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1 Introduction: The Shadowy World of the Greater China Seas Robert J. Antony Many problems of the past still haunt us today — piracy and smuggling among them. Although maritime marauding reached a peak in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries — the so-called “golden age of piracy” — it has never completely vanished from around the globe. Today, piracy appears in many of the same areas where it thrived two or three hundred years ago. Although a worldwide presence, the largest number of pirates and the highest total of incidents of piracy today, as in the past, take place in Asian waters. Alongside piracy, smuggling always has posed a problem, and comprised a way of life in this area of the world. In fact, piracy and smuggling usually went hand-in-hand and have continually occurred for many of the same reasons. As recurring cyclical phenomena, the piracy and smuggling of today are inescapably bound to the piracy and smuggling of the past. Viewed from this vantage point, we should regard them as malleable concepts with multiple layers of meanings relative to time, place, and culture. Both piracy and smuggling involve complex, still-evolving historical processes. Although often dismissed as historically unimportant, in reality, pirates and smugglers have played key roles in the development of modern society. We like to read about pirates and smugglers because their stories are captivating. Just to mention the word pirates evokes colorful and fanciful images of rogues like Blackbeard and Long John Silver. We can appreciate them as treacherous and bloodthirsty villains, yet at the same time, we might look upon them as romantic, swashbuckling heroes. Our appetite for stories about piracy and the sea seems unquenchable; there are hundreds of books, cartoons, songs, television dramas, and movies produced on these subjects each year. However, we should look at pirates and smugglers not only because of their intrigue but also because of their importance. Piracy and smuggling always have been closely linked to issues of maritime security and national sovereignty. Today, as in past ages, they have cost honest, legitimate commerce and business millions of dollars every year, not to mention the toll in human lives and destroyed property. Conversely, piracy and smuggling also have 2 Robert J. Antony stimulated and fostered an extensive shadow or informal economy and a vibrant subculture. Pirates and smugglers were elusive, but pervasive, creatures with different but interrelated activities. Though both may also have had political and social overtones, economic factors fundamentally motivated them. Most people engaged in piracy and smuggling to earn money, but they may also have used these activities to gain social status or as forms of protest, for example, against colonialism. Unlike smugglers, pirates traded in stolen goods obtained through violence. Still, like smugglers, pirates disposed their loot in the same black markets and trading networks. Pirates and smugglers contrasted the most, it seems, in the methods used to procure the goods that they traded; in disposing of them, however, they were functionally the same. Also, because smuggling was illegal, sometimes smugglers had to use violence to protect their interests or to defend themselves against repressive authorities, thereby becoming little different from pirates. Furthermore, some people who became pirates and smugglers did not consider themselves outlaws or their activities illicit. As Anthony Reid reminds us in his chapter, what we label as piracy is a Western construct, and may have had little to do with native Asian perceptions. From the perspective of most governments and victims, pirates and smugglers appeared as merely criminals, but in the eyes of their supporters and their own self-image, they believed their enterprises justified and proper. It was not uncommon for pirates to become folk heroes; Asian societies also have their equivalents of Francis Drake and Henry Morgan. Likewise, many smugglers considered themselves as authorized because local practices and official connivances safeguarded such activities and thereby gave them a sense of validity. In some cases, such informal trade appeared safer and better protected than the legitimate trade. Since the illicit trade supported the licit trade, and the two were interconnected, smuggling proved difficult to eradicate and, in fact, some officials even tolerated it.1 Because of the nature of their work, pirates and smugglers left few records, which would, indeed, have been risky to keep. They did not want to draw attention to themselves from officials. Sometimes, pirate gangs went to extraordinary lengths to remain anonymous, even murdering entire crews of ships that...

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