N020: Sociocultural Dimensions of Transregional Intelligence Gathering in East Asia, 1450-1850

Organizer(s)

• 

  Gary Luk

  Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Chair(s)

• KS

  Kenneth Swope

  University of Southern Mississippi, United States

Paper Presenter(s)

• PS

  Peter Shapinsky

  University of Illinois, Springfield, United States
• AI

  Ashleigh Ikemoto

  Georgia College and State University, United States
• JL

  Jing Liu

  Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, China
• 

  Gary Luk

  Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Discussant(s)

• KS

  Kenneth Swope

  University of Southern Mississippi, United States

This panel centers on the collection, production, and circulation of intelligence across borders, empires, and cultures in East Asia from the fifteenth to nineteenth century. It reconsiders the historical and contemporary meanings of East Asia by conceptualizing the region as a site of multilayered intelligence activities and highlighting the roles of its transregional intelligence agents in premodern times. It focuses on the under-appreciated social and cultural dimensions of intelligence, examining how its making was shaped by the perceptions of people with diverse backgrounds and their interactions across administrative and sociocultural boundaries. Peter Shapinsky explores the cartographic representation of a multiethnic pirate lair and navigational hub in the Japanese archipelago produced as a result of the cross-cultural dialogues of Japanese warlords, monks, and mariners with the agents of Ming China and Chosŏn Korea. Ashleigh Ikemoto assesses the benefits of espionage for advancing Spanish imperial designs in late-sixteenth-century China by exploring how the Spanish friars and merchants established connections with diasporic Chinese interpreters and Ming officials. Jing Liu examines the cross-cultural intelligence networks of different regimes across the northern Yellow Sea region during the Ming-Qing transition where border-crossing people facilitated the regional integration of the early modern northeast Asian littoral. Gary Luk explores how a local elite in wartime China used his administative experience, financial knowledge, and social connections to faciliate British rule in Ningbo and shape the competing yet partly overlapping Qing and British intelligence networks in Zhejiang during the Opium War (1839–1842).

Presentations:

• Mapping a Japanese Pirate Lair: Cross-Cultural Cartographic Representations of the Gotō Islands in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
  

  Paper Presenter: Peter Shapinsky – University of Illinois, Springfield
• China Is Locked Up Tighter Than a Convent" Spanish "Spies" in Guangdong and Fujian, 1575-1585
  

  Paper Presenter: Ashleigh Ikemoto – Georgia College and State University
• Sea Routes, Intelligence Gatherers, and the Regional Integration of the Northern Yellow Sea in the Seventeenth Century
  

  Paper Presenter: Jing Liu – Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences
• Interweaving Social Connections and Intelligence Networks: Lu Xinlan in the Qing and British Camps in Eastern Zhejiang during the Opium War
  

  Paper Presenter: Gary Luk – Hong Kong Polytechnic University