The shift from indirect to direct trade between China and South Asia, 1684–1740

This article will examine the structural evolution of China’s maritime trade with South Asia from 1684, the year in which the Qing dynasty legalized private commercial voyages, until about 1740. It concludes that, initially, most of the Chinese goods that entered the Indian Ocean destined for South Asian markets were first exported by Chinese merchants to Southeast Asian ports, and were then relayed from there to the Indian Ocean. The two most important hubs in this indirect trading system were Ayutthaya and Johor. However, between about 1715 and 1725, political changes in these two centres, combined with a short-lived Qing ban on Southeast Asian trade, encouraged South Asian-based merchants to increase the number of direct voyages they made to China each year. The result was an expansion of direct trade between South Asia and China at the expense of the indirect routes.