HIST4400GL Topic Studies in Asian History:
Chinese Maritime Connections in Asia, 1500–1800

This course aims to show how the passages of Chinese people, ships, commodities, and ideas connected different maritime regions in East Asia and Southeast Asia, and linked maritime Asia to other parts of the world in the early modern era (c. 1500-1800). It takes into account the state policies of China, other Asian “indigenous” states, and European imperialists, and the activities of different Chinese groups of people such as merchants, sailors, pirates, and settlers in Southeast Asia. Assisted by a variety of textual, cartographic, and pictorial sources, the course explores the roles of various forms of Chinese circulations such as tribute trade, migration, and the spread of “sea religion” in forming an Asian macro-region with its own intrinsic political, social, economic, and cultural orders. Students will have much chance to read historical materials and secondary literature in both English and Chinese.

1. Introduction: Conceptualizing Maritime Asia
2. The Ming-Qing Maritime Policies
3. Maritime Policies in Japan and Southeast Asia
4. The Tributary System and Tribute Trade
5. Chinese Junk Trade
6. Smuggling and Piracy
7. Circulations of Copper and Silver
8. Exchanges of Commodities
9. Chinese Flows: Books and Ideas
10. Transregional Connections: Chinese Traders and Others
11. Chinese Communities in Maritime Southeast Asia
12. Chinese Communities in Mainland Southeast Asia

Research proposal (15%)

Term paper (40%)

Tutorials (40%)

Class participation (10%)

See Blackboard.

See the course outline.

Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy and regulations. Details may be found at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/.

With each assignment, students will be required to submit a signed declaration that they are aware of these policies, regulations, guidelines and procedures.

• In the case of group projects, all members of the group should be asked to sign the declaration, each of whom is responsible and liable to disciplinary actions, irrespective of whether he/she has signed the declaration and whether he/she has contributed, directly or indirectly, to the problematic contents.
• For assignments in the form of a computer-generated document that is principally text-based and submitted via VeriGuide, the statement, in the form of a receipt, will be issued by the system upon students’ uploading of the soft copy of the assignment.

Assignments without the properly signed declaration will not be graded by teachers.

Only the final version of the assignment should be submitted via VeriGuide.

The submission of a piece of work, or a part of a piece of work, for more than one purpose (e.g. to satisfy the requirements in two different courses) without declaration to this effect shall be regarded as having committed undeclared multiple submissions. It is common and acceptable to reuse a turn of phrase or a sentence or two from one’s own work; but wholesale reuse is problematic. In any case, agreement from the course teacher(s) concerned should be obtained prior to the submission of the piece of work.