This is the third part of the series violence for profit and the second on piracy. The podcast is available here or you can see the podcast here: http://historyontherun.libsyn.com/webpage
You’ve all probably heard of Captain Kidd sometime in your life. However, you probably don’t know all that much about him. Think for a second. Do you know which oceans he plundered? Can you tell me anything of his character? Probably not. He’s one of the pirates that everyone has heard of, but nobody knows anything about. So, who was Captain Kidd. Well, we know he was born in Scotland in 1654 and he had a hard life which drove him to sea for a living and over the next two decades of his life he learned his trade. In February 1689 at the age of 35 he was a part of the crew of the privateer ship the Sainte Rose, a French ship. Now, operating with a French ship wasn’t too bad for Kidd and the other British sailors, but when the news broke about how Britain was now at war with France they were operating in the middle of any enemy ship! Kidd and the others pleaded fealty to the mostly French crew, but when they attacked the island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean Kidd and the other British sailors doubled back to the boat, overpowered the crew, and returned as champions to a British port. The governor let Kidd keep the ship and he named it the Blessed William. Unfortunately, Kidd was double-crossed by a portion of the crew and was left stranded on the island of Antigua. After a year he was able to capture a ship and return to sea where he pursued the men who left him stranded. He named the ship Antigua after the island he had been marooned on. That led him to New York where he became a member of the gentry there and engaged in trade, privateering ventures, and was a father of two. Kidd desperately wanted to become a captain in the British Navy, but he did not have the pedigree or money to make it happen. He became involved with several businessmen who were putting together a privateering expedition along the West African Coast.
This is where things began to unravel. Kidd’s crew was the most desperate of crews. To be someone who would want to go to sea in such abysmal conditions took a special type of desperation. To get men to join the royal navy they would often use press gangs who would get you drunk and let you wake up aboard one of Her Majesty’s ships. This added to the fact that a third of his crew had died of a sickness after just starting caused some last minute recruiting of the dregs. These men wanted money and after 18 straight months of no rich targets they were not happy with their Captain.
Kidd had decided to go after targets along the West African Coast and to swing through the Indian Ocean looking for targets. His hope was to find pirates operating on this seaway where there were many plump Indian and Arab targets to choose from. Unfortunately, after no good legal targets to choose from Kidd picked one of the not-so-legal targets. He attacked an Indian vessel (really British) and took the cargo. It was worth about 6000 in today’s dollars. On his way back his ship fell apart, half of his crew deserted, and they had taken some of the goods, so he used the Indian vessel to travel back to the Caribbean. Lamentably, he found that he was now a wanted pirate when he got back, and all of his financial backers, including Richard Coote the governor of New York, had turned against poor Captain Kidd. When Kidd returned he was tried publicly and was found guilty of piracy. It was quite a sensation on the streets and the name of captain Kidd and piracy in general was discussed quite a lot in upper circles who debated the trial of the would be aristocrat gone bad. Kidd was led to the scaffold as he shouted he was innocent and then hung in front of a cheering crowd. His body would be put in a cage and posted on the banks of the River Thames. The bulk of Kidd’s loot would go towards building a hospital for injured sailors in London.
Kidd was not a successful pirate. I simply chose to tell his story because it is an interesting yet little known tale. He was a victim of the changing times that would come, in twenty years to wipe out the Golden Age of Pirates. Peace was bad for the business of privateers and the new northern European powers tried to destroy the monster they had created over the past 100 years. While many privateers switched careers to the shipping industry, other, more bloodthirsty men, went the way of the pirate. The royal navies suddenly had hundreds of men who sailed under their own flag and were crazy for blood, gold, and loot. They were unlike the semi-aristocratic men like Morgan and Kidd. They were the common sailor who were the more violent types and could not simply switch livelihoods that easily. The Royal navies were the most active during the Golden Age and slowly brought it to a close.
So, let us again switch scenery. Piracy was coming to an end in much of the Western Oceans, but I have not yet talked about the East. The first recorded incidence of piracy in China occurred in AD 589, but despite its lack of acknowledgment in the historical record it is likely that piracy was alive and well in the South China Sea well before that. When a dynasty was powerful in China the emperor would have the strength to reign in piratical activities. During times of unrest or weakness the pirates would basically create their own fiefdoms and attack any ships that went their way. Let me read a section from Angus Konstam’s book: Piracy: The Complete History to show something:
“In fact, the business of piracy was different in China from anywhere else in the world. For a start, piracy was highly organized. Rather than operating in individual ships or even small groups, pirates congregated into fleets. Instead of occupying small havens, Chinese pirates tended to control large sections of the coast…However, for the most part these Chinese pirate confederations or empires kept well away from politics, and simply ruled their pirate fiefdoms as independent states.”
These pirates operated basically up until the Europeans arrived and were driven out, but during their heyday they ruled the water. In 1661 Koxinga attacked the island of Formosa which was under Dutch control with 400 ships and 25,000 pirates. Koxinga was the son of Cheng Chi-Lung, another pirate king who crossed the Manchu or Qing Dynasty and both he and his son payed the price and were eventually defeated. After the fall of Koxinga’s pirate empire at the end of the 17th century in 1681 the pirates would be fragmented for 100 years until Cheng Yih who would create an empire just as large. Cheng was born in Vietnam and his family has been in the piracy business for generations. Cheng Yih expanded his operations to the North in Kwangtung and would bully other pirates to follow his flag. By 1805 Cheng Yih had created a pirate league that dominated the South China Sea. Cheng divided up his forces into six fleets. A black, red, white, blue, yellow, and green fleet sailed the South Sea. Each of these fleets would dominate their area, control the seas, make ships pay to get through, and dominate trades like the Opium trade which had thousands of Chinese addicts. Cheng Yih personally controlled the largest of these fleets which had 600 ships and 30,000 pirates under his control, and, if all the fleets were to be merged together Cheng Yih could muster a force of 150,000 pirates and 1,200 ships which is the largest pirate fleet ever. If anyone threated Cheng’s Empire he could easily bring together all the fleets and beat off the Europeans or any attempt by the Imperial government to restrict him, which they didn’t really want to.
Imagine that. 150,000 pirates……that is something that you can’t even begin to imagine. Imagine being a European sailor, knowing that you will be sailing through waters where 150,000 pirates are spread out between you and where you want to go? Imagine that were you today. Would you go? Would you invest in a boat that might go there? You know the largest you might get in a pirate fleet in 2,000 or so pirates, but in the East we have forces of 150,000. He could even defeat European forces such as in 1804 where he beat a Portuguese fleet that was sent out to beat him.
Tragically Cheng Yih’s career took a tragic end when he died during a voyage in 1807. His wife Cheng Shi took over his massive Empire as he had no sons. However, Cheng Shi would not have much time at the helm as her Empire began to crumble. The different fleets began to fight each other, the British began to bring in more ships and fight piracy, and Imperial forces began to try to bring the opium trade under control. In 1810, after three years of rule, she accepted an Imperial offer of amnesty and retired to control a sector of the opium trade. The British would begin to dominate the Chinese market and Chinese politics and they began by defeating piracy and making the waters safe for free trade. The last major force was defeated at the Red River Delta where 1,800 pirates and 58 ships were destroyed by the British Navy as it swept down the Chinese coast.
Piracy has not died. Today it is still a major threat to world shipping, but it is nothing like what it was. There are no massive armies that terrorize Europe, no forces of 150,000, and nothing that can challenge the modern navies. For the most part these modern pirates operate in small groups in speed boats that cruise the waters around Somalia and the area around the Philippines and Indonesia where there is a lot of boats and a lot of nooks and crannies for pirates to hide in. Everyone remembers when the Somalian pirates took Richard Phillips, an American captain of the Maersk Alabama was taken hostage and then saved by Navy Seal snipers.
So, let’s discuss some trends in piracy and pirate history. For one we can note that piracy has always existed and it will probably always exist. The ancient Egyptians experienced piracy and we still deal with pirates today. We can analyze the historical trend in piracy however. Pirates, privateers, and others who profit from raiding all live for anarchy. One of the terms that historians have created that can help explain the lack of piracy in most parts of the world today is Pax Britannica and Pax Americana. Let me explain Pax Britannica first. When Britain began to dominate the waves and cut out its empire it began to become the most powerful country in the world. The beginning of Pax Britannica begins at the fall of Napoleon and ends with the two World Wars that crippled the British Empire giving it a 200 percent debt to GDP ratio, a bombed out country, and a much weaker navy. During that time Britain destroyed piracy in every major ocean, spread parliamentary democracy around the world, and helped police international conflict. The 19th Century saw barely any conflict and very few wars. It was the failure of this international system that Britain led that saw a return once more to trouble on international waters as nations. After the two World Wars America took over Britain’s role as globocop and continued the patrolling of waters and the commitment to free trade. Today America has the most to benefit from keeping the sea lanes free of pirates and therefore commits resources to do so. While Britain did have a navy that was the most powerful in the world during Pax Britannica, America today arguably has both the most powerful navy and army which may cause Pax Americana to last longer than Pax Britannica did. It’s an amazing thing to examine, but, as the Human Security Reports say there has been a dramatic and steady downfall in violence every decade since the Second World War. That means that the 90’s were more peaceful than the 80’s which were more peaceful than the 70’s and so on.
From an economic point of view it has been said that piracy can be merely a way for countries to put a tariff on the goods of other richer countries that might not want to trade with it. For example in Somalia the piracy trade is one of the largest generators of wealth in the country. Piracy can in many ways be a libertarian’s dream way of fighting wars. When a country declares war on another it can profit from charging for letters of marque from privateers. The only problem with that approach, as the British found out, it is hard to make those privateers go away when you want peace. Some nations, such as the Barbary States made it into an entire industry and relied on the corsairs for both revenue and power. Another thing that pirates provided in terms of economic benefit was a free form of national defense. Pirates such as Henry Morgan were really the only thing between the Spanish and the settlers of Jamaica. For the pirates themselves piracy was simply a business, a trade, a means of life. Most of the men who engaged in true lawless piracy were probably mentally ill in some way, but most privateers liked to think of themselves as patriots and would not attack their own countries ships under any circumstances.
Now, the economic effects to the global markets from piracy are large. For one, it raises the costs of global trade by making insurance costs go up. The costs go up even higher as the wages you have to pay for sailing through pirate infested waters must be higher than without. Lastly, the amount of goods being sent decreases as fewer businesses can cope with the costs of sending their product to market. Less goods for the same supply makes prices go up, trade goes down, and decreases globalization. While some might argue that the taxes that go towards the Navy outweigh the costs associated with piracy it is ultimately incorrect if we look at the historical record. As British sea power grew piracy decreased and globalization began to occur. If anything, we know that markets like an absence of war, piracy, and violence to work best. We can also see that as you invest in a global market the costs of that market go down as countries get incentives to police their own waters. All across Europe we don’t see any piracy anymore because as liberal capitalism spreads, so too spreads governments that want trade and don’t want piracy. If you let piracy defeat globalization by providing no police we could see a slide back into the era when armadas of 150,000 pirates sailed the high seas.
Piracy: The Complete History by Angus Konstam
Empire of Blue Sea by Stephan Talty
http://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-11542&y=-7598&z=5
Piracy and World History: An Economic Perspective on Maritime Predation by J. L. Anderson From the Journal of World History,
the Human Security Report http://www.hsrgroup.org/human-security-reports/human-security-report.aspx
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