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99 FIVE Separating Trade from Tribute Kangxi Ends the Tribute Trade System W hen the Kangxi emperor decided to open the gates of the Qing empire to the foreign world, he supplemented the threehundred -year-old tribute trade system with an early modern customs office. All those who wished to trade with China, whether by conveying tribute to the capital or by any other means, were issued government permits. In this chapter I place Kangxi’s separation of trade from tribute into the context of the vicissitudes that the tribute trade system faced from the late fourteenth century to the late seventeenth century. In the present study, and especially in the chapter that follows, I use the terms “tribute system,” “tribute trade,” and “tribute trade system” with great precision. “Tribute system” refers to a diplomatic system employed by the Ming and Qing dynasties in their dealings with other countries. “Tribute trade” refers to the commercial exchanges between the Chinese people and the tribute missions that traveled to China, especially those that visited the imperial capital during the Ming and Qing dynasties.As designed by the Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang and abolished by Kangxi in 1684, the “tribute trade system” was a sophisticated economic policy characterized by a combination of nondiplomatic trade and tribute, the prohibition of all foreign commerce other than tribute trade, and the rejection of all overtures for trade from countries with which China did not have tribute relations. The terms “tribute trade” and “tribute trade system” belong to the field of economic and commercial history, whereas “tribute system” belongs to the field of diplomatic history. Even as the first two underwent great changes, the tribute system did not disappear. John Fairbank’s famous studies of the tribute system, published in the 1940s and 1960s, have remained defining works. Analyzing the tribute system as the diplomatic and commercial institutions of the Ming and Qing dynasties, he considered in them a wide range of issues, from tribute rituals to imperial perceptions of how tribute related to trade.1 Though Fairbank’s scholarship was a remarkable achievement, his conclusions were conditioned by his impact-response paradigm.2 Because he viewed China as a closed and relatively unchanging civilization, he viewed Chinese maritime 100 Chapter 5 policy, including the tribute system, as a product of an outdated, anticommercial , and isolationist monolith. This stagnant diplomatic and commercial institution could not cope with the challenge that confronted China during the Opium War: any changes registered after 1840 were entirely due to the impact of this cataclysmic encounter with the West. As to foreign trade, Fairbank held that the imperial court, whether the Ming or the Manchu,always maintained the operation of the tribute system at the expense of private maritime commerce in order to maintain its influence among tribute states. In the 1980s, Hamashita Takeshi published a series of studies confirming Fairbank’s description of the tribute trade system. He claimed that only the tribute trade system could explain the rise and development of the trade network across all of Asia from the fourteenth century until the late nineteenth century. But his conclusion was based mainly on secondary literature, notably Fairbank’s, not on his own archival research. He argued that the tribute trade system continued to expand after the founding of the Qing.3 John Wills is the only scholar to have mentioned Kangxi’s 1684 separation of tribute from trade. Wills’s important discovery of some previously unknown Dutch materials confirmed contemporaneous Chinese records concerning Kangxi’s new measures.4 By considering Kangxi’s separation of trade from tribute,I hope to show that the tribute trade system was not as monolithic as Fairbank assumed; it changed constantly in response to changing political and economic realities. A historical perspective is crucial to understanding the significance of the 1684 reform. The following discussion thus begins with an exploration of the emergence of the tribute trade system in the mid-fourteenth century. It then turns to examining how the system changed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Finally, scrutinizing the Kangxi reform itself shows how the emperor put an end to the tribute trade system while encouraging the rise of private trade in the East and Southeast Asian trade networks. 1 There has been tribute trade as long as there has been a China. The institution can be traced back to the years when the Han rulers gradually made their state the political, economic, and cultural center of East Asia.5 “Tribute ” refers...

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