Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai : Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1550–1700

__Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai__ traces the roots of modern global East Asia by focusing on the fascinating history of its seaways. The East Asian maritime realm, from the Straits of Malacca to the Sea of Japan, has been a core region of international trade for millennia, but during the long seventeenth century (1550 to 1700), the velocity and scale of commerce increased dramatically. Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese smugglers and pirates forged autonomous networks and maritime polities; they competed and cooperated with one another and with powerful political and economic units, such as the Manchu Qing, Tokugawa Japan, the Portuguese and Spanish crowns, and the Dutch East India Company. Maritime East Asia was a contested and contradictory place, subject to multiple legal, political, and religious jurisdictions, and a dizzying diversity of cultures and ethnicities, with dozens of major languages and countless dialects. Informal networks based on kinship ties or patron-client relations coexisted uneasily with formal governmental structures and bureaucratized merchant organizations. Subsistence-based trade and plunder by destitute fishermen complemented the grand dreams of sea-lords, profit-maximizing entrepreneurs, and imperial contenders. Despite their shifting identities, East Asia’s mariners sought to anchor their activities to stable legitimacies and diplomatic traditions found outside the system, but outsiders, even those armed with the latest military technology, could never fully impose their values or plans on these often mercurial agents. With its multilateral perspective of a world in flux, this volume offers fresh, wide-ranging narratives of the “rise of the West” or “the Great Divergence.” European mariners, who have often been considered catalysts of globalization, were certainly not the most important actors in East and Southeast Asia. China’s maritime traders carried more in volume and value than any other nation, and the China Seas were key to forging the connections of early globalization—as significant as the Atlantic World and the Indian Ocean basin. Today, as a resurgent China begins to assert its status as a maritime power, it is important to understand the deep history of maritime East Asia. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: The East Asian Maritime Realm in Global History, 1500–1700 1. Neither Here nor There: Trade, Piracy, and the “Space Between” in Early Modern East Asia 2. Envoys and Escorts: Representation and Performance among Koxinga’s Japanese Pirate Ancestors 3. Friend or Foe? Intercultural Diplomacy between Momoyama Japan and the Spanish Philippines in the 1590s 4. Maps, Calendars, and Diagrams: Space and Time in Seventeenth-Century Maritime East Asia 5. Yiguan’s Origins: Clues from Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin Sources 6. Between Bureaucrats and Bandits: The Rise of Zheng Zhilong and His Organization, the Zheng Ministry (Zheng Bu) 7. The Zheng Regime and the Tokugawa Bakufu: Asking for Japanese Intervention 8. Determining the Law of the Sea: The Long History of the Breukelen Case, 1657–1662 9. Dreams in the Chinese Periphery: Victorio Riccio and Zheng Chenggong’s Regime 10. Shame and Scandal in the Family: Dutch Eavesdropping on the Zheng Lineage 11. Bridging the Bipolar: Zheng Jing’s Decade on Taiwan, 1663–1673 12. The Burning Shore: Fujian and the Coastal Depopulation, 1661–1683 13. Admiral Shi Lang’s Secret Proposal to Return Taiwan to the VOC 14. Trade, Piracy, and Resistance in the Gulf of Tonkin in the Seventeenth Century 15. Koxinga and His Maritime Regime in the Popular Historical Writings of Post–Cold War Taiwan 16. Japan in the Chinese Tribute System Glossary Contributors Index "Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai traces the roots of modern global East Asia by focusing on the fascinating history of its seaways. The East Asian maritime realm, from the Straits of Malacca to the Sea of Japan, has been a region of international trade for centuries, but from 1550 to 1700 that the velocity and scale of commerce began to increase dramatically. Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese smugglers and pirates forged autonomous networks, or in the case of the Zheng family of southeastern China and Taiwan, maritime-focused polities. They competed and cooperated with one another and with ambitious state-builders, such as the Manchu Qing, Tokugawa Japan, the Iberians, and the Dutch. ... Consider, for example that European mariners, whom we associate with opening oceanic trade routes, were far from the most important actors in East and Southeast Asia. During this period, it was the Chinese whose traders carried more in volume and value than any other nation. The authors of this volume offer a new perspective on global history, because the China Seas were key to forging the connections of early globalization, as important as the Atlantic World and the Indian Ocean basin." -- Provided by the publisher.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems– both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

Tracing the roots of modern global East Asia by focusing on the contested and fascinating history of its seaways, this volume offers a new perspective not just on East Asian history but on global history, because the China Seas were key to forging the connections of early globalisation, as important as the Atlantic World and the Indian Ocean basin