“Minlan” and the Stigmatization of Fujian Merchants in Macao in Late Ming Dynasty

After the Portuguese settled in Macau, they brought a breakthrough in Sino-Western trade. Via the “Aopiao”（ “澳票” ） system, Fujian merchants could trade in Macao and became business partners of the Portuguese. They carried on legitimate economic activities, as well as illegal ones like prohibited smuggling. The latter infringed the economic interests of local governments and officials. Therefore, official documents referred to Fujian businessmen as “Minjian”（ “闽奸” ） and “Minlan”（ “闽揽” ）, resulting in the phenomenon of stigmatization. The relevant cases in Mengshuizhai cundu（ 《盟水斋存牍》 ） showed that the reasons for the stigmatization of Fujian businessmen were: First, local officials and gentry in Guangdong discriminated against Fujian businessmen from the concept of dynastic orthodoxy and Yili（ “义利” ）, and used “Lan”（ “揽” ） and “Jian”（ “奸” ） to describe the foreign business groups that did business with the Portuguese, so that there were unique derogatory names such as “Minlan” and “Minjian”. Second, with the expansion of the economic interests of globalization, differentiation and disagreement within the Fujian business group have gradually become serious, and their business image has extremely deteriorated. The third is due to social and economic changes after the mid-Ming Dynasty. The prosperity of the commodity economy triggered the transformation of the identity order. The gentry and the common people became anxious about their identity. They often shaped the opposition or scapegoat through stigmatization, which gradually evolved into a common mentality. Although Fujian merchants were looked down upon as treacherous and sinister people by official documents in Guangdong, they played an important role in local public affairs in Fujian and were regarded as the elites of the local society.