Questionnaire concerning Chinese junks and English ships from and to Amoy, Canton and Ningpo answered by Chinese nakhodas, 20 January 1701

Introduced Paul van Dyke

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The "Questionnaire concerning Chinese junks and English ships from and to Amoy, Canton and Ningpo answered by Chinese nachodas, 20 January 1701", in the Harta Karun collection, is a good example of the treasures that can be found in the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia.

Dutch East India Company (VOC) officials in Batavia needed to keep track somehow of what their competitors were doing in Asia. After the Qing Dynasty opened its ports to trade in 1684, China's maritime commerce with the outside world began to expand. This posed a considerable threat to the Dutch trade in Batavia. Not only could other Europeans now go directly to China to obtain Chinese wares, but the Chinese junk trade to Southeast Asia also began to expand.[1]

After several experimental voyages to China in the late 1680s and 1690s, English and French ships began frequenting China on a more regular basis. The date of this questionnaire is particularly interesting because it is at the beginning of what later became a very regular and substantial Sino-European trade at Canton.[2] The Dutch knew that this trade was expanding, because they had been keeping track of the ships passing through Batavia.

In 1698, for example, the Dutch reported to the directors in Holland that ten English ships stopped at Batavia this year and their destinations were Borneo and/or China; in 1699, the Batavia officers reported that  five junks arrived from Ningbo,  three from Amoy,  two from Canton, and  two small ships from Macao. In this year, English had sailed up the coast to Ningbo and sent  two ships to Canton; and in 1700, they reported that out of 13 English ships that had visited Batavia, six were bound for China.[3] The Dutch officers needed to know more clearly what was happening in China's foreign trade, which is why the questionnaire was created.

The best place for the Dutch to get the information they wanted, without going to China themselves, was to question the captains (nachodas) of the Chinese junks arriving at Batavia. These men would know which ships and junks had arrived and left China as well as some basic details about their trade. The junk captains needed this information as well so they could better manage their trade and remain competitive.

Some of the information gathered from the questionnaire was reported to the VOC directors in the Netherlands. In a letter dated 28 January 1701 (eight days after the questionnaire), the Dutch reported that there had been  four English ships at Ningbo (Nimpho),  five ships at Amoy and  three ships at Canton. They mentioned that the English had sold their goods in China at a profit, and that there were  eight Chinese junks that arrived at Batavia this year.[4] This information had been taken from the questionnaire.

The more specific details mentioned in the questionnaire about the contents of the English, Portuguese and junk cargos, the number of vessels and crew sizes, were needed for officers in Batavia to manage their trade better. Rather than go directly to China to get Chinese wares, the Dutch relied on the junks bringing those goods to Batavia. Some of these Chinese products were then reshipped to Europe aboard VOC ships. By keeping track of what the English and other Europeans were selling and purchasing in China, the  VOC gained a better idea of how to manage the ordering and purchasing of junk cargos coming to Batavia, and what Chinese items should be sent to Europe. And by keeping track of what the Portuguese ships in Macao and the Chinese junks were doing in Southeast Asia, the Dutch officers gained a better idea of how to manage their intra-Asian trade.

By 1728, the Dutch had decided that depending on the junks to bring Chinese wares to Batavia, and then transshipping those goods to Europe was no longer effective. From that year they began sending VOC ships directly to China, as the English, French and others  had been doing. After this direct trade began, the Dutch then gained first-hand information of what was happening in China. But seventeen years earlier, in 1701, it still looked like the best approach was to continue depending on the junks to bring Chinese goods to Batavia.

This questionnaire is a wonderful example of the data that can be found in the Dutch records. There are no comparable details available in Chinese records about this trade, which means that much of the data can only be found in Dutch records. After the VOC began sending its own ships directly to Canton, the Dutch officers in China collected information from junk captains who arrived there.[5]  Today, those Dutch records are among the only documents we have that discuss the Canton junk trade to Southeast Asia. In fact, if we did not have those Dutch Canton records, we would know almost nothing about that commerce.[6]

As far as the present questionnaire is concerned, besides helping us better understand what was happening at Batavia, the document also records what was  happening along the South China Coast in 1700.  It gives us a general idea of the numbers of Chinese junks involved in the trade to Southeast Asia. This document and the many others like it in the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia add wonderful details to the history of Asia that we cannot get from any other sources.

 

Reference:

  • Blussé, Leonard, Strange Company. Chinese setlers, mestizo women and Dutch in VOC Batavia. Providence: Foris Publications, 1988.
  • Cheong, Weng Eang, Chinese Merchants in Sino-Western Trade, 1684-1798. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1997.
  • Van Dyke, Paul A., Merchants of Canton and Macao: Politics and Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Trade. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011.


[1] Leonard Blussé, Strange Company. Chinese settlers, mestizo women and Dutch in VOC Batavia. Providence: Foris Publications, 1988, chapter 6.

[2] Paul A. Van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005; reprint, 2007, chapter 1.

[3] W. Ph. Coolhaas, Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs-Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, vol. VI: 1698-1713. ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976, letters dated 10 June 1698,  46, 20 Jan. 1700,  103, 20 Jan. 1700,  114.

[4] W. Ph. Coolhaas, Generale Missiven, vol. VI: 1698-1713, letter dated 28 Jan. 1701,  148.

[5] See, for example, the Dutch dagregisters from Canton and Macao, which contain much information about China's trade to Southeast Asia. Some of this information was collected from the junk captains, see Paul A. Van Dyke and Cynthia Viallé (eds), The Canton-Macao Dagregisters. 1762, Macao: Cultural Institute, 2006;  Idem 1763,, 2008;  idem 1764,, 2009.

[6] For a discussion of the Canton junk trade to Southeast Asia including names of junks, destinations, owners, and lists of junk cargos, much of which came from Dutch records, see Paul A. Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macao: Politics and Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Trade, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011, Chapter 4 and Appendices 4A-4M.

Paul Arthur van Dyke, “Questionnaire concerning Chinese junks and English ships from and to Amoy, Canton and Ningpo answered by Chinese nakhodas, 20 January 1701.” In: Harta Karun. Hidden Treasures on Indonesian and Asian-European History from the VOCArchives in Jakarta, document 6. Jakarta: Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, 2013.