Pirates and piracy seem to be about as universal as death and taxes, and Chinese and Western piracy bear much in common, from violence and hardship, to oppression from the authorities as both cause and consequence, as well as a certain amount of popular romanticism. In Outlaws of the Sea, Robert J Antony provides an overview of the Chinese version of the phenomenon, situated “along the southern coast of China and in the South China Sea between the 1630s and 1940s,” which he places firmly in the broader sweep of Chinese history.
These three centuries were marked by a series of catastrophic wars, rebellions, and revolutions as China struggled to transform itself from an ancient monarchy into a modern republic. In the wake of these upheavals China also witnessed the rise and fall of the greatest and most intense surges in piracy in world history. Although often dismissed by scholars as unimportant, as the following chapters collectively demonstrate, piracy was inextricably linked to developments in modern China and, in particular, played a significant role in shaping Asian maritime history.

Piracy has always been somewhat ambiguous: a threat to the established order (except when piracy, usually called by another name, is a government-sanctioned activity) but also a way for those down the social order to exert some agency. This tension is evident throughout Outlaws of the Sea:
Pirates were the archetypal outlaws, freely roaming the boundless seas, operating beyond the law, and holding allegiance to no state but their own.
Perhaps the most well-known Chinese pirates is Zhang Baozai (or Cheung Po Tsai), active around the South China Coast (and based close to what is now Hong Kong), a story much popularized in story and even opera. Somewhat unusually by the standards of such stories (to say nothing of actual history), women play leading roles. In a plot twist, Zhang was co-opted by the Qing Government, and lived out the rest of career in official favor. Nevertheless, as Antony points in evident understatement: “Not all pirates were decent and honorable, or romantic swashbuckling heroes as depicted in novels and movies.”
Many pirates, indeed, were rough and cruel robbers, kidnappers, rapists, and murderers. Even those who stumbled into piracy and were amateur part-timers, often succumbed to violent predation. They committed vicious crimes to earn their keep. Despite their codes of conduct, there is much documentary evidence indicating that pirates not only wantonly abducted and raped women, but also sodomized young male captives.
Chinese piracy is more tightly tied to history than one might expect. One upsurge was tied to the turn of the 19th-century Tay Son rebellion in Vietnam, while later in the century, piracy was used as an excuse by Western imperialist powers to extend their jurisdiction. Coloane, indeed, was incorporated into Macau only in 1910, as the result of an anti-pirate campaign (or so it was portrayed by the Portuguese; local residents described it differently).
Outlaws of the Sea is an academic text, but in the interest of readability over strict historicity, Antony is not above a certain amount of invention. He asks “If pirates could speak, what would they say?” He goes to create a couple of fictional testimonies which, he says
are not pure fantasies. They are based on a variety of primary sources, but have been presented as an alternative narrative, as I imagined how they would have been interpreted by the pirates themselves.
He also draws comparisons between Chinese piracy and the Western variety, for example:
Akin to privateers, though the Vietnamese never used the term, Tay Son rulers utilized Chinese pirates, and commissioned many as officers enemy ships during times of war with seals and certificates (similar to the letters of marque issued by many European states in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) authorizing commerce raiding in Chinese waters…
and
The Chinese pirates who operated out of Vietnam were despicable characters for forsaking their own advanced culture in favor of backwardness and depravity among the Vietnamese barbarians. This was the Chinese equivalent of “turning Turk,” referring to European apostates who in the seventeenth century joined the Barbary corsairs and discarded their Christian faith to become Muslims.
As a subject of historical enquiry, piracy has the advantage of moral and political ambiguity. As always, he concludes
For some people pirates are villains but for others they are heroes. Our conceptions of pirates and piracy today, as in the past, are in constant flux.
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