale of Three Cities: Canton, Shanghai and Hong Kong; Three Centuries of SinoBritish Trade in the Decorative Arts. London: Sothebys, 1997. Jacobs, Els M. Merchant in Asia: The Trade of the Dutch East India Company during the Eighteenth Century. Leiden: CNWS, 2006. Kerr, Rose and Luisa Mengoni. Chinese Export Ceramics. London: Victoria & Albert Publications, 2011. Lamb, Charles. “Old China.” In The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, 5 vols., ed. E.V. Lucas, vol. 2, pp. 169–71. London: Methuen, 1903. Lu, Zhangshen, Luisa Megoni, et al. Passion for Porcelain: Masterpieces of Ceramics from the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju, 2012. MacGregor, Arthur, ed. The Late King’s Goods: Collections, Possessions and Patronage of Charles I in the Light of the Commonwealth Sale Inventories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Murphy, Kevin D. and Sally O’Driscoll, eds. Studies in Ephemera—Text and Image in Eighteenth-Century Prints. Plymouth: Roman & Littlefield, 2013. Nishida, Hiroko, catalog; Alexandra Munroe and Naomi Noble Richard, eds. The Burghley Porcelains, an Exhibition from the Burghley House Collection and Based on the 1688 Inventory and 1690 Devonshire Schedule. New York: Japan Society, 1980. Pierson, Stacey. Collectors, Collections and Museums: The Field of Chinese Ceramics in Britain, 1560–1960. Bern: Peter Lang, 2007. Pierson, Stacey. From Object to Concept: Global Consumption and the Transformation of Ming Porcelain. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013. Pierson, Stacey. “The Movement of Chinese Ceramics: Appropriation in Global History.” Journal of World History 23.1 (2012): 9–39. Pierson, Stacey. “Production, Distribution and Aesthetics. Abundance and Chinese Porcelain from Jingdezhen 1300–1850.” In Abundance: An Archaeological Analysis of Plenitude, ed. Monica Smith, pp. 229–50. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2017. Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Sargent, William. Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics: From the Peabody Essex Museum. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.

About the author Stacey Pierson is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the History of Art and Archaeology Department at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London, where she specializes in Chinese art, particularly the history of Chinese ceramics. This is a subject on which she has published widely. From 1995 to 2007 she was Curator of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, at the University of London, which houses a world-renowned collection of Chinese ceramics. In 2013 she published From Object to Concept: Global Consumption and the Transformation of Ming Porcelain. Her most recent book is Private Collecting, Exhibitions and the

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Shaping of Art History in London: The Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1866–1950 (2017), which examines an influential art-collecting group in London that played a key role in the intellectual development of Chinese ceramics and other collecting fields through display.

Index Acapulco: 27, 91, 128, 170, 176–77, 180–81, 184–88 Adams, William: 172 adoption: 105–06 Akbar, Mughal emperor: 237–38 Albuquerque, Afonso de: 167 Alcíbar, José de: 138 Allewelt, Zacharias: 203 Almadén: 162, 181, 185, 186 Alvares Cabral, Pedro: 237 America: 225–27 Amiot, Joseph-Marie: 232–33 Amoy Chinqua see Chinqua Angkor: 58 Anti-Gallican Society: 287 Araújo, Rui de: 167 Arellano, Manuel de: 136 Argentina: 133, 137, 147, 151 Arita wares: 39–42, 269 Dutchmen on: 41–42, 43 flasks: 40, 42 Arkenbout, Jacob Ariesz.: 213 armorial wares: 213, 276–77, 278, 279–80, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288 Arte de los Metales: 160–62 Ashikaga Yoshimitsu: 34, 62–63 Ashikaga Yoshimochi: 63 Asian goods in Latin America see Latin America, Asian goods in Askew, Anthony: 209–10 Ayudhya: 33, 59, 74, 103 map of: 75 Back, Laurens: 96 Baeza, Pedro de: 182, 184 Balbuena, Bernardo de: 127 Bantam: 33 Hokkien trade: 93–95 pepper: 93–94, 95–97 Portuguese trade: 95 silk: 93–96 silver: 93, 95–97 baochao: 61 Batavia: 32–33, 40, 97 Hokkien trade: 97–103, 104–05 pepper: 98 Portuguese trade: 101 silk: 97 silver: 98 tea: 100–01 see also Fort Batavia Bates, Elliot: 227 Battle of Plassey: 287–88 Bayan: 60 Beckman, Jacob: 205 Belnos, Jean-Jacques: 239 Belnos, Sophie Charlotte: 238 Benavente, Alonso de: 185

Bencon: 103, 105, 106 Bentley, Thomas: 206–07 Bian Wenjin: 35 Bird, William Hamilton: 241–42 Birth of the Virgin: 150 Blaeu, Willem: 45 Blair, William: 239–40 Blussé, Leonard: 31–32, 98 Bonsach, Joachim Severin: 201–02 Bosanquet II, David: 198, 200 bowls, tea see tea bowls Boxer, C.R.: 89 Braam Houckgeest, Andreas Everard van: 22, 23–24, 209, 210 Braam Houckgeest, Catharina van: 22, 24, 25 Braganza, John: 241 Braudel, Fernand: 49–50 Brouwer, Guillaume de: 202–03 Brueghel, Jan: 225 n. 3 Bucareli y Ursúa, Antonio María de: 130 Bungo Funai: 67, 68, 70–72, 113, 116, 118, 120–24 Chinatown: 71–72, 114, 123 Funai Castle: 113–14, 116–18, 120–24 Portuguese at: 116 Burke, Thomas: 24 n. 4 Cabrera, Miguel: 136, 138 n. 49, 140–41 Calico Acts: 49 calligraphy: 45 Campen, Jan van: 252 Canning, Lancelot: 238 Canton: 27, 34, 50 clay figures from: 201–09, 212–13, 216 lacquer screens trade: 252 mercury trade: 168–69, 181–83, 186 painting Jingdezhen wares at: 39, 43 porcelain trade: 43–44 silk workers guild: 49 canton system: 50, 79 Capitulaciones con el emperador de Xapón: 170–72 Carreri, Gemelli: 170 carriages: 151 Cartagena: 128 ceramics: 44 as ballast: 44, 284 commissioning of: 38–39, 40 conversion of: 23 see also porcelain; portraits, Chinese clay sculptural ceramics, exchange of: 116 Asia and Europe: 38–44, 116, 117 through Canton: 43–44 China and Japan: 35, 39–42, 118, 121–23 Korean: 35, 119–20 ceramics, geographic Asian in Latin America: 129–35, 147–49, 152 British Chinese: 275–89 Chinese: 21, 23, 35, 38–40, 42–44, 117, 121–22

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Japanese: 23, 35, 40–42, 43 Korean: 35, 119 Venetian: 116, 117 ceramics, types of celadons: 35, 39 glass, Venetian: 116, 117, 147 jian ware: 35, 39 Luzon jars: 21 Oribe-style wares: 39 raku ware: 35 shipping jars: 23 three-color: 117, 118 white wares: 35, 39 see also porcelain, types of; tea bowls Chambers, William: 45, 207 Champa: 58 Charleston, R.J.: 203 Chengshi moyuan: 45 Chen Hongshou: 257, 263 Chen Zizhen: 88 Chinatowns: 70, 74 Bungo Funai: 71–72, 114, 123 Higo: 85 Hirado: 86 Nagasaki: 84 Chincheo: 168, 174–75, 181, 183, 187 Chinese trade through Canton: 43–44 ceramics: 38–40, 43–44, 61–62 with the Dutch: 39–40, 43–44 lacquerwares: 47 mercury: 164, 165–66, 173–75, 179, 181–88 prohibitions: 27, 30–31, 37, 47, 61–63, 66–67, 98, 101, 251 silk for silver: 27, 33, 47, 67, 78, 89, 91 silver: 165 see also Hokkien trade and merchants; Sino-Japanese trade; specific Chinese dynasties Chinqua: 197–200, 204, 206, 214, 252 Chitqua: 22, 23, 206–09 in London: 206–08 paintings of: 22, 24, 208 portraits by: 23, 197, 205 n. 44, 209–12 chocolate consumption: 130–32, 146 Chongzhen, Ming emperor: 232 Christ Crucified: 144 Christian VI, king of Denmark: 201, 203 Christianity ivory figures: 143, 144, 152 in Japan: 36, 45, 77, 173 in Kyushu: 71, 74–75, 114, 116 rosary beads: 116, 144, 256 see also Jesuit missionaries cigarettes: 146 cinnabar: 164, 165, 167 Civitates orbis terrarum: 45 Clapera, Francisco: 147 clavichords: 228, 229, 230, 232–33 Clive, Robert: 238, 287 Cocks, Richard: 87 coconut cups: 130–31

Coen, Jan Pieterszoon: 96, 106 coffee: 149, 279–80, 283 Co-Hong associations: 43 coins, Chinese: 29, 33 export to Japan: 29, 58–59, 64 Kamakura currency: 58 Majapahit currency: 59 coins, lead: 95, 97 coins, Spanish Reals: 95, 96, 97, 161–62 Colin, Alexandre-Marie: 238 Collet, Joseph: 197–98, 199–200 compass: 57 conceit: 209, 211 Confucianism: 61 copper see coins, Chinese core regions, economic: 50–51 Coromandel coast: 252–53 cotton textiles Chinese: 66 English imports of Indian: 49 indianilla: 135, 138–39, 149, 150, 151 Couto, Diogo do: 94 credit systems: 101–02 Cruzat y Góngora, Fausto: 185–86 Curiel, Gustavo: 145 currency, paper: 61, 66; see also coins, Chinese Curucelaegui y Arriola, Gabriel de: 185 Dagly, Gérard: 234 Đại Việt: 69, 79 Dam, Jacob van: 204 Dampier, William: 92–93 Danish Asiatic Company: 201–02, 206 Da Shan: 101 Dazaifu: 34 Delftware: 44, 45 Delves, Grave: 252 Deng Wenjun: 86 Denney, Joyce: 30 Deshima: 37, 40, 166 Dittis, Andrea: 87, 106 doré: 160 Dutch East India Company see VOC Dutch Republic: 33 triple-banded flags: 249 n. 3 Dutch trade: 33 China: 39–40, 43–44 Japan: 37, 40–42, 75–77, 166, 253 mercury: 166, 169 porcelain: 39–44 see also VOC Duyvendak, J.J.L.: 267 Earlom, Richard: 208 East India Company: 33 ceramics as ballast: 44 China: 250–51 clay figures: 197, 203 gifting instruments: 238 Hirado: 33–34, 87 India: 238–39, 251

295

INDEX

lacquer screen imports: 252 porcelain trade: 44, 276–78, 282, 284 private trade: 277–78, 282 Taiwan: 251 tea trade: 284 economic revolution: 49–50 Ecuador: 132, 140, 146 Edo period ceramics: 35, 39 lacquer screens: 261 trade during: 36–37, 70, 73–77 trade restrictions: 41 Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang: 34, 35 Elizabeth I, queen of England: 230 Emperor of China: 45, 270–71 Empress of China: 212 Enríquez de Almanza, Martín: 164, 177 entrepôts: 56 estrados: 146 European role in East Asian trade: 29–30, 32–34, 49–51, 56 export substitution: 47, 269 expulsions Hokkiens from Manila: 91, 107 Tokugawa edicts: 37, 77, 79, 253 Ex-Voto with Saint Gertrude: 149, 151 Farrington, Anthony: 277 Felipe II, king of Spain: 116, 173, 174 Felipe III, king of Spain: 91, 172 Fishing Village at Sunset: 35 Flynn, Dennis O.: 162 folding screens see screens, lacquer folding Foreign Emperors and Kings: 45 Fort Batavia: 56 Fort Zeelandia: 77 Fowke, Margaret: 241 fox hunting: 280, 281, 287 Fróis, Luís: 116 From Chino and Indian: 147, 148 From Spaniard and Black, Mulatto: 138 Fujian: 57, 67, 83 ceramics: 35, 39 clay figures from: 197 lacquer screens: 252 silver trade: 162 Zheng family: 77–78 see also Chincheo; Hokkien trade and merchants Fukuoka see Hakata Funai see Bungo Funai furniture: 145–50 cabinets: 130, 131, 147–48, 203, 225–26 chairs: 145, 201–02 chests: 140, 145–47 estrados: 146 tables: 141, 145, 203 see also screens, lacquer folding Fuzhou see Quanzhou Gage, Thomas: 128, 130, 135 galleon trade see Manila galleon trade

gamelans: 226–27 Garrick, David: 211 Gate of Calais: 287, 288 Gentlemen Seventeen: 22, 33, 40, 96 Gezantschap der Neerlandtsche Oost-Indische Compagnie: 45, 46 Giráldez, Arturo: 38, 162 glass, Venetian: 116, 117, 147 Go-Daigo, emperor of Japan: 60 Gómez de Sandoval, Francisco: 171 Gómez Escobar, Julián: 168 gongs: 226–27 González de Mendoza, Juan: 178 Gough, Richard: 207 Graham, Maria: 138, 146, 151 Grau y Monfalcón, Juan: 184 Gregorio XIII, Pope: 116 Grifo, Piedro: 168 Grignion II, Charles: 23–24, 208 Guangzhou see Canton Guizhou: 165, 185 gunpowder weapons: 66, 67, 253, 258, 261 haifuki: 167 haijin see restrictions on trade, Chinese Hakata: 65, 68 Hokkien merchants: 84–85 Ōtomo clan: 114, 118, 120 silk trade: 118 trade: 27, 34, 58, 70 Hall, Thomas: 198–200 hand scrolls Chinese: 34, 35, 257, 265 Japanese: 24 Harich-Schneider, Eta: 230 Harpen, Johannes Jacob van: 212, 213 harpsichords: 228, 229–30, 231–34, 235–36, 237–38, 241–42 Harrison, Edward: 197, 199, 200 Hasegawa Fujihiro: 88 Hasekura Rokuemon: 141, 173 Hawks, Henry: 129 Heeren XVII: 22, 33, 40, 96 Henry Casimir II: 251 Herrera, Alonso de: 145 Hickey, William: 206, 209 Higo: 85–86 Hindley, Geoffrey: 229 Hindoostanie airs: 240–41 Hirado: 27, 37, 74 East India Company at: 33–34, 87 Hokkien trade: 86–87 piracy: 75–76 Portuguese at: 67 VOC at: 75 Hodgetts, Thomas: 209 Hogarth, William: 287 Hội An Sino-Japanese trade: 69–70, 74 textile trade: 47 Hokkien trade and merchants: 83–84, 107–08

296 

Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

adoptions: 105–06 brotherhood partnerships: 106 networks: 103–07 pepper: 93–94, 95–97 raising capital: 101–02 red seal trade: 88–89 restrictions: 101 sangleys: 92–93, 105, 107, 129, 173 silk: 91, 94, 96–97 silver: 93, 95–98 silver for silk: 89, 91–92 smuggling: 84, 89, 90, 91 tea: 100–01 Hokkien trade, geographic Bantam: 93–95 Batavia: 97–103, 104–05 Higo: 85–86 Hirado: 86–87 Kyushu: 84–86 Manila: 87, 89–92, 105, 107 Manila Parián: 92–93, 105, 107 Melaka: 103 Nagasaki: 88, 99–100, 105 Satsuma: 85 Taiwan: 99–100 Hollandisme: 42 homes, colonial: 145–52 altars: 151–52 bedrooms: 147, 149, 150–51 dining areas: 149 estrados: 146 porcelain in: 147–48 salons: 145–47, 149, 151 see also Latin America, Asian goods in Honda Masazumi: 88, 172 Hongwu, Ming emperor: 30–31, 60–61, 66 Hornby, Joan: 268 Hosokawa clan: 65, 70 Huancavélica: 162, 164, 181 Hurk, Pieter van: 201 Iaccarino, Ubaldo: 171 Idria: 185 Ikuno: 27 Impey, Oliver: 42, 269 import substitution: 44, 47, 234–35, 237 indianilla: 135, 138–39, 149, 150, 151 Inquisition: 181, 184 instruments, musical: 225–27, 233–35 gongs: 226–27 lutes: 227, 230, 239, 264 n. 34 qin: 232, 233 ‛ūd: 227 see also keyboard instruments Intje Moeda: 103–04 ivory: 143–45, 146, 152 Iwami: 27, 66, 167 Iwasaki Cauti, Fernando: 175, 177–78, 179 Jahangir, Mughal emperor: 238 Jakarta see Batavia

Jansen, Marius: 37, 40 Japanese trade bullion export limits: 37, 41 closed country: 37, 77, 79 with the Dutch: 37, 40–42, 75–77, 166, 253 with the Philippines: 21, 23, 36 porcelain: 40–42 restrictions: 37, 41–42, 73–74, 77, 78–79, 84 silk for silver: 27, 33, 47, 67, 78, 89, 91 silver: 27, 32, 66–68, 78 with Spain: 170–71 see also Ryukyu; Sino-Japanese trade; specific Japanese periods Japantowns: 74, 79 jars, tea see tea jars Jesuit missionaries Amiot, Joseph-Marie: 232–33 in Bungo Funai: 67, 71 in China: 36, 45, 50, 232–33, 235–37 Fróis, Luís: 116 in India: 237 music, instruments: 230, 232–33, 235–37 in Nagasaki: 36 Pantoja, Diego: 232 Pedrini, Teodorico: 232–33 Pereira, Tómas: 233 in Phú Xuân: 70 Ricci, Matteo: 45, 232 Sánchez, Alonso: 179 Schall von Bell, Johann Adam: 232 Xavier, Francis: 67, 114–16, 230 jian ware: 35, 39 jícaras: 130, 131 Jingdezhen porcelain: 38–39, 42, 43, 123, 269, 278, 280, 281, 285 Jourdain, John: 96 Juan, Jorge: 132, 135 Juárez, Luis: 145, 147, 150 junk trade see Hokkien trade and merchants Kadoya merchants: 74, 76 Kamakura period Ōtomo clan: 114 Song coin: 58, 59 trade during: 30, 59–60 kango trade: 85, 88 Kangxi, Qing emperor: 232–33, 251 “Kangxi Depression”: 78 kanhe licenses: 31 Kano Motonobu: 261 Kano school: 261, 262, 263 karamono: 35, 58, 59, 63 Kauffmann, Angelica: 24 n. 4, 211 Keichō Embassy: 173 kenminsen ships: 114 Kessel, Jan van, the Elder: 225–27 keyboard instruments: 36, 227–44 in China: 232–33, 243 chinoiserie on: 233–34, 235–36, 237 clavichords: 228, 229, 230, 232–33 fortepianos: 239

297

INDEX

as gifts: 229–30, 232, 235, 237–38, 243 harpsichords: 228, 229–30, 231–34, 235–36, 237–38, 241–42 in India: 237–40, 243 in Japan: 230–31 organs: 228, 230, 237–38 Khanazad, Madhu: 237–38 Khouw Hong Liang: 104 Khouw Hun: 104 Khubilai Khan: 58 kimonos: 137–38 kinrande: 133–34 Knox, Robert: 198 n. 8 Kobata Atsushi: 85 Kongen of Danmark: 203 Korea, invasion of: 35 Korean ceramics trade: 35 Korean craftsmen in Japan: 40 Koxinga: 33 n. 19, 78, 90, 98–99, 251 Kronprins Christian: 201–02, 203 kuancai folding screens: 247, 252, 258 n. 15 Kyushu: 34 Hokkien trade: 84–86 map of: 68 silver trade: 67–68 Wokou: 60, 70 see also Arita wares; Bungo Funai; Ōtomo clan; Ōtomo Sōrin lacquerwares, geographic Asian, in Latin America: 140–41, 149 Chinese: 47, 141, 198, 247 Japanese: 47 Mexican: 130, 131 lacquerwares, items: 47, 140–41 cabinets: 203 cases: 198 chairs: 201 chests, trunks: 141 gourd cups: 130, 131 headboards: 149, 151 tables: 141 see also screens, lacquer folding Lang, Mervyn F.: 164, 181, 182, 186 Latham, Richard: 284 Latin America, Asian goods in: 128–29, 145 accessories: 138–39 furniture: 140–43, 145–52 ivory objects: 143–45, 146, 152 porcelain: 129–35, 147–49, 152 textiles: 135–40, 147, 149–51 see also homes, colonial leaden coins: 95, 97 Leur, J.C. van: 98 licenses, trade see kanhe licenses; red seal trade Li Dan: 87, 106 Life of Christ: 45 Li Khoen Tsoe: 105 Lim Lacco: 106 Lin Daorong: 105 Lindorff, Joyce: 232–33

Lin Guangtian: 104 Linschoten, Jan Huyghen van: 33, 224 Lippit, Yukio: 260 Li Qingxin: 40, 48–49 Longqing, Ming emperor: 89 López de Legazpi, Miguel: 173, 179 López de Zúñiga y Velasco, Diego: 176 Louis XIV, king of France: 45, 75, 270 Luarca, Miguel de: 179 Lu Ji: 35 lutes: 227, 230, 239, 264 n. 34 Luzon jars: 21 Mạc Đăng Dung, emperor of Đại Việt: 69 Macartney mission: 266 Macau: 27, 32 mercury trade: 168–69, 182–83 Portuguese at: 67, 101 textile trade: 47 Majapahit: 59 Maldonado, José: 139 Manila: 27, 32, 68–69, 74 Hokkien trade: 87, 89–92, 105, 107 mercury trade: 169–70, 174, 176, 182, 185 Parián trade, retail: 92–93, 105, 107 Spanish at: 27 Manila galleon trade: 27, 32, 36, 91, 128, 164 map of: 163 mercury: 164, 185, 188 maps, historical Ayudhya: 75 Bungo Funai: 72 Kadoya nautical chart: 76 world maps: 45 matcha tea: 35 Matsuya Hisamasa: 119 Matsuya Record of a Tea Ceremony: 119 Medano, Melchor de: 168 Medina, Bartolomé de: 160 Meissen: 44 Melaka: 23, 27, 32 Hokkien trade at: 103 mercury trade: 166–67 as a port polity: 56, 58 Portuguese at: 55 Spanish at: 27 Mendes Pinto, Fernão: 114 Mendoza y Luna, Juan de: 181–82 Mendoza y Mate de Luna, Juan de: 177–78 mercury: 159, 164–65, 169 mining of: 162, 164, 181, 185 price of: 169–70, 173, 181–83, 186 in silver refining: 36, 66, 160 smuggling of: 164, 174–75, 180–81, 186, 188 trade prohibitions: 164, 175, 186 mercury trade, geographic Canton: 168–69, 181–83, 186 China: 164, 165–66, 173–75, 179, 181–88 Chincheo: 168, 174–75, 181, 183, 187 Dutch trade: 166, 169 Japan: 166, 167, 183, 187

298 

Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

Macau: 168–69, 182–83 Manila: 169–70, 174, 176, 182, 185 Melaka: 166–67 Mexico: 170–74, 182, 184–86 Nagasaki: 166, 168, 169 Peru: 170, 174–76, 181–82, 186 Philippines: 164, 166, 170–74, 184–85 Portugal: 168–69, 182–83 Sino-Japanese trade: 168–69, 173–74 Southeast Asia: 166–67 Spain: 164, 170–75, 181–82 Mexia, Lourenço: 230 Mexico: 127–29, 140–41, 145 mercury trade: 170–74, 182, 184–86 silver from: 27, 68, 160, 181 Mexico City: 128–33, 136, 138, 140–41, 143, 146–49, 151–52 Mexico Parián: 129 Mietke, Michael: 234–35, 236 Ming dynasty ceramics: 38, 40, 61–62, 121–23, 133, 276 currency: 61, 66 folding screens: 247–48 paintings: 34–35, 257 trade during: 30–31, 58, 60–71, 78, 121–23, 168–70 trade restrictions: 27, 30–31, 47, 61–63, 66 Western instruments: 232 see also Hokkien trade and merchants missionaries: 36, 88, 230, 232; see also Jesuit missionaries Momoyama period ceramics: 35, 39 lacquer screens: 261 trade during: 35–36, 74–75 money lending: 101–02 Mongol invasions of China: 58, 98 of Japan: 30, 55, 59 Mongol Yuan see Yuan dynasty Monroy, Pedro: 184 Morga, Antonio de: 90, 179–80 Mortimer, John Hamilton: 208 Moya de Contreras, Pedro: 173 Mule, Peter: 201, 202 Mundy, Peter: 141 Mu Qi: 34 Murga Ergaluz, Martín: 182 Muromachi period ceramics: 34, 39 paintings: 34, 260–61 trade during: 30, 34, 60, 62–71, 167 see also Ōtomo Sōrin musical instruments see instruments, musical Nagasaki: 24, 27, 74–75, 79, 88 n. 14 Chinese trade with: 37, 47, 84 Deshima: 37, 40, 166 Dutch at: 40, 77, 253 Hokkien trade at: 88, 99–100, 105 Jesuits in: 36 map of: 32 n. 16 mercury trade: 166, 168, 169

in Nanban art: 258 Portuguese at: 47, 75, 88 silk trade at: 47 Naha: 64, 65 Nakamura Tadashi: 105 Nakaya merchants: 71, 116, 118 Nanban art on folding screens: 47, 143, 249, 254, 258, 260–61, 264, 268–69 on porcelain: 41–42, 43 nanbanbuki: 167 Nanbansen: 173 nautch parties: 239, 240 Naya Sukezaemon: 21, 23 Needham, Joseph: 165 Nesbitt, Dorothy: 281 networks, family: 103–6 networks, multipolar: 29–30, 50–51 New Mexico: 133, 137, 138, 140, 149–50 New Spain: 32, 36, 128 Asian textiles: 137 ivory carvings: 144 lacquerwares: 47 miners from: 171–72 silk trade: 48 Nguyễn dynasty: 69–70, 79 Nieuhof, Johan: 45 Ningbo missions to: 65–66, 71 trade at: 27, 57, 60 Nishikawa Joken: 88 Noordt, Oliver van: 165–66 Nuestra Señora de la Cinta: 176–78 Ogilby, John: 223 Oka Yasumasa: 42 Okinawa: 63–65 Omura Sumitada: 88 Ōnin War: 65 opium trade: 34, 50 organs: 228, 230, 237–38 Oribe-style wares: 39 ortoq cartel: 59 Osaka see Sakai Osbeck, Peter: 205 Ōtomo clan: 70–72, 113–14 Hakata: 114, 118, 120 Ōtomo Sōrin: 36, 67, 70–71, 114, 118–21, 123 Christianity: 114, 116 paintings of: 115 Ōtomo Yoshiaki: 70–71 Ōuchi clan: 65–66, 70–71 Ōuchi Yoshitaka: 230 Pacheco y Osorio, Rodrigo: 175 Painter’s Cabinet, The: 130, 131 paintings, geographic British: 24, 238–39, 240, 287 Chinese: 24, 25, 34–35, 257, 265 Dutch: 40–41 Flemish: 115, 225–26

INDEX

Japanese: 24, 26, 34–35, 260–63 Mexico: 131, 136, 142, 148, 150, 151, 231 Sino-Japanese exchange: 34–35 paintings, types of on clavichord lids: 228, 229 engravings: 238–39, 240 on instruments: 233–34, 235–36 oil on canvas: 41, 115, 131, 136, 142, 148, 151 oil on copper: 150, 225 wood-plaques: 26 see also hand scrolls; portraits, types of; prints, geographic paintings of audiences: 115 Battle of Lepanto: 229 bedrooms: 150, 151 cabinets: 130, 131, 147, 148, 225–26 chinoiserie: 233–34, 235–36 gongs: 226–27 harpsichords: 231 indianilla: 138 landscapes: 35 Mexico City palace: 142 musical gatherings: 238–39, 240 organs: 237–38 porcelain: 40–41, 131, 148 red seal ships: 26 silk: 136, 150 still lives: 40–41 tributes: 265 see also portraits of, painted; screens, art on lacquer folding Palazuelos Mazars, Béatrice: 185 Pantoja, Diego: 232 parasols: 223, 224, 225, 258, 259, 268, 270 partnerships, brotherhood: 106 Pasgeld: 204 patio process: 36, 160 in China: 165 in Japan: 167, 171 see also silver refining Paul V, Pope: 173 Pedrini, Teodorico: 232 Pepin, king of the Franks: 229 pepper Bantam: 93–94, 95–97 Batavia: 98 volume of trade: 95–96 Pereira, Tómas: 233 Pérez Dasmariñas, Gómez: 169 Pérez de Aguilar, Antonio: 130 Pérez de las Cuentas, Juan: 181 Peru: 128, 135, 177, 180 mercury: 170, 174–76, 181–82, 186 silver refining: 164 smuggling: 177–78 Philcox, Richard: 286 Philip II, king of Spain: 116, 173, 174 Philip III, king of Spain: 91, 172 Philippines, the Japanese trade with: 21, 23, 36

299 mercury trade: 164, 166, 170–74, 184–85 Spanish at: 27, 32, 49, 127–28, 170–71, 179 see also Manila piracy: 31, 114 from Hirado: 75–76 Wokou: 60, 62, 66–67, 70, 85–86 Pires, Tomé: 23, 55 Pitt, Thomas: 279 Plowden, Sophia: 241, 243 porcelain Asian, in Latin America: 129–35, 147–49, 152 British Chinese: 275–89 commissioning of: 38–39, 40, 277–83, 285 in dinner services: 149, 278–79, 282 in tea services: 283–85 porcelain, designs on armorial: 213, 276–77, 278, 279–80, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288 Chinese decorations: 279–80, 284–85 fox hunting: 280, 281, 287 political: 287–88 Viennese decorations: 286 working life: 286 porcelain, production of Arita: 39–42, 269 Jingdezhen: 38–39, 42, 43, 269 porcelain, types of blue-and-white: 38–40, 43–44, 45, 121–22, 123, 133–34, 285 Chinese Imari: 278, 279 Delftware: 44, 45 flasks: 40, 42 handle-less teacups: 130, 134 Jingdezhen: 123, 278, 280, 281, 285 kinrande: 133–34 kraak: 40, 44 punch bowls: 286–87, 288 see also Arita wares port polities: 56, 58–59, 66, 73, 79 Portrait of Don Juan Xavier Joachin Gutiérrez Altamirano Velasco: 136 portraits, Chinese clay sculptural: 22, 23, 195–216 Allewelt, Zacharias: 203 Arkenbout, Jacob Ariesz.: 213 Askew, Anthony: 209–10 Beckman, Jacob: 205 Bonsach, Joachim Severin: 201–02 Bosanquet II, David: 198, 200 Braam Houckgeest, Andreas Everard van: 22, 23–24, 209, 210 Brouwer, Guillaume de: 202–03 Collet, Joseph: 197–98, 199–200 Dam, Jacob van: 204 Garrick, David: 211 Hall, Thomas: 198–200 Harpen, Johannes Jacob van: 212, 213 Harrison, Edward: 197, 199, 200 Hickey, William: 206, 209 Hurk, Pieter van: 201 Mule, Peter: 201, 202 Pott, Bob: 206, 209

300 

Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

production of: 196, 201 Pyke, Isaac: 203, 204 Sage, Daniel: 215, 216 Talbot, Henry: 211 Todd, Thomas: 211–12 Tønder, Michael: 201 Tribou, Louis Bernard: 205 Westpalm, Michiel: 204–5 Zimmer, Fredrik: 201 portraits, types of chalk: 23, 24 oil on canvas: 136, 198 reverse on glass: 22, 24, 25, 210 portraits of, painted Bosanquet II, David: 198 Braam Houckgeest, Andreas Everard van: 22, 210 Braam Houckgeest, Catharina van: 22, 25 Mulatta: 136 Tan Chitqua: 22, 23, 24 Xavier Joachin, Juan: 136 ports, trading: 27 Portuguese trade: 32–33, 36 Bantam: 95 Batavia: 101 Bungo Funai: 116 Macau: 67, 101 Melaka: 55 mercury: 168–69, 182–83 Nagasaki: 47, 75, 88 silver: 33, 67–68, 95 Potosí: 27, 32, 160–61, 176 n. 71 Pott, Bob: 206, 209 pottery see ceramics prints, geographic British: 287 Chinese: 44–45 Dutch: 45–46 Japanese: 224 prints of Dutchman: 224 embassies: 45–46 how to paint: 45 umbrellas: 224 world maps: 45 punch bowls: 286–87, 288 Pyke, Isaac: 203, 204 qamargah: 255, 268 Qianlong, Qing emperor: 50–51, 187, 267, 284 qin: 232, 233 Qing dynasty British Chinese porcelain: 277–88 efforts against the Zheng: 78 lacquer screens: 248–72 paintings: 257 trade during: 37, 73, 78–79, 101 Western instruments: 232–33 Quanzhou: 27, 57 Rada, Martín de: 179 raku ware: 35

reals of eight: 95, 96, 97, 161–62 red seal trade: 35–36, 73–77 Higo: 86 Hội An: 70 Hokkien merchants: 88–89 at Nagasaki: 88 shipping routes: 28, 47, 73–74 Sueyoshi: 26 table of: 74 Relación de Azogue para la China: 183 Rendering of a Mulatta: 135–36 restrictions on trade Calico Acts: 49 Chinese: 27, 30–31, 37, 47, 61–63, 66–67, 98, 101, 251 exceptions: 31, 61, 67 Japanese: 37, 41–42, 73–74, 77, 78–79, 84 Spanish: 128, 164, 175–77, 180 Reynolds, Joshua: 285 Ricci, Matteo: 45, 232 rice economy: 57, 58 Roach, Joseph: 223, 225 Rodríguez, Pedro: 176 Ronquillo, Diego: 176, 178 Ronquillo de Peñalosa, Gonzalo: 176–77 rosary beads: 116, 144, 256 Royal Academy of Arts: 22, 207, 209, 211 Rumboldt, Thomas: 287 Ryukyu: 31, 63–65 decline of: 69, 74 missions to China: 63 Sage, Daniel: 215, 216 Sakai: 21, 65, 70, 167 salons, colonial: 145–47, 149, 151 Sánchez, Alonso: 179 Sande Picón, Francisco de: 174 Sanders, John: 208 San Garbiel del Yunque: 133–34 sangleys: 92–93, 105, 107, 129, 173 San Juan Bautista: 173 Santa Ana, Francisco de: 176 Santa Fe: 133–34, 137, 138, 139, 142 Saris, John: 90, 94 Sarmiento de Valladares, José: 186 Satsuma: 85 Savina Villamonte, Josefa: 147 Schall von Bell, Johann Adam: 232 Schleswig: 201–03 Schmidt, Benjamin: 225–26 screens, art on lacquer folding: 247–50, 254–72 antiquities: 263 camels: 264 clothing: 260 estate receptions: 247, 248 European forts: 257–58 fanning stoves: 256, 257 foreign buildings: 264–65 foreigners hunting: 248–49, 253, 254, 255, 256–58, 259, 268 lion-dogs: 264, 265, 268

INDEX

loading, unloading ships: 248–49, 258, 260, 264, 268, 269, 271 Mongols hunting: 249, 254–55, 261, 262, 271 Nanban imagery: 47, 143, 249, 254, 258, 260–61, 264, 268–69 Palace of the Viceroys of Mexico: 142 qamargah: 255, 268 Tartars hunting, playing polo: 261, 262, 263 tributes: 249, 260, 264, 265, 266–68 Western maps, cities: 45, 142 screens, lacquer folding Chinese: 248–72 European imports of: 252–53 as gifts: 247–48, 252 Japanese: 47, 142–43, 249, 258, 260–61, 262, 268 kuancai: 247, 252, 258 n. 15 in Latin America: 141, 142, 143, 146, 149, 269 in the Netherlands: 251–52 production of: 252 sculptures: 143, 144; see also portraits, Chinese clay sculptural seclusion edicts: 37, 77, 79, 253 Sen no Rikyu: 119 Sesshu Toyo: 34 Seymour, James: 281 sheet music: 227, 231, 233, 240–41, 242 Shen Nanshan: 86 Shimai Soshitsu: 118, 120 Shimazu Yoshihiro: 85 shipbuilding: 57 Shō Hashi, king of Ryukyu: 63 shuinsen bōeki see red seal trade Siam: 59 silk, items Asian, in Latin America: 135–40, 147, 149, 151 bedcovers: 48–49, 138, 147, 149 clothing: 135, 136, 137–39, 231 cushions: 146 kimonos: 137–38 silk production, Japanese: 42 Silk Road: 57 silk trade: 47–49 Bantam: 93–96 Batavia: 97 Hakata: 118 Hokkiens: 91, 94, 96–97 raw silk: 47 n. 66, 49 for silver: 27, 33, 47, 67, 78, 89, 91 Sino-Japanese: 47, 77 Spanish: 47–49 VOC: 97 silver deposits: 27, 32, 66, 160–61, 167, 171–72 silver in the Chinese economy: 29, 33, 66, 98, 162 silver refining: 36, 160, 164 in Japan: 167 in Peru: 162, 164 see also patio process “silver sink”: 29, 162 silver trade: 66 Bantam: 93, 95–97 Batavia: 98

301 Fujian: 162 Kyushu: 67–68 Manila tonnage: 91 Mexico: 27, 68, 160, 181 Portuguese: 33, 67–68, 95 Sino-Japanese: 27–29, 32, 33, 66, 78, 89, 91–92, 162 Spanish: 27–28, 32, 91, 161–62, 166, 175 Spanish miners for Japanese concessions: 171–72 Sinan shipwreck: 60 single-whip tax: 33, 98, 162 Sino-Japanese trade: 57–60, 62–71, 180 ceramics: 34–35, 121–23 at Hội An: 69–70, 74 mercury: 168–69, 173–74 at Nagasaki: 37, 47, 84 paintings: 34–35 porcelain: 39–40 Ryukyu: 31, 63–65 silver: 27–29, 32, 33, 66, 78, 89, 91–92, 162 through Taiwan: 77–78 textiles: 47 tribute trade: 63, 65–66, 70–71 see also coins, Chinese; Kyushu Slack, Edward R.: 164, 170, 187 smuggling: 31, 62, 123, 180 Hokkiens: 84, 89, 90, 91 Latin America: 133, 176–78 Manila: 90, 180 of mercury: 164, 174–75, 180–81, 186, 188 of silver: 66–67, 91, 180 of textiles: 47, 180 Zheng Zhilong: 77–78 Soldi, Andrea: 198 Solís, Juan de: 179–80 Song dynasty agriculture: 57 ceramics: 23, 35 coins: 58, 59 paintings: 34–35 trade during: 30–31, 57–58 Sonnerat, Pierre: 196, 201, 205 Sophie Charlotte, queen of Prussia: 234 Sotelo, Luis: 171–72, 173 Spanish trade: 32, 36 Japan: 170–71 Manila Parián: 92–93 mercury: 164, 170–75, 181–82 Mexico: 128–29 Mexico Parián: 129 Philippines, the: 27, 32, 49, 127–28, 170–71, 179 prohibitions: 128, 164, 175–77, 180 of silver: 27–28, 32, 91, 161–62, 166, 175 see also Manila galleon trade spice trade: 33 n. 19, 59; see also pepper Spilbergen, Joris van: 33, 223 Srivijaya: 58 Staffordshire: 44 St. Francis Xavier before Ōtomo Sōrin: 115 Still Life with Goblet and Fruit: 40 Stringer: 203 sugar trade: 44, 77, 99

302 

Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550–1800

sulfur: 36, 58, 67 Suma Oriental qua trata do Mar Roxo até aos Chins: 23 Sumitomo Masatomo: 167 sumptuary laws: 135 Sunda Kalapa: 94 Taiho Code: 34 n. 23 Taiwan: 37, 251 Dutch at: 33 n. 19, 77–78, 99, 251 Hokkien trade: 99–100 red seal trade: 74 Sino-Japanese trade: 77–78 Zheng family: 37, 50, 73, 77–78, 90, 98–99 Talbot, Henry: 211 tally trade: 85, 88 Tanabe Mokei: 88 Tan-Che-Qua, or Tan Chitqua see Chitqua tapestries: 45, 270–71 taxation see single-whip tax taxation of trade: 57 tea drinking and porcelain in Britain: 283–88 matcha: 35 types and prices: 100 tea bowls celadons: 119 jian ware: 35, 39 Koryo: 119–21 oilspot-glaze: 35 rabbit’s-fur-glaze: 35 raku ware: 35 temmoku: 119 tea ceremonies: 21, 34, 35, 119, 120–21 Western participants: 36 tea jars Chigusa: 23 Luzon: 21 teapots: 283–84, 285, 286, 287 tea trade: 34, 283–84 Batavia: 100–01 Hokkiens: 100–01 VOC: 100 volume of: 44 temmoku ware: 35, 39 Ten’nojiya Doshitsu: 120–21 textiles see cotton textiles; indianilla; silk, items of textiles, Asian, in Latin America: 135–40, 147, 149–50 textiles, trade of English Indian: 49 Sino-Japanese: 47 Spanish: 47–49 tin trade: 99 Tipu’s Tiger: 238 n. 57 Titsingh, Isaac: 22, 268 Todd, Thomas: 211–12 Tōfukuji monastery: 60 Toghon Temür, Yuan emperor: 60 Tōjinmachi see Chinatowns Tokugawa Hidetada: 171 Tokugawa Iemitsu: 37

Tokugawa Ieyasu: 35, 73, 75, 77, 88, 167, 170–72 blue-and-white wares: 39 Tolosa, Juan de: 160 Tønder, Michael: 201 Toreen, Olof: 205 Torin, Benjamin: 284 Torres y Portugal, Fernando: 181 Toyotomi Hideyoshi: 21, 35, 71, 73, 75, 88, 167 trade licenses see kanhe licenses; red seal trade trade prohibitions see restrictions on trade trade routes, East Asian: 26–29 treasure ships: 41, 260 n. 18, 268 Treaty of Tordesillas: 174 Tribou, Louis Bernard: 205 tribute trade, China: 29, 31, 61–62, 63, 250 n. 4 in art: 249, 260, 264, 265, 266–68 Dutch missions: 266–68 Japanese missions: 63, 65–66, 70–71 Macartney mission: 266 pressure on: 66 silver in: 66 Trignart, Antoine: 216 Tsushima: 27 tumbaga: 138 Tu Zemin: 89 Tyune: 197, 212–13, 216 ‛ūd: 227 Ulloa, Antonio de: 132, 135 umbrellas: 223, 224, 225, 258, 259, 268, 270 Uthong, king of Siam: 59 Vaez, Alonso: 168 van Braam Houckgeest, Andreas Everard: 22, 23–24, 209, 210 van Braam Houckgeest, Catharina: 22, 24, 25 Van Dyck, Anthony: 115 Van Dyke, Paul A.: 44 Vargas, Diego de: 137 Vaudry, Jean-Antoine: 234–35 Velasco, Luis de: 170, 174, 182 Velde, Jan Jansz. van de: 40–41 velvet: 146 Vera, Santiago de: 173 Veracruz: 128 Viera, Fray Juan de: 129 Virgin of Bethlehem: 129 Vivero y Velasco, Rodrigo de: 170 VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie): 22, 33, 250 at Bantam: 96 in Japan: 75–77 money lending: 101–02 porcelain trade: 40–41 private trade: 39, 100, 277 silk trade: 97 in Taiwan: 33 n. 19, 77–78, 99, 251 tea trade: 100 see also Batavia Voyage to Suratte: 205

303

INDEX

wabi: 35 Wade, Bonnie: 237–38 Wallerstein, Immanuel: 49–51 Wang Zhi: 86 Wanli, Ming emperor: 232 Warring States period, Japanese: 114, 116 Wedgwood, Josiah: 206 Westby, Richard: 96 Western role in East Asian trade: 29–30, 32–34, 49–51, 56 Westpalm, Michiel: 204–05 White Mietke: 234–35, 236 Wokou: 60, 62, 66–67, 70, 85–86 Woodfield, Ian: 229–30, 240–41 Wu Li: 233 Xavier, Francis: 67, 114–16, 230 xylography: 44 Yale, Elihu: 252 Yan Liben: 265 Yan Lide: 265 Yongle, Ming emperor: 62–63 Yoshihiro Sojin: 120 Young Woman with a Harpsichord: 136

Yuan dynasty ceramics: 23 trade during: 30–31, 59–61 Yuegang: 67, 89 Yu Shiqian: 104 Zacatecas: 160–61 Zen art: 34 Zen Buddhism: 116 Zen monasteries: 60 Zhang Juzheng: 98 Zhao Gang: 29–30 Zheng Chenggong: 33 n. 19, 78, 90, 98–99, 251 Zheng family: 37, 50, 73, 77–78, 90, 98–99 mercury trade: 166 Zheng He: 62–63 Zheng Jing: 78, 251 Zheng Shungong: 85 Zheng Yuanfu: 104 Zheng Zhilong: 77–78, 101 Zhu Yuanzhang, Hongwu emperor: 30–31, 60–61, 66 Zimmer, Fredrik: 201 Zoffany, Johann: 208, 211, 239–40 Zupide, Francisco: 182