Here be Chinese Pirates!
The Qing Dynasty (1636-1911 CE) oversaw a significant rise in the maritime trade of China. But as licit trade grew, so did illicit trade. These illegal maritime activities were conducted by smugglers, raiders, rebels and all manners of dastardly men. In contrast to the swashbuckling buccaneers of the New World, Chinese pirates were no small-time amateurs. Infamous pirate chiefs at one time ruled over vast swaths of land and sea, commandeering hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men.
Infamous pirate chiefs commanded hundreds of ships, far outnumbering the imperial navy
Piracy mostly occurred in the waters of Southeast China (Vietnam, Hainan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, and Taiwan)
These eastern expropriators had criminal networks so vast that small armies of scribes had to be employed for the bureaucratic purposes of bookkeeping and writing blackmail letters. Our cabal of corsairs would generate profits from coastal market towns through an extensive formal protection racket based on extortion, bribery, and terrorism. Chinese merchant ships had to purchase passports from pirates to safely travel through their territory. Even the state-licensed salt trade fell victim to pirates. The imperial navy was powerless to resist, as they were underdeveloped and underfunded, saddled with outdated guns, untrained recruits, and corrupt officials. Very often, Chinese soldiers would deliberately avoid conflict with pirates altogether, but they recovered their lost dignity by fabricating triumphs over their fictitious foes, convincing the imperial court that their efforts in curbing the pirate menace had been a spectacular success.
Even Western merchants were not spared from the arrogation of these abominable men. Despite believing British sailors breathed fire, they were unafraid to kidnap and ransom them for high sums of money. Many vivid accounts of life onboard Chinese pirate ships actually came from these Western captives such as John Turner and Richard Glasspoole.
English sailors according to the Chinese
Where did the pirates come from and how did they get so powerful? How did they do business? What was life like as a pirate? Let us take a look at the historical background: We will first begin with the origins of Chinese pirates in the Qing dynasty, then an overview of the conditions that allowed for their existence, how the pirate business was conducted, life as a Chinese pirate, pirate battles, and then conclude with a commentary of our historical sources.
Origins of Chinese Pirates
There were three main reasons why Chinese people became pirates: poverty, adventure, and escaping government oppression. Poverty is by far the biggest reason for most Chinese. The vast majority of the rank-and-file Chinese pirate came from the underclass of the labouring poor, mostly sailors and fisherfolk. They were typically young single men who lacked employment opportunities and constantly put themselves in debt. These people made up 70% of the pirate population in the early 1800s. Many Chinese were also lured by the call for adventure on the high seas, these individuals sought out new lives unperturbed by imperial laws. Finally, many Chinese also turned to piracy to escape the harassment of corrupt local officials and their soldiers.
One thing all of them had in common was that they came from small market towns off the coastal regions of China. These market towns had populations of between 2,000 and 10,000. Its inhabitants engaged in a variety of seasonal work and depended on the sea for their livelihoods. We shall see later that this includes piracy as well.
Conditions for Piracy during the Qing Dynasty
Contrary to popular belief, the Qing dynasty adopted a relaxed attitude towards domestic trade. The collapse of the previous dynasty, the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 CE), convinced Qing emperors that it is far better for individual actors to manage their own commercial activities instead of the government dictating every facet of the economy. Coastal maritime trade was allowed to be conducted freely by private enterprises. For the poor fishermen armed with not just steely determination but with Western guns, the rich cargo on these merchant ships was an opportunity they could not resist.
It is important at this point to differentiate Chinese pirates from our modern perception of piracy, which conjures up images of small boat parties raiding cargo ships to ransom their crews and goods. Piracy during the Qing dynasty was fundamentally an economic endeavour, and pirates participated in the economy just like any merchant. Since legitimate commerce could never keep up with consumer demands in China, many gaps presented themselves and were invariably filled by pirate activities.
There are two main factors to understanding Chinese pirates. Firstly, it is difficult to distinguish who really was a pirate at this time. Names for pirates also varied greatly, with Wokou 倭寇 referring to Japanese pirates (largely made up of Chinese sailors) during the Ming dynasty, Haifei 海匪 or Yangfei 洋匪 that translates to sea or ocean bandits, Yangdao 洋盗 that translated to sea robbers, or Ladrones by Westerners which came from ladrões, the Portuguese word for thieves. To the Qing government, any merchant who shipped illegal goods became a pirate. Sometimes merchants became pirates, and sometimes pirates became merchants.
Communities of Chinese who live entirely offshore still exist in China today (google Tanka People 疍家人 for more information)
The second factor for understanding Chinese pirates is through a more macro lens by examining the network of piracy. Pirates did not act alone, they were supported by fishermen, small-time entrepreneurs, secret societies, and wealthy coastal clans. These coastal Chinese were more than willing to break the law to do business with pirates. Piracy was so widespread that it was probable that pirate supporters did not even realise that they were breaking the law. A statue of the famous pirate Koxinga 国姓爷/郑成功 (Kok Seng Ia/Zheng Chenggong) was even built in his native Fujian province to commemorate the contributions he made to the people. Many coastal towns acted as port-of-calls for pirates, providing them places to offload their goods, spend their earnings, make ship repairs, and purchase weapons. When docking at these towns pirate ships will often find themselves swarmed by small boats commandeered by eager locals, offering their goods for barter and women for prostitution. In these friendly waters, pirates would pay the locals honourably.
Statue of famous pirate Koxinga / Zheng Chenggong in Fujian Province
How Pirates Conducted Business
Pirates would explore the sea, coasts, and rivers for opportunities to engage in extortion, kidnapping, and the trading of illicit goods. Many goods were traded, such as food, weapons, opium, alcohol, and tea. It is difficult to pinpoint the type of goods most commonly handled by pirates as we do not have any first-hand information from the pirates themselves. On the costs side, pirate chieftains had to pay contractual wages to their men, make weapons purchases, ship repairs, and other administrative functions like bookkeeping for their booty.
After their raids, pirates would typically keep food, weapons, and daily necessities while bartering away most of their other items at both black markets and legitimate ports. Profits consisted not of gold and silver, but mostly copper coins and items of daily life. Small part-time gangs will split up their loot after heists, while larger more organised gangs stashed their loot onshore to sell later.
Portuguese Macau - The Wickedest City in Asia
Pirates also had specialised ports where they conducted their shady enterprises. One such place was the Portuguese enclave of Macau. Labelled by Westerners as the "wickedest city in Asia" or the "Tripoli of the Orient". The island's jurisdiction was divided between the Portuguese and the Qing dynasty, hence the tenor of laws was often arbitrarily applied. Pirate chieftain Zhang Bao 张保 even made Macau his headquarters and set up a tax bureau there to improve his extortion capabilities.
Many Chinese depended on the coast and rivers for their livelihoods
It is not known yet how much pirates fought amongst themselves, but I like to think that Chinese pirates all had a kindred spirit and displayed gentlemanly conduct towards each other, but we cannot be sure. The Guangdong Pirate Pact of 1805, a pact between seven of the most powerful pirate leaders in Guangdong 广东 (Canton) formed a loose confederation of 50,000 pirates and several thousand ships. We might deduce from the pact that pirates knew not to fight each other, or on the other hand, it might tell us that pirates fought each other so much that something had to be done. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
The Guangdong Pirate Pact of 1805
Life onboard a Chinese Pirate Ship
Daily life on a Chinese pirate ship was a sorry existence. Pirate ships averaged around fifty men with some ships housing upwards of 100 men. Pirates lived in cramped, dirty bunks and spent all their leisure time gambling and smoking opium. Vessels were also swarmed with rats, which were encouraged by pirates to be bred and eaten as great delicacies. Richard Glasspoole, an English captive onboard a vessel of the Red Banner Fleet in 1809 noted that during his captivity they lived for three weeks on caterpillars boiled with rice.
How Englishmen John Turner and Richard Glasspoole's experiences on Chinese pirate ships ought to have looked like
China's water world was not easily defined by ethnic differences or national boundaries. Pirate ships had men, women, and children onboard, and sported a motley crew of various backgrounds including Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asians, and even Europeans, Americans, and Africans. After coastal raids by pirates, captured men were recruited into their ranks, children were brought up as servants, and women were kept on as wives if they were beautiful but left onshore if they were not. Pirates were also expected to be loyal to their wives and no adultery was tolerated amongst them. Women were allowed equal responsibility to men, a huge contrast to the male-dominated Confucian society on the mainland. The most famous female pirate was Zheng Yi Sao 郑一嫂, her name translating to Wife of Brother Zheng Yi. After her husband Zheng Yi's death, she took command of his Red Banner Fleet in 1807, Guangdong's 广东 (Canton) largest pirate fleet.
Zheng Yi Sao commanded the largest pirate fleet in 1807
Many Chinese pirates were seasonal workers. The Englishman John Turner noted that pirates come and go at such quick successions that the chief of the ship he was on refused any short-term contracts and accepted only long-term contracts of eight to nine months. Long-serving pirates of four years held higher positions of command.
Weapons of Chinese Pirates, late nineteenth century
Pirate Battles and Qing Government Responses
During battles with imperial soldiers, pirates utilised all kinds of weapons they could muster, ranging from traditional Chinese daggers to Western muskets. One time the Englishman Richard Glasspoole and his men were mustered by his pirate captors and told to fight imperial soldiers with their own muskets, which they did so with great devastation to the imperials, who mainly used bows and arrows. Imperial soldiers had matchlocks of their own but Glasspoole noted that they used them unskillfully. The weakness of the imperial army was no surprise because of two reasons: Firstly most of the army was tied up suppressing rebellions deeper in the mainland, such as the White Lotus rebellion. Second, the Qing dynasty thought little of Western weapons and neglected the development of military technology, during the Opium War in 1839-1842, British forces found that Chinese forts still wielded two-hundred-year-old cannons manufactured in the 1600s.
The Qing government was often just as, if not more cruel than the pirates
Pirates also raided villages with great fervour, slaughtering entire populations that did not comply. Glasspoole noted that during these massacres pirates were paid by the number of heads they produced, and he saw a pirate chase someone with two heads slung around his neck by the pigtails, and some more capable pirates even managing to acquire five or six heads for payment. Despite the cruelty, it is important to remember that this was normal for the time, and Qing government forces were just as, if not more cruel than the pirates. One example of how far the Qing dynasty was willing to go to eradicate piracy was the Great Clearance or Qianjieling 迁界令, a series of edicts between 1661-1679 that forcibly removed the entire coastal population of China from Shandong 山东 to Guangdong 广东 (Canton) and resettled them 5 kilometres inland. People were forced to depart their ancestral homelands and any who refused were executed. Many of these refugees from the coast wandered about inland looking for work and many died in ditches and burrows. Despite causing a huge humanitarian crisis, the edicts eventually starved out the pirates and were lifted in 1683.
Historical Accuracy and Conclusion
Today, pirate villages and shanties have been long replaced by high-rise condominiums, hotels, shopping malls, and casinos. Pirate legends still weakly persist in folklore and through the secondary sources of literature from their enemies. Because of the nature of piracy, pirates left behind little records of their own. Some pirates went to extreme measures to remain anonymous, murdering entire crews of ships they attacked to eliminate any witnesses.
However, the study of piracy is important, because it is the study of larger historical issues of social and economic dislocation and a crucial component of maritime commerce. By robbing official trade routes and diverting goods to where they were in demand elsewhere, piracy stimulated the development of new markets and ports all along the coast of Southeast China. As mentioned earlier, we still know surprisingly little about these pirates and more research has yet to be done.
This post was primarily sourced from Robert Antony’s The Golden Age of Piracy in China, it is a short read and may be available at your nearest University library. Supporting sources from the period came from Willard Peterson’s The Cambridge History of China: Volume 9, The Ch’ing Dynasty to 1800, Part 2. If you are interested in the period, I recommend you check these two books out for yourself.
If you have enjoyed reading this post or have any feedback, please do leave a comment. Do consider checking out my previous post on Cuju: Ancient Chinese Football for more interesting facts about Chinese history. Thank you kindly.
References
Antony,
Robert J. The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520-1810: A Short History with
Documents. Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.
Peterson, Willard J. The Cambridge History of China: Volume 9, The Ch'ing Dynasty to 1800, Part 2. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
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