ABSTRACT
In December 1683, Admiral Shih Lang 1 successfully petitioned the throne to open Chinese ports to foreign trade and repeal the Ch’ing ban on Chinese overseas navigation which had been in force intermittently from 1656. 2 The Ch’ing pacification of southern China had preceded this new liberal policy and the reorganization of the former feudal domains in the south along traditional lines of provincial administration followed. Ming prohibition of overseas navigation from 1522 had never been strictly enforced, especially after 1567 when Hai Cheng on the Chiu Lung River in Fukien was opened for ocean-going junks, but the junk trade was significantly reduced by the prohibition and was eclipsed by the better-organized and more regular European carrying trade at Macao, Tainan, Kelung and Tamsui and the privileged Spanish trade at Amoy and Ch’üanchou. Although in the period 1633–83, the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch, for different reasons, had withdrawn to their colonial entrepôts, the junk trade itself was unable to benefit from the absence of the Europeans and expand because it was restrained at first by the war of conquest and then from 1656 by Ch’ing prohibition.
