Maritime Interactions

Offshore Asia: Maritime INteractions in Eastern Asia Before Steamships / Edited by Fujita Kayoko, Momoki Shiro, Anthony Reid. ISEAS. 2013

From Liu Shiuh-feng's "Shipwreck Salvage and Survivors' Repatriation networks of the east asian rim in the Qing Dynasty

• 211 - Research on shipwrecks in East Asia focusing on China, Japan, Ryukyu, and Korea in particular has produced a wealth of papers. but overall their topics tend to focus on the salvage activites or individual events in a country or between two regions. Works dealing with salvage activities and repatriation systems covering the entire China seas and multiple countries are still few in number."
• "shipwreck survivors' repatriation network.
• 213 - east asian waters in 17th century were essentially closed as a result of the maritime ban by china's ming and qing regimes and japanese sakoku (national seclusion) policy. nevertheless the ban did not completely stop people of coastal communities from engaging in activites at sea and maritime accidents in the event of natural disasters never ceased to occur....

handling and repatriation of foreign shipwreck survivors always involved intentional interactions. udner normal circumstances, the safe repatriation of civilians was ensured only if they drifted to a country with which their home country had diplomatic ties or trade relations.

• China: fishermen or coastguards that spotted a foreign vessel floating along china's coastline would report the matter to the local government. the local authorities or districts (or the department of maritime defence) would send officials to investigate th cause of the wreck, inspect it to determin whether there was contraband cargo, and then provide accomodation, clothing and food. from the local department of the district, the incident would be reported to superior govts. in principle foreign civilians were sent to the provincial capital to sta. where the govt general and governmor would present a memorial to the imperioal court and inform the board of revenue and board of rites. (BOARD OF RITES

Ministry of Rites 礼部 (禮部) Foreign relations prior to the establishment of the Zongli Yamen in 1861.