Chapter 2 - Cultural Transmission by Sea: Maritime Trade Routes in Yuan China

Summary

The Mongol epoch in world history has long been recognised as a period of unprecedented east-west communication and cross-cultural transmission. Scholars have typically pointed to the eradication of political barriers in continental Eurasia, with the result that the Silk Route flourished as never before. This essay, by contrast, will focus on the maritime trade routes linking China with southern and western Asia as a medium for cross-cultural transmission, and it will argue that maritime trade and communication functioned differently under the Mongols than they had previously, most notably in their politicisation and centralisation, and that these differences had significant cultural implications. For the first time, individual merchants and merchant families come into historical focus, in some cases as politically important actors. The unprecedented east-west flows of people, goods, and ideas helped to give the Muslim communities of southeastern China a semi-colonial character.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The system of maritime trade inherited by the Mongols following their conquest of the Song in the 1270s had its origin in the protrade policies of the post-Tang Southern Kingdoms and the early Song. In an approach unique in pre-modern Chinese history, the imperial government allowed virtually free trade while relying on it as an important source of revenue, employing a combination of compulsory purchase and import taxes. Although tributary trade from frequent tribute missions was important through the early decades of the eleventh century, and briefly in the late Northern Song, these tapered off so that through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Song government's interactions with the maritime world occurred almost exclusively through the superintendencies of maritime trade which dotted the coast, the two most important of which were located in Guangzhou and Quanzhou. The superintendencies did not simply tax the incoming ships; they welcomed ships when they arrived and saw them off, provided support to foreign seamen and merchants in distress, and served as the point of all political contact between the ships and government.