Download Revisiting Chinese Pirates in the Ming Dynasty: From Global

Revisiting Chinese Pirates in the Ming Dynasty: From Global Perspective Michael Wing‐hin Kam Hong Kong Baptist University Abstract The European powers started their "globalization" process since the sixteenth century. By the virtue of their leading maritime and military technologies, Portugal, Spain and the Dutch expanded their commercial empires globally. Since Chinese goods such as silk were popular in Europe and the European communities in the New World, the European were keen to open up trade with China. Different with the European who saw trade as a pure economic activity, the Ming court regarded it as political and diplomatic means which aimed to uphold the Chinese world order. The European powers, especially Portugal and the Dutch, then sought cooperation with Chinese pirates who possessed strong naval forces, regional trading networks and personal connections with local bureaucracy. The Ming court saw pirates negatively. Chinese words such as "dau" (盜), "kou" (寇) were commonly used in official records to label Chinese pirates whose illegal activities endangered public safety and caused property damage and loss of life. But Chinese pirates in fact were not devoid of any merit. In global perspective, the clandestine trade operated by them in coastal areas led China to participate in global economy. When a quarrel between the Dutch and the Ming court about trade intensified, the powerful pirate in South China Sea, Zheng Zhilong (鄭芝龍), sided with the Ming court and assisted the latter defeat the Dutch invasion in 1633.