The China Seas consist of a series of marginal seas in the Western Pacific Ocean, around China. They are the major components signifying the transition from the continent of Asia to the Pacific Ocean. They have been described in terms of their collective vastness and complexity:
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In this Dossier
China Seas in the context of Kingdom of Tungning
The Kingdom of Tungning, also known as Tywan, was a dynastic maritime state that ruled part of southwestern Taiwan and the Penghu islands between 1661 and 1683. It is the first predominantly ethnic Han state in Taiwanese history. At its zenith, the kingdom's maritime power dominated varying extents of coastal regions in southeastern China and controlled the major sea lanes across both China Seas, and its vast trade network stretched from Japan to Southeast Asia.
The kingdom was founded by Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) after seizing control of Taiwan from Dutch rule. Zheng hoped to restore the Ming dynasty in Mainland China, when the Ming remnants' rump state in southern China was progressively conquered by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty. The Zheng dynasty used the island of Taiwan as a military base for their Ming loyalist movement which aimed to reclaim China proper from the Qing dynasty. Under Zheng rule, Taiwan underwent a process of Sinicization in an effort to consolidate the last stronghold of Han Chinese resistance against the invading Manchus. Until its annexation by the Qing dynasty in 1683, the kingdom was ruled by Koxinga's heirs, the House of Koxinga, and the period of rule is sometimes referred to as the Koxinga dynasty or the Zheng dynasty.
China Seas in the context of Kâtip Çelebi
Kâtip Çelebi (كاتب جلبي) or Ḥājjī Khalīfa (حاجي خليفة) (1017 AH/1609 AD – 1068 AH/1657 AD) was a Turkish polymath and author of the 17th-century Ottoman Empire. He compiled a vast universal bibliographic encyclopaedia of books and sciences, the Kaşf az-Zunūn, and wrote many treatises and essays. “A deliberate and impartial historian… of extensive learning”, Franz Babinger hailed him "the greatest encyclopaedist among the Ottomans."
Writing with equal facility in Alsina-i Thalātha—the three languages of Ottoman imperial administration, Arabic, Turkish and Persian – principally in Arabic and then in Turkish, his native tongue— he also collaborated on translations from French and Latin. The German orientalist Gustav Flügel published Kaşf az-Zunūn in the original Arabic with parallel Latin translation, entitled Lexicon Bibliographicum et Encyclopaedicum (7 vols.) The orientalist Barthélemy d'Herbelot produced a French edition of the Kaşf az-Zunūn principally with additional material, in the great compendium, Bibliothèque Orientale.