Introduction: Piracy and occasional state power

Pirates and states

Maritime predation has been a lens through which developments in the legal, political, economic, imperial and social history of the sea have been viewed. Making use of Roman philosopher Cicero’s oft-quoted oration in the first century BC, which defined pirates as communis hostis omnium (‘the common foe of all the world’), piracy is often pitched as the first crime to fall under universal jurisdiction. ¹ In practice, however, historians have shown that states conflicted over the legitimacy of maritime predation in different regions, and mariners employed various legal strategies to provide a veil of legitimacy for their activities. States drew the boundaries between licit and illicit maritime predation on a case-by-case basis. ² By the early eighteenth century, European laws had enshrined licit maritime predation as ‘privateering’, which was not abolished until 1856 by the states that signed the Declaration of Paris. ³

However, European states continued to be unwilling to advance outright universal claims to piracy jurisdiction and non-European polities continued to resist such pretentions. As Benton and Ford argue, attempts to order the oceans in the early and mid nineteenth century – including the right to suppress pirates – remained reliant on an ‘awkward combination of bilateral treaties, municipal law, admiralty law, and diplomatic negotiation’. ⁴ This meant that anti-piracy measures remained regionally focused and dependent on imperial bureaucracy, inter-imperial cooperation and mediation surrounding the legality of various forms of maritime predation. ⁵ European law and bilateral agreements were then absorbed into international law as it was formalised in the second half of the nineteenth century. As Chadwick has recently shown, these principles were later enshrined in the United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea (1982), which defined piracy as a universal crime when committed on the high seas, but which required enforcement at a municipal level. ⁶ Piracies occurring in territorial waters continued to fall under the domestic jurisdiction of the state policing those waters. ⁷ Far from exercising universal jurisdiction, therefore, states suppressed and continue to suppress piracy based on a combination of legal instruments and geopolitical posturing. States, therefore, project their presumed power over pirates occasionally and differently in diverse circumstances.

In European cases, questions of maritime predation came to the fore in the fifteenth century, when new maritime zones were encountered in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. European states attempted to monopolize their interactions with the polities in these newly accessible regions, leading to the creation of distinctive legal zones. ⁸ As Kempe states, these were not lawless zones subject to ‘the rule of force alone’, but instead prompted the use of ‘conflicting legal strategies’ to justify private maritime violence. ⁹ States then attempted to impose a unified imperial framework over these developing maritime empires. For example, Northern European states like England and the Netherlands explicitly and implicitly supported maritime predation in the sixteenth century as a means to obstruct Iberian overseas enterprise. This meant that the colonisation schemes of those states began with a focus on plundering Iberian shipping and settlements, influencing where, when and how their colonies formed. ¹⁰ In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the desire to boost state revenue through closed imperial markets encouraged European attempts to impose centralised control over their dominions and curtail piracy. However, as Koot and Hanna argue, states did not have the resources to enforce these measures and, instead, relied on colonial compliance, which only occurred on the few occasions when colonists came to believe that following imperial regulations outweighed the many benefits of supporting private maritime operations. This happened sporadically and largely depended on the commercial connections between colonies and European markets. ¹¹ Anderson and Starkey, in their global histories of piracy, offer a similar assessment in which the primary causal factors of piracy are episodic wars and fluctuating economies, which generate unstable labour markets and trigger demands for black-market goods provided by pirates. These predatory societies are only suppressed when markets become stable and licit trade increases. ¹² Whether as a result of wars or obstructive commercial regulations, pirates relied on the existence of markets where they could sell their plundered goods and it was only when these markets declined that piracy also declined. This effort depended on state negotiation with maritime communities, incorporating their interests within the imperial framework to ensure their compliance.

Pirates were not merely a problem for European states and their empires. European activity beyond the Cape of Good Hope helped catalyse the development of armed commerce in the Indian Ocean. Sovereign authorities in the region acted to suppress such activities. ¹³ When Mughal rulers proved incapable of checking maritime depredations, they turned to European maritime powers for assistance. In doing so, Mughal authorities recognised European maritime law in Indian waters, but its legitimacy was underpinned by Mughal sovereignty. ¹⁴ The introduction of European maritime law to the Indian Ocean would have implications further afield in the Malay Archipelago. Maritime predation in this region was an important economic activity and many sovereigns sanctioned sea raiding as a form of warfare or statecraft. European imperial agents could delegitimise sovereignties by labelling such activity as piracy and using such stigmatisations to justify violent intervention. ¹⁵ Chinese authorities, many of whom considered various rulers in Southeast Asia under the suzerainty of the emperor, also tried to suppress maritime depredation. Bans on maritime trade rendered the activities of the many Chinese living in Southeast Asia illegal, turning them into smugglers and pirates. Chinese rulers also used accusations of piracy to delegitimise authority in the Malay Archipelago. ¹⁶ In China itself, piracy was endemic, and, during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties, it confronted some of the most prolific pirates, such as Zheng Chenggong (a.k.a. Koxinga), whose forces drove the Dutch from Taiwan, and the wife of Zheng Yi, whose confederation of over 50,000 pirates dwarfed the bands of the most infamous pirates of the Caribbean. ¹⁷ State authorities in China, as Sander Molenaar’s article in this Forum demonstrates, resorted to a variety of measures to deal with pirates, all of which had limited effect as evidenced by the pervasiveness of piracy in the late imperial period. ¹⁸

When imperial states attempted to stem the impact of maritime predation, they not only sought to better regulate their own subjects, but also led persistent campaigns to define the activities of rival groups, communities or empires as piratical. This provided justification for aggressive action against these groups to extend greater sovereignty over these spaces. As Risso argues, applying the term piracy to purposefully misrepresent the practices of commercial competitors was one tool employed by imperial powers to justify the suppression of these rivals, whether achieved through force or treaty relationships. ¹⁹ Calling regional competitors pirates was instrumental to the extension of imperial state power, particularly in Asian waters at the expense of indigenous sovereignties; as Kwan’s article in this Forum shows, extending state power in that manner often relied on collaboration and compromise between multiple regional state powers. ²⁰

Across the history of maritime predation, the state has attempted to arbitrate maritime violence, facilitating or suppressing plunder by sea depending on whether specific forms of predation fit within broader developments in state or imperial formation. Regulating plunder in this way forms part of a broader move by states to claim a monopoly on violence and absorb maritime predation into state or interstate control. This has encouraged the description of anti-piracy campaigns as campaigns of ‘terror’, in which the state utilises coercive violence through naval supremacy and capital punishment to aggressively suppress pirates. ²¹ Other anti-piracy measures recognise the necessity of collaboration and compliance, in which the decline of piracy is reliant less on the overt power of states and more on communal recognition of the benefits of operating within an overarching legal framework. ²² Even so, anti-piracy campaigns required considerable projection of state power, as they relied on the ability of the state to extend its reach over often remote maritime communities and waterways. Since intermittent occurrences of piracy combined with the constantly fluctuating limits of state resources, anti-piracy campaigns were largely reactive and targeted specific regions where maritime predation posed the most predominant problem. ²³ These were not universal in either scope or intent, and depended on the willingness, determination and resources of the impacted states to respond to the threat of piracy, often through political, commercial or diplomatic pressure. Piracy may represent a recurring problem throughout the world’s oceans, but for individual polities it poses an episodic issue that meets with varying responses.

The means and methods of occasional state power over the sea

As this Forum reveals, state power manifested against the problem of piracy in many ways. ‘Occasional state power’ reflected the reality of states’ limited abilities to project power and control over sea space, which regularly proved fragmented and short-lived. In particular, the application of state power to defining and combating maritime predation has been inconsistent and sporadic. Whether a given state tackles a problem of piracy depends on its interest in doing so and the legal, political, economic and martial resources available to it. In addition to naval force and imperial expansion, states also used laws and courts (Hu), local actions (Molenaar), interstate cooperation (Kwan), and co-optation (Cavell) among other measures to deal with the problem of piracy. Many of these policies were only deployed contingently against pirates. Without permanent control over the waters that pirates inhabited, state power, when used for the suppression of piracy, was only ever occasional and often limited in effect.

Examining domestic maritime disputes in medieval England, Hu utilises the opposing petitions of two port communities to discuss the importance of local participation and petitionary language in shaping royal intervention and outcomes in regional disputes. Hu explains that conflicts surrounding coastal jurisdiction between Great Yarmouth and the Cinque Ports, both on England’s east coast, led to violent encounters at sea between mariners of the two ports. This then created a ‘cycle of royal mediation’, in which intermittent royal intervention attempted to effect peace between the two communities after the outbreak of serious violence. This, however, proved ineffective in stemming overall hostilities, which continued unabated until the next eruption of major aggressions forced the Crown into renewed intervention and arbitration. As the Crown proved unable to produce any real change, the onus for meaningful mediation fell on the communities themselves, which could choose when to actively engage and cooperate with the arbitration process. This could then be exploited as a means to demonstrate loyalty to the Crown to the direct detriment of regional rivals. In 1316, as Hu demonstrates, the petitioners from the Cinque Ports purposefully aligned their interests in highly localised disputes with Great Yarmouth with that of the Crown’s sovereign interests. To do so, the petitioners employed language that instead reflected a broader disrespect of, and opposition towards, royal authority. Hu argues that the Portsmen proved more adept at this than the Yarmouth petitioners, highlighting that their successful manoeuvring was due to their political literacy at a time when King Edward II faced considerable internal and external threats. The occasional extension of state power even within domestic waters, then, relied on the support and political manoeuvrings of maritime communities that recognised that cooperation with the state could advance their interests against regional rivals.

This idea finds resonance in Molenaar’s assessment of coastal banditry on the southern coast of China during the Ming dynasty, which reveals the limits of state agents’ authority in two counties in separate provinces. ²⁴ Through a critical reading of local gazetteers, Molenaar not only examines state responses to piracy, but also offers insight into the society and environment in which the pirates existed. Due to demographic, economic and environmental pressures, banditry was endemic in South China. ²⁵ Molenaar argues that the administrative system of the Ming Empire, and the beliefs and ideals held by its officials, clouded local authorities’ understanding of the situations within their jurisdictions that caused banditry. Ming officials attempted to impose an agrarian ideology and system of rule on maritime regions that did not conform to the model envisioned by their administrators. When Ming officials were familiar with the circumstances of their jurisdictions and had ties to local elites, as in the case of Zhou Xuan, Molenaar points out that the state could effectively suppress coastal banditry. The Ming administrative system, however, rotated officials from post to post to prevent them from building a local power base. The example of Zhou’s successor reveals that even forceful displays of state power, such as the violent suppression of piracy, failed to prevent banditry for long. The dissonance between state-dictated agrarian ideals and the realities of life on the coasts of Guangdong and Fujian prevented officials from effectively dealing with the problem of banditry. In this case, even occasionally potent state power proved unable to suppress piracy in Ming South China.

Imperial officials not only struggled to suppress piracy during the Ming period but, as Kwan demonstrates, piracy continued to pose a substantial problem in South China in the mid-nineteenth century. Trade with China, the colonisation of Hong Kong, and the opening of the treaty ports gave Britain a stake in the suppression of piracy in Chinese waters. From Hong Kong, British officials could impose their own understandings of piracy and maritime law off the coast of China. ²⁶ Britain enforced its version of maritime law with the might of the Royal Navy, the most powerful naval force in the world at the time. Yet, even at the height of its maritime dominance, Britain struggled to suppress piracy around the island of Hong Kong. The limits of state power in China drove British officers to rely on cooperation from Qing officials as well as Portuguese and American naval forces for assistance in dealing with piracy. Focusing on an international punitive expedition to Coulan – an island at the southwest corner of the Canton Delta – in 1854, Kwan reveals the destructive potential of interstate exercises of power against pirates. Even extreme violence by international coalitions had a limited effect in checking piratical activity for long. The 1854 expedition produced some results, but subsequent cooperative expeditions to Coulan suggest that violent interstate power in the region was occasional and limited. Persistent piracy around Coulan, which continued well into the twentieth century, is testament to the limits of state and interstate power in maritime South China.

Earlier in the century, piracy had also posed a problem in the Americas. Cavell shows that in early nineteenth-century New Orleans, Jean Laffite operated a successful privateering and smuggling ring for the predominantly French inhabitants of the city. Despite its French and Spanish roots, however, after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, New Orleans existed in a ‘frontier’ zone of the Gulf Coast claimed – but not directly controlled by – the new United States government. Cavell notes that most of the residents of New Orleans were sceptical of US authority and outwardly supported Laffite’s business. As a result, he was able to mass up to 1,000 men as part of his privateer squadron based on the island of Grand Terre in Barataria Bay, which served as a ‘back door’ to New Orleans through bayou waters. Lafitte and his men used that channel to smuggle goods and slaves regularly to the grateful inhabitants of the city. Between 1803 and 1815, Laffite enjoyed a level of ‘civic protection’ because people wanted the goods he brought in, especially after Thomas Jefferson’s embargo hurt the city’s economy. Despite Laffite’s unimpeachable local status, Cavell asserts, US authorities sought to exert state power and curtail his operations, though they lacked the resources and the opportunity to do so. That situation changed once New Orleans became ground zero in the War of 1812 and Laffite’s reputation as the respectable rogue started to work against him, particularly after rumours spread that he had dealt with British naval vessels off the coast in 1814. Although Laffite did not aid the British commander, his former protectors took the opportunity to paint him as a pariah. To regain his place, Laffite began working alongside US General Andrew Jackson to defend the city against the British. Cavell reminds us that ‘the weakness of state military power allowed Laffite to, once again, make himself indispensable’. Jackson lacked the resources in this frontier zone to combat his enemies on his own, and was forced to offer an amnesty to the Barataria men. Because state power was thin on the ground, New Orleans was in part preserved for the United States by its leading French pirate.

Conclusion

As the examples from this Forum show, different states in diverse periods had disparate means of dealing with piracy. In medieval England, monarchs failed to produce meaningful change when port communities came into conflict with one another; instead, royal mediation was exploited to advance community interests against rivals. On the southern coast of the Ming Empire, local officials, who often attempted to govern according to agrarian ideals unsuited to their jurisdictions, were tasked with controlling waterborne banditry. In early nineteenth-century Louisiana, US federal agents and naval forces had limited success in reigning in the activity of pirate-smugglers like Jean Lafitte. On the other side of the world, British colonial authority in Hong Kong, although backed by the might of the Royal Navy, had to rely on cooperation with other state actors to suppress piracy in the mid-nineteenth century. In each instance, state power took on different forms when deployed against pirates with ambivalent results. These responses demonstrate the manifestations and limits of state power in different regions at different times, and their study is an important contribution to the history of piracy and occasional state power. The legal, administrative and martial tactics, as well as policies of co-optation and cooperation, used by states across time and place were only deployed occasionally and proved to be inadequate solutions to the problem of piracy.