Lineage Society on the Southeastern Coast of China: The Impact o ...

the renewed use of the Grand Canal, which linked northern and southern China—in fact represented China’s first experience of the “sprouting of capitalism” remains debatable, but the changes clearly brought about an increased demand for silver. By the fifteenth century, silver was becoming the principal currency of the Chinese economy.²⁷

By the middle of the sixteenth century, tax payments and corvée obligations were being progressively converted and streamlined into silver payments (in line with what was known as the Single Whip reforms), and growing demand for the metal led to China’s gradual integration into the world economy. Chinese merchants turned to international trade networks centered in Southeast Asia and Japan for new supplies of silver bullion from Japanese mines and from the Spanish New World via the Philippines.²⁸

Trade and the Wokou

This growing demand for silver bullion and luxurious exotica (such as spices and aromatics) in the Ming economy came to be increasingly at odds with Ming foreign policy, which rested on the dual foundations of a Sino-centric tributary system and a closed-door policy on the maritime frontier. Soon after the Ming founder, the Hongwu emperor, had established his new dynasty at Nanjing, he turned his attention to bringing relations with China’s neighbors into line with the tradition of China as the civilizing suzerain in Asia. At the same time, he fortified the littoral areas by setting up a coastal maritime defense system of stockades, fortresses, and garrisons.²⁹ In attempting to put an end to the sporadic wokou raids along the Shandong peninsula and the eastern coast of China, the Hongwu emperor sought to assert China’s authority over Japan within the framework of traditional suzerain-vassal tributary relations; he recognized the ruler of the southern court as the “king of Japan” and formalized the relationship through the acceptance of tribute missions from the southern court via the port of Ningbo in eastern Zhejiang.³⁰

Also seeking to ensure that the imperial court at Nanjing benefited fully from the tally (kanhe) trade, which was the officially approved commercial exchange that accompanied the tribute missions, in February 1372 the Hongwu emperor initiated a total ban on maritime traffic, ostensibly