China as a Sea Power 1127–1368 by Lo Jung-Pang (review)

China as a Sea Power 1127–1368 by Lo Jung Pang is an important contribution to the field of Chinese maritime history. Originally completed in the late 1950s, the manuscript had apparently not been published until it was discovered amongst his materials at University of California, Davis, library archives after his passing in 1981. The result is a well-edited book by Bruce A. Elleman (U.S. Naval War College), which showcases Lo’s scholarship and grasp of the field of maritime history at its best.

The book is divided into four main sections. The first section traces China’s naval experiences up to the Northern Song period. The second section describes Chinese naval experiences during the Southern Song Dynasty. This section narrates the substantive and significant developments in the use of the navy and its different components, including ordnance, vessels, battle tactics, and naval campaign strategies, for the purpose of further geo-political imperatives and socio-political agendas. The third section details the military exploits of Yuan China’s Mongol rulers from the perspective of the navy and its engagements in Java, Annam, and Champa, and in Japanese waters during the 1274 campaign. In all three sections, Lo discusses the nature and impact that the maritime economy had on developments in naval technology, navigational knowledge, shipbuilding techniques, and potential naval capacities over time.

The final section, in effect an extended concluding discussion, sums up the key arguments made earlier in the book, and extends the effects of China’s naval experiences over the longue durée into the Ming period, framing the early Ming voyages under the emperor Yongle (known as the Zhenghe voyages).

This book makes for interesting reading for several reasons. At one level, the book contains a wealth of historical data and narrative information that is characteristic of Lo’s works and that Chinese and Asian maritime historians have come to be familiar with. More importantly, this book provides completeness to the work Lo has been known for, including his seminal works on the Song navy that were published in 1950s and 1960s.¹ Scholars interested in data on the taxonomy of Chinese naval crafts, mobilisation figures, varying strengths of naval squadrons, and even migrations patterns between north and south China will appreciate the numerous tables included in the book. The details of critical events in Chinese naval history make for very engaging reading, reflecting the manner of crafting historical narratives of a different scholarly time.

At another level, this book needs to be read in light of the significant advances in the field of Chinese maritime and military history over the course of the twentieth century. Indeed, this book in itself reflects the advances in this field by the 1950s, especially in light of the seminal work that was produced a generation ago, as represented in the works of such scholars as Kuwabara Jitsuzō 桑原隲蔵.² In addition, since the 1950s, a wealth of scholarship on Chinese military history, including the exchanges and adoption of military technology across state borders in the south and north of China have been explicated in great detail by such scholars as Sun Laichen and Kenneth Swope,³ to name but a few.

In the field of Chinese maritime history, new information on shipbuilding knowledge, navigational technology, and maritime trade practices have been brought to light through marine archaeology, particularly through the excavations of the Dinghai 1 wreck off the coast of Shanghai, the Quanzhou wreck that was recovered at Houzhu 后渚 in Quanzhou Bay, and more recently the Nanhai 1 wreck in the Pearl River Delta. Surprisingly, many of Lo’s tentative arguments and data on these aspects of China’s maritime history, which were based entirely on textual research, were quite accurate. As a case in point, the size of Chinese merchant vessels of the Southern Song period, which Lo has surmised as having a proportion of breadth to length of 1:4, has been showed...