Relationship Between Chinese Sea Ban and Wokou

Relationship Between Chinese Sea Ban and Wokou
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Relationship Between Chinese Sea Ban and Wokou
The mid-16th century Ming dynasty contended with the significant challenge of containing wokou (pirate) campaigns on its southeastern coast. However, the wokou crisis resulted in Ming Court’s policy changes on maritime trade. Haijin (sea ban) by the Ming Court restricted maritime commerce along the Chinese coast and in the South China Sea, allowing smuggling and piracy to fill the market vacuum. The state-mandated sea ban policy created a financial crisis among southern cities like Nanjing and Hangzhou and incentivized wokou as an alternative option to acquiring the much-needed income from the lucrative maritime trade. This essay theorizes that the relationship between the Chinese sea ban of the Ming and Qing dynasties and wokou revolves around the restriction of maritime trade and people’s desire to gain a foothold in trade networks.
Around 1470, the Portuguese first discovered the new sea route to Asia. The Portuguese were the first European nation to find a direct sea route after Vasco da Gama arrived in India via the Cape of Good Hope in 1498. This discovery of a new maritime route allowed the Portuguese to gain a foothold in the profitable spice trade, which made China face an unprecedented demand for overseas trade. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the East China Sea was a place of social and cultural interaction between Asian and European powers. More importantly, the East China Sea was a global maritime link and trade area: the coastal provinces of eastern China were the only way European merchants could access the lucrative Asian market. The early Ming dynasty was strongly protectionist and limited foreign trade to trade missions and diplomatic embassies. A series of Ming emperors enforced isolationist maritime policies against European powers, whom they believed threatened national security. The Ming Dynasty sought to restrict the influence of European powers in their country by implementing protectionist policies that limited social, cultural, and economic interaction between southern villages along the coast and foreign merchants (Fujitani, 2016). Asian products were highly sought after in Europe, and foreign merchants flooded the East China Sea to exploit the lucrative market for exotic goods like Jiangnan silks and spices. However, the maritime trade was largely unidirectional in that China did not desire many European goods except silver. Until the introduction of opium in 1820, silver was the only significant import for China and therefore.
However, the commercialized economy along the East China Sea gave the southern villages easy access to wealth and status: Chinese merchants exchanged cash crops and specialized handicrafts for European silver (the primary medium of possible exchange). The fortunes of the landed gentry elite in the southern villages and Chinese merchants steadily increased. Their ability to acquire power and distinguish themselves socially threatened the ruling class. European merchants also traded guns, and their social and cultural influence on Chinese communities along the coast was viewed as a national security threat. Haijin was a national security function against all foreign influence, particularly by European powers invested in maritime trade in the East China Sea. The implementation of haijin was comprehensive and draconian. All boat households along the coastline were forcibly registered as military households and moved into garrisons (Kung & Ma, 2014). Similar autocratic measures restricted all possible economic or cultural collaboration avenues between local merchants and foreigners. However, the sea ban also created unintentional security loopholes: leaving the offshore islands uninhabited and unfortified, the deserted isles became strategic bases for a smuggler and pirate organizations.
Besides weakening Ming’s maritime defense against smugglers and pirates, the dynasty’s policy changes towards maritime trade also provided an economic incentive for illegal activities to thrive. The sea ban effectively deprived many coastal peasants of their livelihood: many villages along the South China Sea relied on maritime trade and fishing to sustain themselves. Moreover, the draconian implementation of haijin by the Ming and Qing dynasties created a class conflict between the ruling class and the peasants. The Ming and Qing governments severely punished any violations of the sea ban: those who violated or were suspected of having violated even minor maritime laws faced disproportionate retribution, ...