Ruan Yuan, 1764-1849: The Life and Work of a Major Scholar-Official in Nineteenth-Century China before the Opium War

4. Internal Security and Coastal Control: Piracy Suppression in Zhejiang, 1799–1809

4 Internal Security and Coastal Control: Piracy Suppression in Zhejiang, 1799–1809 1 In the winter of 1799–1800 when Ruan Yuan first arrived in Zhejiang as governor, his most urgent task was the suppression of coastal piracy.2 The initiation and implementation of a comprehensive programme to halt the pirate activities off the southeast coast of China within the directives of Jiaqing remained a major challenge for him during his tenure in this province, 1799–1805, and again in 1808–9. This task was more difficult because the programme had to be implemented without drawing from the regular tax revenue of the province. Background of Coastal Piracy Throughout history pirates had plagued the Chinese coast, but it was the antidynastic character of piracy during the early Qing that added a political dimension to their threat. At the beginning of the dynasty, the coast of Fujian and Zhejiang had provided a strong base for the Ming loyalist movement. Zheng Chenggong (鄭成功 1624–62), who had pledged himself to the Ming cause, had organized the province of Fujian into military units and staged expeditions against the Manchu troops from there. In 1658 he landed in Zhejiang and Jiangsu with a force estimated to be between 100,000 and 170,000 men. After some initial success, his campaign ended in a disaster. He then retreated to Xiamen (廈門 Amoy) 1. An earlier version of this chapter was published as ‘Internal Security and Coastal Control: Juan Yuan and Pirate Suppression in Chekiang 1799–1809’, Ch’ing-shi Wen-t’i 4:2 (1979), pp. 83– 112. 2. Within the scope of this chapter, piracy is defined as the act of taking by force ships or other possessions from their lawful owners on the water, equivalent to robbery on land. The term piracy will also include acts of robbery by perpetrators whose home bases were on water, but who raided coastal villages. The pirates discussed here will include those who operated on a large scale with fleets organized in confederations that challenged official forces in open battles off the coast, as well as the individual perpetrators who functioned in small groups near the shore. 82 Ruan Yuan, 1764–1849 Map 4.1 Zhejiang circa 1800: Showing locations of military and marine commands as well as where Ruan Yuan set up soup kitchens Internal Security and Coastal Control 83 and from there to Taiwan, as Lynn Struve has observed, because ‘he needed a territory that was larger and more secure from the Ch’ing (Qing), but which still was located proximate to the major East Asian maritime trade routes’.3 This attempt to move to Taiwan did not enjoy the total support from his commanders some of whom thought that Taiwan lacked ‘supplies and ship building facilities’.4 Furthermore, the Dutch were in Taiwan at that time. After Zheng’s death in 1662, his successors continued to raid the Zhejiang and Fujian coast with munitions sold to them by Dutch and English traders, leading the Qing court to declare an embargo against all foreign imports later that year. The court ordered all coastal ports closed to foreign trade and all inhabitants evacuated thirty to fifty li (里) inland in order to cut off supplies to the Zheng group. This embargo was lifted in 1685 when Zheng’s successors surrendered Taiwan to the Qing government, so the coast was considered safe from organized attacks once more. Provincial officials were told to continue their vigilance for any possible sign of a resurgence of such activities, however. Towards the end of the Qianlong reign in the 1790s, the pirates preying on coastal residents and offshore traders were primarily men from localities in southern Zhejiang and coastal Fujian. Residents of this region, living ‘along an irregular and inhospitable shore’,5 turned to the sea. Traditionally, the bulk of the Chinese pirates had come from this fishing and seafaring element of the populace. Natural disasters such as the severe flooding along the Zhejiang and Fujian coast in 1794, the worst in one hundred years, further disrupted the already depressed economy of the region. The price of rice, for instance, rose by eight hundred copper cash per shi in the spring of 1795.6 This was a major jump even though rice prices always fluctuated seasonally in China. Heavy exaction and drastic depreciation in the value of copper cash in terms of silver further added to the people’s burden. The displaced...