The early history of the maritime trade of China had been largely<br />studied (at the time of this 1954 study) from the Western point of<br />view, that is, as the eastern terminal point of a trade carried and<br />dominated by Indians, Persians and Arabs. This had also been true of<br />the early history of Southeast Asia. Historians, both of China and of<br />Southeast Asia, had seen the trade mainly as the coming of Western<br />merchants in search of gold, silks and various kinds of spices. No<br />study (then) had yet been made of the ancient trade between China and<br />Southeast Asia which was known to the Chinese as the Nanhai trade.<br />This book, The Nanhai Trade: Early Chinese Trade in the South China<br />Sea, introduces this subject. It examines various features of this<br />trade, especially the economic background and the Chinese imperial<br />and regional attitudes towards it. The period covered is the eleven<br />centuries before the founding of the Sung dynasty in 960 -- roughly<br />the period from the Han dynasty to the T'ang. This one of Professor<br />Wang Gungwu's early studies, now re-issued under the Eastern<br />Universities Press imprint.