河口通事と一九世紀の琉淸關係 --逗留西洋人宣敎師退去の請願運動を中心に--

Abstract

After the Opium War, Western countries, mainly Britain and France, frequently came into contact with the Ryukyu kingdom, and from 1844 French and British missionaries began long-term stays in the Ryukyus. The presence of Western missionaries was an unprecedented situation in the Ryukyus, and it was perceived by the Ryukyuans as a threat to their traditional foreign relations. In order to have the missionaries expelled, the Ryukyu kingdom decided to rely on the Qing Dynasty, and repeatedly launched “petition campaigns” to the Qing dynasty from the 1840s to the 1850s, which was also accorded with Satsuma’s wishes. This petition campaign, which was a core issue for the Ryukyuans was also influenced by the intentions of the West, Qing, and Satsuma, is thus a perfect topic for examining the position of the Ryukyu kingdom in East Asia during this period. Indeed, many researchers have already discussed this topic. However, while the general significance of the petition campaign has been discussed in previous studies, the specific process of negotiations in Fuzhou by the Ryukyuan envoys has not been fully clarified. This paper tries to make up for this lack in previous studies by using the “Shō Family Documents” 尙家文書, the documents of the ruling house, a historical source recently opened to the public. First, this paper illustrates the specific negotiation process of the petition campaign conducted by the Ryukyuan envoys, which has been overlooked by previous studies. Sections one to three focus on the dispatch of envoys in 1844, 1846, and 1852, respectively, which were particularly important to the petition campaign, and describe the negotiations that took place between the Ryukyuan envoys and the Qing authorities in Fuzhou and Beijing. Secondly, this paper examines the role of the Sino-Ryukyuan interpreters, Kakō Tsūji 河口通事, in the petition campaign. In particular, this paper shows that there existed a human network extending from Fuzhou to Beijing, and that Ryukyu's access to this network through the Kakō Tsūji was a great help in the favorable development of the petition campaign. Based on the discussion in sections one to three, section four examines the personnel on the Qing side who constituted this human network, as well as the indispensable role of the Kakō Tsūji, who acted as intermediaries between Qing officials and the Ryukyu envoys. Through the above observations, this paper reconstructs in concrete terms how traditional Sino-Ryukyuan relations functioned at the end of the early-modern period.