Globalization and Its Counter-forces in Southeast Asia

9. Maritime Piracy and Raiding in Southeast Asia: Local and Global Perspectives

207 Maritime Piracy in Southeast Asia 207 9 MARITIME PIRACY AND RAIDING IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: LOCAL AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES Stefan Eklöf Amirell INTRODUCTION: ‘PIRACY’ IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN HISTORY Along with the West Indies and the Mediterranean, maritime Southeast Asia (here meant to include the whole maritime region from the Andaman Sea in the west to Taiwan and the Luzon Strait in the east) has throughout history been one of the classical pirate regions of the world. Many early observers of Southeast Asia, from Faxian in the fifth century toTomé Pires in the sixteenth century, have commented on the prevalence of piracy in the region. Francis Drake — himself, arguably, one of the world’s most notorious pirates — even reportedly called Southeast Asia the world’s most lawless regions.1 “Piracy”, however, is a Western concept, and its application to the Southeast Asian historical context is not uncomplicated.2 As Nicholas Tarling has pointed out, the use of the term “piracy”, with its criminal connotations, to the Asian situation in the nineteenth century allowed Europeans to pass unfavourable moral judgement on non-Europeans.3 Even though motives of robbery and plunder certainly were important for many, if not most, of Southeast Asia’s pirates, maritime violence has also, historically, been intimately linked to social and political motivations. In many communities, piracy was a traditional and prestigious activity associated with male prowess. On the 207 09 G&CForces Ch 9 1/28/08, 12:28 PM 207 208 208 Stefan Eklöf Amirell political side, the power of the pre-colonial maritime states in the region, including Srivijaya, Melaka (distinction between Kingdom of Melaka and modern straits) and a number of less influential states, relied on the control of strategic waterways, particularly the Straits of Malacca, and piratical activity in this context was crucial to the establishment and maintenance of these states. Prior to the nineteenth century, moreover, the European colonial powers themselves also engaged in piratical activities and maritime raiding in order to further their geopolitical and economic objectives. In the sixteenth century, for example, the Portuguese used their superior naval power to seize indigenous merchant vessels and to force local ship owners to buy trading licences (cartazes) protecting them from raids by Portuguese ships. In the seventeenth century, vessels of the Dutch East India Company systematically raided plantations and settlements in the Eastern Malay archipelago as part of the company’s strategy to establish a monopoly over the production of clove, and in the following century, the British actively instigated maritime raiding by local pirates as a means of weakening Dutch hold on the area.4 Notwithstanding such activities by the colonial powers, most of Southeast Asia’s pirates were original inhabitants of the region. The nineteenth century — particularly the first half — was the real heyday of indigenous Southeast Asian piracy. Large and well-equipped fleets of Iranun and Balangingi raiders from the Sulu archipelago haunted seafarers and coastal inhabitants throughout maritime Southeast Asia in their search for slaves and plunder. Meanwhile, on the South China coast, the confederated pirate fleets of Cheng-I Sao controlled large parts of China’s southern waters and contributed to destabilizing the Qing dynasty.5 In the nineteenth century, the flourishing piracy in the region was highlighted as a major reason for the European powers to establish a larger and more permanent presence in the region. Whereas the raids of the Iranun and other pirates no doubt interfered with the trade of the British and other European powers, it also provided a convenient pretext for European colonial expansion. As James Brooke and other standard-bearers of colonialism in the region realized, public opinion in Europe was more inclined to support campaigns and wars against Southeast Asian “pirates” rather than the various native peoples of the region.6 Even though the nineteenth century European colonial powers readily described their expansionist policies in terms of anti-piracy operations, they were not themselves, as we have seen, alien to the phenomenon. Privateering — that is, state-sanctioned piracy — was a long-standing and widely used means of warfare employed by the European powers in the early modern era. In Southeast Asia, privateering was particularly useful as a means for weak 09 G&CForces Ch 9 1/28/08, 12:28 PM 208 209 Maritime Piracy in Southeast Asia 209 states to strengthen their naval power at low or no cost. By 1800, however, the attitudes of the European...