Cuando el mar se encuentra con la tierraCultura marítima y comercio exterior de Zhangzhou

Resumen

To break the yoke of "Eurocentrism" and correct the partial view in the study of maritime history, in this thesis we will focus on Zhangzhou, a port city located in Fujian Province in south of China. This region was one of the most important centers where the first contacts between China and Europe appeared during the 16th-17th centuries. However, such a fact has been long-ignored by the western scholars when talking about this history. This thesis will deal with it from the viewpoint of “maritime culture”, concept proposed by Hegel in his Philosophy of History, but for a long time has been considered as something exclusive of European peoples and little relative to the Chinese. In fact, the people of Fujian have a millenary maritime culture, which created an essential environment for the emergence of Zhangzhou in the Late Ming period. In this work, we will study the rise and fall of Yuegang in Zhangzhou with various sources, both western and eastern, and place it in the background of maritime competition between the different contemporary European and Asian powers. We will concentrate in particular, on the trade between Zhangzhou and Manila, a maritime line that connected China with the world market through its link with the trans-Pacific route of the Manila Galleon. On the other hand, we will also analyze the “maritime economy” of Zhangzhou, especially the three typical items including porcelain, ivory and Spanish reals that were produced, exported and introduced in the foreign trade economic framework of Yuegang. Through these studies, we can reevaluate Yuegang's role in the world trade during the 16th and 17th centuries and also deepen our understanding of the material culture exchanges between East and West during the early globalization. The glorious history of foreign trade in Zhangzhou during the Late Ming period is a direct inheritance of Fujian maritime culture, as well as a key link in the chain of the early Sino-European exchanges. A study on this topic helps us to break the traditional prejudices and deepen our understanding on Chinese maritime culture from a new point of view. We believe that the maritime cultural background is a common and decisive factor between the Fujianese and the Europeans, which has played an essential role in the first contacts and interactions between both sides. Such a topic deserves further investigation in in the future study.