Seas and oceans provide channels for exchanges, in people, goods, and ideas; ports are where these channels converge, and where these exchanges occur or pass through. In this sense, the study of ports tends to be crucial in studies of maritime history. The Singapore University Press in association with the Kyoto University Press has now published an important book which does exactly this. It consists of ten solid papers, in addition to an elaborate introduction by the editor. And one other point merits special mention: more than half of the authors are Asian scholars. This means that although they may have been trained in the West or according to Western traditions, their home background gives them the opportunity to bring in Asian perspectives of understanding.
The papers collected in this volume share some common features. Many of the authors bring out new research findings – not infrequently based on extensive exploration of archival sources. Each paper examines in depth the characteristics of the Asian port cities under study from varied aspects, such as the location and architecture of foreign settlements, legal and jurisdictional arrangements regarding foreigners, port and city facilities, management and control of the port cities. By detailing their findings, these papers give us much diversified and colorful representation of individual port cities and greatly enrich our understanding of them.
Asian ports had different characteristics and underwent multifarious historical changes during the period of this study. Professor Haneda's proposal to make “comparative studies” of Asian port cities thus makes good sense for uncovering the similarities and the ultimate differences between these places. This is an ideal that merits further discussion here.
The book, in fact, comes out of two academic meetings held in the same year on similar themes. The purpose of these meetings was to study cross-cultural contacts in Asian port cities and to make a comparison between Nagasaki and Canton in the pre-modern period. In this the Dutch East India Company (the VOC) was frequently included, while the Portuguese and other Europeans were touched on only rarely. Batavia was the headquarters of the VOC in Asia, so it too is brought into the discussion. In addition, several other Asian ports are included. They are the three Indian ports of Surat, Madras, and Pondicherry, as well as the Siamese capital Ayutthaya accessible through the Gulf of Thailand. It is somewhat strange that no Iranian or Arabian port was selected for serious consideration in this book. Notwithstanding, this is in one way or another compensated for by Professor Haneda's interesting paper “Canton, Nagasaki and the Port Cities of the Indian Ocean: A Comparison,” where Bandar Abbas is added to the discussion.
“Comparison” is in fact the very point emphasized by the editor. As mentioned in his Introduction, in order to establish a consistent scope, only those ports frequented by Europeans are treated in this book. The time frame is also set between 1600 and 1800. As far as cross-cultural contacts are concerned, the discussion and analysis also bring in specific elements of port cities. We all understand that port cities of different countries differ from one another in many aspects. Unless some pre-set limitations are made, it is not easy to isolate suitable factors for meaningful comparison. However, such constraints in the end limit the scope of the work. The fact is that during the period under study, besides the seaports visited by both Europeans and Asians, there were also ports called at only by Asian traders or by locals. By excluding these latter ports from consideration, the picture of Asian port cities is incomplete. This means too that not only port cities but also Asian traders are not given balanced treatment in comparison to Europeans. Due to limits of space, of course not all Asian port cities could be included in one book. However, at least all types of ports should have been properly represented, but this was not accomplished. To be sure, Professor Haneda and his colleagues Murai Shouke and Fukasawa Katsumi have recently edited and published a series of three volumes, thirty-five chapters in all, covering many Asian ports, and these books, along with other previous and ongoing scholarship, will strongly enhance our understanding of the nature of Asian port cities. However, a more complete picture of Asian port cities is not to be found in the volume under review.
Professor Haneda points out that the European East India Companies' archives provide common sources for the better-documented information. He also proposes six points for comparative study. These points are: (1) the forts and factories of the East India Companies; (2) communications between Europeans and the local people and people from overseas; (3) the way trade was conducted; (4) legal and judicial problems; (5) women and mixed-blood children; and (6) cultural exchanges. How far each of the papers realizes the above points is explained in the Introduction. However, since not all of the papers are really tailor-made for this book, some of them do not include all of these comparative points.
The papers of this volume are very useful and informative, but do not provide sufficient data for a workable comparison. The emphases of the individual authors are often different. Points given detailed treatment in one paper are scarcely touched upon or are completely left out in another. In consequence, as a whole, these papers do not provide sufficient information for readers to make comparisons by themselves.
Some of the authors, such as Bhawan Ruangsilp and Liu Yong, are former students of Professor Leonard Blussé. Blussé's paper, dealing with Batavia, serves as a good example for depicting the features of a port city. In his “On the Waterfront: Life and Labour Around the Batavian Roadstead,” Professor Blussé gives us vivid narration and discussion on several aspects: the morphology and special features of Batavia, the life cycles of that port city, how it would have appeared to visitors, its geographic location, its function as a trading port and its management, its shipping routes and network, and so on. Had all the authors of this volume followed such a model, this would have enabled the reader to draw interesting comparisons between these ports.
Although the papers are derived from conferences, this does not mean they are all brand-new works. Some have already been published elsewhere and were only abridged or revised for inclusion in this book. For example, Professor Blussé has himself published a book, Visible Cities: Canton, Nagasaki, and Batavia and the Coming of the Americans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), which has content similar to his paper in this volume. Bhawan Ruangsilp also acknowledges that “This chapter is a revised version of Chapter Two of my Dutch East India Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya: Dutch Perceptions of the Thai Kingdom, c. 1604–1765 (Leiden: Brill, 2007).”
A few papers are written in other languages and translated into English by a different hand. In consequence, some subtle ideas are not precisely transmitted. Liu Zhaohui's paper is an instance of this, and at the same time contains examples of shortcomings in writing common to several of the papers. In Liu's paper, the Korean potter Yi Sam-p'yŏng, a crucial figure in Japanese ceramic history, is known by the Japanese as Ri Sanpei, but for English readers, the transliteration Yi Sam-p'yŏng is better known. Liu's paper gives only Ri Sanpei. Similarly, for non-Japanese readers, it is not easy to comprehend “Bunroku Keichō no eki,” whereas something along the lines of “the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598)” or “Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea” would have been instantly recognizable. The translation of Jingdezhen small Blue-and-White wares as ko-sometsuke may mislead readers into thinking that these are Japanese wares. The translation of sakoku as “closed-door policy” instead of “seclusion policy” seems odd. The term Mingmo was rendered as “the end of the Ming,” which is incorrect: it would have been better rendered as “the last few years of the Ming.” Precise dates are not carefully expressed. Occasionally, Liu introduces serious errors of fact. For example, he mentions on p. 90: “According to the statistics in T. Volker's book, Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company, China exported more than 16 million porcelain wares to Japan between 1602–1682.” But in fact, these 16 million pieces of porcelain were exported to Europe, not to Japan! Some papers like Liu Zhaohui's would have benefited from thorough copy-editing. The book as a whole also could have used a little more editorial refinement. For example, Professor Blussé and Raungsilp's adoption of the term comptoir to describe the VOC's trading posts requires extra work from readers to work out its real meanings. The trading compounds occupied by VOC personnel are described in some places as “lodges,” and elsewhere as “factories.” A clarification of these technical terms would have been desirable.
In general, each author seems to know the port cities they study very well, but their understanding of other Asian counterparts seems lacking. Most of the authors are content to deal with their own port, and leave the task of comparison to the minds of the readers. A significant exception is Haneda's paper, which gives a very good example of comparison. Nagashima Hiromu makes some comparative analysis regarding the European possessions within Surat, but when he points out the similarities and differences between the cases of Surat and Nagasaki, it seems that he presupposes that his readers already have a clear understanding of the foreign (i.e. Dutch) community in Nagasaki. To anyone not familiar with Japanese history, it will be time-consuming for them to make up this gap in knowledge on their own.
Asian historians are accustomed to studying national or regional issues, and rarely treat the whole continent or its maritime world as an object of research. Although the editor reservedly says that this book “makes a modest contribution to efforts to describe world history from a new angle,” in fact efforts like this volume make a leap forward towards a wider perspective and should be applauded.
The editor uses the plural form “Asian Maritime Worlds” to designate maritime Asia to account for the fact that even just taking the maritime sphere into consideration, Asia is not a well-integrated entity. In fact, unless confronted by Europeans (or Americans), Asian people rarely think of themselves as being Asian. With the noble dream of writing a new form of world history, it is necessary to discover the uniqueness of Asia. For this, comparative study becomes an indispensable method. In this sense, the book and its editor have made a big stride in the right direction.
