COMPLETION REPORTA Legal Smuggling? A Study of the Contraband Investment in Tonkin-Nagasaki Trade
by Vietnamese and Japanese Officials during the Seventeenth Century
Hoang Anh Tuan (+3)
Associate Professor
Faculty of History, USSH, VNU Hanoi
In March 2016, I received a research grant from The Sumitomo Foundation to carry out the research
project entitled “A Legal Smuggling? A Study of the Contraband Investment in Tonkin - Nagasaki Trade
by Vietnamese and Japanese Officials during the Seventeenth Century”, aiming at a study of theVietnamese and Japanese officials’ secret investment and involvement in the Tonkin - Nagasaki tradeas well as it socio-economic impact, if any, during the seventeenth century.
Having carried out the research project between 2016 and 2018, I would like to report the academic
result which I have achieved:-First, of the Vietnamese and Japanese officials’ involvement in the Tonkin - Nagasaki trade:
Having checked through the daily records of the Dutch factory in Hanoi (1637-1700) and the English
factory in Hanoi (1672-1697) and collected significant data relating to the secret business between thetwo ports (Nagasaki and Hanoi), I have found 25 mentions of the contraband trade in 22 years (16mentions for the period 1640-1660). The information, however, was mostly short, consisting of briefnews only. For instance: “we were informed by a reliable merchant trading with us that a high-ranking
official supervising our factory has just given the Chinese captain a large sum of silver to be invested inTonkinese silks” [Jan. 1649].
-Second, of the regional history of the Tonkin - Japan trade:
Reading secondary sources relating to early modern East Asian history and contextualizing the newlyextracted archival data, I will draft a research paper on the contraband trade between Tonkin andJapan during the 1600s.
-Third, of the impact of this contraband trade on the Vietnam - Japan diplomatic relationship:
It is obvious that the local governments in Nagasaki and Hanoi were by no means ignorant of thiscontraband trade. Yet, while the Vietnamese court had no strict regulation to guard off its mandarin’s
investment in foreigners’ transactions outside the country, the Japanese authorities in Nagasaki
seemed to ignore such activities. Thus, this contraband trade went on, and only ceased down together
with the deterioration of the Tonkin – Japan trade from the 1670s onward. This brand of trade,however, does not seem to have made any decisive impact on the long-term bilateral relationshipbetween the two countries, though it did influence, to some certain extent, the commercialconnection between the Tonkin and Japan.
In conclusion, it is interesting to highlight the existence of an unofficial trade between Tonkin andJapan in the seventeenth century in which official and mandarins of both governments involved insecret transaction through the third party. Data and references collected from both archives andsecondary sources will be utilized for a research paper in the coming years.

Publication of the Results of Research Project:
Verbal Presentation (Date, Venue, Name of Conference, Title of Presentation, Presenter, etc.)
Data from my research project is utilized in the following presentation:“Seventeenth-Century Dutch – Vietnamese Trade and Diplomacy in East Asian Perspective”,
Paper presented at the Conference: Political, Economic and Cultural Development of the Early
Tainan Region (10th - 18th Century), Tainan-Taiwan, 20 - 21 October 2017.
“Tonkin Rear for China Front: The Dutch Exploration of the Sino - Vietnamese Border Trade in the1660s”, Presentation at History Department, East China Normal University, 25 November 2016.
“The End of A Commercial Era: From the English Junk Affair to the Vietnamese Maritime Embargo
in 1693”, Paper presented at the Conference: Maritime Worlds around the China Seas:
Emporiums, Connections and Dynamics, Academia Sinica (Taipei), 31 Aug. – 1 Sept., 2016.

Thesis (Name of Journal and its Date, Title and Author of Thesis, etc.)
Data from my research project is utilized in the following theses:1.

“Phụ nữ Đàng Ngoài thế kỷ XVII qua một số nguồn tư liệu phương Tây” [Vietnamese Woman in theSeventeenth Century as Seen from the Western Sources], Tạp chí Nghiên cứu Lịch sử [Journal ofHistorical Studies, Vietnamese edition with English summary] Vol. 2 (2018).

2.

“Cạnh tranh ảnh hưởng giữa Anh và Hà Lan ở Đông Nam Á hải đảo đầu thế kỷ XVII” [The Dutch-EnglishCompetition in the Insular Southeast Asia in the Early Seventeenth Century], Tạp chí Nghiên cứu ĐôngNam Á [Journal of Southeast Asian Studies] Vol. 2 (2018, co-author).

3.

黄英俊：《日本——马尼拉——欧洲：1670 年代英国与越南东京之间贸易的流产》，全球史评 论/, 第十集，北京，中国社会科学出版社 (2016, ISBN 978-7-5161-7961-1), pp. 208-225.

Book (Publisher and Date of the Book, Title and Author of the Book, etc.)
Data from my research project is utilized in the following monograph:
Hoang Anh Tuan, The English East India Company in Tonkin, 1672-1697 (Hanoi Publishing House, 2019, c.
850 pages, forthcoming) [book in Vietnamese, with English summary article]