Chinese sources on Piracy
Robert J. Antony, Guangzhou University
It has been said that piracy is as old as ships and seafaring, yet just how old it is in China remains unclear. Perhaps Philip Gosse, the noted chronicler of pirate history, was correct when he wrote that “the Chinese were practicing piracy before history began.”[1] Although archaeologists have uncovered the remnants of primitive Stone Age boats along China’s coasts and rivers, the earliest written record of maritime raiding is that of the Han Dynasty pirate Zhang Bolu 張伯路 in A.D. 109. By the fifth century piracy had become a pervasive feature of maritime society throughout the South China Sea, involving not only Chinese but also Southeast Asian and Japanese pirates. Lu Xun 盧循 and Sun En 孫恩 were perhaps the first Chinese pirates of any notoriety during this period. As the volume of commerce grew over the Tang and Song dynasties, so too did maritime raiding. Piracies became more frequently mentioned in official histories in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. For example, one notorious pirate named Zheng Guang 鄭廣 repeatedly pillaged coastal towns and shipping between Zhejiang and Fujian in the 1130s. Then in the wake of the abortive Mongol invasion of Japan in the following century, Chinese and other Asian pirates repeatedly harassed coastal shipping into the Ming dynasty. [2]
Ming to Qing
The golden age of piracy
The golden age of Chinese piracy, however, actually began during the mid-Ming dynasty and lasted until the mid-Qing dynasty, roughly the three hundred years between 1550 and 1810. During those centuries China witnessed an unprecedented growth in maritime raiding at a time of tremendous commercial expansion. During the late imperial age between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries piracy surged in three great waves: (1) the wokou 倭寇 pirates (wakō in Japanese) or merchant-pirates between 1520 and 1574; (2) the rebel-pirates during the Ming-Qing transition between 1620 and 1684; and (3) the mid-Qing “commoner” pirates between 1780 and 1810. These three great pirate waves were characterized by the rise of huge pirate leagues whose power overshadowed that of the imperial state in the maritime world. After 1810, of course, piracy did not cease; what changed, however, was the end of large-scale piracy as was seen during the previous golden age of Chinese piracy.[3]
During its golden age Chinese piracy was unsurpassed in size and scope anywhere else in the world. While in the West at its peak in 1720 the number of pirates never exceeded 5,500 individuals, in China the number of pirates was no less than 70,000 individuals at its peak in 1809. Scholars have long recognized that the main cause of the surge in piracy in the mid-Ming period (1520-1574) was the Jiaqing emperor’s stringent enforcement of “sea bans” (haijin海禁) that in effect criminalized large segments of the maritime population. Although Chinese sources characterized the pirates as Japanese “dwarf bandits” (wokou), in fact over eighty percent were Chinese. Most of the leaders had merchant backgrounds, such as Xu Hai 徐海, Wang Zhi 王直, and Hong Dizhen 洪迪珍; they were businessmen who had been forced into piracy by the rigid sea bans.[4]
After a hiatus of about fifty years, a new wave of large-scale piracy surged forth during the Ming-Qing dynastic wars (1620-1684). Often characterized in official sources as “sea rebels” (haini海逆), this phase of piracy was symptomatic of the general crisis in China that accompanied the change of dynasties. Given the economic and political anarchy of the times, it was impossible to distinguish between pirates, rebels, and merchants. The Zheng family, led first by Zheng Zhilong 鄭芝龍and later by his son Zheng Chenggong 鄭成功 (known is the West as Koxinga), built a maritime empire across the South China Sea based on a combination of trade, piracy, and political intrigue.[5]
The last stage of large-scale piracy occurred between 1780 and 1810, during the time that historians call the High Qing when sea bans had been lifted, commerce flourished, and the population exploded. Although this was an “age of prosperity,” the uneven distribution of wealth pushed many fishermen and ordinary seafarers into poverty. Besides professional pirates, such as Zheng Yi 鄭一, Zhang Bao 張保, and Cai Qian 蔡牽, the majority of pirates in this era were impoverished and marginalized commoners who engaged in occasional piracy in order to survive in an increasingly harsh and competitive environment.[6]
Pirates and maritime history
Pirates were not only pervasive throughout history, but they also played integral roles in maritime history. The story of maritime China is not simply that of merchants, ship owners, and gentry who reaped most of the profits from seaborne trade, but also of ordinary men and women who sailed their ships and endured untold hardships and dangers for barely enough wages to live. Pirates, in particular, played key roles in shaping maritime society and culture. Piracy was a rational and viable alternative or supplement to inadequate employment and low wages, thereby providing work, even on a part-time basis, for countless poor fishermen and sailors who could not be adequately absorbed into the prevailing labor market.
Whenever piracy flourished, as it did during its golden age, the clandestine economy also flourished, thereby supplying tens of thousands of additional jobs to coastal residents as well as promoting the development of new ports and black markets to handle the pirate trade. At the height of their power, large pirate leagues gained firm holds over many coastal villages and ports, as well as over shipping and fishing enterprises through the systematic use of terror, bribery, and extortion. As their power came to overshadow that of officials and local elites, pirates at times became states within the state. Pirates created a sociocultural world of their own making that was important precisely because it existed outside the mainstream orthodox model and provided an alternative lifestyle.[7]
The accounts of their enemies
Although there are many primary sources in Chinese, nonetheless it is no easy task to recover the history of Chinese piracy. Because the pirates themselves left us virtually no records, we must rely on the written accounts of their enemies, namely officials and landed elites. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the sources are biased. Nonetheless, when read with care official documents are very valuable and can be used in ways not intended by their authors. There are, however, few sources on pirates before the Ming dynasty.
- Overall, one of the most important sources are the official or standard histories of the successive dynasties, in Chinese called the Twenty-Four Histories (Ershsisi shi二十四史), which cover a period from roughly 3000 B.C. to the end of the Ming dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century. While only sections of the Veritable Records (Shulu實錄) are extant from before the fourteenth century, we have complete Veritable Records from the Ming and Qing dynasties. These are daily accounts compiled from court diaries and administrative records and, as a more comprehensive source, can be used in conjunction with the standard histories. Each Shilu consists of an account of one emperor’s reign compiled after his death.
- Another useful source are gazetteers (fangzhi方志) of coastal areas that date mostly from the Ming dynasty and afterwards. They are basically local histories usually compiled by members of the local elite and were produced under the sponsorship of the local officials. Local gazetteers are usually subdivided into provincial gazetteers (tongzhi 通志), prefectural gazetteers (fuzhi 府志), county gazetteers (xianzhi县志), and even some township gazetteers (xiangzhi 鄉志).
- Official documents found in the central government archives, especially for the Qing dynasty, are among the most direct and useful sources for the study of piracy and its suppression.
- Finally, there are a large number of private volumes dating from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, which were written by officials and literati stationed or living along the coast. They provide important information on the nature of piracy, local conditions, and local, provincial, and national level policies dealing with piracy.
Notes
- ↑ Philip Gosse, The History of Pirates (New York: Tudor, 1932), 265
- ↑ On the general history of Chinese pirates see Matsuura Akira, Chugoku no kaizoku [Pirates of China] (Tokyo: Toho Shoten, 1995); Zheng Guangnan, Zhongguo haidao shi [A history of Chinese piracy] (Shanghai: Huadong ligong daxue chubanshe, 1998).
- ↑ Robert Antony (An Lebo), “Zhongguo haidao zhe huangjin shidai, 1560-1810” [The golden age of Chinese piracy, 1520-1810], Dongnan xueshu, (2002): 34-41; and Like Froth Floating on the Sea: The World of Pirates and Seafarers in Late Imperial South China (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2003), chap. 2.
- ↑ See Kwan-wai So, Japanese Piracy in Ming China during the Sixteenth Century (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1975); Tanaka Takeo, Wakō [The wokou pirates] (Tokyo: Hanbai Kyoikusha Shuppan Sabisu, 1982); Li Jinming, Mingdai haiwai maoyi shi [A history of overseas trade in the Ming period] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1990); and Fan Zhongyi and Tong Xigang, Mingdai wokou shilue [A brief history of Ming dynasty wokoupiracy] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004).
- ↑ See Ralph Croizier, Koxinga and Chinese Nationalism: History, Myth, and the Hero (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977); Lin Renchuan, Mingmo Qingchu siren haishang maoyi [Private maritime trade in the late Ming and early Qing] (Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue chubanshe, 1987); Cheng Wei-chung, War, Trade and Piracy in the China Seas, 1622-1683 (Leiden: Brill, 2013); and Xing Hang, Conflict and Commerce in Maritime East Asia: The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modern World, c. 1620-1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
- ↑ See Dian Murray, Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790-1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987); and Robert Antony, Like Froth Floating on the Sea. On Chinese historiography of Qing dynasty piracy in Guangdong see Zhang Daichun, “30 nian lai Qingdai Guangdong haidao yanjiu zongshu” [Summary of studies over the past 30 years on piracy in Guangdong in the Qing dynasty], Guangzhou hanghai gaodeng zhuanke xuexiao xuebao 18.2 (2010), 47-49.
- ↑ On the pirate’s clandestine trade see Robert Antony, “Piracy and the Shadow Economy in the South China Sea, 1780-1810,” in Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers: Violence and Clandestine Trade in the Greater China Seas, ed. Robert Antony (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 99-114.
Source list
| Title (pinyin) | Title (hanzi) | Title (English) | Author (pinyin) | Author (hanzi) | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chouhai tubian | 籌海圖編 | Zheng Ruozeng, Hu Zongxian | 鄭若曾, 胡宗憲 | 1562 | |
| Dongnan jishi | 東南紀事 | Shao Tingcai | 邵廷采 | Qing | |
| Guangdong xinyu | 廣東新語 | Qu Dajun | 屈大均 | 1700 | |
| Haibin dashi ji | 海濱大事記 | Lin Shengwu | 林繩武 | Qing | |
| Haikou Liu Xiang cangao | 海寇劉香殘稿 | Qing | |||
| Haishang jianwen lu | 海上見聞錄 | Record of Things Seen and Heard on the Seas | Ruan Minxi | 阮旻錫 | Ming |
| Hou Hanshu | 後漢書 | Book of Latter Tang | Fan Ye | 范曄 | Southern Dynasty (Liusong) |
| Huang Ming yu Wo lu | 皇明馭倭錄 | Wang Shiqi | 王士騏 | Ming | |
| Huangchao jingshi wenbian | 皇朝經世文編 | He Changling | 賀長齡 | 1826 | |
| Jiajing pingwo qiyi jilue | 嘉靖平倭祗役紀畧 | Zhao Wenhua | 趙文華 | Ming | |
| Jiaoping Cai Qian zougao | 剿平蔡牽奏稿 | various | 合著 | 2004 | |
| Jinshu | 晉書 | Book of Jin | Fang Xuanling | 房玄齡 | 648 |
| Jinghai fenji | 靖海氛記 | Yuan Yunlun | 袁永綸 | 1830 | |
| Jinghai jilue | 靖海紀略 | Cao Lütai | 曹履泰 | Ming | |
| Jinmen zhi | 金門志 | Jinmen Gazetteer | Lin Gunhuang | 林焜熿 | 1882 ed. |
| Lianzhou fuzhi | 廉州府志 | Lianzhou Prefectural Gazetteer | 1721 | ||
| Luzhou gong'an | 鹿洲公案 | Lan Tingyuan | 藍鼎元 | 1729 | |
| Ming Qing shiliao wubian | 明清史料戊編 | Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiu suo | 中央硏究院歷史語言硏究所 | 1953–1975 | |
| Mingshi | 明史 | History of the Ming | Zhang Tingyu, et al. | 張廷玉 | 1739 [1789] |
| Ming Shizong shilu | 明世宗實錄 | Ming | |||
| Ming wokou shimo | 明倭寇始末 | Full Story of the Ming wokou | Gu Yingtai | 谷應泰 | Qing |
| Mingdai wokou shiliao | 明代倭寇史料 | Ming sources on wokou pirates | Zheng Liangsheng | 鄭樑生 | 1987 |
| Xuxiu Nanhai xianzhi | 續修南海縣志 | Zheng Mengyu | 鄭夢玉 | 1872 | |
| Panyu xianzhi | 番禺縣志 | Panyu County Gazetteer | Li Futai | 李福泰 | 1871 |
| Pinghai jilue | 平海紀略 | Wen Chengzhi | 溫承志 | 1842 | |
| Piyu zaji | 甓餘雜集 | Zhu Wan | 朱紈 | 1590 | |
| Qiantai wo zuan | 虔台倭纂 | Xie Jie | 謝杰 | Ming | |
| Qing chu Zheng Chenggong jiazu manwen dang’an yibian | 清初鄭成功家族滿文檔案譯編 | Translated Collection of Manchu Archival Documents on the Zheng Chenggong Family in the Early Qing | Chen Zhiping, et al (comp.) | 陳支平 | 2004 |
| Da Qing lichao shilu | 大清歷朝實錄 | Qing | |||
| Qingzhou zhi | 欽州志 | Qingzhou Gazetteer | Lin Xiyuan | 林稀元 | Ming Jiajing ed. |
| Riben yijian | 日本一鑑 | Zheng Shungong | 鄭舜功 | 1566 | |
| Sanshan zhi | 三山志 | Sanshan Gazetteer | Liang Kejia | 梁克家 | 1182 |
| Sanguo zhi | 三國志 | Chen Shou | 陈寿 | West Jin | |
| Sheng wu ji | 聖武紀 | Wei Yuan | 魏源 | 1842 | |
| Song huiyao jigao | 宋會要輯稿 | Xu Song | 徐松 | 1809 | |
| Wo bian shilüe | 倭變事略 | Cai Jiude | 采九德 | Ming | |
| Wo huan kaoyuan | 倭患考原 | Huang Yuqing | 黄俣卿 | 16th century | |
| Wo qing kaolue | 倭情考略 | Guo Guangfu | 郭光復 | ||
| Xiamen zhi | 廈門志 | Xiamen Gazetteer | Zhou Kai | 周凱 | 1832 |
| Xin Yuanshi | 新元史 | New Yuan History | Ke Shaomin | 柯劭忞 | 1920 |
| Xishan wenji | 西山文集 | Zhen Dexiu | 真德修 | 1598 | |
| Yuanshi | 元史 | Ming Dynastic History | Song Lian | 宋濂 | |
| Yuezhong jianwen | 粵中見聞 | Things Seen and Heard in Guangdong | Fan Ruiang | 范瑞昂 | 1777 |
| Zheng shi guanxi wenshu | 鄭氏關係文書 | Documents on the Relations of the Zheng Clan | 1960 | ||
| Zhupi zouzhe | 硃批奏摺 | Qing memorials | various | 合著 | Qing |
