Sometimes Piracy Makes Good Economic Sense or Pirates of Xinan County, the Hong Kong area before the British. Part 1
And Sweet Potatoes too!!!
Greetings,
Welcome back. Thank you for being here. After several months of writing a weekly (at least) column on the subject of Chinese or “Mostly Asian” history, a pattern is becoming clear.
I start with a long-range sequence of events that I plan to cover over the next couple months. My thought is that these will lead to something that will be informative, interesting, have some depth to it, and be fun to write about. Then I sit down to write the next piece in the puzzle or part of the sequence. I remind myself that people do not like overly long pieces and plan to keep it short. I decide on a specific, limited - but interesting - subject and plan to write only about that.
So I begin to write, stop to check some little oddball missing piece in the puzzle, some little hole in the narrative, something that just doesn’t quite hold up on its own, a name, a place, whatever, and then I dig a bit and the next thing I know, it’s like a big window opens up, and there is this amazing sequence of events and interesting people and strange sequences of events on the other side of that window, and I am suddenly stumbling down a crazy rabbit hole tracking down an entire sequence of things that I knew nothing about or had barely heard about in the past and having a great time doing it. And I write and write.
Then I look at it, and realize it’s too long, so I chop off the first part of what I am writing, post it and share it with you, my readers, and look forward to finishing the rest next week.
Then I go back, polish that first part, think of a few things that would improve it, some thing that would just be fun to add, and then I write and I write and it gets too long anyway. Still working on that.
And so, here it is, the first in a series on Chinese pirates of the southern Chinese Guangdong (Canton) coast from the 16th to 19th Century. Give me a few weeks on this subject and it all will kind of tie in with events in California during the Gold Rush. At least a little bit. Remember, everything, everywhere is connected in some way. Reality is a unified thing.
Peace. Please, share, like, or comment. Consider a paid subscription. Tell all your friends and send them here.
Although I have not been able to track down too many details about this painting (yet), it was labelled “Qing Dynasty (1636-1912) illustration showing pirates attacking merchant ships in the South China Sea. From the Qing Scroll. (Maritime Museum, Hong Kong)” It’s on the web in several places, but with many contradicting claims as to who the pirates depicted exactly are and who they are fighting. Notice that it shows several ships fighting each other, not just individual ships. In this time and place, pirates often operated in fleets, sometimes large fleets of hundreds of ships.
CHINESE PIRATES IN XINAN COUNTY SITE OF HONG KONG
Recently I purchased a book by Peter Y.L. Ng called “New Peace County, A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region. (copyright 1983, published by Hong Kong University Press, ISBN: 962-209-043-5 ). I wrote a bit about this book and its history last week. It’s an interesting book, being a combination of commentary and direct translations of portions of an 1819 gazetteer describing the area of what is now Hong Kong and Shenzhen on the southern coast of China, then called Xinan ( “New Hope”) County prior to British control of any portion of the region. On the other hand, it’s not perfect. Like the original document it is based on, it is, naturally, disorganized at times, misses important pieces of information that a modern reader would want, sometimes without explanation, and often, like the original source, it often provides only a superficial covering of many interesting subjects.
Another thing that bothers me about this work, and this is more academically oriented, is that the author often doesn’t share the original Chinese characters for terms and names and when he transliterates them into Roman letters, he often uses Mandarin spelling and pronunciation of the names even though the people of the time did not speak Mandarin, and they probably should be written as pronounced in something else such as Cantonese, Hakka, or perhaps even Fukinesese (or as it is sometimes known, “Hokien.”) I find it irritating and it does make it a little more difficult for me to dig in deeper and determine exactly what is being written about without confusion. (Why don’t I just go and find the original Chinese text and read it? Oh my. My Chinese is not good enough for that. I fully admit that I do not have the ability to go and read an early 18th Century text, one reason I did not continue on to pursue a PhD. On the other hand, there are a lot of reasons why people with PhDs would be hesitant to write something like this column, so you seem to be stuck with someone like me. )
Recently 1 I began with the question of “Why did the White miners in California think of the Hakka miners in California as ‘the Hong Kong Chinese’ in contrast to the Cantonese miners in California who they called ‘the Canton Chinese’”? 2
The sequence of events and conditions that led to this was multi-step, but one condition was the constant presence of Chinese pirates in the region. 3
Therefore, today we are going to share a bit about the presence of pirates and the problem of pirates in the area according to Ng’s book “New Peace County” and why there were so many pirates in this place and time. As stated, the core of this book was written in 1819 and therefore it was written about 30 years before the discovery of gold in California, an event that led to many Chinese going to California to seek gold or perform as manual laborers or open businesses, many of which sold goods to people seeking gold.
Oh, but first we are also going to share a bit about what the book says about sweet potatoes in China. Yes, sweet potatoes.
SWEET POTATOES IN THE REGION
Sweet potatoes are a new world crop. They did not exist in Asia until after the exploration and commercial exploitation of the new world by Europeans. According to Ng ( page 38), the sweet potato was first brought to China in the late sixteenth century. It was an excellent staple crop. According to Ng, it had high yield, was nutritious, drought resistant, and flourished in poor soils where other crops did not grow. It soon became an important crop in southeast China, a land where the people had previously eaten yams and taro, two vegetables that are similar but not the same as sweet potatoes. (Yes, my friends, sweet potatoes and yams are different things, something I admit I only learned in the last few years. Now, you, too, can learn this if you did not already know it.) As China’s population began to increase steadily after 1700, the importance of sweet potatoes increased too.
And now you know something about sweet potatoes and their history in China. 4
BUT WAIT, there is more!! Sweet potatoes were just one of many new world crops that came to China and East Asia around that time, and their impact on the local population, local agriculture, and local cuisine was huge. What would Sichuan cuisine be like without red peppers? What would Korean kimchi be like? How many Chinese recipes have you seen that at some point say “add a slurry of corn starch to the sauce?” The answer is “most of them.”
And for that reason, I am adding an awesome video at the bottom of this page on the impact of New World Crops on China. I recommend it highly. (I do share a lot of cool videos here, and this one is particularly good.)
BUT NOW WE TALK ABOUT PIRATES
Although it is very likely that there was never a period in this region in the past thousand or thousand and a half years when someone did not periodically get on a boat or ship or even gather together a group of ships or boats and then go sail or row out and attack someone somewhere in the region, piracy definitely increased around the 16th Century. People sometimes rob each other. Especially when it makes economic sense. Sadly, it’s a human universal and what’s significant about it in terms of the big picture usually is the frequency with which they do so and where and the patterns.
Having said that, the region of the southern Chinese and Guangdong coast had a great deal of pirate activity with the amount increasing in the last part of the Ming Dynasty.
As a reminder the Ming Dynasty lasted from 1368-1644AD although there were Ming loyalists holding out and resisting the new Qing Dynasty (which lasted from 1644 to 1911 AD) for several decades after that and they were, as we shall see over the next few weeks, politically important and a factor in several key events, several involving pirates.
Why was piracy prevalent in this place and time?
So why did piracy make economic sense in this place and time?
Geography was one factor. There was a rugged coast with several inlets and small islands, all of which make great hiding places where pirates and other outlaws can stock up on supplies and food and fresh water.
See this map? Notice all the islands? Notice all the jagged coastlines with their nooks and crannies perfect for hiding a pirate ship or even a small fleet of pirate ships? Yeah, great place to be a pirate if there are no cops around and during much of this time in most places there weren’t. ‘Nuff said.
So one key factor in the large presence of pirates was that this was just a really great place to be a pirate. Again, geography helped piracy make economic sense.
If you need better understanding, check this out. Hong Kong home movies from the 1950s showing lots of Chinese junks (boats, if you prefer, one of my Costa Rican friends in Taiwan thought I was being insulting when I referred to a Chinese boat there as a “junk” as she was not familiar with that English term), jagged coastline, little islands everywhere, and lots of vegetation within which people or ships could hide. Not only that, there are also lots of villages and people living on boats and merchant ships full of stuff sailing from one place to another so there’s lot of people to rob and lots of things to steal. Look at it and think “Wow! What a great place to be a pirate.” Isn’t it? Perfect place to be a pirate if there are no cops around. And, as stated, there often weren’t. For several reasons.
There was also a great deal of political instability and shifting of political and legal control in this area from the 16th to 19th Century meaning that laws could not be enforced uniformly throughout the region. When when civil war broke out during the Ming and the Manchus took over the country, it was decades before the Qing had full control of this region and nearby Guangdong and Fujian, resulting in further lawlessness and more piracy.
In some areas there was no real authority and in others there were multiple authorities vying for control. Sometimes these competing authorities ignored piracy or even sought alliances with particularly important pirates as they fought each other. In other areas, for whatever reason, there was no real, functional authority at all.
Again, the fluctuating political and legal environment in this time and place also helped piracy make economic sense. So, again, often there were no cops around because no one was quite sure who was in charge and supposed to run the police department. A bit anachronistic, law enforcement in China at this time, even when done properly by the standards of the time and place, didn’t exactly work the same way as the modern USA with cops everywhere, but the point is valid.
On top of that, around this time the population of China began to grow considerably. Without compensating economic or agricultural change, and there was some (i.e the introduction of sweet potatoes among other things), the amount of resources per person becomes less and less. And when people begin living close to the edge and their children start skipping meals because their parents are not able to provide them with food, people become closer and closer to taking bigger risks and commiting previously unconsidered activites such as robbing others in order to make ends meet and survive.
Hence, not only did piracy make economic sense, but it also could make a difference for desperate people and their families. Even though this came at the expense of others like themselves, it was still a common part of life in this region at this time.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:China_population_growth.svg
Therefore, many local people turned to piracy and raiding others, preferring it to watching they and their families starve.
Japanese pirates were also a problem in the region and had been for centuries. Again, when they came in their ships, if they attacked and then left quickly, it really was not feasible for the Chinese authorities to chase them and catch them.
Look! A map!
Japanese pirates were often known as “wokou” or “woko” or “倭寇 “ from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wokou.jpg
Now imagine yourself a local magistrate of some kind down in 17th Century Canton when suddenly a large fleet of Japanese pirates show up clearly planning to rob people, kill people, kidnap people and sell them into slavery or force them to serve as pirates, and worse. Remember helicopters, telephone, and the internet have not been invented yet so you can’t call for help, and even if you did, the help couldn’t come in time and there wasn’t much of it. (Ng does describe coastal defence forces and fortifications of the time. There were some, but not that many and the pirate fleets were often much larger than the local garrisons. Hopefully more on that some time soon.)
In such a case, if you are smart and industrious and a good leader, you might find a way to run away and lead the citizens to a safe hiding place, maybe, perhaps, and if you do then the pirates could either loot people’s houses while they were out in hiding, but nobody gets hurt although they might steal all the food and break the farm tools for fun, leaving you all in danger of starving, but it’s probably better than being murdered or kidnapped or worse immediately, or else they pirates could just move on to the next town or village if everyone was away, in which case they get their economic reward and escape punishment, and come back some future year as it all worked so well the first time.
There was also the fact that the Portuguese had arrived in China, much to the surprise of the local people and the Chinese authorities, in 1513. (if you wonder, Columbus, working for the Spanish, they say “discovered” America in 1492, so we could say the Portuguese “discovered” China 19 years later. While the arrival of Europeans in East Asia did not cause as much chaos and destruction as their arrival in the Americas, largely because the East Asians, unlike the Indigenous people the Americas, had already been exposed to smallpox, they did create considerable chaos in East Asia as well. 5 The Portuguese very quickly did things like park a ship at the mouth of a great river until the Chinese authorities came out to see them, not too polite, and they also tried to build a fort on the Chinese coast without consulting with the Chinese about it. There were several conflicts between the Portuguese and the Chinese for the next century or two, and in the process of trying to find a suitable arrangement where all parties could benefit, the Chinese eventually allowed the Portuguese to have control of the city of Macao, something they kept until the 20th of December 1999. Of course, the history of that is kind of complicated. For what it’s worth, Macao is a very interesting place to visit but small and the casinos are getting out of hand and destroying the flavor of the place.
The Portuguese presence and activity further increased political instability and reduced the prestige and control of the Ming in this region.
And the Portuguese were followed by the Dutch, the French, and the English as well as the Spanish, not all of whom were law abiding. Some were smugglers, others just out and out pirates. And after an act of piracy, the Europeans with their ships capable of long ocean crossing voyages could easily travel far outside the reach of any Chinese authority.
Again, if one can commit an act of piracy and get away with it most times, well, sadly, piracy makes economic sense.
Therefore, piracy was endemic to the region for a long time.
Some European pirates of the time. Imagine yourself a Chinese peasant, fisherman, or shopkeeper of 16th Century Canton (Guangdong) who has never been further than 100 miles from home in your life and suddenly a fleet of people who look like this descend upon your town. Not only are they armed, dangerous, and murderous, but they dress and act in a way you have never seen before and have the craziest, hairiest, furry looking faces you have ever seen in your life! Pretty terrifying. As a general aside, many Chinese people are fascinated by the hair that caucasian men have on their arms and bodies. If you spend time in China, Taiwan, or Vietnam, and you are a White man, sometimes little children will will reach out and try to touch or stroke your arms just out of curiosity. It takes some getting used to, but it’s nothing malicous. I once had a male PhD graduate student in computer science, a Chinese friend of a friend, do it to me without warning at lunch first time I met him. It was nothing sexual or hostile, his intellectual curiosity was just stronger at that moment than his social skills (insert PhD computer science student comment of your choice here). Having lived in China or Taiwan for a total of four years or so, I was not the least bit offended, but the mutual friend, a Chinese college professor, who had introduced us was terribly embarrassed by it.
This was found on Pinterest and I was unable to find the source or owner of the copyright. If you know the copyright owner, tell them I love this painting, hope they will consider this sincere flattery, and will remove it and apologize upon request or promptly provide attribution.
The Gazetteer and Its Accounts of Piracy
Looking at Ng’s book, we have a list of incidents involving bandits between the years 1493 during the Ming Dynasty until 1680 during the Qing Dynasty and the years 1804 until 1810.
There is a strange gap in the record covering the entire 18th Century. I’ll write more about this later. I’ve been looking at what occurred during this period and region involving pirates and piracy and let me say, it really is the kind of thing they local officials would not have wished to advertise. More on that soon, in a future column. Like I said, rabbit holes, rabbit holes, exploring Chinese history is like an endless series of rabbit holes.
Counting quickly the book lists 21 incidents in the 187 years between 1493 and 1680. 1660 to 1669 was the period known in English as “the Great Clearance,” a draconian decree where the Qing Dynasty officials ordered all of the residents of the coastal areas in this region and most of the Chinese coast to simply abandon their homes and move inland under penalty of death. Nevertheless, according to this book, there will still pirate attacks during that time.
The data in the list in the book indicates approximately one bandit or pirate incident every 9 years or a little less on the average, with a violent mutiny by local troops who robbed the population thrown in for good measure and variety. Between 1804 and 1810, there were four such incidents, something I will comment on more in a later column, I hope.
Counting these 21 incidents quickly:
Several involved foreign pirates: 1493, 1516, 1551, 1570, 1571, 1623, - six incidents: of these six, two European pirate attacks although it never says from which nation, two attacks from Japanese pirates (who are often referred to as “dwarfs,” a Chinese slur for Japanese pirates), and in two cases the authors apparently didn’t see the need to specify as it doesn’t say. Either they assumed anyone who read the work would somehow know or else they did not consider it important. (and I did count the so-called “red haired pirates” as European.)
Chinese pirates: 1533, 1567, 1630, 1633, 1634, 1635, 1672, 1676, 1680 - 9 incidents
Chinese bandits who came from land, not sea: 1566,1580, 1641, 1645, 1647, 1664 (mutiny / rebellion), - 6 incidents
For the 19th Century the work lists four incidents beginning in 1804 and the last in 1810. All involved Chinese pirates.
If all goes to plan, I will discuss these in more depth over the next couple weeks, but next time, if all goes well, I plan to later
and even more cool stuff . . .
An awesome video on New World Crops in Chinese food!!
Movie stuff . . .
Just for fun,
While writing this I was reminded of the Jean Claude Van Damme film, “Double Impact.” It was a very silly film where Jean Claude Van Damme, a man whose acting prowess is grounded mostly in his ability to kick fast and high and then perform elaborate stretches of his body (almost all Jean Claude Van Damme films feature a scene or two or 3, 4, 5, or 6 or more where he performs a full split stretching his legs widely and displaying his buttocks as many of his fans, females particularly, like to see him stretch his legs in a way far beyond the ability of other mortal men and display his buttocks when he does.
Although he prefers to be known as a martial artist in his films, the man did have serious classical ballet training and ability, really. No joke. A surprising amount of martial arts film people have serious dance training —shout out to Sifu Tom Bolden, dancer and amazing martial artist who tells me he did do a bit of acting mostly in local television commercials - decides to stetch himself as an actor by playing twins separated at birth. Yes, two characters with different names and personality in one film! There should be an Oscar each year for the best actor or actress to pull this off.
Seriously, the movie came to mind as one of the brothers is a minor criminal smuggler type in Hong Kong and lives in a hide out in a jungle covered nook and cranny on an isolated stretch of coast not too far, not too close from the city. I hae no idea how realistic this was, especially for a non-Chinese who would stick out like a sore thumb in rural areas of Asia, in 1991 when the film came out, but the scenes with his lair and hang out do give some sense of what I am talking about.
This is not to be confused with other films where actors or actresses play twins
The official trailer.
“Double Impact” is not to be confused with “Twin Dragons,” the film that Jackie Chan released the next year where he played twins separated at birth, too. The two would make a great double feature.
However, fun as this is, I must say to both Jackie Chan and Jean Claude Van Damme, “Boys, boys, stop it. You are embarrassing yourselves. Tatiana Maslany came along in the TV show ‘Orphan Black’ and beat you both silly hands down. Don’t even try to compete with her. She has got you completed out-classed in the “twins separated at birth” realm forever.”
For those tragic people not in the know, do yourself a favor and learn about the TV show Orphan Black, a Canadian production that aired starting in 2013 and starred the incomparable actress Tatiana Maslany, supreme grand mistress of all time of the Twins Separated At Birth trope. It aired worldwide for five seasons with ten 45 minute episodes each season initially on BBC America. This is one of my all time favorite TV shows and I honestly do not know how many times I have rewatched the first four seasons on DVD. I admit I didn’t really get into the fifth season. The less you know about it the better starting out, but whatever you do, begin with season 1, episode 1 as a lot of the fun is that the main character initially has no idea what is going on and each episode things become a little bit clearer, or do they? — perhaps things are not as they seem. Check it out. For the record, it has virtually nothing to do with Asian culture and history, but it’s still one of my all time favorite TV shows. Great show.
Finally, on a serious note there was a documentary a few years ago that deals with this sort of thing in real life. Although the girls (women?) appear happy, the sad truth is that there is a lot of information coming out right now on the dark side of the widespread Korean adoptions that were so popular a generation or two ago. Information is coming to light about a lot of unethical and misleading practices to obtain children for adoption often motivated by government corruption, government foreign policy of the time (adoption as a “soft power” practice maybe), and the desire for commisions and placement fees by people in the system. I have considered writing some about this, but have not done so yet. There are only so many hours in the day, and other subjects, most historical and less current events, were chosen instead. Perhaps there will be more of this sort of thing when I start adding paid content. Perhaps.
FYI, similarly, the People’s Republic of China has recently decided to stop all foreign adoptions. While I admit, I haven’t seen it yet, it’s an interesting subject.
And that’s your Asian History fix for this week. Please feel free to leave a like, a comment, purchase a paid subscription, and whatever else you do, if you like what I offer, please share widely and tell your friends. Peace. Thanks for stopping by.
Bibliography and Footnotes
Here I used the term “Cantonese” to refer to the dominant Chinese sub-group in Canton. Be aware that although this is commonly done, there are other terms for tis ethnic group that are in use, for instance, “Punti” is a common term used to refer to these people in the 19th Century, and today academics prefer to use the term “Yue” for this ethnic group and their language.
As an interesting aside, although it seems that sweet potatoes were introduced to the Asian mainland around the time described, there is very interesting new research that indicates that the Polynesians and the people of the area that is now Peru had some contact and interaction long before Columbus and the Spanish came to the Americas. See https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/01/22/169980441/how-the-sweet-potato-crossed-the-pacific-before-columbus
As a second aside, and I’ll let you find your own reference for this, there is also evidence that the ancestors of the Polynesians were the indigenous, non-Chinese people of Taiwan.
I am trying to remember the name and dates of the female Chinese pirate who started off as a concubine. She was so good at it that the Chinese government eventually asked her what they would have to pay to get her to retire