For at least three hundred years, since the heyday of Atlantic piracy in the early eighteenth century, pirates have been the object of a particular fascination for Europeans. As a result of this long cultural historical development, today, the word “pirate” conjures up a vast array of associations that are partly based on historical events and personalities and partly based on imagination, such as fictive accounts, songs, poems, paintings, films, and games. On the one hand, throughout European history, pirates have been associated with defiance, subversion, and rebellion, and have often been seen as constituting existential threats to society, peace and order, international trade, and the security of seafarers and coastal communities around the world. On the other hand, pirates, both historical and fictional, have also been seen as romantic heroes and non-conforming revolutionaries or champions of the common people. The word pirate, in the modern European understanding of the word, thus has a wide range of social, cultural, and political connotations that by far transcend its generic meaning of a robber or bandit operating at sea.

Against this background, the concept of piracy has been used for centuries in numerous contexts, often far removed from the original meaning of the word. This chapter explores one such case, in which the concept of piracy was stretched to its limits, namely, when the French invaded and subsequently colonized Vietnam in the second half of the nineteenth century.