| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Gang Deng. Maritime Sector, Institutions, and Sea Power of Premodern China. (Contributions in Economics and Economic History, number 212.) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. 1999. Pp. xix, 289. $69.50.

History argues that China is a land-oriented empire, negligent of its long maritime frontier and without a significant maritime tradition. As is almost always the case, there is some validity to the stereotype, for China's greatest military threats before the nineteenth century always came from the grasslands of inner Asia. Yet the stereotype is ultimately inadequate, a point that has been clearly established in a growing body of recent research. In his second book on China's maritime history (see also Chinese Maritime Activities and Socioeconomic Development c. 2100 B.C.–1900 A.D. [1997]), Gang Deng affirms his role among those who would give that history its due. 1

Deng's thesis is that China's long-standing economic superiority among its maritime trading partners was driven by an equally long superiority in maritime technology. When the latter was challenged by the rising power of European fleets in the nineteenth century, the former was doomed, leading to China's long century of degradation and humiliation at the hands of the Europeans and, later, the Japanese. . . .

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