ABSTRACT
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Japan did not have any diplomatic contacts with the states in South Asia. Yet these two economically important regions in early-modern Asia were connected with each other by several types of international maritime trade. Chinese Junks from South-East Asian ports such as Tonkin and Ayutthaya could also come to Nagasaki to trade. Contrary to the usual Japanese historiography, the writer recently offered a new perspective with a case study of the Japanese copper trade of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC). The triangular trade created in the seventeenth century maintained Dutch trade with Siam. Large amounts of cotton textiles and raw silk were sent to Japan from Bengal in exchange for Japanese bullion, and so stimulated the intra-Asian trade of the VOC. The main products which the VOC imported to Japan in the eighteenth century were sappanwood and sugar.
