No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Pirate Nations
Maritime Pirates as Escape Societies in Late Imperial China
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Abstract
This article assesses the pirate bands in the coastal waters of late imperial China as political communities in flight from the state. James C. Scott's (2009) recent work on fugitive political communities in the highlands of Southeast Asia presents a novel and compelling account of small, remote groups living as escapees from the state. I expand on Scott's thesis by considering pirate bands as escape groups that not only escape state coercion but go on to accumulate sufficient power to reengage with and sometimes coerce the states they escaped. The pirate bands of the period formed relationships with the Chinese state that were by turns competitive, cooperative, coercive, and extractive. They were persistently loyal to no one but themselves. Two cases illustrate the argument: that of the pirate band of Zheng Zhilong and his son Zheng Chenggong and that of the pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Social Science History Association 2013
References
Anderson, J. L. (1995) “Piracy and world history: An economic perspective on maritime predation.” Journal of World History 6 (2): 175–99.Google Scholar
Andrade, Tonio (2004) “The company's Chinese pirates: How the Dutch East India Company tried to lead a coalition of pirates to war against China, 1621-1662.” Journal of World History 15 (4): 415–44.Google Scholar
Andrade, Tonio (2011) Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China's First Great Victory over the West. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Andrade, Tonio (2012) “Koxinga's conquest of Taiwan in global history: Reflections on the occasion of the 350th anniversary.” Late Imperial China 33 (1): 122–40.Google Scholar
Antony, Robert J. (2003) Like Froth Floating on the Sea: The World of Pirates and Seafarers in Late Imperial South China. Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Antony, Robert J., ed. (2010a) Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers: Violence and Clandestine Trade in the Greater China Seas. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Antony, Robert J. (2010b) “Introduction,” in Antony, Robert J. (ed.) Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers: Violence and Clandestine Trade in the Greater China Seas. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press: 1–14.Google Scholar
Antony, Robert J. (2010c) “Piracy and the shadow economy in the South China Sea, 1780-1810,” in Antony, Robert J. (ed.) Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers: Violence and Clandestine Trade in the Greater China Seas. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press: 99–114.Google Scholar
Barfield, Thomas J. (2001) “The shadow empires: Imperial state formation along the Chinese-nomad frontier,” in Alcock, Susan E.D'Altroy, Terence N.Morrison, Kathleen D.Sinopoli, Carla M.Barfield, Thomas J. (eds.) Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 10–41.Google Scholar
Blussé, Leonard (1981) “The VOC as sorcerer's apprentice: Stereotypes and social engineering on the China coast,” in Idema, W. L. (ed.) Leyden Studies in Sinology. Leiden: Brill: 87–105.Google Scholar
Blussé, Leonard (1990) “Minnan-Jen or cosmopolitan? The rise of Cheng Chih-lung, alias Nicholas Iquan,” in Vermeer, E. B. (ed.) Development and Decline of Fukien Province in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Leiden: Brill: 246–64.Google Scholar
Calanca, Paola (2010a) “Piracy and coastal security in southeastern China, 1600-1780,” in Antony, Robert J. (ed.) Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers: Violence and Clandestine Trade in the Greater China Seas. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press: 85–114.Google Scholar
Calanca, Paola (2010b) “South Fujian the disputed coast, power, and counter-power,” in Kleinen, JohnOsseweijer, Manon (eds.) Pirates, Ports, and Coasts in Asia: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Leiden: International Institute for Asian Studies: 76–98.Google Scholar
Carneiro, Robert L. (1970) “A theory of the origin of the state.” Science (3947): 733–38.Google Scholar
Cheng, K'o-ch'eng (1990) “Cheng Ch'eng-kung's maritime expansion and early Ch'ing coastal prohibition,” trans. Beck, Burchard Mansvelt, in Vermeer, E. B. (ed.) Development and Decline of Fukien Province in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Leiden: Brill: 217–44.Google Scholar
Clastres, Pierre (1989) Society against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology, trans. Hurley, RobertStein, Abe. Brooklyn, NY: Zone.Google Scholar
Clements, Jonathan (2004) Pirate King: Coxinga and the Fall of the Ming Dynasty. Phoenix Mill: Sutton.Google Scholar
De Souza, Philip (2002) Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hastings, Justin V. (2009) “Geographies of state failure and sophistication in maritime piracy hijackings.” Political Geography 28 (4): 213–23.Google Scholar
Heers, Jacques (2003) The Barbary Corsairs, trans. North, Jonathan. London: Greenhill.Google Scholar
Huang, Ray (1974) Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
King, Charles (2008) The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Leeson, Peter T. (2007) “An-arrgh-chy: The law and economics of pirate organization.” Journal of Political Economy 115 (6): 1049–94.Google Scholar
Leeson, Peter T. (2009) The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
McKnight, Brian E. (1992) Law and Order in Sung China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Michaud, Jean, ed. (2010) “Zomia and beyond.” Special issue, Journal of Global History 5 (2).Google Scholar
Murray, Dian H. (1987) Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790-1810. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Murray, Dian H. (1995) “Cheng I Sao in fact and fiction,” in Stanley, Jo (ed.) Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates across the Ages. Hammersmith: Pandora: 203–39.Google Scholar
Murray, Dian H. (2004) “Piracy and China's maritime transition, 1750-1850,” in Wang, GungwuNg, Chin-keong (eds.) Maritime China in Transition, 1750-1850. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz: 43–60.Google Scholar
Ni, ShawnHoang Van, Pham (2006) “High corruption income in Ming and Qing China.” Journal of Development Economics 81 (2): 316–36.Google Scholar
Nimick, Thomas G. (2008) Local Administration in Ming China: The Changing Roles of Magistrates, Prefects, and Provincial Officials. Minneapolis, MN: Society for Ming Studies.Google Scholar
Ochsenschlager, Edward L. (2004) Iraq's Marsh Arabs in the Garden of Eden. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur (1993) “Dictatorship, democracy, and development.” American Political Science Review 87 (3): 567–76.Google Scholar
Park, Nancy E. (1997) “Corruption in eighteenth-century China.” Journal of Asian Studies 56 (4): 967–1005.Google Scholar
Perry, Elizabeth (1980) Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China, 1845-1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rediker, Marcus (1989) Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Salomon, FrankSchwartz, Stuart B. (1999) “New peoples and new kinds of people: Adaptation, readjustment, and ethnogenesis in South American indigenous societies (colonial era),” in Schwartz, StuartSalomon, Frank (eds.) The Cambridge History of Native Peoples of the Americas. Vol. 3, South America, pt. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 443–501.Google Scholar
Sandars, Nancy K. (1985) The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean, 1250-1150 BC. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. (2009) The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Siu, Helen F.Zhiwei, Liu (2006) “Lineage, market, pirate, and Dan: Ethnicity in the Pearl River delta of South China,” in Crossley, Pamela KyleSiu, Helen F.Sutton, Donald S. (eds.) Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press: 285–310.Google Scholar
So, Kwan-wai (1975) Japanese Piracy in Ming China during the Sixteenth Century. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.Google Scholar
Spruyt, Hendrik (1994) “Institutional selection in international relations: State anarchy as order.” International Organization 48 (4): 527–57.Google Scholar
Struve, Lynn A. (1984) The Southern Ming, 1644–1662. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sweet, L. E. (1964) “Pirates or polities? Arab societies of the Persian or Arabian Gulf, eighteenth century.” Ethnohistory 11 (3): 262–80.Google Scholar
Swope, Kenneth M. (2012) “Review of ‘Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China's First Great Victory over the West,’ Tonio Andrade.” American Historical Review 117 (2): 499–500.Google Scholar
Thomson, Janice E. (1996) Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (1985) “War making and state making as organized crime,” in Evans, Peter B.Rueschemeyer, DietrichSkocpol, Theda (eds.) Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 169–91.Google Scholar
van Schendel, Willem (2002) “Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance: Jumping scale in Southeast Asia.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20 (6): 647–68.Google Scholar
Wightman, Ann M. (1990) Indigenous Migration and Social Change: The Forasteros of Cuzco, 1570-1720. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Woodard, Colin (2008) The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Google Scholar