‘Greedy, ignorant people’ : the impact of recurring coastal violence on state-society relationships along the south coast of the Ming Empire, 1440-1570

Maritime merchants escalated their raiding activities on the Ming coasts during the middle of the sixteenth century in response to strict enforcement of private overseas trade prohibitions. Studies of violence along the coasts of the Ming Empire often focus on this exceptional escalation of maritime raiding in the middle of the sixteenth century, rather than longue durée patterns of banditry along the coast. Their focus frames coastal violence in the context of growing international trade and renewed enforcement of prohibitions on private overseas trade during the Jiajing Reign (1521-1567), while marginalising endemic forms of banditry that preceded this period and continued long after. This dissertation, instead, argues that coastal violence, including maritime raids as well as other land-based forms of banditry, formed a recurrent threat to the safety of coastal communities and the officials who administered the region, and therefore profoundly shaped the relationship between them. The study of endemic coastal violence thus has important implications for our understanding of the evolving relationship between the Ming state and local society. This dissertation explores the impact of coastal violence on relationships between officials and local communities in the mountainous coastal region of Zhangzhou and Chaozhou through a series of case studies from the early fifteenth century to the late sixteenth century. It places the escalation of coastal violence in the middle of the sixteenth century within a broader historical context that foregrounds longue durée patterns of violence on the south coast. The case studies are primarily drawn from local gazetteers, as well as public inscriptions and private letters. A close reading of these sources deconstructs the official narrative in which greedy and ignorant coastal residents are held responsible for coastal violence and helps to foreground those labelled ‘bandits’. This approach reveals a pattern of interaction between officials and marginalised groups in the mountains and at sea that pulled the Ming state further into these unfamiliar environments. In addition, network analysis of the relationships between officials, local elites, and local communities shows how officials invested in the cultivation of local literate elites who supported state expansion in the imperial margin, while officials simultaneously alienated those marginalised groups they accused of banditry. This dissertation therefore examines recurrent coastal violence as a driving force for Ming state expansion, and a crucial element in the formation of state-society relationships