This study examines the Zheng organization, which flourished from 1625 to 1683, during a time when the Ming-Qing transition in China intersected with the formation of an integrated early modern economy in maritime Asia. This quasi-governmental commercial enterprise reached the apex of its power under Zheng Chenggong (1624-1662), and his son and successor Zheng Jing (1642-1681). From bases along the southeastern Chinese coast and Taiwan, they relied upon overseas commerce to maintain a sustained resistance against the Manchus, who had taken over most of China in 1644 from the collapsing Ming, the ethnic Chinese dynasty to which both men had pledged their support. Like their fiercest competitor, the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the organization protected the safety and property of Chinese subjects abroad, engaged in armed trade, and aggressively promoted overseas expansion. Zheng Chenggong and Jing proved far more successful and profitable at these endeavors than the VOC. In 1662, shortly before his death, Chenggong even defeated and expelled the company from its colony of Taiwan, and opened the island for Chinese colonization and settlement.Yet, operating within an imperial world order that looked upon overseas contact of any form as a potential source of political instability, the Zhengs, lacking "native" maritime sources of legitimacy, had to receive recognition for their authority from continental centers of power. Father and son skillfully utilized the ranks and titles from the Ming Yongli pretender to rule over territory, develop a civil bureaucracy, and sign treaties with foreign powers, functioning essentially as an autonomous "state." Moreover, by successfully intermediating between continental and maritime Chinese cultural discourse, they forged a complex social unit of traders, militarists, and Ming imperial descendants and loyalist elites. However, this ambiguous arrangement, which gave the organization maximum autonomy and flexibility, came under threat due to the gradual consolidation of Qing ...