Fading Horizons traces the making and unmaking of maritime borders in southern China from the late Qing to the early Cold War. Drawing on the salt-stained diaries of Quanzhou captain Lin Jinbao, Portuguese hydrographic charts in Lisbon, and lighthouse ledgers from the Penghu archipelago, Li maps how traders, pilots, and patrolmen read the sea. Scenes shift from Xiamen's Gulangyu warehouses to Beihai's customs sheds and Haikou's storm shelters, where cargo lists for the steamer Hailiang sit beside typhoon warnings. The result is a portrait of a littoral world that refused to stay still.
Arguing that horizons fade as much as they recede, Li shows communities redrawing themselves under the pressure of tariffs, treaties, and cyclones. Oral histories from Kinmen boatbuilders, telegrams from the Hong Kong marine police, and a rusted sextant recovered in Shapowei anchor a narrative that is both intimate and global. Methodologically a microhistory with a long view, the book pairs fine-grained storytelling with annotated maps and photograph plates for readers of maritime history and border studies.
Li Zheng (b. 1969, Quanzhou) is a historian of maritime Asia whose research explores port cities, cartography, and everyday life along coastal frontiers. He earned a B.A. in history from Peking University and a Ph.D. in Asian history with a focus on seaborne networks. Li has held teaching and research posts in Hong Kong and Singapore, working extensively with lighthouse logs, hydrographic surveys, and customs archives across East Asia and Europe. His articles on coastal governance and informal trade have appeared in peer-reviewed journals, and he frequently collaborates with local museums to document oral histories from shipwrights and pilots. He lives between Xiamen and Hong Kong, balancing archival seasons with fieldwork on smaller islands.
I expected a sweeping narrative about empires and got a very narrow maritime microhistory loaded with acronyms and archival minutiae. Interesting in parts (the Shapowei sextant story), but the prose felt dry and the focus too niche for my taste.
Give me all the maps, all the marginalia, all the weather reports! The chapter that reconstructs the 1905 typhoon using lighthouse logs from Penghu and telegrams from Hong Kong marine police had me holding my breath. You can feel the deck tilt beneath your feet.
Also, the small touches—a stamped customs seal on the Hailiang's manifest, a pencil sketch of shoals on a Portuguese chart—make the big thesis land. It's rare to find a historian who can navigate both sextants and semantics with this much grace.
语言平实但材料扎实，尤其是关于金门船匠的口述与澎湖灯塔档案的结合，很有现场感。若能对地方方言词汇做更多解释会更友好，不过整体上是对南中国海沿岸社会史的细致补充。
Well-researched and surprisingly readable for a study centered on customs records and hydrographic charts. The index is excellent, and the map plates make the maritime routes instantly legible. Chapter 5 meanders a bit, but the through-line—how treaties, storms, and tariffs remade coastal life—holds steady.
Impeccable research, dense presentation. I learned a lot about tariff boards and tonnage tables I didn't know I needed, but the narrative sometimes drowns in footnotes. Useful for grad seminars and specialists; general readers may skim.
This is the kind of history that smells like salt and old paper. Li makes a page-turner out of cargo manifests and lighthouse ledgers, especially when he follows Captain Lin Jinbao's diary into Gulangyu's warehouses and out again on the Hailiang as a typhoon rises off Penghu.
What impressed me most is how the argument stays clear: horizons don't just move; they blur. The rusted sextant from Shapowei becomes a metaphor for knowledge under strain, and the annotated maps are both beautiful and instructive. A remarkable blend of microhistory and oceanic scale.
