These scholarly essays examine the connections and
history
of piracy and smuggling in Asian waters, both of which have long been a
way of
life in this region. Often given short shrift, these authors show how
pirates
and smugglers – different, yet related – played key roles in how
society
developed. The information unveiled clearly shows the link between the
past and
the present, especially in light of issues of maritime security and
national sovereignty.
These two groups involve themselves in an illicit or shadow
economy, which coexists with legal trade. Searching through documents
in many
different languages and representing a variety of perspectives, these
historians share what their research reveals about piracy and smuggling
in the
greater China Seas region over a period of six hundred years. They also
discuss
the integral and essential roles both groups played in shaping the
history of
China, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
The general arrangement of the ten chapters is
chronological, although the first one provides somewhat of an overview.
- “Violence
at Sea: Unpacking ‘Piracy’ in the
Claims of States over Asian Seas” is written by Anthony Reid, professor
emeritus of Australian National University’s Department of Pacific and
Asian
History. Concentrating on the Chinese and Malay, he explores the
differences
between eastern and western piracy, and how Europe’s colonial expansion
altered
how people saw pirates.
- Peter
D. Shapinsky, assistant professor of East
Asian history at the University of Illinois at Springfield, examines
perceptions of piracy in “From Sea Bandits to Sea Lords: Nonstate
Violence and
Pirate Identities in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Japan.” By
examining
various historical and cultural contexts, he shows how these
perceptions
changed from mercenaries and pirates to legitimate, state-sponsored sea
lords.
- A
research fellow at the Centre of Asian
Studies, University of Hong Kong, James K. Chin specializes in the
history of
maritime Asia. His use of contemporary Chinese and Portuguese accounts
in
“Merchants, Smugglers, and Pirates: Multinational Clandestine Trade on
the
South China Coast, 1520-50” show not only the negative impact, but also
the
positive influences on these groups had on the Chinese economy.
- “Pirates,
Gunpowder, and Christianity in Late
Sixteenth-Century Japan,” written by Maria Grazia Petrucci, a doctoral
student in
the University of British Columbia specializing in Japanese history,
analyzes
how Europeans, merchants, and pirates interacted to manufacture and
smuggle
gunpowder.
- Igawa
Kenji, associate professor of the Graduate
School of Letters at Osaka University, discusses the impact Chinese and
Japanese pirates had on sea routes that established the Philippine
Islands as
an important player in international trade in “At the Crossroads:
Limahon and
Wakō in Sixteenth-Century
Philippines.” The key points examined are: a) when and why the
Philippines became
a crossroads; b) who the pirates were and what their role was in this
development; and c) the relationship between piracy and trade in this
period,
especially as regards interactions between the Philippines and Japan.
- Paola
Calanca studies Ming and Qing navies and
is an associate professor of history at the École
Française d’Extrême-Orient.
In “Piracy and Coastal Security in Southeastern China, 1600-1780,” she
explores
how government bans on maritime trade forced people to become pirates
and
smugglers. She then demonstrates how reversals in state policies turned
supporters
of piracy into opponents.
- Professor
of Chinese and comparative history at
the University of Macau and author of Pirates
in the Age of Sail, Robert J. Antony examines the rise of
piracy
and the
roles these bandits played in “Piracy and the Shadow Economy in the
South China
Sea, 1780-1810.” He demonstrates how this illicit trade impacted the
economy
from both a negative and positive perspective.
- Robert
Hellyer’s case study, “Poor but Not
Pirates: The Tsushima Domain and Foreign Relations in Early Modern
Japan,” is a
case study scrutinizes how and why Tsushima, an island and piracy haven
in the
sixteenth century, changed through the intervention of agreements with
Korea.
He also considers how and why they refrained from reverting to their
piratical
ways when beset by economic hardship in the seventeenth century.
Hellyer is an assistant
professor of history at Wake Forest University, whose specialty is
early modern
and modern Japanese history.·
- Ota Atsushi, assistant research fellow at the Center
of Asia-Pacific Area Studies, Research Center for Humanities and Social
Sciences, Academia Sinica in Taipei, studies Southeast Asia’s maritime
history.
His essay, “The Business of Violence: Piracy around Riau, Lingga, and
Singapore, 1820-40,” focuses on how pirates worked, their military and
commercial networks, and how the Europeans and locals dealt with piracy.
- “Smuggling in the South China Sea: Alternate
Histories of a Nonstate Space in the Late Nineteenth and Late Twentieth
Centuries” concludes this collection. Eric Tagliacozzo – an associate
professor
at Cornell University who teaches Southeast Asian history and Asian
studies –
examines smuggling in two centuries to show how the past influences the
present.
This
noteworthy study contains an abundance of material that
is enhanced with illustrations, maps, chapter notes, and a detailed
bibliography
and index. As Antony, who also edits this volume, writes in his
introduction, “this
the first book to carefully examine piracy and smuggling from [in-depth
historical and comparative perspectives] for the whole East and
Southeast Asian
region.” Not only do these essays
accomplish
this goal, but they skillfully show that eastern piracy greatly differs
from
that of the west, and that we need to study it from that perspective,
more so
than that of the colonial powers who forced their definition of piracy
onto
this region.
The other strength of Elusive
Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers is it explores the past, rather than
focusing
on the present, as many recent books have. In doing so, these scholars
provide
readers with a better understanding of “the problems of piracy and
smuggling .
. . [and] that they are deep-rooted, complex, and evolving phenomena.”
Review Copyrighted ©2010
Cindy Vallar
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Pirates
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