"Ride the Wave" A Review: Pirates, Ports, and Coasts in Asia: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

In his essay on Problems of a Definition, Michael Pearson highlights exactly this, that the nature of piracy in our colloquial acquisition has in some ways come to starkly contrast the extreme violence of historical conceptions. Furthermore, Pearson deconstructs the notion of what piracy means from its early Greco-roman origins to forms of sanctioned piracy such as privateering or allowed piracy, to create buffer zones between larger systems of governance during the era of European dominated empires. Finally, he concludes that outright piracy in and of itself is a relatively minor threat to global governance today when compared to the smuggling of drugs and people, environmental change and the “military adventurism” of the United States. (24)

The first part of Pirates, Ports and Coasts, which focuses on “East Asia,” demonstrates the fluidity of the Sino-Vietnamese border dating back to the transition period between the Ming and Qing dynasties. Here, Robert Anthony focuses on the fascinating narrative of the port of Giang Binh, which was known as a heaven for black market activity during the late eighteen and early nineteenth centuries. Giang Binh, here, although it was admitted as within Vietnamese territory, is reported from Chinese eyes as a dastardly port, which might been seen in association with the Tây Sơn rebels, whom in turn relied upon the plunder based economy of the South China Sea. The South China Sea, which Anthony reports had 50,000 recorded pirates in 1802 was a natural offshoot of the Chinese economy, and Giang Binh itself, as it operated within the two realms of East and Southeast Asia do not fit “preconceived” notions of regionalism but rather represented “a world unto itself.” (46)

Within this region unto itself, Hoang Anh Tuan draws on a truly remarkable array of Dutch and Vietnamese language sources in order to explore the strategy of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the ports of the north-eastern coastline of Vietnam during the early modern period and argue that, in fact, global concerns over the dominance of shipping routes and access to Chinese gold and musk markets were the leading causes in the VOC’s Tonkin Gulf policy. This policy, although unsuccessful, caused the VOC to maintain formal ties and a factory in nortnern Vietnam until the eighteenth century, a fact that complicates the geo-political map of the Sino-Vietnamese frontier during this period.

Paola Calanca’s analysis of South Fujian the Disputed Coast further complicates the notions of a monolithic Sinitic identity during the period of the eighteenth century through an exploration of the power dynamics of local family holdings as local officials found power in the expanding bureaucracy due to the need to police the southern coastline. The need to police this coastline was furthermore a justification for European interventionism in John Klienen’s fascinating exploration of Maritime Piracy through a Barbarian Lens. Here Klienen takes a page from James Scott’s Weapons of the Weak in order to argue that “In incidents in which peasants resorted to banditry…they did not do so spontaneously, but as instruments of elites and warlords fighting their own wars against other state makers to subdue or overthrow them” (103) and concludes that therefore this evidence disproves Foucault’s argument that the Ancien Regime was replaced by a modern prison state, since executions persist up until the present. (120)

The notions of contemporary piracy in the second partition to Pirates, Ports and Coasts in Asia are not generally reserved for the last two essays in the volume. As with Part I, Southeast Asia begins with Andian Lapian’s analysis of Violence and Armed Robbery in Indonesian States, which is not only rooted in a firm historiographical analysis of the questions of slaving, raiding and trading in Southeast Asia, but also an analysis of Piracy Today that concludes that piracy in the contemporary context exists only through the complacency of corrupt governmental policing agencies. (144)

Gerrit Knaap further blurs the lines between the complacency of governments that decry “uncivilized” against pirates, while at the same time offering measures of complacency in his contribution on Robbers and Trader. Knaap focuses on the example of early-modern Papuan piracy in order to argue that this practice is not “macro-parasitism” as it has been viewed in the past, but rather that piracy in this context relates directly to the dominant export of seventeenth century Papua, which was a market for local individuals established by the local elite, who sought to capitalize on whatever market exports could be extracted from hinterland regions. (169)

A volume on Pirates Ports and Coast in Asia certainly could not have been completed without a contribution from James Warren, whose work on Singapore and The Sulu Zone will be in the minds of scholars who are concerned about the issues of human trafficking, local governance, and global markets for generations to come. In this analysis of The Port of Jolo Warren’s contribution emphasizes the degree to which the discourse on piracy was in fact an outgrowth of the search for a justification for the expansion of Catholic Spanish colonial dominance over the profitable market lanes of Insular Southeast Asia, where “The slave raiding activities of the Balangingi would be severely curtailed by the advent of steam gunboats.” (195)

The discourse of the European colonial system verses the sovereignty of inter-regional elites remains as a central focus in the work of Esther Velthoen in the intriguing analysis of Pirates in the Periphery. Velthoen’s exploration of the Bugis peoples demonstrates that the presupposed stability of the colonial system encouraged the movement of the Bugis to the Sulawesi archipelago, a further periphery, from which they could more easily continue their previous practice of intermediaries between hinterland peoples of the islands and what were increasingly becoming European dominated trade networks. Although the colonial governance of the Dutch would continue to expand, Velthoen concludes “the advent of the colonial state to areas such as eastern Sulawesi, which had been the last refuge for raiders, was by no mean the end of piracy.” (217) As such, Pirates, Ports and Coasts in Asia concludes with a three selections that demonstrate the modern and contemporary relevance of the examination of piracy, policing, and human trafficking in Southeast Asia, from Stefan Eklof Amirell, Carolin Liss, and Ikuya Tokoro.

Brought artfully together in a complementary format that demonstrates the clear strengths of each author, these collected essays reveal not only the troubling discourse around the practice, but also the definitions of piracy straight to the contemporary present. As such, this volume demonstrates the considerable achievements and considerations of John Kleinen and Manon Osseweijer in their approach to Pirates, Ports, and Coasts in Asia.