Abstract
The South China Sea has long served as a conduit for trade, migration, and cultural exchange. However, during the seventeenth century, these connections acquired strategic significance amid the tumultuous transition from the ethnic Han 漢 Ming 明 dynasty (1368–1644) to the Manchu Qing 滿清 (1644–1911) in China, along with a worldwide economic crisis. Partly as a result, a trading network in place since the sixteenth century and centred upon the exchange of Chinese silk for silver from the East China Sea ports of Nagasaki 長崎 and Manila went into decline.