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China Takes the Seas
“Profits from maritime commerce are very great. If properly managed, they can amount to millions. Is this not better than taxing the people?”
- Emperor Gao Zong (AD 1127-1162)
The history of China is one of many wars and the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires. Even as China began to build larger, oceangoing ships and reach out into the ocean, internal problems and strife altered the political landscape. The fall of the Tang Dynasty in 906 once again divided China into warring entities. But in 960, the victors of the struggle established the Song Dynasty, which united the country and dominated it for the next three hundred years.
The Song were the first Chinese political power to pay substantial attention to the southern coast. Previously, Chinese shipping on the ocean had traded in northern waters, with Korea and Japan, and occasionally had fought there, including an AD 660 battle with Japanese ships that brought Korea under Chinese domination. |
Oceangoing junk from the Liu-Chhiu Kuo Chih Lileh of 1757.
An excellent illustration from Chinese literature.
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The Song were China’s first maritime power, building up the inland water transportation links with new canals, locks and a haul-way for moving cargo-laden craft up the Yangtze against the current. Chinese shipping, albeit with large and multistoried ships for trade and war – existed as a largely inland, river-based fleet. Foreign ships from the Indian Ocean carried on most of China’s oceangoing maritime trade. But this began to change after the 8th century. Around then China experienced a boom in shipbuilding, in which Chinese shipbuilders learned from innovations brought into China by Arab, Singhalese and Persian traders. With these new influences, the Chinese built improved craft that reflected a merging of some of those traditions with Chinese designs. The result was a significant merchant fleet that grew larger in both the number and size of ships from the 8th to the 12th century.
By the time they came to power, the Sung were able to use this new fleet of larger, oceangoing junks and sampans to encourage more overseas trade, expanding on routes that linked China with Indochina, Malaya, Korea and Japan, and introducing Chinese porcelain in particular to an expanding regional market. The Song did not use their naval power to force trade or subjugate other lands, but rather saw their navy as a defensive force. The peaceful expansion of trade into distant waters did help encourage the development of a naval force, but the major factor in the rise of the Song Navy was the arrival of invaders. | |
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