A Historiographical Survey of Sinophone Research into Mediterranean-East Asian Maritime Trade (1st-8th centuries CE)

This article presents an overview of Chinese-language historiography concerning ancient maritime trade between the Mediterranean and East Asia. It examines the impact of institutional structures, political context and wider questions within the Chinese research environment, revealing inter-disciplinary intersections and recent trends, including towards the intensive study of numismatic evidence and the centring of the (maritime) Silk Road as the focal point of a growing research community. This article aims to enable future research collaboration, in a contemporary context in which scholars working in China are often more aware of key debates in western scholarship than vice versa.