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Past, present of Chinese maritime civilization

Author  :  CHEN FENGLING     Source  :    Chinese Social Sciences Today     2017-10-31

Product of Civilization through the Ocean

Author: Su Wenjing

Publisher: Social Sciences Academic Press (CHINA)

At the beginning of 2014, the Chinese Communist Party and state leaders repeatedly proposed the “B&R” initiative. This is a big development in Chinese history: land-oriented Chinese civilization is now orienting itself toward a more maritime perspective.

Product of Civilization through the Ocean uses the development of human civilization as a lens to examine the relationship between humans and the ocean. The majority of the knowledge systems we use today come from the interaction between man and the land. However, water covers about 70 percent of the earth’s surface. The land we inhabit consists of islands divided and surrounded by the ocean. Thus, marine civilization has emerged as a human adventure on the broader seas and oceans. 

Before the first armored ship appeared in England in 1772, the protagonists of human sailing adventures were wooden sailboats. In order to adapt to marine activities, people developed new organizational structures. In the 15th and 16th centuries, a number of European countries jointly set up the stockholding East India Company, to profit from maritime trade. Also, in response to the vagaries of the ocean, the insurance industry emerged. One key aspect of human marine activity was the emergence of a new group of people—the wealthy class who obtained profit via trade through ocean adventures, who were completely different from landlords and nobility. Su argues that the adventurous spirit of the Europeans is clearly related to the cultural traditions developed since ancient Greece. From Homer’s Epic to Robinson Crusoe, Europeans developed cultural genes that drove them toward the open seas.

However, China has a maritime culture that is quite different from that of European countries. The spirit of the European maritime culture lies in power and ambition, resembling the image of the Western god of the ocean Poseidon. In contrast, the Chinese goddess of the sea, Mazu, is a female image expressing love and harmony. 

In the book, Su analyzes the “The Selden Map” discovered in recent years. It, for the first time, depicted in detail the areas along the East and South China Sea and regions in East and Southeast Asia using the Western method of drawing a map. The map is based on the compass map style used by maritime merchants in Fujian Province in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. This kind of map illustrated with Chinese characters but pronounced in the pronounciation of Fujian dialect was typically used by the Chinese maritime merchants in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

In addition, the book presents a methodology and vision that is badly needed by modern Chinese academia. Su wrote the book on the ideological basis that “the world contains China and China is involved in the world.” Therefore, the “An Lushan Rebellion” in the Tang Dynasty and the ban on maritime trade or intercourse with foreign countries in the Ming Dynasty must be regarded as key parts of world history, according to this way of thinking. Similarly, the reason for the discovery of the new continent and the great efforts at navigation were partly due to products in the East, such as tea, silk and porcelain.

Editor: Yu Hui

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