Pirates

With respect to regional violence in particular, the study of pirates has received considerable attention in the scholarly literature. While some stu­dies have highlighted the importance of endemic societal violence in shaping the world views and culture of late imperial pirates,^[209] others have focused on the state's responses to piracy, most notably in the mid sixteenth century, during the so-called wokou (Japanese pirate) crises.^[210] In the Ming, most wokou pirates were actually amphibious bandits that were not only Japanese but also Chinese and even sea rovers from as far afield as Africa.

In reality, the wokou never constituted a serious challenge to Ming authority, but they symbolised dynastic corruption, inefficiency and military weakness in the mid sixteenth century. The state's inability to deal with this minor threat on its coasts eventually led the Ming to develop a more formidable navy, which acquitted itself quite well in the struggle against Japan in the 1590s. Initially, the Ming embarked upon a two-pronged strategy to eradicate the pirate threat. The first was the lifting of the general ban on maritime trade in 1567 by the Ming Emperor Longqing (r. 1567-72). The second was the general revival of Ming military power carried out under the auspices of the emperor's top adviser, Zhang Juzheng (1525-82), a patron of General Qi Jiguang (1528-88). In addition to appointing competent officers to important commands, Zhang believed in bolstering the Ming defences along the coast by improving the early warning systems and reconstructing decaying walls and other coastal defences.

Piracy would revive towards the end of the eighteenth century as pirate leagues flourished in coastal south-eastern China. Historians have offered differing interpretations as to the primary causes of this revival. One inter­pretation blames political unrest in Vietnam, connected to a popular rebel­lion known as the Tay Son Uprising.^[211] Another focuses on domestic social and environmental causes related to Qing population expansion and resource exhaustion.^[212] In any case, the Qing managed to eventually solve the pirate problem through traditional means of coercion and diplomacy, and because the pirates were not especially technologically advanced, they were not forced to develop significant new naval technologies to defeat these primarily amphibious bandits. This would have serious repercussions four decades later with China's dealings with the West.