A tale of globalisation in ancient Asia
According to a study made in 2003 by a Chinese historian, Hu Meng Shen, the Chinese maritime silk route which began during the Han dynasty (206 BC to AD 220) had expanded into a full-scale international trade between China and India, Persia and Arabia. These Indian Ocean voyages were mainly carried out by the Chinese, Arabs and Persians, with none of them monopolizing the sea routes. In a single voyage, however, the multinational fleets consisted of as many as 50 ships and more than 200,000 voyagers. From the 7th to the 9th century, all the merchant ships sailing across the Indian Ocean were manned with at least some Persian speaking sailors because Persian was then the lingua franca. The South Sea voyages were set out from Quanzhou to Guangzhou and then from India to Mecca and even as far as Madagascar of East Africa. Such voyages are commonly referred to as “the voyages of Sinbad, the sailor of Arabian nights.” Recently, both the studies by Liu Wen Bo and Li Yu Kun indicate that by the Tang Dynasty period, Quanzhou had already become one of the four major maritime seaports of China during the mid 9th century. In fact, since the reigns of Tian Bao and Da Li, Quanzhou already emerged as a busy overseas-trading port with more and more foreign traders flocking together. The rapid growth of Quanzhou’s foreign trade had by 834 AD, even prompted the Tang emperor to decree that foreigners in Fujian should enjoy the freedom of movement and trade and should not be heavily taxed. The free trade policy paved the way for a Quanzhou’s era to dawn in China’s history. It was against this backdrop of Quanzhou’s rise that a famous contemporary Arab Geographer, Ibn Khurdadhbah ranked Quanzhou just as equally important a Chinese overseas trade seaport as Jiaozhou, Guangzhou and Yangzhou.
At the pinnacle of the Tang, the Arab fleets set out from the Gulf of Persia sailing across the Indian Ocean to reach Quanzhou and then went northward entering the Yangtse River and reached Yangzhou. During this period, Tang’s China had reached the apex of its internationalization. As a result, a total of more than 360,000 immigrant West Asian households, mostly Arab/Persian traders, was estimated to have been sojourning within China. The 90 feet Arab dhow built of Indian and African wood, was manned by Arabs and Indians. Over 5000 pieces of China carried by the Bathu Hitam had been fired in the Changsha Kiln. They had been manufactured specifically for export as the design on many of the pieces had never been seen before in China. Apparently, the dhow seemed to have been on one of China’s three traditionally major South Sea trade routes —- from South China to Borneo to Timor and North Australia.
Indeed, the amazing reach of ancient China’s globalization to Australia is evidenced by many pieces of broken Chinese ceramics dating from the Han dynasty (220 BC to 220 AD) to the early Ming (1368 to 1433) found on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Capentaria. But the clear evidence of Arab’s presence in North Australia during the Tang comes from Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizimi’s 820 AD sea map of Java which showed the distinctive tip of the Cape York Peninsula and the U-shaped Carpentaria Gulf. Further evidence of Arab, Indian and Chinese traders during the Tang dynasty frequenting Australia long before any European arrivals is the AD 934 sea chart of Abu Al-Farisi Istakhari that clearly showed an outline of the northern coast of Australia. Clearly, any suggestion that before European arrivals, Australia’s history was a complete blank without any robust presence of the maritime traders from Asia is untrue.
