This study asks how human trafficking in Ming China (1368–1644) became enveloped in the emerging global economy of the sixteenth century. Utilizing theoretical insights from the model of “slaving zones,” the essay examines recorded incidents of human trafficking along China’s littoral from 1370 to 1565 and contends that its presence and persistence were intertwined with the Ming court’s economic policies and problems. Here the history of human trafficking in early-to-mid-Ming China is viewed from the perspective of a series of challenges to the country’s economic well-being but also to its power to govern according to its own laws and norms. These challenges include the Ming regime’s efforts: to eradicate piracy and smuggling through their integration into the lawful framework of tribute trade; to support provincial requests for extra revenue to promote military security; to acquire Japanese silver but deny Japan mercantile access to China; to profit from Portugal’s Southeast Asian and Japanese commercial networks. This study argues that the increasing prevalence of human trafficking along China’s coastline was the result of competing forces anxious for power and riches that fused into the thrust of sixteenth-century China’s expanding economy, as well as the adaptability of those in authority to ignore the consequences of allowing safe havens for persons bartering and selling human beings. These factors turned the status of Ming China’s littoral from a “no slaving zone” into an “imperfect no slaving zone.”

This article focuses on recent revisionist scholarship demonstrating that China's maritime history in the period 1500 to 1630 is no longer a case of ‘missed opportunity’, a viewpoint fostered by earlier writing dominated by state-centric and land-focused models. To challenge this perspective, this study first reviews analyses demonstrating the far-reaching commercial networks between Ming China and localities in Southeast and Northeast Asia, and then considers the impact of the metaphor of Fernand Braudel's ‘Asian Mediterranean’ and his ideas about ‘world economy’ on the study of East Asian seafaring history. Secondly, this investigation reveals the dimensions of Chinese trade networks which the mid-Ming government officially sanctioned, as well as the extent to which literati from the southern provinces challenged the state's involvement in overseas commerce of trade and exchange. Finally, the article assesses how modern historians have studied late Ming maritime defense policies as security along the littoral lapsed.

This study pursues three goals: to unravel the socio-economic conditions which pushed women into prostitution and courtesanship, to analyse their position in Chinese society, and to relate what changes occurred at the end of the Ming dynasty that affected their status. According to contemporary judicial regulations, both prostitutes and courtesans were classified as “entertainers”, and therefore had the status of jianmin [mean people], which made them “outcasts” and pariahs. But there were great differences, beyond the bestowal of sexual favours, in the kind of work these women performed. That courtesans operated at the elite level of society, and that they were often indistinguishable from women born into the upper or gentry class, is indicative of this era's blurry social strata, which has prompted scholars and writers to elevate the place of the educated courtesan in Ming society.