Maritime exclusion policy in Ming China and Chosŏn Korea, 1368-1450: dynastic authority, national security, and trade

Keywords: Ming China
Maritime history
Border policy
Chosŏn Korea
Maritime exclusion

The Ming dynasty was a special period in China’s maritime history. From the beginning, the court implemented strict and consistent restrictions on private navigation, prohibiting its residents from carrying out maritime trade and communicating with overseas people. Almost at the same time, Chosŏn, another important East Asian maritime country, carried out a similar policy. This thesis aims to explain the context of, and the reasons behind, the implementation of the maritime exclusion policy in both Ming China and Chosŏn Korea. It attempts to address a simple but crucial question: why did these two East Asian countries suddenly and simultaneously strengthen their maritime border controls at the turn of the fifteenth century? To answer this question, the thesis surveys primary textual evidence from court discussions on maritime exclusion. By focussing on court debates, this thesis intends to explain maritime exclusion policies from the perspective of central, elite, decision makers and reveal what the Ming and Chosŏn courts understood themselves to have been doing in imposing maritime bans.
Scholarship on maritime border control is voluminous. Scholars have made efforts to decipher the rationales for the policy, primarily interpreting it as anti-piracy strategies, part of a Sino-centric or Korea-centric diplomatic framework, which was later known as the ‘tributary system’, or a Confucian, value-oriented policy that stressed the stability of a natural economy and suppressed commercial activities. Most historians assume that maritime exclusion was an anti-trade policy that could primarily be explained by non-economic factors, such as security, diplomacy, and ideology. The thesis does not deny that non-economic factors were important, but it argues that economic considerations played a key role in the policy-making process. As will be shown, the Ming and Chosŏn courts strengthened coastal border control partly because they intended to maximize their revenue from maritime trade.
Although the thesis foregrounds economic considerations, it also considers other factors. Ming and Chosŏn had security concerns, but their maritime policies were more a consequence of the courts’ worries about geopolitical uncertainty in the overseas world than about piracy. The thesis also demonstrates the role of the maritime exclusion policy in the establishment of dynastic authority, showing how the courts, by implementing control policies, extended jurisdiction over coastal regions, imposed civilian control over their own militaries, and constructed ‘tributary systems’ that were designed to strengthen monarchic authority over foreign and domestic audiences. In sum, the thesis shows that the decisions to implement maritime exclusion were motived by multiple practical considerations like trade revenue, national security, and dynastic authority.
Moreover, the thesis also shows how the Ming and Chosŏn differed regarding policies and practices. The Ming and Chosŏn courts implemented similar policies simultaneously, because they faced similar security challenges from nearby maritime countries. They were both newly-established regimes founded roughly at the same time, and they had similar interests in improving their fiscal balance as newly centralized authorities. Although their policies look identical, the two administrations attached importance to different aspects of the policy. The Ming court repeatedly highlighted the ban on Chinese border-exit activities, while the Chosŏn court concentrated on its control over border-entry activities or foreign access to Korea. This was partly explained by the fact that the Ming court had a strong military and was able to impose exclusive control over the high seas and protect its marine business. The Koreans, on the contrary, were at a disadvantage when they met the Japanese fleets on the seas, and thus, they had to tolerate the presence of Japanese visitors in their territory. Finally, the thesis will also show how policies evolved differently in the two countries after their initial developments and follow changes into the mid-fifteenth century.