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The sections of this essay are taken and edited, with permission from the dissertation of Dr Lee English who earned his doctorate from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Dr English uses the term “marine predator” for pirate however I prefer the term pirate to avoid confusion among my readers. This is part one of the essay.
The waters of Southeast Asia have been a major centre of maritime trade since people first plied the seas. Not only was it a major connecting route for the economic arenas of the Indian Ocean and maritime East Asia, but it was also a source of many highly valued trade goods, such as camphor, benzoin, gaharu wood or eaglewood, a kind of kino known as dragon’s blood, gold, resin, brightly coloured feathers, pearls, tortoise shells, tin, and trepang, a kind of dried sea cucumber which were considered a delicacy by the Qing. The Qing was the last dynasty of China lasting from 1644-1912.
Considering the geography of the region, it was filled with choke points to ambush targets and numerous hiding places among its many islands, coves, and mangrove swamps. Together with a scarcity of strong states to patrol the trade routes, it is no wonder that the region was home to piracy.
The earliest recorded cases of piracy in the region stretch back to the fifth century, though it reached its heyday between 1750 and 1860. This period is particularly associated with the high point of the Illanun raids from the southern Philippines throughout both coastal and insular Southeast Asia. In particular, for some Malay communities, maritime raiders could be upstanding, and respectable members of their societies and at times were even considered heroes in their communities.
This was the case for Raja Ismail, a mid-eighteenth-century noble from the Siak Sultanate who obtained great wealth and power from his maritime raiding. Malay nobles around Singapore on the islands of Riau, Galang, and Lingga frequently sponsored raiding expeditions by supplying them with weapons and opium. These voyages also doubled as trading expeditions selling marine products to Europeans involved in the China trade in the spring before launching attacks in the Straits of Malacca as far north as Kedah. During the summer, in exchange for a share of the loot, British sources claimed the sponsors of the raiders received “shares of the plunder, the female captives, the cannon, and one-third of all the booty.”
Accounts from Malay victims of pirates did not portray the profession as nearly as honourable as the pirates did. In fact, the pro-piracy positions were held by the elite who benefited from the raiding and enslaving.
Furthermore, while there may not be exact linguistic translations for “pirate” in many Southeast Asian languages, sources reveal a difference between legitimate and illegitimate maritime violence.
Pirates were known to move into maritime Southeast Asia from other areas and extend operations across multiple seas. This trend of pirate migration intensified over time, with piracy in the region between 1500 and 1860 becoming a multinational enterprise. European, Chinese, Japanese, and native forms of piracy existed alongside each other without anyone coming to dominate the others.
The numbers of pirates came and went in three great waves; the first two corresponded with the rise of the wokou and the alliance between the Tay Son and Qing maritime predators, while the third occurred between the 1820s and 1860s.
The Wokou were Japanese pirates. The early wokou were the result of the Mongol invasions of Japan where poverty became extreme. The later wokou period was led by Chinese pirates where 30% were led by Japanese and 70% by the Chinese.
One notable instance of the Chinese presence was the maritime predator Chen Zuyi, encountered by the famous Admiral Zheng He on his expeditions. Chen Zuyi was of Guangdong origins, but took over the city of Palembang on the island of Sumatra to rule as his own fiefdom, raiding into the Straits of Malacca and along the Ming coast, before being overthrown by Zheng He’s forces at the battle of Palembang in 1407 and taken back to the Ming state for execution.
The period between 1550 and 1650 saw sporadic raids by both Ming and Japanese maritime predators, mainly associated with the wokou. This motley alliance of former Japanese soldiers and both Ming and Japanese sailors left unemployed by Ming trade bans came to trade as much as raid. The Ming trade ban lasted through the Ming(1368-1644) and early Qing dynasties. The Chinese government attempted to halt private maritime trading.
Many local rulers and merchants were happy to have the visitors so long as they did not cause too much trouble. This period saw Southeast Asian ports such as Hoi An, Malacca, Pahang, and Manila become thriving emporia frequented by Ming and Japanese pirates and smugglers alike.
The depth of the connections between Southeast Asia and East Asian regions of the South China Sea during this period is best illustrated by the Xu family. By the mid-sixteenth century, the wealthy Xu family from Huizhou (located on the Pearl River delta) were already involved in the Malacca trade and had Malaccan wives, and they responded to the Ming trade ban by going into smuggling and raiding.
Xu Dong was known for allying with Japanese and Portuguese adventurers for expeditions throughout Southeast Asia which combined raiding and trading. Some of Xu Dong’s other allies included the “smuggler-pirates” Li Guangtou and Lin Jian, the latter of whom operated a large fleet for both raiding and trading in Southeast Asia, China, and Japan out his base in Pahang; it was out of Pahang that Lin Jian and Xu Dong launched a combined force of seventy junks to pillage the Zhejiang coast (located on the east coast of China) in 1547.
When Xu Dong fled China in 1548, one of his subordinates, Wang Zhi, seized control of the Xu syndicate and became the most powerful “merchant pirate” of the time. Initially, he was active around Siam before moving operations to Japan, and surrendered to the Ming in 1559, only to receive an execution instead of the pardon he was promised.
Another notable maritime predator of this period was Lin Feng, who operated from a Taiwan stronghold in the 1570s and challenged the Spanish control of the Philippines adding to the threat of Japanese maritime predators operating out of Luzon from 1580 to 1582 threatening the Spanish.
Ling Feng threatened many other regions and powers. In 1571 and 1572 he pillaged along the Guangdong coast before establishing a fortified trade post in Luzon, and two years later led a fleet of thirty junks to pillage Hainan(an island province off the south coast of China and the east coast of Viet Nam) before attacking the Spanish at Manila.
While this resulted in Lin Feng being driven from his base by a Spanish armada led by Juan de Salcedo, he nevertheless remained an active raider in the region for another decade before fading into historical obscurity in the late 1580s.
Japanese and Ming pirates were as active in the region. In addition to the Spanish encounters with Japanese raiders from Luzon in the 1580s, Vietnamese officials often noted Japanese raiding along their coastlines. For instance, in 1585 Shirahama Kenki led five large vessels in pillaging several Vietnamese coastal villages, and when he returned four years later claiming to be a lawful merchant, Vietnamese officials immediately threw him in jail.
Extracted from and with permission:
English, Lee Tides of Law A dissertation submitted to the graduate division of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. The entire dissertation can be read on Proquest, type in “Tides of Law”.
BorneoHistory.net