A Necklace of Fins - Marine Goods in Trading in Maritime Southeast Asia 1780-1860

8/14/2019 A Necklace of Fins - Marine Goods in Trading in Maritime Southeast Asia 1780-1860

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International Journal of Asian Studies, 11111, 1 (2004), pp. 2348 2004 Cambridge University Press

DOI: 10.1017|S147959140400004XPrinted in the United Kingdom

intra-asian networks

a necklace of fins: marine goodstrading in maritime southeast asia,17801860

Eric Tagliacozzo

Cornell University

E-mail [email protected]

This paper explores the ocean produce trade that connected maritime East and Southeast Asia

between 1780 and 1860. The essay explicitly concentrates on two arenas of action where

politics, commerce, and the trade in sea produce combined in powerful ways: the Straits of

Melaka, and the waters of Northern Borneo. In both of these regions, the collection of marine

goods became big business. More importantly, however, the organized funneling of these

objects helped keep disparate political projects alive and running. This was the case in the

Straits of Melaka, where the collection of such bounty supplied one rationale for British expan-sion in Penang (1786) and Singapore (1819), in the decades on either side of the turn of the

nineteenth century. In Northern Borneo, the collection of these commodities from shallow local

seas was also tied to empire-building, in this case via the Sultanate of Sulu. Sulu used North

Borneos waters as a vast collecting-ground for sea-produce to be shipped to China. In the late

eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, North Borneos coasts became a major source

for these products geared toward international trade, linking East and Southeast Asia in

increasingly vigorous ways.

introduction

Hidden away in the pages of the 15 March 1851 North China Herald is a small chart

entitled Statement of Imports into the Port of Shanghai for the year 1850.1 It is a fascinat-

ing document. Fascinating, if only because next to the long lists of shirtings, twills, and

English camlets which were pouring into China at an unprecedented rate lies an equally

long list of very different items: sharks fins, pearls, and edible sea-cucumbers, to name just

a few. All of these latter imports had appeared a millennium earlier in Chinese registries,

filling to overflow the coffers of the Tang in the eighth and ninth centuries. At that time

they were carried primarily by Arab and Persian seafarers, sailing the long and arduous


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a necklace of fins24

sea-route to distant Canton.2 Such items appear once again in Zhao Ru Guas Zhu fan zhi,

which detailed the passage of similar products to Fujian in the early thirteenth century,

this time primarily in Chinese bottoms.3 Yet the Shanghai chart, so much closer to us in

time and so much more detailed in terms of prices and availability, does not explain how or

through whom these items made it to the South China coast. A mere century away insteadof a millennium, it leaves us guessing as to the nature of the trade that carried such rare

and valuable items to the door of the Middle Kingdom.

The period around the turn of the nineteenth century in China is one of the most thor-

oughly researched epochs of commodity trade history anywhere in the world. Tea, opium,

and textiles were traded at such an explosively accelerated pace, and with such powerful

repercussions on the opening of Chinese society, that there are literally scores of books

and articles on the subject.4 Yet the marine products trade survived in this transitional

period as well, and very little has been written on its remarkable continuation. Who

carried the sharks fins, sea weeds, and edible holothuriansto China during this era of flux

and change? It is a difficult question to answer, and what statistics and clues that exist are

often incomplete or confusing.

The present essay tells the story of these two regions which geographically comprised a

vast necklace of fins, stretching from Penang south to Riau, and then north again to Sulu.

The paper weaves the political maneuvers of expanding state-making projects, the passage

of centuries-old trade flows, and the history of marine goods themselves into a single

narrative. I hope to show the complicated inter-relationship between the East India Com-

pany, Anglo-Indian country traders, and Chinese junks in the delivering of such items from

Insular Southeast Asia to the South China coasts. I have taken 1780 as a rough starting-

date because it was in this decade that Penang was annexed by the Company, partially to

serve as a collecting-center for ocean and other products eventually bound for Canton.

Through examining the incorporation of the Straits of Melaka and the waters of Northern

Borneo into these circuits, as well as the nature of both the country and the junk trades,

I hope to show how the commerce in marine products to China evolved in an era of

rapid change.5 1860 closes the time-frame of the study, as the opening of the Chinese Treaty

Ports (after 1842) and the rise of the steamship once again mutated this trade in new

2 Schaeffer 1967. Here and for the rest of this paper when I speak of marine produce I am referring to the

following types of items: pearls, mother of pearl, agar-agar (a kind of seaweed), tortoise shells, sharks fins, sea

cucumbers, and many other products of the sea.

3 Hirth and Rockhill 1966, p. 193.

4 For the larger implications of this burgeoning world system, see Frank 1998 and Hopkins and Wallerstein

1980.

5 Although I make use of period Dutch sources (from the Netherlands East Indies) and modern scholarship

(focusing on Sino-Siamese and Philippine trade) in this article, the main thrust of the narrative concerns

Anglo/Indian and Chinese movements. More could be said about the place of Makassar, for example, andseveral other Indies harbors in this connection (see, for example, Sutherland 2000). I have focused on Penang,

Si d N th B h b th it th i t t f l d hi h


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25eric tagliacozzo

directions.6 Far from being a sideline commerce or a colorful oddity, the trade in sea-

products helped shape the history of the region as we now see it today. The trade therefore

deserves closer inspection, especially as linked with further examinations of the subject as

seen from other Asian locales.

china and western trade in the 1780s

Before attempting an understanding of this highly specialized commerce, it is useful

first to sketch in broad strokes Canton and its dealings with the trade world of the late

eighteenth-century. Canton in 1786 presented both difficult realities and fantastic possi-

bilities to foreigners wishing to trade with China. Only three decades previously (in 1757),

the Qianlong Emperor had issued an edict forbidding European merchants to trade in any

other city on point of death or expulsion. Several interlocking factors at once precipitated

this decision: missionaries were perceived as disturbingly successful among SouthernChinese coastal populations, brawls had broken out between sailors and local tradesmen,

and valuable tax revenue would disappear if foreigners were able to trade on their own

account away from the eyes of the government.7 In 1759, however, news reached the

Emperor of the many abuses the Co-hong had inflicted upon the Canton system for their

own benefit, and their supervisor was recalled to Beijing in disgrace. The European trade

community was promised a substantial redress, and expectations of change rose accord-

ingly. Yet by 1760 a new decree had been promulgated which essentially legitimized the

existing system, reinforcing the Hong monopoly as the best means available to seal the

Chinese Empire from further penetration.8 The ten to thirteen members of the Co-hongfraternity, overseen by a new leader, were held mutually responsible for insuring Beijing a

standard cut garnered from the profits of the trade. In terms of the Europeans, the Co-hong

were also responsible for all of their deeds and behavior, for the factories in which they

lived, and for enforcing a system whereby the traders were denied free movement, their

own laws, and the right to petition or question any decisions except through the Hong.

Even under such conditions the quays at 13 Factory Street, Whampoa Anchorage, were

filled with various Europeans in the 1750s. One major reason for this was the rise in

demand for Chinese tea in the 1720s, as the leaves started to displace beer as a drink for

all classes in pre-Industrial England.9

From an average of only five ships a year in the1720s, the East India Company were sending fifteen to China a half-century later, with tea

6 For these matters, see especially Waley 1958, and Kubicek 1994, pp. 86106. In Southeast Asia, Europeanterritorial expansion at this time also changed the equation; for a contemporary view on this, see van Hoevell,Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsche Indie(hereafter, TNI) 11, Pt. 1, 1849, pp. 6683. This does not mean, however, thatthe idea of marine products-collecting disappeared. The small island of Labuan (off Borneo) was settled byJames Brooke in the 1840s with this trade (among others) in mind. See PRO (Public Records Office), W. Napierto Earl Grey, 20 March 1849, CO 144/3.

7 See Edwards 1980, pp. 22269 and Pritchard 1970, p. 128.

8 Keay 1991, p. 351, and Basu 1985, pp. 15155. For primary documents illustrating European complaints aboutthe system, see Extracts from a Letter from the Secret Commercial Committee of the East India Company toRight Honourable Lord Amherst Ambassador 17 Jan 1816 in Endacott ed 1964


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showing up now as the most valuable export in the Companys portfolio.10 Cotton and

wool were the largest Company imports into China, with the totals from Bombay alone

reaching 80,000 bales a year in some seasons, or over 300 million pounds net weight. 11

Two-thirds of all tonnage space was reserved on East Indiamen for these products, with the

remaining space usually given over to iron, lead, manufactured goods, and Indian agricul-tural products. (Specie was by far the most valuable import into China in the first half of

the eighteenth-century, comprising over 90% of total value for those fifty years.) Opium,

too, had been traded by the Company until 1729, when by Imperial fiat it was declared

illegal and the Company was told it would lose its trading privileges if its ships continued

to bring it. Undeterred, in 1773 opium became a Company monopoly in India, and was sold

to Anglo-Indian country traders who were only too happy to ship it to China in the

Companys stead.12 Chinese goods finding their way back to India and the British Isles were

textiles, porcelain, tea, silk, and sugar candy, with porcelain especially popular as a ballast

item because of its high re-sale value back in England.13

Yet in 1784 something happened which changed all of these arrangements drastically

particularly vis--visthe marine products trade. The Commutation Act of England, which

lowered import duties on tea from 119% to 12.5%, was passed to ease the price burden

on Britains underclasses, who were now drinking the beverage as a part of their daily life.

Demand for tea skyrocketed, and British trade with China exploded by 300% over the years

17641800.14 The majority of these Chinese exports were handled by the Company as

opposed to the country traders; tea was shuttled out of Canton in as yet unparalleled

amounts. Yet the British had to find something to pay for all of this tea, as specie came into

ever-shorter supply and the Chinese (as in centuries past) insisted that they both wanted

and needed little of what Europeans had to offer. Further incentive was added to the equa-tion by the disintegration of the French and Dutch East Indies Companies in the last

decades of the eighteenth century, curtailing the majority of competition for the China

market by 1800.15 Ching China could take only so many tons of textiles it didnt need, and

the heyday of the opium boom was still a generation away. What did the Chinese want

that the British and Anglo-Indians Company and country trader alike were in a position

to give?

marine goods entrepts in the straits ofmelakaPenang and the Idea of a Marine Goods Entrept

Curiously enough, even before the watershed year of 1784 and the Commutation Act,

Englands provisional answer to this dilemma was marine products: the pearls, fins, and sea

10 Keay 1991,p. 349.

11 Milburn (I) 1813, p. 218.

12 See Bose 1993, and Spence 1992, pp. 22858.

13 Milburn (II) 1813, p. 44. Tutenague, an alloy comprised of copper and zinc, was another important ballast


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27eric tagliacozzo

slugs that the Chinese valued so highly. Alexander Dalrymple, a servant of the Company

and Hydrographer of Eastern Seas, seems to have been the first to put this epiphany to

paper: a triangle-trade should be organized, he argued in 1760, supplying Southeast Asians

with textiles and opium in exchange for the products of the local jungles and seas. 16 To

achieve this objective, however, a Southeast Asian base would be needed, both to serve as acollecting-center for the produce and in several other capacities. Such a port should have

potential as a naval station (with deep water, shelter, timber for ship-building, and ready

provisioning) as well as proximity to the main China routes to better protect the

Companys ships. Eventually it was hoped that the base would attract enough junks and

Southeast Asian prahu that Canton itself would become obsolete, obviating the need for

dealing with the Co-hong while Chinas goods were funneled from a position of off-shore

security.

Dalrymples first choice for this port was the tiny island of Balambangan, mid-way

between the coast of Northern Borneo and the Southern spur of the Philippines. Bordering

the trade-spheres of both the latter (where Chinese junks were the paramount shippers)

and the Bugis prahu routes of Indonesia, Dalrymple procured the island from the Sultan of

Sulu in 1763.17 He was to have headed the expedition that was intended to settle it when he

was subsequently dismissed from the Company five years later, ostensibly for publishing

charts announcing the conversion of the island into a marine goods entrept.18 Yet by the

early 1770s, Balambangan was out of favor with the Companys Directors as recent events

had shifted their gaze elsewhere. The Madras Association (a conglomerate of the large

Anglo-Indian trading firms of Jourdain, Sullivan, and De Souza)19 had in the meantime

begun to amass large fortunes by trading for marine products with Bugis and Malay mer-

chants in the Straits of Malacca. More centrally located on the direct route to Canton,

the Straits were the vital bottle-neck for any shipping heading between India and the

South China coasts. A base in the Straits would also supply a safe haven for the British fleet

during the worst months of the monsoon, instead of the present arrangement by which the

Bay of Bengal was ceded to the hostile French as the Royal Navy retired to Bombay.20 The

Company ordered the Madras Association to attempt to procure a port through its friendly

ties with the Sultans of Kedah (on the Malay Peninsula) and Aceh (in North Sumatra).

Missions were sent in 1772 to both rulers, each of which failed. A further mission was sentto the Sultan of Riau, but this embassy was rebuffed as well through the influence of the

Dutch.21 Finally, in 1786, the Sultan of Kedah agreed to cede the off-shore island of Penang

16 For more on Alexander Dalrymple, see Fry 1970, p. 67 passim.

17 Quiason 1966, p. 122 passim. The great hope for Balambangan was in its geography. Dalrymple envisioned

Bugis prahus bringing Southeast Asian marine goods from Indonesia, where Chinese junks and country

traders would meet them and transship the items back to Canton.

18 Hall 1953, p.14. While these actions were certainly serious and imperiled the Companys long-range

strategies by telegraphing intentions to the French and Dutch, Dalrymples combative personality andself-aggrandizing tendencies also seemed to have influenced the decision.

K 6


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in exchange for promises of military assistance against the king of Siam. The Company

snatched up the island and never sent any soldiers.22

Contemporary reports record the speed with which Penang began to fulfill its purpose

as a marine products-mart on the route to Canton. Milburns enormous two-volume com-

pendium, Oriental Commerce(1813), is invaluable in this respect because it records both thegoods and the changing geo-politics of the Straits in the period just after Penangs acquisi-

tion. By 1805 most of the small coastal sultanates in the area had lost their economic inde-

pendence, as Penang began to attract a larger and larger share of regional and trans-regional

shipping. Malay and Bugis prahus that had come to Junkceylon to trade in ocean produce

now headed to Penang instead, and the yearly Chinese junk which once traded in Kedah

also now laid anchor in the British roadstead across the bay.23 Malacca, further down the

coast and once a great emporium in its own right, began its own descent back into the

small regional port city from which it had started.24 Trade in ocean products was also

stimulated across the Straits in coastal Sumatra, with dried fish heading upriver and pro-

ducts of the maritime littoral now heading in large numbers to Penang.25 An examination

of the export registries from the major Indian ports shows roughly equivalent increases in

goods earmarked for Penang: cotton, piece-goods, and manufactures leaving Bombay and

Madras, these same items and large shipments of Bengal opium outbound from Calcutta.26

Streaming into the colony from island Southeast Asia was the entire pharmacopoeia the

British had hoped for and expected: betel and gum benjamin; birds nests, bird of Paradise

feathers, and bezoar stones; cloves, camphor, and an almost unending list of dammar,

diamonds, dragons blood gum, ivory, gold dust, nutmeg, mace, pepper, and beeswax.27 Also

prominent among these items was a spectrum of marine goods: trepang, pearls, and

tortoise shells, among many others. From Crawfurd we know that sharks fins alone sold for

15 Spanish dollars per picul in Canton, making it in the 1820s an article of luxury for the

use of the rich.28

Yet although the varietyof these goods certainly pleased those in Penang who saw the

port as the answer to the debilitating flow of specie into China, the quantityof these marine

22 Hall 1953, p. 15; just a few years later merchants in the colony were also agitating for more territory to be

taken opposite Penang (on the Malay Peninsula) to better the islands security. See the description inAnonymous 1851, p. 99. For a good analysis of the marine products trading patterns of Penang with the

Northern and Eastern coasts of Sumatra, see Zainol 1995.

23 Milburn (II) 1813,pp. 29296. Smuggled items such as tin ores from Dutch Bangka also began to be shipped

on the sly to Penang as its trade increased. On the role of graft and the quiet transit of tin, see van der

Kemp 1917, p. 399, and Anderson 1824, p. 3.

24 Paul Wheatleys monumental history of Melaka (or Malacca) is the best available source here. See Wheatley

1983; see also Kim 1989.

25 See Oki 1986, pp. 8, 23. According to Barbara Watson Andaya, Orang Laut groups on the Sumatra coast were

crucial to these exchanges. See Andaya, p. 486.

26 Milburn 1813 (I), p. 215; (II) p. 43, 145. Damodar SarDesai notes that British trade with Southeast Asia

increased 600% between 18081818, mainly because of Penang. See SarDesai 1977, p. 84.


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29eric tagliacozzo

items never tallied high enough to make the port a marine goods powerhouse. There were

several reasons for this state of affairs. First, Penangs geography placed it too far north of

the major marine-goods collecting areas of the Archipelago to attract a trulyinter-regional

commerce. The most productive seas, and the Bugis and Makassar ocean-going peoples,

were simply too far away to trade profitably so far up the Straits, up and out of the gatesof Insular Southeast Asia proper.29 Second, piracy in this part of the Straits had become

a major problem by the turn of the nineteenth century, so much so that most junks and

prahus (and even many country traders) were afraid to coast along the western edge of

the Malay Peninsula alone and without protection. The issue of piracy will be dealt with in

more detail when the country traders role in marine goods-shipping is examined further

on, but at this juncture it is helpful to note that the aforementioned war between the rulers

of Kedah and Siam spilled out into the Straits, rendering any traffic en route to Penang as

legitimate prizes of war. Finally, the vaunted nearby timber supplies that were essential

for the construction of new ships turned out to be too far away and expensive in coastal

Burma, precisely at the same time that the construction of new harbor slipways was

canceled due to the lack of funds and an experienced engineer.30 Reading the growing body

of writing on the wall, several servants of the Company began making alternative plans for

their marine goods entrept extraordinaire to service the appetites of distant Canton.

Singapore as a Marine Goods Metropolis

All of these transvaluations in policy and geography must be seen not only against the

backdrop of the China trade, but also against the unfolding of events in Europe. The

Napoleonic Wars, which started in 1794 and subsumed the Dutch under the French flag for

years, occurred at precisely the same time as the bankruptcy of the VOC in the last decade

of the eighteenth century. All of the marine products of Indonesia therefore lay bare and

undefended, and English country traders wasted no time in pillaging this prize.31 Yet the

end of the British Interregnum in 1816 gave the Indies back to the Dutch, as London felt it

more important to keep a strong buffer state between England and France than to allow

the lowlands to be overrun. Consequently Dutch power in Southeast Asia began to reassert

itself after this date. Everywhere in the region the Dutch attempted to resurrect theirEmpire, signing treaties and agreements with as many local rulers as possible. Such a state

of affairs did not bode well for the British marine goods trade with China. Stamford Raffles,

a young Company man with visions of his own on how the situation should be handled,

famously stepped in at this point and made a calculated decision. As is well known, Raffles

backed one claimant in a succession struggle between the two sons of the Sultan of Johore,

and maneuvered the situation so that the British received Singapore island as a reward for

29 Hall 1953, p. 17.

30 Cowan 1950, pp. 5 and 13. The Board of Directors of the East India Company were still undecided about

Penangs fate by the end of the 18th century, and were faced with an enormous increase in expenses in


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their patronage.32 He took possession of the island on 28 January 1819 without the know-

ledge of the Company, gambling that he could make it into a success and thus force the

Companys hand. Raffles declared Singapore a free port, devoid of import/export duties,

tonnage fees, or wharf and anchorage charges a considerable step, as the only other

port that Chinese junks were allowed to trade with in the Indies was Batavia, whichcharged very high duties.33 Within several weeks 2,000 Malays and Chinese had moved

to Singapore from Malacca, and by the summer the population had skyrocketed to

5,000, including representatives of many Indian agency houses.34 November saw the city

establishing firm trade contacts with every major port in Southeast Asia. By the time the

Anglo-Dutch Treaty was signed in 1824, Singapores fate was no longer on the bargaining

table.

Yet perhaps the most pivotal reason Singapore succeeded from the outset was because

it was technically incorporated as an Indian port: thus allowing British traders to bypass

the monopoly the Company enjoyed on the China trade since the seventeenth-century.

Merchants based in England who wished to trade with China simply unloaded their goods

on the docks of Singapore, filled out new lading bills, and then re-loaded the same ships to

be sent on immediately to the factors at Canton. Commerce was thus carried out under

a convenient fiction which brought an ever-busier traffic to the wharves of the city. Port

statistics for 1821 show the variety and tonnage of square-rigged vessels calling at

Singapores quays: British, Dutch, Anglo-Indian, and Portuguese ships all made appear-

ances, predominantly en route to Canton.35 Their cargoes included marine goods picked up

in small entrepts and feeder-centers all over the Archipelago, and these supplemented the

staple goods of trade already stowed below from India and Europe.36 Items sold in exchange

for Southeast Asian marine goods were the usual textiles, metals, and manufactured goods,

but increasingly opium as well, which became a major import into the city. Wong pub-

lishes some fascinating figures showing the diffusion of Bengal opium to all corners of the

Archipelago, with Singapore at the center of a widening circle of radials. 37 Although the

city never became a warehouse for opium-running to China, it did become the regional

focal-point for distribution in direct exchange for items such as ocean products. Firearms

were also routed through the new colony, reaching the absolute extremities of Southeast

32 John Crawfurd, who was sent on a British trade and diplomatic mission to Thailand and Vietnam in 1822,

described the island at this time in the following words: When it was founded, it was inhabited by a few

hundred piratical Malay fishermen. Down to the year 1819, both the island and the harbor may be said to

have been almost unknown. It was indeed not only not frequented by European shipping but carefully

avoided. See Crawfurd 1828, p. 536.

33 Import duties on incoming Chinese junks were 26000 florins in 1819 if the merchandise imported

was solely Chinese, and higher if European goods were involved. See Chiang 1978, p. 4. For Raffles in his

own words, see Raffles 183031. Leonard Blusse 1996 also gives some important background to marine and

geopolitical movements in the region.

34 Keay 1991, p. 449.

35 Cowan 1950, p. 117. The Portuguese ships were the exception, calling instead at Macao.


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31eric tagliacozzo

Asia in large numbers for the first time.38 While Penang managed to hold onto some of the

marine products trade of the northwestern Malay Peninsula and coastal Burma, Singapore

had passed its older counterpart in overall trade value only three years after its founding.39

By 1824 its trade had almost tripled that of Penangs. 40

Yet the panorama of European shipping passing through Singapore was only half thestory in getting marine produce to China. The combination of an expanding traffic and

non-existent duties also attracted a whirlwind of junks and prahus as well, which found an

enormous bazaar for speculation in the pearls, fins, and sea-slugs headed toward Canton.

The Bugis seafaring peoples of Southwest Sulawesi, now within reach of such a metropolis,

mobilized their fleets as never before: Sumbawa, Bali, Lombok, Flores, Timor, New Guinea,

and Borneo were all brought into Singapores burgeoning economic net.41 One hundred

and eighty prahus reached Singapore in 1830, carrying cargoes worth 1230,000 Spanish

dollars per ship and crammed to capacity with live turtles, edible holothurians, and

mother-of-pearl-bearing shells.42

The junk trade also picked up, starting with four immenseChinese arrivals in 1821 and expanding to five in 1822, six in 1823, seven in 1824 and

eighteen by the turn of the decade. 43 Only a year later the Singapore Chroniclecatalogued

the changes that were emerging by reporting that:

Formerly many junks sailed to Batavia and to the different ports on the West

coast of Borneo (Sambas, Pontianak) but the number now, we believe, is very

limited, perhaps not more than three at most. The Chinese find it by far more

advantageous, and certainly less hazardous and expensive, to sail for this port

direct than proceed more southerly. Here also they readily procure, duty-free,all the strange articles they require for home consumption, in barter for such

products of China as they bring.44

38 Crawfurd 1828,pp. 54647. The Peabody Museum at Yale has one of these old flint-lock muskets which foundits way out to Mindanao, Southern Philippines. Collection No. 4325, Item No. 15791. The study of materialculture artifacts remaining in Southeast Asia is one of the best ways to examine the legacy of the marinegoods trade in the region. For the role of Chinese porcelain in these exchanges, another item frequentlyexchanged for ocean products especially on the coasts, see Adhyatman 1981.

39 Chiang 1978, p. 3.

40 Cowan 1950, p. 14. Of course, a few of these Southeast Asian marine products also made their way up toChina via land and river-routes from mainland Southeast Asia; from Burma into Yunnan by way of theIrrawaddy, and from Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam via footpaths. See Symes 1827 (II), p. 211 as an example ofthe former.

41 For a list of the products Bugis ships brought, see PRO, A Memoir . . ., 26 February 1761, Egremont Papers,30/47/20/1; for their geography, see Crawfurd 1828,p. 543. These products included spices as well as marinegoods. For contemporary accounts of sandalwood-production in Timor, and clove production in Maluku, seeFrancis 1838, No. 1, pp. 35369, and de Stuers 1842, No. 2, pp. 45864. Batavia also tried to concentrate thegrowth of valuable spices in well-policed areas, including parts of Maluku and even by transshipments toJava. See A.L. Weddik 1840, No. 1, pp. 41318, and A.L.Weddik 1839, No. 2, pp. 589600.

42 Phipps 1835, p. 291. Of course, much of the trade to Singapore still revolved around bulk items such as rice,imported form Bali and Lombok. See ARA (Algemeen Rijksarchief, den Haag), P. Dubois Rapport aan denHeere Resident van Besoeki en Banjoewangi, MvK (Ministerie van Kolonien), Verbaal 8 Jan 1857, No. 27.


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Even at this early date the Chinese were starting to become middlemen in the commerce of

marine products, acting as brokers between country traders and Malay crewmen who

brought the items to the docks. Boat Quay at the mouth of the Singapore River became the

specialty-area for these items, and Malay the lingua-franca of its trade.45 With Southeast

Asian pearls alone fetching 25,000 Spanish dollars annually in Canton, and mother-of-pearlalmost three times that amount in the early 1820s, it isnt difficult to see why these

branches of commerce flourished.46 Ambergris also traveled to South China from Southeast

Asia, as did agar-agar, and at least several varieties of cockles, some of which (at least

according to John Crawfurd, who saw these commodities with his own eyes) reached

enormous sizes.47 Country traders arriving in ever-increasing numbers from Bengal and

Bombay continued to push the pace of exchange alongside Chinese ships, always en route

to Canton to deliver more goods from the sea.

another arena: north borneo and thesouthern philippines

Sulu and the Marine Products Trade

In tracing the effects of the marine products trade on the societies of Insular Southeast

Asia, it becomes useful to look north and east at this point, primarily in an effort to under-

stand crucial developments as they began to unfold in North Borneo and Sulu. From the

last quarter of the eighteenth century onward the expanding Sulu Sultanate began to have

an enormous impact on events in Northern Borneo. Originally populated by the Samal and

other groups of scattered fishing peoples, Sulu became a Taosug-controlled dominion afterthe eleventh century as wave after wave of these new settlers intermarried in the area.48

Sulu soon became an important way-station along the China-routes, serving as a collecting

center for marine produce from Borneo, Mindanao, Sulawesi, and Palawan. This geographic

centrality, the adoption of Islam by the governing Taosug, and the expansion of the

Sultanates trade contacts led to a series of commercial embassies to Beijing, compromising

seven in all between 1725 and 1763.49 It also led, over the long run, to protracted war and

competition with other coastal sultanates in the area (most notably Cotabato in Mindanao

and the polity of Brunei), which were competing for similar resources. Yet because of a

Dutch prohibition on Chinese shipping entering the Outer Islands of the Indies (Maluku,Sulawesi, etc.), Sulu and North Borneo found themselves in the enviable position of being

directly athwart the main sea routes between China and the ecological riches of the

Indonesian archipelago. The Jolo-based sultanate in particular was positioned in the

middle of an enormous Sulu basin of sea cucumbers, pearls, and edible birds nests.50

45 Chiang 1978,pp. 4751; see also Gibson-Hill 1950.

46 Crawfurd, 1820, p. 445.

47 Ibid., pp. 44546.

48 Spoehr 1973, p. 22.

49 The exact dates for these missions were 1725 1726 1727 1743 1746 1754 and 1763 Majul 1973 pp 195; 252


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33eric tagliacozzo

By 1775, with the destruction of the East India Company enclave of Balambangan by

Sulu war prahus, the Sultanate had risen to a new position in the commerce of the seas

north of Borneo. Anglo/Indian country traders, Mainland and Manila Chinese, and a vari-

ety of merchants from other countries all began to descend on Jolo as never before. 51 The

ecological products brought to Jolo for shipment to the China coasts in turn stimulateda massive return trade: warstores, cotton cloth, and opium now came into Taosug hands

in unparalleled volume. As de factorulers of this Sulu basin, the Taosug became the main

distributors of such desirable outside goods to the various peoples of the region. Trade

brought status, and status, power, as Taosug datusbegan to fan out to carve their own petty

principalities, easing the flow of produce back to their capital. Nowhere were these

new alignments stronger than in northern Borneo. Datussettled in the river mouths and

bargained with local chiefs for produce: wax, camphor, and birds nests were brought down

from the highlands, while sea peoples contributed pearls, shark fins, and the ever-present

holothurians. As James Warren has shown in painstaking detail, almost all of these special-

ized China-market goods eventually found their way to Jolo. There they were packed,

crated, and bargained for by shippers heading north, the export totals skyrocketing in a

matter of several decades.52

Yet the expansion of the Sulu Sultanates trade with the coasts of Northern Borneo also

carried other consequences. Profits on China Trade items were simply too high for the

Sultanate to maintain a competitive advantage for long, though indigenous institutions

were developed to try to perpetuate the system for as long as possible. The most important

of these was the implantation of a client system upon several sea peoples: the Samal, Bajau,

Balangingi, and Iranun. The two former populations were reduced to a status of near-

serfdom by the datus of the Borneo coast, who pressed them into sea-produce collection

for several months every year. It was in this way that most of the trepang, mother of pearl,

and sharks fins were collected, all for export to distant Canton. 53 The Balangingi and

Iranun, however, more martial as groups than the Bajau (though equally lacking in

large-scale organization), became the pirate/slavers of the Taosug.54 They were sent on

pan-Southeast Asian slaving missions to capture more manpower for Sulu, a calculated

effort to thoroughly exploit the geography of the home region and thereby increase profits.

In a very real sense much of the Northern Borneo coastal strand became an enormousslave-state between 1775 and 1850, though slavery carried a different context in this

milieu than in the West and was almost always exercised on a strictly seasonal basis. 55

The majority of Sulus profits during this time in fact came from Borneo, and not the

maze of small islands to the north which were the center of the sultans power.56 Taosug

datussettled along the estuaries of major river mouths and on favorable locations along the

51 For some of the outstretched vectors and radials of these voyages, see Blusse 1999, pp. 10730.

52 Warren, 1981, p. 64.

53 Ibid., p. 7374.

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coast, making marine-products collection the mainstay of their survival. These men were

connected with the Sultan back in Jolo in several ways. Many were kin relations, and it

seems to have been these princes who received fiefdoms along the strand exhibiting the

greatest potential for profit. Some resided in these economic sinecures for the entire year,

while others visited only seasonally. In either case, enough autonomy was available thatthese men could run their principalities pretty much as they saw fit.57 The distribution

and collection of rice, copra, dried fish, and salt gave plenty of opportunities for the datus

to make substantial sums of money. Marine products such as pearls and fins, however,

remained at least nominally within the domain of the Sultan: at any moment he main-

tained the right to buy these products at low fixed rates, skimming a percentage off the top

in a value tax as well.58 In such a way allegiance was kept to the center while independence

still functioned on the margins, allowing both parties to make money in a system geared

toward export. Yet how was all of the manpower of the sea peoples to be organized by the

Borneo coast datus, in order to funnel the marine products of the strand into the waiting

channels of the China Trade?

The Maritime Ecology of the Coasts

The Samal and Bajau who made their living along the shores of northern Borneo were tra-

ditionally a people apart from their northern sophisticated neighbors, the Taosug and

Balangingi.59 Thomas Forrest, who traveled in the region in the 1770s, described the former

as having a language of their own, but with no written character,60 while other wayfarers

described them as nomadic bands of fishermen, living in small communities of several

dozen boats.61 Most seem to have kept to this wandering maritime lifestyle, while others

built stilt houses over mud flats exposed at low tide.62 What is certain, however, is that

when Taosug datusstarted frequenting the coasts of North Borneo, pressure started to build

on the Bajau especially to change the pattern of their lives. The first aspect of this imposed

flux was religious: many sedentary Bajau (at least nominally) adapted the trappings of

Islam, abstaining from pork, circumcising their children, and keeping the fast during

Ramadan.63 Travelers in the region in the 1930s, however, doubted the sincerity of these

conversions: the tribal structure and way of life is based upon the old Paganism; atthe Mag-Islam (conversion) ceremony, the people are Muslims; at sea they are Pagans.64

Perhaps a more lasting change in lifestyle, however, came economically: as a perceived

57 Gowing 1979, pp. 4749.

58 Kiefer 1972a, p. 47.

59 See Lenhar 1997, pp. 577604.

60 Forrest 1779, p. 297.

61 Crawfurd 1856, p. 69; see also P. Wilkes Narrative of the U.S. Exploring Expedition, Philadelphia, (1844),quoted in Blair and Robertson 1973, Vol. 43, p. 185.

6 S h


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35eric tagliacozzo

low-status group, the Bajau were co-opted into becoming sea-product procurement slaves

for the immigrant Taosug.65

The Bajau had traditionally utilized most of their energies in food collection for their

own needs, gathering fish, crustaceans, and turtle eggs from the sea. Yet as the importance

of the China market grew in northern Borneo, they often began to be pressed into unwill-ing service by the Taosug to provide different sorts of marine resources: tortoise shells,

mother of pearl, rattan and trepang, all of which the Chinese valued highly. Tortoise- and

turtle-shell of several species (Green (Chelonia mydas), Hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata),

and Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) had been transiting to China from Borneos waters

for centuries already. By Dalrymples and Forrests visits in the late eighteenth century,

coastal peoples had made these items an important mainstay of the trade.66 Mother of pearl

exports were also extremely lucrative by the beginning of the nineteenth century,67 the

finest specimens coming from the same coral beds often 25 miles wide and ringing whole

coasts and islets from where pearls were collected.68

Rattan was gathered for bulk ship-ment to the South China coasts, with early commentators noting that North Borneo bays

were teeming with the plants, the supply of which would grow back even if hundreds

of tons were cut annually for export.69 The pliable fibers were extraordinarily cheap, as a

single piece of cotton trade cloth could fetch 500 strands of the plant in Marudu Bay in

1879.70 Finally, the Bajau even became expert manufacturers of salt, some of which was

acquired by the solar evaporation of brine, while other portions came from the bleaching

of nipa palm ashes. Almost all of this particular resource which wasnt used locally was

traded inland for further China products of the interior.71 In such ways the indigenous

Bajau economy was disrupted and re-fashioned along entirely new lines, all in the interestsof the profits to be made from the expanding marine goods commerce to China.72

Pearls were another important product exported out of the region and up to the Canton

market. Obtained from the mollusc Melegrina margarifa, the placuna was often pounded

into powder for use in Chinese medicines, while larger and finer specimens were sold to be

soldered into fine jewelry.73 Notices of the quality and value of Bornean pearls reach all the

way back in European records to Tome Pires time, when the Portuguese traveler described

pearls being traded as beads to Chinese merchants in 1515.74 Only a few years later,

65 For four excellent discussions of these group dynamics see Appel 1969, pp. 2122; Kiefer 1972b, p. 22; Sather1971, p. 45; and Stone 1974, pp. 9091.

66 See Elkin 1992, pp. 7480; Ptak 1999a; Doctor de Sandes Report on the Visit of the Portuguese to Brunei,

August 1578 in Blair and Robertson 1903: 4: 221 passim; Dalrymple 1769, pp. 7682; Forrest, 1779, p. 405.

67 Milburn, 1813, (II), p. 513.

68 Dalrymple1770 (I), pp. 114.

69 Dalrymple 1808 (II), p. 534; and Forrest, 1779, p. 88.

70 St. John 1862, p. 403.

71 Sopher, 1965 p. 138; for a good overview on salt as a commodity in this trade, see Sellato 1993, pp. 26384.Coral was also exported to China from the Bornean coastal strand; see Ptak, 1999b.

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Bornean pearls were sometimes disparaged as being of inferior quality, however, though

Pigafetta commented that they were still valuable enough to use as ransom items to win

the freedom of political hostages.75 These marine exports of local waters largely retained

their reputation over the next several centuries, however, with Chinese texts like the

Huang Qing Zhi Gong Tu (Illustrations of the Tributaries of the Ching Empire) describingthem as among the most important products of Borneo.76 The distant Chinese court under-

stood that these commodities were crucial to the littoral communities on Borneos coasts;

Western observers also comprehended this, and eventually tried to figure out ways to

muscle in on their trade.77

Yet no single product illustrates the dynamics of marine goods-extraction better than

the edible sea-cucumber, which found a perfect habitat for itself in the placid waters off

northern and western Borneo. The various sea peoples of the area never took to eating

these animals, even in times of great hardship, yet by the nineteenth-century Taosug datus

had organized an estimated 20,000 Samal per year for their collection, often in fleets of fiftyto one hundred boats.78 More than sixty species of these holothurianswere indigenous to the

area, and these were sorted into grades of first, second, and third class depending on color,

size, and difficulty of procurement.79 The Chinese preferred the whitish-gray colored ones,

which were usually found on coral bottoms at considerable depths; the dark-gray or black

varieties were less esteemed, but eaten nonetheless. Southeast Asians often went to con-

siderable trouble to procure the animals, with Aboriginal Australians still remembering

the trepang voyages of Makassar prahus to the coasts,80 and Bajau mythology eulogizing

trepangheroes who outwitted sharks and giant stingrays.81 The Taosug even built a series

of fresh-water wells on isolated islands as an encouragement for Free Bajaus to search forholothurians offshore.82 New technologies were also brought to the North Borneo coasts

to better facilitate the gathering process, altering further local modes of livelihood. The

ladung, a spiked-dredge that was dragged along the sea-bottom in efforts to catch and pierce

nearby sea-slugs, and a type of basket trap called the babu gamatwere both imported by the

Taosug to increase trepang collection.83 By the 1830s Warren has estimated that almost

70,000 people most of them slaves and appropriated sea-peoples were involved

in marine products procurement, most of them under the auspices of the Sultan of Sulu. 84

75 Smith 1972, p. 12; Pigafetta, The First Voyage Round the World, and De Moluccis Insulis [transl.], both in

Blair and Robertson 1903: 33: 211 passim; and 1: 328, respectively.

76 Wade 1987, pp. 13.

77 Ibid., p. 3; Fray Casimiro Diaz in Blair and Robertson 1903: 42: p. 185 passim; Dalrymple, 1769, pp. 7682.

78 Warren 1981, p. 70.

79 Kolff described the sorting, preparation, and drying process oftrepangin Borneo waters in the 1830s and 40s;see Kolff 1840, pp. 17275; see also Wernstedt and Spencer 1967, p. 595.

80 See Andaya 1995, p. 11938; Spillet n.d.

81 Dalrymple 1770, p. 12.

82 Forrest 1779, pp. 37274; and Dalrymple 1808, p. 530.


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37eric tagliacozzo

Almost all of the ocean produce they collected was eventually heading north to the coasts

of Ching China.

The Taosug system of marine products extraction on the coasts of North Borneo began

to unravel a few decades later, however, based on a variety of factors. The single most

important of these was competition, as other parties started to muscle in on the trade ofthe region as the century wore on. Bugis shipping networks operating out of both Sulawesi

and Eastern Borneo came into direct competition with the Taosug for Borneos marine

products, a confrontation which was felt along the coasts and up into the interior along

major rivers.85 Yet perhaps more influential than the Bugis were the Europeans (and the

Chinese following them), who made the area a new political and economic priority well

into the nineteenth century. The erection of the Brooke Dynasty in Sarawak and the North

Borneo Chartered Company in Sabah increasingly re-routed ocean produce into a widening

British mercantile net. Through Singapore and Labuan, traders under the English flag

received ready access to the riches of Borneos coasts, funneling the traditional marineproducts to their own agents on those two islands.86 Spanish Manila also began a new

campaign to subdue the Muslim South, with the gobierno particularly concentrating on

humbling the military and financial independence of the Sultan of Sulu.87 The appearance

of the first Spanish steamships in the area after 1848 virtually sealed the Sultanates

decline, as an integral part of its existence (the slaving complex which stretched through

much of maritime Southeast Asia) was hunted out of the water. Yet the system as it stood

between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries imparted enormous ecological

changes on the coastline of Borneo, as extraction of trepang, pearls, fins, and rattan

proceeded at pace over the decades.

carrying natures bounty: the shipping ofocean produce

Country Traders and the Marine Products Trade

British trade with China grew increasingly more important between 1786 and the early

1840s, as the revenue earned in Canton paid for the maintenance and expansion of the

Indian Empire. The part of this commerce run by the Company was primarily gearedtoward export, buying and shipping tea to be consumed back home in England. The import

trade to China, however, including the import of marine goods, became more and more the

specialized domain of the country trader. Already by the early decades of this study, in the

85 For a wonderful analysis of these shifting dynamics based on the literature of Joseph Conrad (and proved

through contemporary newspapers and shipping logs) see Sherry 1966. The Bugis diaspora in Borneo, and

elsewhere, is well studied; see Mattulada 1991, pp. 4109; Maeda 1993, pp. 42026; Lineton 1975, pp. 173205.

86 For three contemporary newspaper accounts chronicling these changes in exotica-control see The Singapore

Chronicle(5 Nov. 1829) and The Straits Times and Singapore Journal of Commerce(7 Jan. 1851 and 6 July 1852).The upper hand in these transactions passed from Malay and Bugis shippers in the early part of the century

to Chinese and Europeans by the 1850s. On the history of the Chinese role in particular in this coasting trade


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late 1780s, country traders were bringing three-fourths of all British goods to Chinas

shores.88 Pritchard publishes several tables showing how the average value of these imports

steadily increased, and from his statistics it is evident that items such as ocean products

occupied a small but growing proportion of total goods.89 If country traders were grudg-

ingly accepted by the Company in Canton, having no legal status there and periodicallysheltering under the factories and nationalities of Ostend, Sweden, and Portugal, they were

also needed: the specie they brought in the years before 1800 helped the Chinese pay

for Company goods, and country trade ships were borrowed even until 1842 to be used

as troop transports during the Opium War.90 The breakdown of the VOC in the last decade

of the eighteenth century and the disappearance of Dutch authority in Asia after 1794

provided a further push for the import of marine goods, as collection areas were laid

bare to British traders. When in 1796 Admiral Peter Rainier captured the Moluccas, all but

cornering the world market in nutmeg, mace, and cloves, as well as valuable sea products,

the Company instructed the country trade syndicates to ship as much of these items toChina as they could profitably fit in their holds.91

Who were these merchants? The listings of Bombay and Madras Directories give us

some inkling as to who was involved in this enormous enterprise, bringing marine

produce of Asia to Chinas southern doorstep. British and Portuguese firms were promi-

nent and well known, but there were equally vigorous concerns headed by Armenians,

as well as Muslim and Hindu Indians.92 Parsees, displaced Persians who came to occupy a

thriving settlement in Bombay, were among the richest and most aggressive shippers. The

century between 1750 and 1850 has been called the Parsee Era by one of several scholars

of the trade, who point to the twenty large ships (two over 1,000 tons) owned by one of theolder families in the community.93 The crews of most all of these vessels were Indian in

ethnicity, which certainly in itself is a fascinating topic for study in terms of race relations

(Sino-Anglo-Indic) in Canton. Yet perhaps the most interesting aspect of these Anglo-

Indian concerns was that they continued a fragment of the traffic to China that had lain

dormant then for centuries: the Indian shipping of South Asian and Middle Eastern goods

in Indian-owned bottoms. Not since the days of the Tang and early Sung had Indian ships

made the full sea-voyage to Canton, carrying the specialized products of the region to

the Chinese: this continued now again, after an interstice of nearly one thousand years.

Frankincense, myrrh, olibanum, and carnelians were reintroduced into Canton by the verysame people who cut and quarried them, and these items traveled alongside the dried and

packaged wealth of the oceans. Freighting prices for some of these goods even survive to

88 Keay 1991, p. 431.

89 Pritchard 1970,p. 175.

90 Coates 1911, p. 59.

91 Keay 1991,p. 443. One of the problems in figuring out the statistics of marine goods transport to Canton is

that country traders often leased space on Company ships to send their goods to China. Ocean products were

therefore transported and recorded in Company bottoms, but were actually owned and sold in these

instances by Anglo-Indian merchants.


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39eric tagliacozzo

round out the picture, telling us how much mother of pearl and sharks fins cost to

transport to South China.94

The actual process of shipping such items must have been itself a nerve-wracking

adventure. East India Company charts from 1783 show how little Europeans knew about

the places many marine products came from: while reefs were marked with xs anddepth-soundings appear in lines, Southeast Asian rivers disappeared into enormous blank

interiors and islands were marked with here it is dangerous.95 Even the Pearl River

Estuary, which had been traversed now for some time, was terra incognita a mere mile or

two further on-shore. Country traders commissioned specialized ships, some kettle-

bottomed and shallow to be able to navigate tropical rivers, others small and fleet-winged

to better smuggle opium, all in the service of their trade.96 A thriving business sprouted

around Batavia for Chinese opium runners looking to purchase the illegal product. Coun-

try traders entered the shallow harbor, paid the requisite bribe to crooked Dutch officials,

and were then told where to pick up contraband cargoes of ocean produce and the inlets

frequented by the junks.97 These marine products also found their way up to Canton, being

transshipped by wooden cranes onto the decks of Indiamen who brought the items there

for a freight fee. The country traders could thus continue their coasting trade in the Archi-

pelago, picking up more ocean produce while their original cargoes sped north on consign-

ment. Coates even publishes the letter of a Parsee ship-owner to his captain, instructing

him on how to avoid Dutch customs patrols and war junks cruising around Whampoa. 98

Yet far and away the greatest danger to a country trader trying to bring a full hold

of marine products to Canton was piracy. The years around the turn of the nineteenth-

century saw an enormous increase in what Europeans of the time called piracy, from

Calcutta all the way to Canton. The Balangingi Samal, Iranun, and Bugis were amongthe most feared raiders in Southeast Asian waters,99 and were later joined by Malay

and Chinese craft preying on the greater volume of traffic in the region. 100 Indigenous

94 Ibid., p. 7990. The transport costs from Bombay to Canton in 1813 per Surat candy were the following:cotton=Rs. 27, sandalwood=Rs. 20, olibanum=Rs. 23, asafoetida=Rs. 20, Mother-of-Pearl=Rs. 20,sharks fins=Rs 23, cornelians=Rs. 30 and false amber=Rs. 35 per chest.

95 See Sayer and Bennett 1783?, pp. 64 and 91. This old chart repository is an enormous, cracked-leather volumewhich is disappearing into maroon ash. On the chart published of the approach to Canton and the mouths ofthe Boca Tigris, a small shrub is drawn before the outline of the city, described with the small cursive letters

here lies a remarkable tree.

96 Coates 1911,p. 58; Kubicek 1994, p. 86 passim.

97 Parkinson 1937, p. 351; see also de Haan 1922, Vol. I, p. 498 for scandals involving Chinese payoffs to anincumbent Governor General. Of course, the transit of opium into certain parts of the Indies, such asSurakarta, was also banned. See Winter 1840, No. 2, p. 588.

98 Coates 1911,p. 81.

99 For period accounts on these peoples, especially in the Sulu Sea, see Gregori 1844, and Jansen 1858, pp.21239. Acehnese pirates from North Sumatra were also feared; see ARA, MvK, Gov Gen NEI to Resident ofRiau, 26 Dec. 1830 Secret, in Kol, Exh. 26 Sep. 1830, No. 28. On piracy generally at this time, see the periodDutch historian Kniphorst 1876, p. 3 passim.

100 For a very good historiographical treatment of piracy in Southeast Asia see Murray 1987. Designatingsomeone a pirate, of course, implies a certain perspective local Southeast Asian peoples equally saw in


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Southeast Asian pirates were often prahu crewed by thirty men, reinforced against

shot by double-plankings of bamboo on both sides, and were equipped with swivel guns,

muskets, and machetes. They tried to board ocean produce-hunting country traders by

approaching the ships from the bow or stern (steering clear of broadsides), and were often

rowed by slaves from places as far away as New Guinea. Country ships countered theseattacks with cannon and with the firing oflangridge, a mixture of bolts, iron nails, and glass

that decimated entire decks filled with men.101 Parkinson included in his study a contem-

porary description of the armaments country traders were advised to carry,102 while Coates

reprinted part of a diary describing the terror of a night attack during a thick fog in

the Straits.103 Yet it is perhaps the simple notice in a Canton Register of 1830 that most

adequately portrays how common piracy had become by that point:

As is usual at this season of the year, the rivers around Canton are infested with

boats assuming all characters, even that of revenue cutters, and plunderingtraders and passengers. The Magistrates of Canton have issued proclamations

directing passengers and others to anchor near some fort or village for the

evening, instead of proceeding all night. A European was once again recently

plundered at the Nine Islands, in going to Canton, by one of those real or

pretended cutters.104

If the rewards for bringing marine products to China were great, so were the dangers. Many

merchants never made it home with their holds filled with goods, finding watery graves

instead on the Southeast Asian sea-roads to Canton.

Junks and the Ocean Products Trade

No study of this specialized commerce would be complete without an analysis of the paral-

lel arm of the marine produce trade: the many junks sailing south from the docks of coastal

China. Chinese ocean products shipping was a complicated endeavor requiring a large cast

of actors and their concomitant skills merchants, capitalists, seamen, and navigators all

came together to share in the venture. Syndicates called pangwere set up in Guangdong,

Zhejiang, and Fujian to defray costs and share in the risks, as construction fees on the junks

alone often reached into the tens of thousands of gold cash.105 In 1804 a junk of under 1,000

tons could be fitted out by pooling the capital of one hundred small merchants, while a

101 Parkinson1937, p. 348.

102 Ibid., p. 349.

103 Coates 1911, p. 47.

104 CantonRegister,19 January 1830. The Register is a priceless source for information such as this. Small events

which nevertheless illuminate the common life and experiences of the Europeans in Canton litter the pages:musings about whether the winds of a recent typhoon in the South China Sea spun left to right or right to left

(15 April 1830), the announcement of a relatives wedding in Oahu, Sandwich Islands (23 April 1839), or even


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41eric tagliacozzo

2,000 ton vessel needed two to three hundred backers to get off the ground.106 Crawfurd

noted the state of affairs in the 1820s by observing that the cargo of Chinese junks is not

the property of an individual but of many the proprietors merely have their own com-

partments in the vessel.107 Plenty of people stood ready to invest despite the risks involved,

as large amounts of money could be made on speculation. The profit margin on junks sail-ing to Sulu in the Southern Philippines ranged between 30 and 300%, with certain marine

products commanding 100% profits back home, and mother-of-pearl three times that

amount.108 Amoy in Fujian served as the main base for the fleets, although ships departed

from as far north as Shanghai and as far south as Hainan to participate in the trade. Most

left China during the beginning of the Northeast monsoon, arriving in Southeast Asia in

January and early February.109

Such a large degree of cooperation was made necessary by the very difficult cir-

cumstances surrounding such ventures. Overseas trade was continually restricted on an

on-again/off-again basis, merchants were held in low social esteem by society and therefore

had little voice to protect their own interests, and bankruptcy in such a dangerous

endeavor as trans-oceanic shipping was only as far away as the nearest pirate or squall. Yet

by far the most difficult hurdle in making these ventures a success was the degree of offi-

cial propitiation needed to oil the machine: Viraphol estimates that 2040% of total costs

during this period were earmarked toward the local yamens to serve as protection.110

Chinese viceroys and customs officials were not necessarily opposed to such journeys.

They merely wanted their cut. The pattern for our purposes can be traced as far back as

1727, when in a joint memorial the Governors of Guangdong and Fujian convinced the

Emperor to re-open the Nanyang trade, though large numbers of Chinese renegades had

been reported in Batavia and Luzon.111 Such graft and inefficiency did take its toll, however.

Official outlets for overseas goods were quickly ignored by many junk captains, who pre-

ferred to put into Chinese ports where such exactions could be minimized. There separate

deals could be cut with local coastal authorities, and if the price wasnt right the captain

could simply move on. Phipps sums up the difficulties in tabulating commodity trends in

such a system, both for country traders then and for our purposes now:

It is not always possible to ascertain the quantity of any particular article thatmay be imported into China, in which the Europeans may be generally inter-

ested: for many of the Eastern products are taken direct from Batavia, Singapore,

and other places in the Straits to small Chinese ports in junks, and in many

cases, it appears, this is done purely to evade a transit duty which is being levied

106 Viraphol 1977, p. 123.

107 Crawfurd 1828,pp. 16061.

108 Warren 1981,p. 8.109 Reid 1993; Wong 1960, p. 114.


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upon the goods from Canton into the interior, whereas otherwise this port

would be preferred.112

Nevertheless, certain patterns seem clear. Once again, Singapore can serve as an example

in the altering and continuing patterns of marine-goods shipping in the period 17861842,this time in terms of the junk trade. In 1826, when 222 junks (of 200 tons each)

were involved in the Nanyang trade, Singapore laid claim to only eight of these ships: as

compared to Japan with 20, Tonkin also with 20, the Philippines with 13, Borneo with 13,

Cambodia with 9 and by far the leader of the pack, Siam with 89 (81 of which were built

and owned by Chinese living in that country.)113 This was only seven years after the found-

ing of the colony. Yet by 1841/42 the number of junks had risen to an incredible 247 (thirty

times the 1826 statistics), with a total tonnage of over 30,000 tons net weight.114 A junk

recorded by the 10 May 1838 Singapore Free Pressshows the typical cargo these craft carried

back to China: sharks fins, trepang, agar-agar (sea weed), pearls, as well as a host of othervaluable items.115 Carted to Singapore in return were paper umbrellas, Chinese medicines,

confectionery, Chinese cloth, joss sticks, and gold lace much of these products by now for

the growing numbers of Chinese immigrants who had taken up residence (permanent

or otherwise) in the colony. By 1835 Singapores total trade with China was valued at

$1,344,236: half of which was carried in junks.116

Such a monumental increase in shipping from Singapore to China seems to have come

at the expense of the junk trade everywhere else in the Nanyang. In 1805 Milburn could

report that despite the advent of Penang twenty years earlier several Southeast Asian poli-

ties continued their marine products trade with Chinese junks uninterrupted. Pattani stillreceived considerable numbers of junks who were busily trading with Siam and Batavia,

while Bintang continued to use Chinese cash and measure her goods with Chinese weights

and measures.117 Only twenty years later this situation had drastically changed. George

Windsor Earl, who visited Batavia in 1832, wrote that the Chinese junk trade had com-

pletely dried up in that citys harbor: the Dutch could no longer compete with the British

free port nearby, as Singapore attracted all passing traffic with the strength of a magnet.118

By the late 1820s the junk trade with Bangkok was also on the decline, so that by the

next decade all ships involved were Siamese-owned and Siamese-run as mainland Chinese

shippers preferred to sail further south.119

And in the Philippines, where marine goods-coasting had been a staple of Chinese activity for centuries, the number of junks also pro-

portionately decreased, occupying only a minor place now in the inter-island shipping of

that archipelago. The Registro Mercantil (Manila) for 1829 shows that of the seventy-eight

112 Phipps 1835,p. 9.

113 Wong 1960, p. 110.

114 Ibid., p. 123.

115 Singapore Free Press, 10May 1838, p. 4.

116 Wong 1060, p. 107.

ilb ( )


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43eric tagliacozzo

foreign vessels visiting the country for the entirety of that year, only five were junks a

radical change indeed from the dozens of craft that had traditionally coasted down to Sulu

for sea-cucumbers and pearls.120 European ships (primarily Spanish, British, and American)

now carried this produce, picking up a substantial proportion of it in Jolo (the Sultans

capital) on their way to South China. Chinese would continue to stay involved in thisvenerable leg of the trade, but they were Manila Chinese now who leased Mestizo ships

to make the round-trips between Sulu and the capital.121 There the marine goods would

be cleaned, processed, and crated before European ships loaded up the remainder for

consignment to Canton. Only a few decades later, by the mid 1850s and early 1860s, the

junk traffic to the Philippines had disappeared altogether.

conclusions

Any conclusions made about the ocean products trade to China between the 1780s and1860 must be made with certain caveats. The first and most important is that the data avail-

able for such a study is sometimes sketchy and incomplete: Chinese junks often discharged

their cargo where no one could record it, for example, in fact doing so for those very shrewd

business reasons. Second and also very important, the conflation of country trade goods

on Company ships also creates discrepancies, giving rise to a situation where shipping

statistics are difficult to trust both in the Southern hemisphere ports and in China. Not

all marine produce shipped to China in Indiamen was the property of the Company:

indeed much of it certainly wasnt. Both of these outstretched shipping networks (Asian

and European) were part of a swirling increase in trade throughout Asian seas generally inthis period.122

However, some conclusions are possible, in that they reveal the patterns of the period

vis--visa small commerce being swamped by a much larger one. The East India Company

ended up being much too large and concerned with high-volume commodities like textiles

and tea to ever take a sustained interest in ocean produce: the products of Southeast Asias

seas were simply scattered too far and wide, and with their steady acquisition too uncer-

tain, to keep the directors interested. Such items were unnecessary anyway when the

Company had plantations and factories on which to rely for revenue. Country traders, pos-

sessing much less capital to invest than a huge concern like the Company, did getinvolved in the shipping of marine products to China, but succeeded only in a limited

range of items. Much of the real energy for transporting marine products from Southeast

Asia to China, therefore, came from other quarters. A range of Asian shippers, bankers, and

financiers from a variety of places was crucial in getting these commodities to market.123

Overall, ocean produce was bound for China primarily for traditional Chinese uses: in

medicines, in foods, and for the preparation of religious and cultural paraphernalia. In this

120 Registro Mercantil(Manila 1829) as reported in The Canton Register,15 April 1830, p. 78.

121 Wickberg 1965, pp. 8889. See also the statistics on the rise of Hong Kong shipping produced in Historical and

Statistical Abstracts of the Colony of Hong Kong 18411930 (3rd ed.) Norohna and Co., Government Printers,


22/27


sense the British could not compete with the Chinese junk syndicates and networks: they

couldnt know the markets as well because they didnt know the culture as well.124

Restrained in a tiny anchorage in the mouth of a huge river, it wouldnt be until later

after 1842 and the concessions of the Opium War that they would begin to collect this

eye-witness, face-to-face knowledge. Until that time, the Chinese especially managed tohold onto the marine products trade better than almost any other branch of their com-

merce with the outside world. If European vessels were shipping more and more of the

produce they so loved by the middle of the nineteenth-century, Chinese were still owning

many of those shipments: Chinese in Manila, Singapore, and Bangkok. In this regard, the

commerce in ocean products in the first half of the nineteenth century can almost be seen

as defiance in the face of the flood: a Chinese assertion of what was important at the dawn

of European hegemony.


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45eric tagliacozzo

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