By Joe Dredge-Fenwick [Edited by Krutika Sharma and Tertia Bloor]
As admiral of China's largest pirate confederacy, Cheng I Sao 'exercised such wanton barbarity as, struck horror into the breasts of the Chinese', as their captive the East India Company officer Richard Glasspoole reported.[1] The sophistication and scale of her confederacy significantly threatened the Qing Empire's very assertion of state power. This essay will outline Cheng I Sao's career, her ruthlessness and skills, which raised her confederacy to dominate the South China Seas. Then, further exploring how her immense confederation held real control of the coasts and strategically and commercially valuable Peral River Delta, being effectively a counter-state independent of Qing authority, thereby infringing on foreign maritime-trade interests. Last, highlighting coastal communities popular participation with her pirate-state fomented a social threat to Qing authority, the confederacy becoming more present and attractive than the Qing state.
Cheng I Sao's formidable character combined undeniable leadership skill and exact ruthlessness, earning the designation by many as the 'most powerful leader of the biggest pirate fleet in Chinese history and arguably, globally.[2] Rising from prostitution on one of Canton's 'innumerable flower-boats', she married the pirate-admiral Cheng I in 1801. Before their betrothal, Cheng was a privateer employed by the Vietnamese Tây Son dynasty, recently established following a successful rebellion against the corruption and ‘increased financial exactions’ of the Lê dynasty.[3] Cheng existed as ‘one of several contenders for power’ of a loose assemblage of independent Chinese admirals, who formed ‘a cornerstone of [Tây Son] military strategy’ till the dynasty’s fall.[4] Only following the death of his main rival and distant cousin Ching Ch’i in 1802, did Cheng and his new wife seize leadership of the Tây Son’s navy.[5] Their union was, as Robert Antony states, 'instrumental in his rise to power in the burgeoning confederation'.[6]
Following the Tây Son's fall, the couple cemented the disparate fleets into a pirate collation. Achieved with such effectiveness that Yun-lun Yuan, a Cantonese official in his history on the pirate confederation, remarked how ‘Peace and quietness was not known by the inhabitants of the sea-coast for a period of ten years’.[7] Indeed, even within a year of their activity the Gazetter of Haiang-shan District, as translated and surmised by Dian Murray, noted that ‘The Cheng’s were so successful in establishing the pirates in Kwangtung Province...they precipitated the downfall of the provincial commander-in-chief and the death of one of his leading generals, “Old Tiger” Huang.’[8] Early into their piratical operations, the Cheng's confederation already significantly impinged on Qing authority, killing top generals and affecting its internal politics, showing the Empire could not suitably contend with them.
Cheng I Sao's career appears out of step with the often-perceived homogeneity of Confucianism in China, whereby women were classed as inferior, bound by hallowed duty to their father, husband, and son. Yet in the maritime world, women were essential and active. Various foreign commentators noted similarly to Glasspoole that 'women [were] on board; and in many instances women command their junks'.[9] Even Yuan, a Confucian-trained official, noted that during a bloody incursion with the Qing, which again ended in their capitulation, a ‘pirate’s wife [held] fast by the helm...Having two cutlasses, she desperately defended herself’ only stopped by a musket-shot.[10] Though, Cheng I Sao was not simply a junk captain, nor only an admiral’s wife (despite her name), rather she proved a ferocious and calculated leader in her own-right.
Assuming control of the confederacy’s fleets, following the death of Cheng in 1807, she swiftly consolidated her rule by first securing her relationship with her husband’s adopted song Chang Pao. Captured at fifteen, the fisherman’s son was made Cheng’s catamite engaging in a homosexual relationship, later adopted and groomed for leadership as was commonly practiced among Chinese pirates.[11] Cheng I Sao ‘acted boldly and decisively’, as Murray commented, allied with Pao ‘through a sexual relationship of her own’, followed soon with marriage.[12] Yuan articulated their relationship in his history, asserting that Cheng’s ‘legitimate wife Shih placed the whole crew under the sway of Paou; but so that she herself should be considered the Commander of all the squadrons together...Ching yih [fleet] was then called Ching yih saou’.[13] Indeed, Glasspoole mentioned ‘a woman is at the head of this confederacy, whose son was the principal’.[14] Thus, securing Pao, she strengthened her supremacy over the confederacy, positing him as her junior-partner so that she may exert real power.
Cheng I Sao’s management of the confederacy is clear through her manipulation of Pao as a popular leader in the confederacy. Glasspoole noted how ‘The Lardones look up to this chief with uncommon reverence, calling him a god...always pray before they go into action’.[15] Fostering this godlike persona shows the manipulation of the confederacy’s pirates. Indeed, Murray noted how Pao constructed a ‘magnificent temple’ where crews could pray for success, along with frequent secret meetings between Pao and priests always resulted in the gods seconding any major decision.[16] Thus using Pao’s popularity, Cheng I Sao maintained and exerted her will on the confederacy.
Cheng I Sao’s leadership led the confederacy to dominance which directly curtailed state claims and control of China’s coasts. Her implementation of rigid legal codes which stated that none may go ashore without permission; that all ‘plundered goods’ shall be registered, eighty percent stored in a ‘general fund’, the remainder given to the pirate; and strictly no forced sexual relations with captive women and that permission was necessary to wed them.[17] Establishing a sophisticated network of diligent pursers, or Ink and writing master's as the pirates called them, was one manifestation of Cheng I Sao’s bureaucratic institution.[18] Any found uncompliant with her law were punished with decapitation.[19] In this manner, she acted as the brutal arbiter who alone could reward and punish. Exacting such tight control over the confederacy made it ‘capable of engaging in a great deal of anti-state violence’.[20]
Power lay in their systematic raiding and its threat. An indicative account from Glasspoole’s noted a resplendent town 'immediately plundered, and burnt down' partially, faced with complete destruction, decided to pay ransom.[21] A similar attack in October 1809 ‘sent up notice of their determination to attack Canton itself’, following Cheng I Sao and Pao’s capture of Qing vessels, demanded a ‘large sum of money’ and provisions or torch the city and ‘inhabitants [put] to the sword’.[22] The officer made numerous such mentions of extreme violence followed by ransom offer or subjection to plunder and death.
The Qing were clearly ineffective to counter the confederacy’s incursions. A fortified town on the Peral River, had Qing soldiers and inhabitants swiftly routed with ‘great slaughter’.[23] At sea they did not fare much better, on 20th November 1809 an ‘immense fleet of Mandarin vessels’ proved unable to overwhelm the confederacy even when sailing eight ‘fire-vessels’ into them, for the confederacy to then manoeuvre the fire-ships safely to shore without casualty and used the remains for firewood.[24]
Such accounts are hardly surprising given the Qing’s Guangdong military strength. Having sixty-thousand infantry, twenty-thousand sailors, ‘poorly deployed and scattered throughout the province’, with Dongguan on the Peral River with only 1,734 spread over thirty-five posts, the smallest having only three to five men.[25] This proved insubstantial against the confederacy seven fleets; the largest being Red Fleet headed by Cheng I Sao and Pao, seconded by the Black fleet led by Guo Podai (also an adopted son of Cheng I), with its other fleets had a combined force of around seventy-thousand crew, eight-hundred large vessels and nearly one thousand small craft.[26] Indeed, the confederacy was, as Wensheng Wang argued, an undeniable political player with a ‘strong, unified, and professional-like force’, a ‘regulated financial operation backed by military prowess’.[27] Coming against this massed and practiced military force, the Qing were ill-prepared, thus, invariably lost their assertation of a military monopoly on China's coast.
Control of trade routes through violence and implementing a pass-system meant the confederacy, in many ways, was a virtual bureaucratic government, threatening Qing and
foreign powers prerogatives. A British account, from 1805, noted with agitation that 'coasting
trade is as at an end nearly, excepting with passes from the[confederacy]; and that of salt'.[28] This presents the pirate’s ability to control and restrict trade to their whims. Murray regarded the pirate’s systematic attacks captured all but four of the 270 government salters junks.[29] Thus the imperial trade then ceded to Cheng I Sao’s mastery with salters negotiating under direct control of pirate leaders.
Under Cheng I Sao, the confederacy also exerted its dominance by implementing a protection racket forcing maritime traffic to purchase safe passes. The British captive John Turner presented fishermen and Chinese merchants ‘avail[ing] themselves of these protections’ as the norm.[30] Again, the confederacy imitated the role of the state, bureaucratically taxing its subjects and backed by military force. Wang asserted how it 'openly infringed on [Qing] prerogatives', effectively a 'virtual state within the state'.[31] This, however, reduces their influence somewhat, for the confederacy on the coasts was a truly independent polity not subjected to Qing authority. It was not 'within' the Qing state; rather, it operated independently outside it. The confederacy, as the dominant power on the China seas, alone could grant permission to traverse its water, therefore wholly undermined Qing maritime prerogative.
The pass-system worked against Portuguese and British trade aspirations and destabilised regional politics. Glasspoole and Turner both testify to the pirate’s impact on trading with Qing China. Negotiations surrounding Glasspoole’s ransom mention how British ships were forced to use ‘Lardone-pass’ to sail unhindered.[32] Similarly, the Chinese merchant Afoo, who assisted in Turner’s release, was compelled to purchase a pass.[33] The threatened raid on Canton in October 1809 in which the Siamese ambassador and tribute vessels were captured was a symbolic exposure of Qing weakness.[34] It proved the Qing were unable to sustain the long-established tribute system and thereby refute their claim of ‘universal rule’ even nominally.[35] The confederacy contested the Qing’s assumption of imperial dominance, revealing them as incapable of such role on the seas and coast. Thus, the confederacy not only threatened the Qing state, but its international standing which had always asserted observance to China as the ‘Central Kingdom’.
Cheng I Sao’s confederacy not only threatened the Qing state and foreign powers through their state-like monopoly on violence and trade, but in gaining the participation of coastal communities. Sailing up the Peral River, Glasspoole observed a large town ‘tributary to the Ladrones; [whose] inhabitants saluted them with songs’, showing those under their paid protection were active supporters.[36] Yuan affirmed this noting, they never ‘want of provisions, Chang paou gained the county people to their interest’.[37] Indeed, McKay noted the ‘redistributive’ character ‘transferring the gains of piracy’.[38] This highlights a mutually beneficial relationship, whereby the confederacy spread its plunder for local onshore supply of provisions and information. Thus, the confederacy, despite its brutal ravaging, had popularity amongst tribute communities cooperating symbiotically as allies.
These littoral communities were the very ones in which most of the fleets were composed. The line between fisherman or merchant often blurred into pirate when necessary. The Nan’ao wreckage, a late-Ming ship transporting tea and porcelain for Japan’s markets, sailed in contravention of the maritime ban highlighting the necessity of making a living despite the law; indeed, modern China’s first ship-wreck explorers were poor fishermen operating as illegal treasure-hunters to survive.[39] Indeed, Turner observed that crews were ‘considerably augmented’ by captives and ‘Chinese, who come daily from different parts of the coast to join them’.[40] First, marking the exploitative raiding which gained captives for ransom and their crews (such as Pao), but crucially those who actively joined them. Turner regarded some as 'vagabonds, instigated by poverty and idleness to embrace' piracy. At the same time, 'many were men of decent appearance' resorting to piracy because the 'Mandarins of their district were unjust', thus left to 'avoid their oppression'.[41] This suggests coastal communities’ suppression by local Qing government, forced many into the confederacy being an attractive counter-state offering a lucrative and stable employment for complete loyalty. McKay’s argument rings true that poor coastal inhabitants could ‘escape into an archetypal nonstate space: the ocean’.[42] As a contested place, it provided desperate communities with the means to survive and even thrive through piracy.
The confederation's disbanding stemmed not from Qing naval reprisal nor loss of local support, but the fleets internal splits caused by long-festering jealously. Wang argued that it was ‘isolation of the coastal communities by new governor-general Liangguang who ‘began enforcing a rigorous embargo in 1809’ cutting the pirates local support to ‘unite local
communities with the state’.[43] This assertion is at odds with the evidence of their strong support base, which Murray surmised as an ‘almost indestructible niche within the local society’.[44] It was not the Qing, foreign powers, or relinquished coastal support, but it was pragmatic response to internal dispute that Cheng I Sao ultimately chose to disband her confederacy.
In conclusion, Cheng I Sao raised the most ruthless and efficient pirate confederacy, which nearly overwhelmed the Qing Empire and regional powers. Her ascendancy and adept management and partnership, first with Cheng I and then Chang Pao, saw her at the helm, ably commanding and sustaining the confederacy. She expertly constructed the confederacy as a finely functioning financed state, able to tax its subjects, pay its military enforcers while maintaining the accord and acceptance of coastal subjects. It was Cheng I Sao's confederacy, not the weakened Qing Empire, that truly acted as a state power-wielding true physical and economic dominance on China's coasts. It proved an attractive 'counter-state' to those disaffected and marginalised by the Qing Empire, offering stable income and security to those who joined it, though undoubtedly ruthless to any who opposed it. She remained an unfaltering leader, securing a general amnesty for her fleets, wresting ranks in Qing military for her closest allies with Pao made a naval lieutenant-colonel, and latter pressing the government to grant her the prestige as ‘wife of an official (ming-sao)’.[45] Ultimately, it was Cheng I Sao’s decision to cease the confederacy’s operations at its zenith which ended it as a threat to state-power.
Notes
[1] Richard Glasspoole, Mr. Glasspoole and the Chinese Pirates (London: Golden Cockerel Press, 1935), p. 54.
[2] Yoriko Ishida, "A Desexualized Pirate in Yuan Yung-Lun's Ching Hai-Fen Chi: Analysis of Ching Yih Saou's Body and Gender from a Perspective of Butlerian Theory", International Journal of Literature and Arts, 6/6 (2018), p. 88.
[3] Ku Boon Daar, "Sion-Vietnamese Relations - 1771-1802: From Contention to Faithful Correlation", Jurnal Sejarah, 23/1 (2015), p. 96.
[4] George Dutton, The Tây Son Uprising: Society and Rebellion in Eighteenth-century Vietnam (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006), p. 204.
[5] Dian Murray, “One Woman’s Rise to Power: Cheng I’s Wife and the Pirates”, Historical
Reflections, 8/3 (1981), p. 149.; Ishida, “A Desexualized Pirate”, p. 86.
[6] Robert J. Antony, “Sea Bandits of the Canton Delta, 1780-1839”, International Journal of Maritime History, 17/2 (2005), p. 1.
[7] Yung-lun Yüan (trans.), History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807-1810 (London: J.L. Cox, 1831), p. 11.
[8] Murray, “Power”, p. 149.
[9] Richard Glasspoole, “Substance of Mr. Glasspoole’s Relation, upon his Return to England, respecting the Ladrones”, in Further Statement of the Ladrones on the Coast of China: Intended as A Continuation of the Accounts Published by Mr. Dalrymple (London: Lane, Darling, and Co., 1812), p. 41.
[10] Yüan (trans.), History of the Pirates, p. 24.
[11] Dian Murray, “The Practice of Homosexuality among the Pirates of Late 18th and Early 19th Century China”, International Journal of Maritime History, 4/1 (1992), p. 125.
[12] Murray, "Power", p. 151.
[13] Yüan (trans.), History of the Pirates, p. 13.
[14] Glasspoole, "Substance", p. 40.
[15] Glasspoole, "Substance", p. 40.
[16] Murray, "Power", p. 152.
[17] Yüan (trans.), History of the Pirates, pp. 13-14.
[18] Yüan (trans.), History of the Pirates, p. 15.
[19] Joseph MacKay, "Pirate Nations: Maritime Pirates as Escape Societies in Late Imperial China", Social Science History, 37/4 (2013), p. 565.
[20] McKay, "Pirate Nations", p. 565.
[21] Glasspoole, Chinese Pirates, pp. 36-37.
[22] Glasspoole, "Substance", p. 75.
[23] Glasspoole, Chinese Pirates, p. 44.
[24] Glasspoole, Chinese Pirates, p. 44.
[25] Antony, "Sea Bandits", p. 11.
[26] Glasspoole, Chinese Pirates, p. 56.
[27] Wenshang Wand, White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 83.
[28] Glasspoole, "Substance", p. 2.
[29] Murray, "Power", p. 153.
[30] John Turner, "Account of the Captivity of J. Turner", The Naval Chronicle, 20/1 (1808), p. 496.
[31] Wang, White Lotus, p. 87.
[32] Glasspoole, Chinese Pirates, p. 31.
[33] Turner, "Account of the Captivity", p. 463.
[34] Glasspoole, "Substance", p. 75.
[35] Glasspoole, "Substance" p. 75.
[36] Glasspoole, Chinese Pirates, p. 36.
[37] Yüan (trans.), History of the Pirates, p. 14.
[38] McKay, "Pirate Nations", p. 557.
[39] Lauren Hilgers, "Pirates of the Marine Silk Road", Archaeology, 64/5 (2011), p. 24.
[40] Turner, "Account of the Captivity", pp. 467-468.
[41] Turner, "Account of the Captivity", p. 467.
[42] McKay, "Pirate Nations", p. 557.
[43] Wang, White Lotus, p. 89.
[44] Murray, "Power", p. 154.
[45] Murray, "Power", pp. 158-159.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Glasspoole, Richard. “Substance of Mr. Glasspoole’s Relation, upon his Return to England,
respecting the Ladrones”, in Further Statement of the Ladrones on the Coast of China:
Intended as A Continuation of the Accounts published by Mr. Dalrymple. London: Lane,
Darling, and Co., 1812.
Turner, John. “Account of the Captivity of J. Turner”. The Naval Chronicle. 20/1, 1808.
Yüan, Yung-lun. (trans.) History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807-1810.
London: J.L. Cox, 1831.
Secondary Sources
Antony, Robert J. “Sea Bandits of the Canton Delta, 1780-1839”. International Journal of Maritime History. 17/2, 2005.
Daar, Ku Boon. “Sion-Vietnamese Relations - 1771-1802: From Contention to Faithful Correlation”. Jurnal Sejarah. 23/1, 2015.
Dutton, George. The Tây Son Uprising: Society and Rebellion in Eighteenth-century Vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006.
Glasspoole, Richard. Mr. Glasspoole and the Chinese Pirates. London: Golden Cockerel Press, 1935.
Hilgers, Lauren. “Pirates of the Marine Silk Road”. Archaeology. 64/5, 2011.
Yoriko, Ishida. “A Desexualized Pirate in Yuan Yung-Lun's Ching Hai-Fen Chi: Analysis of Ching Yih Saou's Body and Gender from a Perspective of Butlerian Theory”. International Journal of Literature and Arts. 6/6, 2018.
MacKay, Joseph. “Pirate Nations: Maritime Pirates as Escape Societies in Late Imperial China”. Social Science History. 37/4, 2013.
Murray, Dian. “One Woman’s Rise to Power: Cheng I’s Wife and the Pirates”. Historical Reflections. 8/3, 1981.
Murray, Dian. “The Practice of Homosexuality among the Pirates of Late 18th and Early 19th Century China”. International Journal of Maritime History. 4/1, 1992.
Wang, Wensheng. White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates: Crisis and Reform in the Qing Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.
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