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Understanding the Roles of Pirates in Seaborne Networks of Commerce and Violence Linking East Asia in the 14-17th Centuries
Organizer and Chair: Peter D. Shapinsky, University of Illinois, Springfield
Discussant: Patricia Risso, University of New Mexico
Seafarers labeled pirates dominated maritime East Asia from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. However, in this period piracy was neither a uniform practice nor simply criminal violence. Instead, it was ascribed to a wide range of groups with varied motives: from domestic Japanese seafarers to the multi-ethnic wakô, from the Dutch East India Company to the organization of Zheng Chenggong. This panel explores how each group operated as autonomous commercial organizations and trans-border purveyors of non-state violence. In doing so, they defined themselves along a continuum of commerce and violence and helped construct the maritime networks that bound East Asia in webs of interaction and exchange. Shapinsky examines the linkages between pirates, estates, and commercial shipping in medieval Japan, revealing that domestic pirates played land-based powers against each other and saw themselves as contributing to as well as living off of economic growth. Clulow considers the privateering raids launched by the Dutch East India Company from their base in Hirado, focusing particularly on the ways in which the Dutch defended themselves and their prizes before the Tokugawa state. Igawa uses both European and Asian sources to consider how the wakô exploited commercial networks linking East and Southeast Asia. Carioti examines how the Zheng family united East Asian pirate bands and dominated maritime commerce in East and Southeast Asia between 1630 and 1683. To help contextualize these ‘pirates’ in global trends of seaborne commerce and violence, the papers will be discussed in comparison with the contemporaneous situation in the Indian Ocean region.
Pirates, Estates, and the Growth of Commercial Shipping in Medieval Japan
Peter D. Shapinsky, University of Illinois, Springfield
This paper argues that in late medieval Japan (c.1300-1600), seafarers labeled pirates facilitated the growth of the commercial shipping industry; they did not just prey on it parasitically. To do so, I focus on the history of interaction between pirates and the estate (shôen) of Yugeshima, a salt-producing island located in the Seto Inland Sea. Commercialization began to flourish in Japan around the fourteenth century, coinciding with increased political decentralization that caused centrally based proprietors to lose control over estates such as Yugeshima. Inland Sea seafarers contributed to these processes in two ways. They squabbled with rivals, extorted protection monies, and fought to gain control of estates. They also played competing proprietary (i.e. sanction-bestowing) factions against each other to acquire title to manage these holdings in exchange for guaranteeing and protecting the delivery of rent shipments. On Yugeshima, many of these local seafaring managers were labeled pirates (kaizoku) and accused of perpetrating unsanctioned violence, extorting rents, and expropriating ships and other resources. From their perspective however, many of these pirate estate officials were simply incorporating Yugeshima and other estates into semi-autonomous maritime domains. In these domains, pirates transformed estates like Yugeshima into production centers, ports, and shipyards that played integral roles in regional commercial shipping networks. This paper will show how the management and protection rackets of successive feuding pirate-administrators such as the Koizumi Kobayakawa and the Kurushima Murakami turned Yugeshima into a prosperous regional commercial shipping center by the mid fifteenth century.
The Commercial Networks used by the Wakô
Kenji Igawa, University of Tokyo
This paper develops new perspectives for exploring the history of the wakô in the sixteenth century. In this period, the term refers to cosmopolitan groups of pirates who, though predominantly Chinese, were based in the Japanese archipelago and sailed between East and Southeast Asia. Scholarship on the wakô remains underdeveloped because of the dominance of state-centered histories. Most studies focus on diplomatic relations between Japan, China, and Korea, and as a result rely almost entirely on Chinese and Korean sources. In contrast research into Japan-Southeast Asian relations uses mainly European sources. To properly understand the activities of these trans-border bands of seafarers who raided and traded extensively in East and Southeast Asia, it is necessary to use both European and Asian sources together. This paper will explore the historical image of the wakô as it appears when European sources, such as Jesuit letters, are read in conjunction with Chinese sources like _Chouhaitubian_. According to Chinese works, the wakô invaded along the Chinese coast from Shandong to Guangdong. However, European sources tell us that these same wakô continued on to the Philippines, the Straits of Melaka, and the Spice Islands. Thus commercial networks that flourished in the seventeenth century were already in use by the wakô a century before. Along these routes the wakô maintained a two-sided character, moving between trade and piracy.
Pirates and Thieves: The Dutch East India Company in Japan
Adam Clulow, Columbia University
In 1609, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) established its first East Asian trading factory in Hirado, a small port in western Japan. Despite its initial promise, the factory was not an immediate commercial success. In light of the limited returns produced by the Japan trade, it became clear that the factory’s primary value was as a military rather than a commercial base. VOC agents realized that Hirado could serve as a base from which the Company could launch privateering raids against Portuguese, Spanish and neutral shipping sailing to and from Macao and Manila, the two great Iberian strongholds in the region. At first, the Tokugawa bakufu tolerated VOC privateering, but the Company’s unregulated maritime predation provoked it to formulate a new policy on piracy and to define—albeit vaguely—an area of central control around the coastline of the archipelago. This paper charts the development of VOC privateering from Japan and considers the ways in which it exists as part of a global process of European maritime expansion.
The Zheng Maritime Organization: A Key Part of the International Context of 17th Century East Asia
Patrizia Carioti, University of Napoli
During the first decades of the 17th Century, the numerous and scattered bands of pirates that had plagued the Chinese coast during the previous century were united under a single common flag. This unification, accomplished by Zheng Zhilong in the beginning of the 1630's, provided the base for the powerful mercantile organization controlled by the Zheng family that lasted until the 1680’s. Their centralized organization came "to monopolize" the Chinese sea-trades, exerting, at the same time, a deep influence on the entire international commerce of maritime East Asia. For this reason, Zheng maritime power represented a formidable rival to the Europeans. Understanding the far-reaching overseas activity carried out by the powerful Zheng organization is essential for considering the historical events which took shape and developed in 17th century East Asia. The economic, political and military influence exerted by the Zheng family, in particular during the years of Zheng Chenggong, extended throughout South and East Asia from Japan to the Philippines to Indonesia. In particular Japan, that for centuries had been China's primary partner in maritime commerce and trade, was directly affected by the economic strategies employed by the Zheng family.