PhD scholarship "China’s Maritime Commerce and Naval Activities in Northeast Asia"

The scholarship will require a comparative-analytic investigation of both written and archaeological sources as well as a cross-cultural approach analyzing, when existent, also sources from Korea and Japan. Research concentrates on a time-period that has been designated “Yuan-Ming rupture” in modern literature, reflecting the fact that great changes took place in terms of maritime commerce and policy. The archaeological evidence focuses on recently discovered shipwrecks at Penglai in Dengzhou Prefecture, Shandong, China, including comparisons with other archaeological evidence such as the Shinnan shipwreck in Korea.

The successful candidate is expected to carry out a thorough investigation of China’s maritime policy, of local maritime activities, and commercial and technological exchange during that time considering also the involvement and interaction of official, in particular military (naval), government authorities and personnel in and with private commerce. The scholarship thus offers an interesting possibility to combine not only archaeology and textual evidence but also private and official as well as military and civil aspects during the period of the shift from the Mongol Yuan to the early Ming dynasty.