The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  35. Zahedieh, ‘Merchants of Port Royal’, pp. 574–5; Zahedieh, ‘“Frugal, Prudential and Hopeful Trade”’, p. 146.

  36. Pestana, English Conquest of Jamaica, p. 255; C. Pestana, ‘Early English Jamaica without Pirates’, William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 71 (2014), pp. 321–60.

  37. D. Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way: the Biography of Sir Henry Morgan 1635–1684 (London, 1977), pp. 76–81.

  38. Talty, Empire of Blue Water, pp. 41–5; Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way, pp. 90–99.

  39. J. Beeching, ‘Introduction’, in A. Exquemeling, The Buccaneers of America, transl. A. Brown (Harmondsworth, 1969), pp. 14–15; cf. Hanna, Pirate Nests, p. 104.

  40. Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way, pp. 67, 73.

  41. Talty, Empire of Blue Water, pp. 101–21; Zahedieh, ‘Trade, Plunder and Economic Development’, p. 216: about £60 per head, three times the annual plantation wage.

  42. P. Earle, The Sack of Panamá (London, 1981); Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way, pp. 212–47.

  43. G. Thomas, The Buccaneer King: the Story of Captain Henry Morgan (London, 2014), pp. ix, 7; Hanna, Pirate Nests, pp. 103–4.

  44. Zahedieh, ‘“Frugal, Prudential and Hopeful Trade”’, p. 152.

  45. Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way, pp. 333–5; Hanna, Pirate Nests, pp. 138–40.

  46. Hanna, Pirate Nests, pp. 106–7.

  47. Zahedieh, ‘“Frugal, Prudential and Hopeful Trade”’, pp. 155–6.

  48. Zahedieh, ‘Merchants of Port Royal’, pp. 570–71; Zahedieh, ‘“Frugal, Prudential and Hopeful Trade”’, pp. 158, 161.

  49. Zahedieh, ‘“Frugal, Prudential and Hopeful Trade”’, p. 148.

  50. M. Pawson and D. Buisseret, Port Royal Jamaica (2nd edn, Kingston, Jamaica, 2000), p. 94.

  51. Marx, Pirate Port, p. 175.

  52. Pawson and Buisseret, Port Royal Jamaica, p. 87.

  53. Ibid., p. 89.

  54. Zahedieh, ‘Merchants of Port Royal’, pp. 583–4, 589–92; Pawson and Buisseret, Port Royal Jamaica, p. 92.

  55. Zahedieh, ‘Trade, Plunder and Economic Development’, p. 220; Marx, Pirate Port, pp. 158–9.

  56. Marx, Pirate Port, pp. 122, 134, 153, etc.

  57. Pawson and Buisseret, Port Royal Jamaica, pp. 158–61; cf. Talty, Empire of Blue Water, pp. 130, 132–5.

  58. Pawson and Buisseret, Port Royal Jamaica, pp. 135–6.

  59. Ibid., pp. 109–11, 120–21.

  60. Ibid., pp. 165–8.

  44. A Long Way to China

  1. K. McDonald, Pirates, Merchants, Settlers, and Slaves: Colonial America and the Indo-Atlantic World (Oakland, 2015); R. Allen, European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850 (Athens, Oh., 2014).

  2. J. Goldstein, Philadelphians and the China Trade 1682–1846: Commercial, Cultural, and Attitudinal Effects (University Park, Pa., 1978), p. 17; M. Christman, Adventurous Pursuits: Americans and the China Trade 1784–1844 (Washington DC, 1984).

  3. C. Matson, Merchants and Empire: Trading in Colonial New York (Baltimore, 1998), pp. 142–3, 146–8; source of quotation: p. 183; C. Frank, Objectifying China: Chinese Commodities in Early America (Chicago, 2011), p. 56, table 1:2; Goldstein, Philadelphians and the China Trade, pp. 17–20.

  4. Frank, Objectifying China, pp. 5, 1, 12.

  5. Ibid., pp. 13–22, 92; examples from the 1790s of E PLURIBUS UNUM in Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI.

  6. Christman, Adventurous Pursuits, p. 22.

  7. J. Fichter, So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), pp. 93–4, 209.

  8. Frank, Objectifying China, pp. 31, 34–7.

  9. Ibid., pp. 31, 34–7; Goldstein, Philadelphians and the China Trade, pp. 18, 20.

  10. He Sibing, Macao in the Making of Sino-American Relations, 1784–1844 (Macau, 2015), p. 42.

  11. E. Dolin, When America First Met China: an Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail (New York, 2012), pp. 65–71.

  12. Cited by Frank, Objectifying China, p. 203.

  13. Dolin, When America First Met China, pp. 4–6.

  14. James Cook, The Journals (2nd edn, London, 2003), p. 559.

  15. Dolin, When America First Met China, pp. 9–11; J. Kirker, Adventures to China: Americans in the Southern Oceans 1792–1812 (New York, 1970), pp. 8, 13–19.

  16. Dolin, When America First Met China, pp. 12–13; He, Macao in the Making of Early Sino-American Relations, p. 43.

  17. Dolin, When America First Met China, pp. 20–21.

  18. Text in Goldstein, Philadelphians and the China Trade, p. 32.

  19. Cited by Dolin, When America First Met China, p. 22.

  20. Cited by Dolin, When America First Met China, p. 74; on Shaw: He, Macao in the Making of Sino-American Relations, p. 44.

  21. Dolin, When America First Met China, pp. 80–84.

  22. Ibid., p. 78; text of sea letter in He, Macao in the Making of Sino-American Relations, p. 43; ‘New People’: p. 45.

  23. Cited by He, Macao in the Making of Sino-American Relations, p. 45.

  24. J. Downs, The Golden Ghetto: the American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784–1844 (Bethlehem, Pa., and Cranbury, NJ, 1997), pp. 26–9.

  25. R. Nield, The China Coast: Trade and the First Treaty Ports (Hong Kong, 2010), pp. 48–55, 124–6; Downs, Golden Ghetto, pp. 29, 37, 45, 48, 65–6.

  26. W. E. Cheong, The Hong Merchants of Canton: Chinese Merchants in Sino-Western Trade (Richmond, Surrey, 1997), pp. 193–213; Downs, Golden Ghetto, pp. 73–4.

  27. P. Van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845 (Hong Kong and Macau, 2005), pp. 19–33; Christman, Adventurous Pursuits, p. 23; P. Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macao, vol. 1: Politics and Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Trade (Hong Kong, 2011), pp. 49–66, and vol. 2: Success and Failure in Chinese Trade (Hong Kong, 2016); Downs, Golden Ghetto, p. 77.

  28. Downs, Golden Ghetto, pp. 81–5, 151–4; Nield, China Coast, pp. 48–50; Dolin, When America First Met China, pp. 173–6; Christman, Adventurous Pursuits, pp. 85–91.

  29. He, Macao in the Making of Sino-American Relations, pp. 46–7.

  30. Fichter, So Great a Proffit, pp. 31–5.

  31. Kirker, Adventures to China, pp. 13–23, 35–47; J. Harrison, Forgotten Footprints: Lost Stories in the Discovery of Antactica (Cardigan, 2012).

  32. R. Dana Jr, Two Years before the Mast: a Personal Narrative of Life at Sea (New York, 1840, and later editions), ch. 5.

  33. Fichter, So Great a Proffit, pp. 49–5; Christman, Adventurous Pursuits, p. 35; S. Ridley, Morning of Fire: John Kendrick’s Daring American Odyssey in the Pacific (New York, 2010), p. 23.

  34. Ridley, Morning of Fire, pp. 30–34.

  35. Ibid., p. 33.

  36. Ibid., pp. 61–3.

  37. Ibid., pp. 67–8.

  38. Fichter, So Great a Proffit, pp. 51–2.

  39. D. Pethick, The Nootka Connection: Europe and the Northwest Coast 1790–1795 (Vancouver, 1980), p. 5.

  40. Christman, Adventurous Pursuits, pp. 34–5.

  41. Pethick, Nootka Connection, pp. 56–61.

  42. Kirker, Adventures to China, pp. 35–6.

  43. Ibid., pp. 19–21, 50–64.

  44. Fichter, So Great a Proffit, pp. 272–7.

  45. Fur and Fire

  1. R. Makarova, Russians on the Pacific 1743–1799 (Kingston, Ont., 1975), ed. and transl. R. Pierce and A. Donnelly from the original edition (Moscow, 1968), pp. 78–84 – an interesting example of Soviet-era historical interpretation.

  2. See Muller’s account of Dezhnev’s voyage in F. Golder, Russian Expansion on the Pacific 1641–1850 (2nd edn, New York, 1971), pp. 268–81, followed by Dezhnev’s own report, pp. 282–8.

  3. Makarova, Russians on the Pacific, pp. 31–2.

  4. Ibid., p. 107; J. Gibson, Feeding the Russian Fur Trade: Provisionment of the Okhotsk Seaboard and the Kamchatka Peninsula 1639–1856 (Madison, 196
9), p. 131.

  5. Golder, Russian Expansion on the Pacific, pp. 71–95, 98–9; Makarova, Russians on the Pacific, p. 32.

  6. Golder, Russian Expansion on the Pacific, p. 33.

  7. Ibid., pp. 40–55.

  8. B. Dmytryshyn, E. Crownhart-Vaughan and T. Vaughan, eds., To Siberia and Russian America: Three Centuries of Russian Eastward Expansion, vol. 2: Russian Penetration of the North Pacific Ocean 1700–1797: a Documentary Record (Portland, Ore., 1988), doc. 12, pp. 59–63, standardizing spelling in the quotation.

  9. G. Barratt, Russia in Pacific Waters, 1715–1825: a Survey of the Origins of Russia’s Naval Presence in the North and South Pacific (Vancouver, 1981), pp. 7–9.

  10. Instructions of 23 December 1724, signed on 26 January 1725, in Golder, Russian Expansion on the Pacific, p. 134; Dmytryshyn et al., eds., Russian Penetration of the North Pacific Ocean, doc. 15, pp. 66–7; also Barratt, Russia in Pacific Waters, pp. 13–14.

  11. M. North, The Baltic: a History (Cambridge, Mass., 2015), pp. 146, 180.

  12. Barratt, Russia in Pacific Waters, pp. 18–19.

  13. Dmytryshyn et al., eds., Russian Penetration of the North Pacific Ocean, p. xxxvii, and doc. 22, pp. 96–100.

  14. Ibid., doc. 22, p. 99.

  15. Golder, Russian Expansion on the Pacific, pp. 220–26.

  16. Makarova, Russians on the Pacific, p. 69: Egor Peloponisov.

  17. Makarova, Russians on the Pacific, pp. 45–6.

  18. Ibid., pp. 66, 96–7.

  19. Ibid., pp. 67–9.

  20. Ibid., pp. 71–2.

  21. Dmytryshyn et al., eds., Russian Penetration of the North Pacific Ocean, doc. 50, p. 321.

  22. Ibid., doc. 86, pp. 510–15.

  23. Shelikov cited by Barratt, Russia in Pacific Waters, pp. 100–101; Makarova, Russians on the Pacific, p. 4.

  24. J. Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: the Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785–1841 (Seattle and Montreal, 1992), p. 16; Barratt, Russia in Pacific Waters, p. 110.

  25. Barratt, Russia in Pacific Waters, pp. 102, 110.

  26. Cited ibid., p. 109.

  27. Barratt, Russia in Pacific Waters, pp. 114–15.

  28. Ibid., pp. 119–20.

  29. Ibid., pp. 123–9; Gibson, Otter Skins, pp. 14–16.

  30. Barratt, Russia in Pacific Waters, pp. 131–8.

  31. J. Gascoigne, Encountering the Pacific in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 133, 408.

  32. T. Lummis, Pacific Paradises: the Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii (Stroud, 2005).

  33. Gascoigne, Encountering the Pacific, p. 195; N. Thomas, Islanders: the Pacific in the Age of Empire (New Haven, 2010).

  34. Cited in Lummis, Pacific Paradises, p. 5; M. K. Matsuda, Pacific Worlds: a History of Seas, Peoples, and Cultures (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 133–4; A. Couper, Sailors and Traders: a Maritime History of the Pacific Peoples (Honolulu, 2009), pp. 64–5; Gascoigne, Encountering the Pacific, pp. 134–7.

  35. Gascoigne, Encountering the Pacific, pp. 134–7.

  36. Lummis, Pacific Paradises, pp. 7–10.

  37. A. Salmond, Aphrodite’s Island: the European Discovery of Tahiti (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2009), pp. 20–21.

  38. Lummis, Pacific Paradises, pp. 13–14; Matsuda, Pacific Worlds, pp. 134–6; Gascoigne, Encountering the Pacific, pp. 146–8, 203–4; D. Igler, The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush (Oxford and New York, 2013), pp. 49–51.

  39. Gascoigne, Encountering the Pacific, p. 233.

  40. Ibid., pp. 141, 265.

  41. Ibid., pp. 110, 137.

  42. D. Sobel, Longitude: the True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (London, 1995), pp. 138–51.

  43. Matsuda, Pacific Worlds, pp. 136–7; Gascoigne, Encountering the Pacific, pp. 138–9; Salmond, Aphrodite’s Island, pp. 36–8, 174–7, 203–35; Thomas, Islanders, pp. 17–19 (Tupaia’s map: fig. 4, p. 18); Couper, Sailors and Traders, pp. 1–2, 67–8.

  44. Couper, Sailors and Traders, pp. 1–2.

  45. Ibid., pp. 36–7.

  46. Lummis, Pacific Paradises, pp. 77–8.

  47. Ibid., pp. 64–5.

  48. Cited in Lummis, Pacific Paradises, p. 70; feather cloaks: ibid., p. 78.

  49. Ibid., pp. 71–6.

  50. Couper, Sailors and Traders, pp. 83–4.

  51. Ibid., pp. 83–5, 88.

  52. S. Reynolds, The Voyage of the New Hazard to the Northwest Coast, Hawaii and China, 1810–1813, ed. F. Howay (2nd edn, Fairfield, Wash., 1970); Couper, Sailors and Traders, pp. 86–8.

  53. Lummis, Pacific Paradises, pp. 80–86, 95–7.

  54. Ibid., pp. 87–91.

  55. Cited by Couper, Sailors and Traders, p. 88.

  56. Matsuda, Pacific Worlds, p. 189.

  57. Couper, Sailors and Traders, p. 83.

  58. Lummis, Pacific Paradises, pp. 94–101.

  46. From the Lion’s Gate to the Fragrant Harbour

  1. M. R. Frost and Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, Singapore: a Biography (Singapore and Hong Kong, 2009), pp. 34–5; J. C. Perry, Singapore: Unlikely Power (New York, 2017), pp. 29, 34.

  2. Perry, Singapore, p. 5.

  3. K. C. Guan, D. Heng and T. T. Yong, Singapore: a 700-Year History (Singapore, 2009), pp. 53–82; Frost and Balasingamchow, Singapore, pp. 34–7; Perry, Singapore, p. 27.

  4. Cf., however, the darker view of N. Wright, William Farquhar and Singapore: Stepping Out from Raffles’ Shadow (Penang, 2017).

  5. Cited by V. Glendinning, Raffles and the Golden Opportunity (London, 2012), p. 111.

  6. Glendinning, Raffles, pp. 176–9; Perry, Singapore, p. 34; Sir Stamford Raffles, The History of Java (2 vols., 2nd edn, London, 1830); cf. Wright, William Farquhar, pp. 7–13.

  7. Cited by Guan et al., Singapore, p. 85, and in Frost and Balasingamchow, Singapore, p. 47.

  8. Frost and Balasingamchow, Singapore, pp. 54–5.

  9. Perry, Singapore, p. 39; also K. C. Guan, ‘Singapura as a Central Place in Malay History and Identity’, and C. Skott, ‘Imagined Centrality: Sir Stamford Raffles and the Birth of Modern Singapore’, both in K. Hack, J.-L. Margolin and K. Delaye, eds., Singapore from Temasek to the 21st Century: Reinventing the Global City (Singapore, 2010), pp. 133–54, 155–84.

  10. Frost and Balasingamchow, Singapore, pp. 41–6, 73–5; Perry, Singapore, pp. 37, 41.

  11. Perry, Singapore, p. 40.

  12. Frost and Balasingamchow, Singapore, pp. 63, 65–9.

  13. Guan et al., Singapore, p. 111; Wright, William Farquhar, p. 119.

  14. Guan et al., Singapore, p. 113; C. Paix, ‘Singapore as a Central Place between the West, Asia and China: From the 19th to the 21st Centuries’, in Hack et al., Singapore from Temasek to the 21st Century, p. 212.

  15. Peranakans are also known as ‘Straits Chinese’ – see the exhibits in the Peranakan Museum, Singapore; Frost and Balasingamchow, Singapore, pp. 93–8.

  16. Perry, Singapore, pp. 13–14, 35

  17. Guan et al., Singapore, pp. 108–9; Wright, William Farquhar, p. 108.

  18. Guan et al., Singapore, pp. 116–20.

  19. F. Welsh, A History of Hong Kong (2nd edn, London, 1997), pp. 52–5; R. Nield, The China Coast: Trade and the First Treaty Ports (Hong Kong, 2010), pp. 127–8; T. Hunt, Ten Cities That Made an Empire (London, 2014), pp. 233–4.

  20. Hunt, Ten The Cities, pp. 232, 234

  21. Welsh, History of Hong Kong, pp. 43, 79; R. Nield, China Coast, p. 129.

  22. Lin Zexu’s letter to Queen Victoria cited by Hunt, Ten Cities, p. 235; J. Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (London, 2011).

  23. Quoted by Hunt, Ten Cities, p. 238.

  24. Welsh, History of Hong Kong, pp. 106–12 (Palmerston on p. 108); Hunt, Ten Cities, p. 240.

  25. Nield, China Coast, pp. 175–8, 181; Hunt, Ten Cities, pp. 239, 242, 245, 255–6.

  26. Nield, China Coast, pp. 179–80, 184.

  47. Muscateers and Mogador
ians

  1. M. Pearson, Port Cities and Intruders: the Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal in the Early Modern Era (Baltimore, 1998), p. 159; N. Bennett, A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar (London, 1978), pp. 11–12.

  2. Pearson, Port Cities and Intruders, p. 162.

  3. Cited by P. Risso, Oman and Muscat: an Early Modern History (London, 1986), p. 192; M. R. Bhacker, Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar: Roots of British Domination (London, 1992), pp. 12, 67–74.

  4. Risso, Oman and Muscat, pp. 78–85; Bennett, History of the Arab State, pp. 14–15.

  5. Risso, Oman and Muscat, pp. 101, 106, 170–72; Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 26.

  6. T. Hunt, Ten Cities That Made an Empire (London, 2014), p. 202.

  7. Risso, Oman and Muscat, pp. 198–9.

  8. Cited by Bennett, History of the Arab State, p. 14.

  9. Bennett, History of the Arab State, pp. 19–21.

  10. Cited from a nineteenth-century French source by W. Phillips, Oman: a Short History (London, 1967), p. 127.

  11. A. al-Maamiry, Omani Sultans in Zanzibar (1832–1964) (New Delhi, 1988), pp. 3–4.

  12. J. Jones and N. Ridout, A History of Modern Oman (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 53–4; Bennett, History of the Arab State, pp. 57–8; Bhacker, Trade and Empire, pp. 71, 92–3; UNESCO, World’s Heritage (4th edn, Paris and Glasgow, 2015), p. 612.

  13. A. Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy, 1770–1873 (London, Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, 1987), pp. 49, 62–5; al-Maamiry, Omani Sultans in Zanzibar, p. 6.

  14. Jones and Ridout, History of Modern Oman, pp. 61–2; Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory, pp. 77, 91–9; al-Maamiry, Omani Sultans in Zanzibar, p. 5; Bennett, History of the Arab State, p. 43; Bhacker, Trade and Empire, pp. 77–8 (graph and table showing revenues from Muscat and Zanzibar), also pp. 108–10, 121.

  15. D. Cesarani and G. Romain, eds., Jews and Port Cities 1590–1990: Commerce, Community and Cosmopolitanism (London, 2006).

  16. D. Schroeter, Merchants of Essaouira: Urban Society and Imperialism in Southwestern Morocco, 1844–1886 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 1, 219–21.