The Ming maritime policy in transition 1368-1567 is an unprecedented structural approach to
one of the most puzzling phenomena in Chinese early modern history: the maritime trade
prohibition from 1368 to 1567. This policy deliberately interdicted its own people from sailing
abroad and prevented foreigners from entering China unless they were part of an official
tribute mission. Other than treating this phenomenon as an isolated trade policy or defense
strategy the author analyzes the policy against the general Chinese historical background from
the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. He approaches the policy as a superstructure established
on the foundation of a compatible ideology the social context economic institutions and the
political power landscape. The 200 years long process of the policy in transition is hence
investigated as a 200 years course that witnessed the general transformation of the Ming
ideological social economic and political structures. It is the historical undercurrent
rather than spindrift that appeals to this book's historiography it is a comprehensive study
of the two particular centuries of the Ming society of which the developments and
characteristics have amazed not only historians.
