Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
With Special Thanks to Dian Murray
We would like to thank historian Dian Murray for her expertise in helping shape this video. Her work, including her book Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790-1810 and research paper One Woman's Rise to Power: Cheng I's Wife and the Pirates provided the backbone for our understanding of South China piracy at the turn of the nineteenth century. In interviews with our team, Murray shared detailed insights into the sources she used to reconstruct how pirate confederations emerged from patterns of seasonal, small-scale piracy and how these maritime groups came to pose a genuine challenge to Qing authority.
A Note on Historical Sources
Our knowledge of Zheng Yi Sao and the South China pirate confederation comes from a fragmented set of sources. Piracy was treated by the Qing state largely as an administrative problem, meaning pirates appear in the record mainly when arrested, interrogated, or suppressed. The most important Chinese sources are palace memorials (reports sent from provincial officials to the emperor and preserved in imperial archives in Beijing). Additional Chinese evidence comes from local gazetteers, compiled by local scholars and officials, which sometimes note raids or issue warnings to the population, including one notable account from around 1820 by a low-ranking clerk, which suggests how patchy the surviving record is. Direct pirate-authored material is extremely rare: the most significant exception is a written contract of the confederation, outlining fleet organization, discipline, and division of spoils, which Murray found in Chinese archives and translated.
European-language sources helped Murray add detail, but they can also introduce distortion. The Canton Consultations, kept by East India Company supercargoes, record trade conditions and pirate interference. Captivity narratives by foreigners seized by pirates, most notably John Turner (1806) and Richard Glasspoole (1809), provide vivid eyewitness accounts, though from limited perspectives. Murray also noted how repeated retellings of the story, and romanticization by Western sources, distorted the account further.
Despite the limitations of individual sources, taken together they allow us to reconstruct the scale and organization of the pirate confederation. Zheng Yi Sao herself is harder to pin down. What we can say with some confidence is that she emerged from the coastal world of Guangdong, shaped by overcrowding, poverty, and boat-based communities, conditions very different from land-based elite society. But the sources do not allow us to determine her exact community, language, or social status with confidence, and her personal identity and inner life remain fundamentally uncertain.
Part 1 - Intro
Flames light the sky over the Pearl River Delta as war junks swarm the banks of Sanshan, a fishing village in southern China. It is 1809. The attackers captain has promised ten silver coins for every villager's head.
By now, the villagers know it was a mistake not to pay the pirate confederation protection money. They have built a wooden palisade and armed every man between sixteen and sixty, but. But now everything goes wrong: Their only cannon explodes in their faces and their leader gets stabbed in the back in the turmoil. One man makes a last stand from a rooftop, hurling dust onto the attackers, until they bring him down with spears.
The looting lasts three days. Two thousand are dead. And when the pirates finally sail away, they set the village on fire and leave eighty severed heads hanging from a banyan tree, staring blankly across the water as a warning.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (pp. 126-127)
Part 2 - The Middle Kingdom
Around 1800 China governs 300 to 400 million people, a third of the world's population, and its economy is the largest on Earth.
#Our World in Data. (2024). Population China 1400 to 1853. Retrieved October 16, 2025. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?time=1400..1853&country=~CHN
Data based on:
#Utrecht University/PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency - History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE v 3.3, 2023). Klein Goldewijk, C.G.M., Beusen, A., Doelman, J., Stehfest, E., 2017, Anthropogenic land use estimates for the Holocene – HYDE 3.2, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 9, 927–953
https://public.yoda.uu.nl/geo/UU01/AEZZIT.html
#Gapminder v7 (2022)
https://www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd003/
#Lee, Harry & Fok, Lincoln & Zhang, David. (2008). Climatic change and Chinese population growth dynamics over the last millennium. Climatic Change. 88. 131-156.
#Lijuan, Miao & Zhu, Feng & He, Bin & Ferrat, Marion & Liu, Qiang & Cao, Xue. (2013). Synthesis of China's land use in the past 300 years. Global and Planetary Change. 100. 224–233.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257343078_Synthesis_of_China's_land_use_in_the_past_300_years #Visual Capitalist. (2017). 2000 years of economic history in one chart. Visual Capitalist.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/2000-years-economic-history-one-chart/
China sees itself as the Middle Kingdom, the center of civilization, while everybody else are barbarians, slowly learning what it has known for centuries.
#Choi, H. S. H. (2016). China, imperial: 8. Qing or Manchu dynasty period, 1636–1911. In J. MacKenzie (Hrsg.), The Encyclopedia of Empire (pp. 83–94). Wiley-Blackwell.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118455074.wbeoe287
The current dynasty running this ancient machine is the Qing, but to most people, they’re still outsiders. They’re Manchu, descendants of horse-riding warriors from the north who smashed through the Great Wall in 1644, realized the Chinese system was too sophisticated to replace, and simply kept it running with themselves in charge.
#Choi, H. S. H. (2016). China, imperial: 8. Qing or Manchu dynasty period, 1636–1911. In J. MacKenzie (Hrsg.), The Encyclopedia of Empire (pp. 83–94). Wiley-Blackwell.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118455074.wbeoe287
#Orlandi, G., Hoyer, D., Zhao, H., Bennett, J. S., Benam, M., Kohn, K., & Turchin, P. (2023). Structural-demographic analysis of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) collapse in China. PLOS ONE, 18(8)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0289748
Imagine this realm as a gravitational field. At its center sits the emperor in Beijing, like a supermassive black hole, bending the fabric of society around him. His pull extends through a vast bureaucracy of governors, magistrates, and inspectors keeping hundreds of millions of people in their place in the cosmic hierarchy. But the farther you get from Beijing, the weaker that gravitational pull becomes.
#Choi, H. S. H. (2016). China, imperial: 8. Qing or Manchu dynasty period, 1636–1911. In J. MacKenzie (Hrsg.), The Encyclopedia of Empire (pp. 83–94). Wiley-Blackwell.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118455074.wbeoe287
#Orlandi, G., Hoyer, D., Zhao, H., Bennett, J. S., Benam, M., Kohn, K., & Turchin, P. (2023). Structural-demographic analysis of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) collapse in China. PLOS ONE, 18(8)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0289748
China’s population has tripled in a century, and land is running out. The size of the bureaucracy, however, remains almost the same. Its grip is slipping, and corruption spreads.
#Our World in Data. (2024). Population China 1400 to 1853. Retrieved October 16, 2025. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?time=1400..1853&country=~CHN
Data based on:
#Utrecht University/PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency - History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE v 3.3, 2023). Klein Goldewijk, C.G.M., Beusen, A., Doelman, J., Stehfest, E., 2017, Anthropogenic land use estimates for the Holocene – HYDE 3.2, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 9, 927–953
https://public.yoda.uu.nl/geo/UU01/AEZZIT.html
#Gapminder v7 (2022)
https://www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd003/
#Po, R. C. (2018). The Blue Frontier: Maritime vision and power in the Qing Empire. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/blue-frontier/84FA1B7560A6DAE31F3222C58DC06EB8
The first to feel it are those already on the edge, like the boat families who live season to season. Fishing only works half the year, and when the nets come up empty, they haul cargo, ferry passengers, or smuggle rice or salt. And some turn to piracy part-time, raiding along the coast until the monsoon season turns. The difference between fisherman and pirate sometimes is simply seasonal employment.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (pp. 14, 17)
Somewhere in this drifting world, in 1775, a girl is born. Nobody pays much attention, but one day, empires will know her name. She’ll grow up to become the most powerful pirate in history.
#Murray, D. (1981). One woman’s rise to power: Cheng I’s wife and the pirates. Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, 8(3), (pp. 147–161)
Part 3 - Water World
It’s likely she is part of the Tanka boat people, living on a wooden junk patched with tar and cloth. A few metres of creaking planks in a cluster of boats, with floating kitchens, markets, and temples. Some families go years without touching land.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 14)
#Wang, C., Peng, D., Dai, Y., & Qi, C. (2025). The endangered Tanka language in Hong Kong: phonological variations and lexical convergence with Cantonese. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, 12, Article 1133.
By the time she can handle a paddle, she’s working – fishing or ferrying, whatever pays. While land-women crush their feet into "lotus buds" to attract husbands, she hops barefoot from plank to plank. Boys on shore spend years memorizing ancient texts for a shot at becoming officials. But the Tanka can’t own land, take imperial exams, or marry into shore families. They’re classified as "mean people", “impure” like actors and prostitutes. And so, like many before her, as she gets older, she finds work on a flower boat, a floating brothel.
#Ma-Lai, M. C. (1998). From “Egg Woman’s Daughter”. Mānoa, 10(1, The Zigzag Way: New Poetry from China), 81–90
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4229618
#Wang, C., Peng, D., Dai, Y., & Qi, C. (2025). The endangered Tanka language in Hong Kong: phonological variations and lexical convergence with Cantonese. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, 12, Article 1133
These boats serve sailors, merchants and pirates. Most are poor, but lately, more and more show up with serious silver and military weapons from Vietnam. For years, the Tây Sơn rebels there fought in a civil war and handed out ships, cannons, and military ranks to Chinese pirates to raid the Qing Empire, and share the profits. Now they are losing, and the jobless pirates are returning to China.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 40-41, 48)
#Antony, R. J. (2014). Maritime violence and state-formation in Vietnam: Piracy and the Tây Sơn rebellion 1771–1802. In S. E. Amirell & L. Müller (Eds.), Persistent Piracy (pp. 113–130). Palgrave Macmillan.
One night in 1801, a pirate named Zheng Yi visits the flower boat. He's powerful and commands his own fleet. The record gets vague as to how – but within months, the girl is his wife and sails with his fleet. From here on, she’s known as Zheng Yi Sao, literally "wife of Zheng Yi."
#Murray, D. (1981). One woman’s rise to power: Cheng I’s wife and the pirates. Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, 8(3), 147-161.
Part 4 - The Confederation
She’s entering the pirate world at the perfect moment. With veterans flooding back from Vietnam, the Sea is swarming with more pirates than anyone has seen in living memory.
#Antony, R. J. (2024). Defending Canton: Chinese pirates, British traders, and Hong merchants, 1780-1810. In Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China. Hong Kong University Press.
#Po, R. C. (2018). The Blue Frontier: Maritime vision and power in the Qing Empire. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/blue-frontier/84FA1B7560A6DAE31F3222C58DC06EB8
Also, the Delta has become one of the world’s most valuable trade corridors, with Guangzhou, called Canton by Europeans, as the only legal port for foreign trade. An open buffet of silver, tea, silk, opium and porcelain for pirates.
#Wang, W. (2014). White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Harvard University Press.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674725317
#Po, R. C. (2018). The Blue Frontier: Maritime vision and power in the Qing Empire. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/blue-frontier/84FA1B7560A6DAE31F3222C58DC06EB8
Meanwhile the Empire is having what you might call a bad century. Inland, they’re fighting bloody uprisings like the White Lotus Rebellion and on the coast, corruption is rampant, patrols are underfunded, and their navy is a joke.
#Po, R. C. (2018). The Blue Frontier: Maritime vision and power in the Qing Empire. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/blue-frontier/84FA1B7560A6DAE31F3222C58DC06EB8
#Antony, R. J. (2024). Defending Canton: Chinese pirates, British traders, and Hong merchants, 1780-1810. In Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China. Hong Kong University Press.
#Wang, W. (2014). White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Harvard University Press.
By 1805, the pirates are fighting each other more than robbing merchants, which is bad for business.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 57)
So they do what any sensible criminal would and incorporate. Six main fleets share loot, settle disputes in a central court and are led by Zheng Yi, captain of the most powerful Red Flag Fleet.
#Antony, R. J. (2024). Defending Canton: Chinese pirates, British traders, and Hong merchants, 1780-1810. In Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China. Hong Kong University Press.
To keep control, he uses the methods of mafia and aristocracy. His brother commands squadrons, his sister marries an ally, and promising young pirates are adopted. And beside him is Zheng Yi Sao, running the numbers and managing alliances. Together, they command one of the largest naval forces in the world.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 67 ff)
They even dominate government monopolies. Salt merchants start paying pirate convoys instead of imperial ones. A silver fee gets you a pirate passport and real protection. When some convoys resist, pirates torch hundreds of government ships to make it clear who’s boss.
#Po, R. C. (2018). The Blue Frontier: Maritime vision and power in the Qing Empire. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/blue-frontier/84FA1B7560A6DAE31F3222C58DC06EB8
#Antony, R. J. (2024). Defending Canton: Chinese pirates, British traders, and Hong merchants, 1780-1810. In Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China. Hong Kong University Press.
Portugal and Britain would love to send their warships, since their profits are evaporating too. But the Qing refuse to let foreign gunboats past the Tiger’s Mouth, the entrance to the Pearl River. They're more afraid of British “help” than pirate domination, which is probably fair.
#Antony, R. J. (2024). Defending Canton: Chinese pirates, British traders, and Hong merchants, 1780-1810. In Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China. Hong Kong University Press.
#Wang, W. (2014). White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Harvard University Press.
By now, even fishermen need a pirate-signed pass.
#Wang, W. (2014). White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Harvard University Press.
The waterways belong to the confederation. They are fast, brutal and operate with military precision.
#Antony, R. J. (2024). Defending Canton: Chinese pirates, British traders, and Hong merchants, 1780-1810. In Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China. Hong Kong University Press.
Part 5 - The Pirate Playbook
Let’s board one of their ships: a former cargo junk, twelve meters long, and never built for war. Now it sails under patched canvas and a black-and-white hull, flaunting a dozen cannons. Below deck is a village compressed into a dark wooden tube. Some pirates share a mat with their wife and children, while new recruits and prisoners fight for space – 200 people in total.
Only the captain lives with any comfort, in the raised stern cabin with his wives.
Scouts spotted a convoy, their escort’s imperial banners proving they haven’t paid for protection. At a signal, dozens of pirate war junks explode from behind the rocks, surrounding the convoy. When their guns erupt, grapeshot made from nails and coins shred through wood and flesh. Three-man teams work the massive gingal guns, while others hurl 9 meter long bamboo pikes. From the masts, pirates fling stinkpots full of liquor and gunpowder.
They leap from boat to boat with long-handled knives, tridents and rattan shields. Some sailors try to surrender, while others jump overboard. But captured navy crews get no mercy. The pirates nail their feet to the planks, and hack them apart. One pirate steps forward and cuts open an officer's chest, pulls out the heart and bites into it like a fruit. To him it's practical magic: consume the enemy's courage, steal his strength. The merchant ships surrender instantly.
Once their convoy’s silver, silk, and opium is taken, a squadron sails upriver to strike the nearest town. The strategy is similar: spread fear and name a price. If they refuse: everyone dies. Some bargain, others pay early, sending silver, rice, and roasted pigs for the fleet’s floating temple.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press
As it grows, the confederation opens protection offices along the coast and even a tax bureau in Guangzhou, where you can pay your pirate fees, like renewing a license.
#Antony, R. J. (2024). Defending Canton: Chinese pirates, British traders, and Hong merchants, 1780-1810. In Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China. Hong Kong University Press.
#Wang, W. (2014). White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Harvard University Press.
They set up supply deals across Guangdong for food, fuel, and ammo, paying above market and sparing their merchants.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 89)
By 1806, fishermen with empty nets and peasants with no land are signing up en masse.
#Po, R. C. (2018). The Blue Frontier: Maritime vision and power in the Qing Empire. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/blue-frontier/84FA1B7560A6DAE31F3222C58DC06EB8
#Wang, W. (2014). White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Harvard University Press.
Part 6 - The Floating State
But on November 16, 1807, pirate captain Zheng Yi dies, either in a storm or struck by a cannonball, leaving a power vacuum. Before anyone else can make a move, his widow Zheng Yi Sao takes control. Unlike most rivals, she already has legitimacy. She sailed alongside her husband, helped lead campaigns, has children with him, and is widely known in the fleet.
First, she secures the family’s loyalty. Then comes her boldest move: she marries Zhang Bao, a young captain who had become Zheng Yi's adopted son, and puts him in charge of the red fleet. By Confucian standards, a widow marrying is absolutely scandalous – let alone her stepson! But by marrying Zhang Bao, she makes the chain of command unmistakably her own.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 153).
#Murray, D. (1981). One woman’s rise to power: Cheng I’s wife and the pirates. Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, 8(3), (pp. 147–161)
Her next step is to tighten discipline, so she issues a new pirate law: Loot has to be registered and inspected. The original captor keeps 20%, the rest goes into a common treasury to support the fleet. Anyone disobeying a superior is decapitated and pirates who rape captives are executed. She runs the confederation like a CEO with cannons: nothing moves without her signature, injured pirates get healthcare, brave ones get bonuses, and the accounting is impeccable.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 72, 59)
The confederation has become a parallel state, complete with law, welfare and a strategy of violent wealth redistribution. A floating shadow empire alongside the Qing. At her peak Zheng Yi Sao commands about 70,000 pirates on 1,800 ships, dwarfing the Spanish Armada –, while Blackbeard, the most feared pirate in Western history, had maybe four ships and 300 drunk men on his best day.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 76)
#Matthias, M. (2023). Queen Anne’s Revenge. In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved October 20, 2025
Part 7 - Endgame
In 1809 the Qing impose a coastal embargo, reroute salt shipments overland, and prevent ships from leaving ports to starve the pirates out.
#Antony, R. J. (2024). Defending Canton: Chinese pirates, British traders, and Hong merchants, 1780-1810. In Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China. Hong Kong University Press.
#Wang, W. (2014). White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Harvard University Press.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674725317
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 123)
But these fleets are full of fishermen who built their own state because the official one had nothing to offer anyways. When the same empire now tries to take this bandaid away, they turn to revolt. Raiding squadrons pour inland like floodwater into rivers and creeks, overrunning garrisons, looting markets, and clashing with militias funded by the Qing.
#Wang, W. (2014). White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Harvard University Press.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674725317
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 123)
Zhang Bao’s Red Flag Fleet creeps closer to Guangzhou, disrupting trade, blocking river traffic, and sending cannon fire echoing into the city on a daily basis to extort silver and supplies. This hits the Qing where it hurts. Losing Guangzhou's customs office would be like losing the empire's credit card. After centuries of treating foreign powers like annoying tribute states, they are running out of options and turn to the “barbarians” for help.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 123)
They don't trust the British, who just recently landed troops in Macao and pushed warships up the Pearl River without permission, claiming to protect it from the French in a sort of proxy of the Napoleonic Wars. So they turn to the Portuguese, who have been squatting in Macao since the 1500s under lease from China.
#Antony, R. J. (2024). Defending Canton: Chinese pirates, British traders, and Hong merchants, 1780-1810. In Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China. Hong Kong University Press.
For a mountain of silver, they send warships to patrol alongside Qing junks and play whack-a-mole with pirates at the Tiger's Mouth. And fail. In December, the Qing switch strategies: they offer full amnesty, government jobs and silver for any pirate leader who flips.
Now cracks start to show. The Black Flag commander, Guo Podai, smells opportunity. He has spent years resenting Zhang Bao – he envies his rise, his victories and the fact that Zheng Yi Sao picked him. So when the Red Flag calls for backup, he ghosts them;, then the two fleets clash, and the Black Flag wins. A thousand pirates are killed, and 16 ships captured. Within weeks, Guo Podai surrenders to the Qing, waving his trophies like a job application. Other leaders follow, hoping to cut a deal before it is too late.
Zheng Yi Sao reads the room perfectly. In early 1810, she walks to government officials in Macau, leading thousands of followers behind her. Entire families who have spent years living aboard pirate ships, now come to ask for peace.
#Antony, R. J. (2024). Defending Canton: Chinese pirates, British traders, and Hong merchants, 1780-1810. In Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China. Hong Kong University Press.
#Wang, W. (2014). White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Harvard University Press.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674725317
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 123)
Their petition reads like this:
“[we are] insects and ants: save us from the flood and fire; pardon our former crimes and open for us a new way of life from this day forward. We solemnly promise to sell our swords and buy cows. … If we dare to act with duplicity, you may kill us at once.”
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 123)
Beneath the humble tone is sharp timing: Zheng Yi Sao is still holding the cards. The Qing need the violence to stop and accept a remarkable deal: She keeps her ships, 17,000 pirates are granted amnesty and Zhang Bao is made a naval officer. The two are allowed to marry legally, and turn to legal maritime trade. Zheng Yi Sao retires near Guangzhou, runs a gambling house, possibly dabbles in smuggling. She outlives Zhang Bao by two decades and dies peacefully around 1844, at 69.
#Murray, D. H. (1987). Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810. Stanford University Press (p. 123)
Part 7 - The End
Zheng Yi Sao was a remarkable woman — and a ruthless killer. Her pirate state could rise because rich trade lanes met weak defenses and famine turned hungry sailors into an army on sea. When the empire left a vacuum on the water, she filled it.
For the Qing, it is a disaster. They had to borrow foreign gunboats, offer amnesty, and call it a win.
#Wang, W. (2014). White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Harvard University Press.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674725317
#Antony, R. J. (2024). Defending Canton: Chinese pirates, British traders, and Hong merchants, 1780-1810. In Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China. Hong Kong University Press.
#Po, R. C. (2018). The Blue Frontier: Maritime vision and power in the Qing Empire. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/blue-frontier/84FA1B7560A6DAE31F3222C58DC06EB8
But when British warships return thirty years later in 1839, they force open China’s markets.
#Po, R. C. (2018). The Blue Frontier: Maritime vision and power in the Qing Empire. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/blue-frontier/84FA1B7560A6DAE31F3222C58DC06EB8
#Wang, W. (2014). White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Harvard University Press.
Foreign powers carve out treaty ports, run their own trade zones and “anti-piracy” becomes their favourite excuse.
#Po, R. C. (2018). The Blue Frontier: Maritime vision and power in the Qing Empire. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/blue-frontier/84FA1B7560A6DAE31F3222C58DC06EB8
#Amirell, S. E. (2019). Pirates of Empire: Colonisation and maritime violence in Southeast Asia. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/pirates-of-empire/introduction/DB571418652FDDDF377C09C972476F8A
#Kwan, C. N. (2020). “Barbarian ships sail freely about the seas”: Qing reactions to the British suppression of piracy in South China, 1841-1856. Asian Review of World Histories, 8(1), 83-102.
Their merchants even sell weapons to pirates, fueling the problem to justify colonial expansion, while Beijing’s control of the coast keeps shrinking.
#Amirell, S. E. (2019). Pirates of Empire: Colonisation and maritime violence in Southeast Asia. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/pirates-of-empire/introduction/DB571418652FDDDF377C09C972476F8A
The Qing fall in 1911, and it takes their successors decades to undo the damage. Most legal privileges for foreigners are only abolished during World War II while the last European colony in China, Macao, isn’t handed back by Portugal until 1999.
Rossi, C. (2021). In the Garden of Gethsemane: US-Sino relations in the history of international law during the Republican period (1912–1949) (Working paper). SSRN.