Agriculture and Rural Connections in the Pacific

Lei Guang, James Gerber, James Gerber

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351960137
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Weltgeschichte

Agriculture and Rural Connections in the Pacific brings together key studies from across several disciplines to examine the history of trans-Pacific rural and agricultural connections and to show an agriculturally-oriented Pacific World in the making since the 1500s. Historical globalization is commonly understood as a process that is propelled by industry or commerce, yet the seeds of global integration - literally as well as metaphorically - were sown much earlier, when crops and plants dispersed, agricultural systems proliferated, and rural people migrated across oceans. One goal of this volume is to demonstrate that the historical processes of globalization contained an agrarian dimension in which sub-national and national spaces were shaped in part through the influence of forces that originated in distant lands. Social and economic trends emanating from outside local territories had large impacts on demographic change, choices of agrarian systems, and the cropping patterns in many domestic settings. A second goal is to encourage readers to abandon the traditional Euro-centric view of events that shaped the Pacific region. The modern history of the Pacific World was undoubtedly shaped by Western imperialism, colonialism, and European trade and migration, but the present volume seeks to balance the interpretation of those forces with an emphasis on the increasing intensity of trans-Pacific interactions through rural labor migration and agricultural production.

1
The Introduction of American Food Plants into China

Ping-ti Ho

A FRESH treatment of the introduction of American food plants into China seems justified. For, in the first place, although the question has been tackled by two generations of Western sinologues and anthropologists, certain important historical evidence has escaped their notice, and consequently the dates for the introduction of such plants must be revised upward. In the second place, some of their far-reaching conclusions which are not results of exhaustive examination of Chinese local histories, the vast branch of Chinese historical literature which yields the most systematic information on our subject, must be re-examined. Furthermore, there has been in recent years a revival of an old controversy as to whether there were indeed no American food plants introduced into the Old World in pre-Columbian times. While interested scientists are well-versed in relevant European literature, they are generally illinformed about Chinese sources, which yield the most systematic botanical and agricultural records in Asia. Since the implications of this question are so important to both the extreme diffusionists and the Americanists, the student of Chinese history feels impelled objectively to present his evidence. It is hoped that such evidence will be of some help to scientists in their attempts to reexamine an old question. For convenience, our discussion of the introduction of American food plants into China will be in the order: the peanut, the sweet potato, and maize.²

Although two outstanding experts on the migration of American plants have fixed the date for the introduction of the peanut into China around 1608 (Laufer 1906, I; Goodrich 1936–37, 1938), the first reference to the peanut is found in a treatise on the methods of cultivating taro by a very versatile, early sixteenth-century scholar and authority on rice species, Huang Hsing-tsêng (1490–1540), a native of Su-chou:³

There is another [kind of tuber] whose skin is yellow and whose flesh is white. It is delicious and highly edible. Its stem and leaves are like those of the broad bean but slimmer. It is called hsiang-yü (fragrant taro). There is yet another kind whose flowers are on the vinelike stem. After the flowers fall, [the pods] begin to develop [underground]. It is called lo-hua-sheng. Both are produced in Chia-ting county (near Shanghai).

Despite the brevity of this botanical description, it is unmistakably of the peanut, for the Chinese name lo-hua-sheng, which literally means the seeds “born from flowers fallen to the ground,” is an exact description of the peculiar way of growth of the plant. Furthermore, it has not been found in any of the hundreds of Chinese local histories and standard botanical treatises consulted that the name lo-hua-sheng has ever been used in reference to other plants. The various local Chinese names of the peanut are always identified by its formal botanical name, lo-hua-sheng.

The 1538 edition of the history of Ch’ang-shu county, Su-chou (Ch’ang-shu hsien-chih, 1538 ed., ch. 4, p. 31a), also lists the peanut as a local product. Wang Shih-mao, member of a famous literary family of T’ai-ts’ang, near Chia-ting and Shanghai, and a chin-shih (doctor) of 1559, said in his Hsüeh-p’u tsa-shu (1587; CP reprint, p. 12b), or notes on horticulture:

Hsiang-yü and lo-hua-sheng are both produced in Chia-ting. Lo-hua-sheng is especially delicious. Since they are easy to grow, they should be grown extensively.

Thus three independent sources all bore witness to the growing of peanuts in the sandy loam south of the Yangtze in the early and second halves of the sixteenth century. None of them, however, mentioned the place where the peanut originated.

The reference to the place of origin is furnished by some Chekiang local histories. The 1608 edition of Hsien-chü county, near the coast of central Chekiang, testified that the peanut “originated from Fukien and has been acquired for cultivation lately.”⁴ Ch’ü-chou fu-chih (1711 ed., 1882 reprint, ch. 23, p. 14a), or the history of Ch’ü-chou prefecture in inland southwestern Chekiang, stated: “Lo-hua-sheng came from Fukien and is grown on sandy loam. After the flowers fall on the sand, the plant bears seeds like silkworm cocoons.” A mid-seventeenth-century Fukien scholar also said that the peanut was first grown in Fukien (cited in Goodrich 1936–37). The first testimonial is of sufficiently early date to carry weight. Although the latter ones, on account of their relatively late dates, do not conclusively prove that the peanut was first introduced into Fukien, yet the southern Fukien ports had had intimate trade relations with the Portuguese and with the South Sea islands. Thousands of natives had gone out to those islands since the famous Chinese naval expeditions of the early fifteenth century. Shanghai during the sixteenth century was not an international port of call except for a certain volume of trade with Japan, which was overshadowed by that of Ningpo. Shanghai was, however, regularly frequented by cotton dealers of the southern Fukien area.⁵ It seems, therefore, that the peanut was probably brought to Shanghai from southern Fukien through this coastal cotton trade. There is yet another possibility that the peanut was brought into the lower Yangtze, or at least to the Hangchow Bay, area by the Portuguese, who after 1522 were expelled from Canton and engaged in illegal commercial activities in the southern Fukien ports, Chang-chou and Ch’üan-chou, and Ningpo, which is within a day’s sailing from Shanghai (Chang T’ien-tsê 1934, ch. 4). In any case, it seems certain that the peanut was introduced into China either by the Portuguese or by the Chinese merchants of the South Sea island who had come into contact with the Portuguese before their arrival at Canton in 1516. That the peanut was introduced into China early in the sixteenth century by way of the sea is an important conclusion, helpful to our investigation of the introduction of the other two American plants into China.

The date for the introduction of the sweet potato has been cautiously fixed at 1594 (Goodrich 1938). So far there has been unanimity of opinion that it was brought into the Fukien area via the sea. Yet a fresh examination of Fukien sources indicates an earlier date, and a perusal of early Yunnan sources suggests that there might have been an overland route of introduction as well. The year 1594 witnessed a widespread crop failure in Fukien. It was not until then that the sweet potato was brought to the attention of the governor, Chin Hsüeh-tsêng, who issued pamphlets on the methods of cultivation and exhorted its extensive cultivation in order to stave off famine, hence the name chin-shu (golden tuber). From this fact alone it is evident that the sweet potato must have been brought into Fukien and experimented with on a small scale before it was presented to the governor in that famine year.

There are at least two different claims for the first introduction of the sweet potato into Fukien. The history of Ch’ang-lo county, near the provincial capital Foochow, claims that the sweet potato was first introduced by a native, Ch’ên Chên-lung, who, being an overseas merchant, brought it from Luzon in the Philippines.⁶ It was his son, Ch’ên Ching-lun, who presented it to the governor, together with his explanation of the “six benefits and eight advantages” of the plant. Thenceforth the methods of cultivation were made widely known, and the value of the sweet potato as an auxiliary food was established (Ch’ang-lo hsien-chih, 1917 ed., ch. 6, p. 1b; also the scholarly discussion of Shih Hung-pao, 1878, ch. 10, pp. 14b-15a). The year in which the sweet potato was presented to the governor is obviously 1594. Although the exact date in which Ch’ên Chên-lung brought back the sweet potato is nowhere mentioned, the fact that he did not live to 1594 and the plant was presented to the governor by his son suggests that it might have been brought to the Ch’ang-lo district a generation or so before 1594.

People of Chang-chou, the important southern port, claim that the sweet potato was first introduced into their locality and was kept as a secret for a considerable time (Chang-chou fu-chih, 1777 ed., ch. 6, p. 1b). Although a specific date is lacking, this version nevertheless has its weight. For Chou Liang-kung, provincial judge and financial commissioner of Fukien, 1647–1654, testified that the sweet potato, despite the claim of people of Ch’ang-lo, was first grown in the Chang-chou area and gradually spread northward to Ch’üan-chou, P’u-t’ien, and Ch’ang-lo and Fu-ch’ing counties of the Foochow prefecture (Chou 1667, ch. 3, pp. 6 a-8 b). While it is always difficult for people more than a generation afterwards to recall the exact date of the introduction of a new plant, they are not likely to err in the sequence and stages of the geographic propagation of a new plant. People of Chang-chou, who had gone overseas for centuries, could not have failed to notice so valuable a plant as the sweet potato. The very fact that in Chang-chou the sweet potato was never called the “golden tuber,” as it invariably was in the Foochow area, further suggests that the plant had been grown there decades before the official exhortation of 1594.

That the sweet potato was introduced into China decades before 1594 is definitely proved by Yunnan sources. As early as 1563 the western prefecture Ta-li, near Burma, already recorded the sweet potato (Ta-li fu-chih, 1563 ed., ch. 2, p. 24b). Eleven years later the history of Yunnan province also put on record that the sweet potato was a product of one prefecture and two department counties (Yunnan t’ung-chih, 1574 ed., 1934 reprint, ch. 3, p. 46a; ch. 4, p. 24a; ch. 4, p. 32b). In both works the sweet potato was under the name hung-shu (red tuber), or hung-yü (red taro), in contrast to the native Chinese yam, which was clearly identified as shan-yao (Dioscorea). The appearance of the sweet potato in these early Yunnan works suggests that in addition to maritime introduction there might have been an overland introduction from India and Burma. In any case, it is risky to fix any single date or any single route for its introduction. All we may say from both Fukien and Yunnan sources is that the sweet potato must have been introduced into China decades before the hitherto assigned date of 1594.

Unlike the introduction of the peanut and the sweet potato, the early history of maize in China has been of considerable interest to the extreme diffu...