The History of Piracy and Navigation

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Dr. Suk Kyoon Kim. The History of Piracy and Navigation

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Chapter 2. The Roman Empire and Piracy. Origin of the Roman Empire. Before exploring piracy problems in the Roman Empire, we will briefly take a look at the early history of the empire itself, as well as its sea-going history. The origin of the Roman Empire began with the myth of the legendary twins ‘Romulus’ and ‘Remus.’ The twins, who had been abandoned in the Tiber River when they were babies, were cared for by a she-wolf. One day, a shepherd came across the twin boys who were suckled by the she-wolf, and the man took them home and raised them. As the twins grew up, they became the leaders of shepherds in the region. As their power expanded, they conquered a kingdom that had ruled the region. The twins decided to divide their territory and rule separately, but soon were in dispute. Romulus eventually killed Remus and founded the city of Rome in 753 B.C., making himself a king and naming it Rome in his own honor.Rome, which was only a small tribal state when it was founded, engaged in conquering tribal states around it and ultimately was able to create a unified state on the Italian Peninsula in 270 B.C. Ancient states were eager to take to the sea to build trade networks. By the 8th century B.C., various trade networks centered in the Greek Peninsula, the Peloponnese Peninsula and along the coast of Asia Minor were built in the Aegean and the Mediterranean. They were engaged in fierce competition to take control of the seas, and this eventually led to wars. Meanwhile, Rome gained a foothold to rise as a great empire across the Mediterranean by winning the Punic Wars against the Carthaginian Empire (located on the coast of modern day Tunis). The Carthaginian Empire, which had been a Phoenician colony, dominated the western Mediterranean during the first millennium B.C. As the emerging Roman Republic eagerly sought to take to the Mediterranean, the emerging and hegemonic powers inevitably went to war over control of the Mediterranean. They fought against each other in three wars, called the Punic Wars, over 120 years. During the first Punic War, which ran between 264 and 241 B.C., Romans invaded Sicily, which had been under control of Carthaginians, and annexed the island into its territory. During the second war (218–201 B.C.), Rome faced a true crisis, as the Carthaginian troops led by Hannibal marched into the Italian Peninsula from across the Alps and stayed there for 16 years. Eventually Romans maneuvered a landing on the coast of Carthage across the Mediterranean to cut off supplies and attack the mainland of Carthage. Hannibal withdrew his troops back to Carthage to defend his homeland. At the battle of Zama in 201 B.C., the Roman troops led by Scipio Africanus won a decisive victory. The Roman Republic was able to establish full control over the western Mediterranean, in addition to a massive amount of reparations from Carthage. A half century later, as Carthage challenged Roman rule, a young Scipio organized the Roman troops and besieged Carthage. The Carthaginians surrendered after three years (149–146 B.C.) of resistance, and the Romans totally destroyed the city and slaughtered all living things there. Then they spread salt on the ground so as to prevent any living thing from growing there again. The Carthaginian Empire ultimately disappeared. On the day of the fall of Carthage, a young Scipio went up to a mountain and shed tears while looking down the 700-year-old city, now in flames. Historian Polybius, next to him, asked him why. With a deep sigh, he replied that he had a sense that Rome would someday share that fate. Scipio was applying the iron principle of history – any thriving state is doomed to decline. The Early Roman Empire and. the Piracy Problem. The conquest of the Carthaginian Empire allowed Rome, which had been a merely city-state, to expand to a gigantic empire that stretched across the Mediterranean, turning it into a ‘Roman Lake.’ Before the Punic Wars, Rome had remained a land power; with a limited number of warships and sailors, it was not a proper naval power at all. However, the Romans created fleets of warships with the Greeks’ assistance, and built up their naval power through the Punic Wars. Meanwhile, the thriving Roman Republic had a major thorn in its side: pirates. During the Punic Wars in the western Mediterranean, and the decline of Mycenaean city-states after Alexander the Great’s death in the eastern Mediterranean, there was a power vacuum throughout the sea. Pirates, taking advantage of this circumstance, were rampant. Pirates throughout Roman provinces were so powerful that they could not be curbed by regional resistance. Since piratical damages across the Roman Republic were tremendous, the eradication of pirates became a national priority. Following the establishment of full control over the Mediterranean, Romans looked for legal justification for how to use the sea and establish the oceanic order. In the 2nd century B.C., Roman jurist Marcianus claimed that the sea, as part of natural law, should be shared by everyone. By the 6th century, the Romans’ idea of the sea as common property was codified in Roman laws. Such views served as the foundation of marine policy in terms of the use of the sea. This open-mindedness toward the use of the sea was likely to be seen as natural, given the Romans’ openness towards the many different ethnicities, cultures, languages and religions that dotted its huge, cross-continental territory. Whatever position they took, however, there would be no difference at all in terms of the Romans’ control of the Mediterranean. Pirates and Rivalry Between. Pompey and Caesar. Interestingly, fateful events in the lives of Pompey Magnus (106–48 B.C.) and Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.) were related to the Roman Republic’s piracy problem. The episode was derived from Pompey’s anti-pirate campaigns. Of the brilliant military successes that Pompey had achieved as a general, the eradication of pirates across the Mediterranean might be his foremost accomplishment. First we need to get to know about his career, as well as his political rivalry with Caesar, to better understand his anti-pirate campaigns. Pompey, who formed a political alliance with Julius Caesar and Marcus Crassus, known as the First Triumvirate in the late Roman Republic, was one of the most powerful leaders. Pompey came from a noble and wealthy family, and he had engaged in many wars since he was very young. He achieved prominent success at the age of 18 during the Social War (91–88 B.C.) that the Roman Republic and several other cities in Italy had fought over Roman citizenship. His successes as a military commander helped him gain the nickname Magnus, (‘the Great’), leading him to attain consulship three times. As a sign of political alliance with Caesar, Pompey married his daughter Julia. After she had died in childbirth, however, there was nothing to halt the two rivals’ contentious battle to become the first man in the Roman Republic. There is a maxim that even father and son may not share political power together. The two rivals, who had once been allies as well as family members, eventually engaged in fierce military campaigns against each other to see who would become the supreme leader of the Roman Republic. Apart from their political ambitions, both were supported by opposing groups of people in the Roman society. Pompey, hailing from a noble family, sided with other nobles and formed a political alliance with the conservative Senate. On the other hand, Caesar was supported by the common people. When Caesar successfully concluded the Gallic Wars, the Senate – driven to an alliance with Pompey because it feared Caesar’s military power – ordered Caesar to step down from his military command and return to Rome. Finding himself with no other option but to cross the Rubicon River, Caesar marched on Rome, saying “the die is cast.” A civil war broke out between the two rivals. Faced with the swift maneuvering of Caesar’s troops, Pompey and many of the Senate fled to the south of Italy. Pompey’s troops retreated to Greece and were defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 B.C. Pompey sought refuge in Egypt but was eventually assassinated there. Caesar’s victory in the civil war meant the transition from the Roman Republic to the Principate, making Caesar de facto emperor – essentially ‘dictator in perpetuity.’ This transition happened four years before Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C. by a group of senators who opposed his populist reforms. Most importantly, they wanted to safeguard the Roman Republic, which had been the political system of Rome over several hundred years. After Caesar’s death, a series of civil wars broke out. Caesar’s adopted heir, Octavian, finally rose to become Augustus after he had defeated his political rivals in the civil wars, opening the era of the Roman Empire. Pompey’s Anti-Pirate Campaigns. Pirates across the Mediterranean had been very problematic for the Roman Republic even before it rose to become the superpower of the region. However, the problem became more serious as the Cilician pirates engaged in the plundering of ships between Rome and Egypt, disrupting the transport of goods and communications, particularly grains from Egypt. At the time, the pirates were powerful enough to defeat the Roman naval force off Brundisium in southeast Italy in 86 B.C. Furthermore, the Cilician pirates were involved in the revolt of Spartacus (73–71 B.C.), a major slave and gladiator uprising against the Roman Republic, by supporting the rebels. As the survival of the Roman Republic itself was threatened, Romans were determined to launch a massive military campaign to root out the pirates completely. In 67 B.C., the Senate decided to grant Pompey three years of imperium under the Anti-Piracy Law, which had been enacted in 101 B.C. He was given sweeping power to fight the pirates, which included the use of 6,000 talents, a fleet of 500 warships, 120,000 infantries and 5,000 cavalries. He was also given the power to tax and raise militias anywhere across the Roman territory within 50 miles landward from the sea. This might show how seriously Romans took the problem of pirates. Even in peacetime, Pompey was given much greater power than wartime commanders. At first, the conservative Senate strongly opposed giving imperium to the young and ambitious general. However, the Senate had no choice but to approve the bill of imperium because pirates were an urgent national issue

Gnaeus Pompey Magnus. As the pirates disrupted shipping, low-class merchants and workers engaged in trade lost their jobs, and the common people greatly suffered from the soaring prices of their necessities. For this reason, the mere news of the Senate’s counter-piracy bill was enough to send prices down. The common people greatly supported the bill, and the Senate promptly passed the revised bill the following day. The swift enactment was made possible, in part, due to the support of Julius Caesar. An episode behind it will be described shortly. Under the powerful imperium, Pompey completely eradicated the pirates off the Italian Peninsula in less than 40 days. Within three months, the pirates across the Mediterranean were broken and scattered, too. What made him so swiftly and effectively complete his mission? Apart from imperium, his strategy employed coordinated strikes between maritime and land forces, and that proved key to his amazing successes. Pompey divided the Mediterranean into 13 districts and placed each of them under the command of deputy commanders, called legates. While commanding a back-up squadron consisting of 60 warships, Pompey instructed the deputy commanders to blockade the pirates from going to the sea and to drive them to land. Then Pompey launched attacks from the coast of Spain eastwards. The pirates were forced to flee to the southern coast of Cilicia (the coast of modern Turkey), once known as the safe haven of pirates. The Roman troops attacked these Cilician pirate strongholds and bases with overwhelming force. The simultaneous attacks on land and at sea were extremely successful. The Roman troops destroyed no fewer than 500 pirate ships and 120 pirate bases, killing more than 10,000 pirates. Only a small number of pirates were able to flee from the attacks. Pompey treated surrendered pirates leniently, not crucifying them. In the aftermath, the Mediterranean was cleared of pirates for the first time throughout history, and shipping was prosperous again. The Roman marketplaces were full of foods and grains from various regions across the Mediterranean, and the price of goods stabilized. The Mediterranean enjoyed peace and security free from the pirate threat for another four centuries until the collapse of the West Roman Empire. When Pompey returned to Rome in triumph, Romans cheered tremendously for his brilliant campaigns. Pompey became a national hero and this led him to his second consulship. Julius Caesar and Pirates. Young Caesar worked as a lawyer as well as a prosecutor. Caesar was engaged in the impeachment of a key aide to Sulla (138–78 B.C.), a general as well as politician who had risen to consulship twice and ruled Rome under a dictatorship. Caesar failed to impeach him and consequently he became a target of the Sulla faction. The young Caesar, at the age of 24, opted to go abroad to save himself from the threat. His choice was Rhodes, a Greek island off the Anatolian coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which was an intellectual capital alongside Athens. Rhodes at the time was the hub of trade as well. Its wealth and power might be well demonstrated by the Colossus of Rhodes, a gigantic statue erected in commemoration of victory over a battle with Macedonia in 290 B.C. The statue, whose height was up to 34 meters (equivalent of the Statue of Liberty from the feet to the crown), collapsed during the earthquake of 226 B.C. and was taken apart by Saracens who invaded the island in 653. Rhodes also held a significant position in terms of the evolution of the law of the sea. Rhodes was the center in the evolution of the law of the sea, particularly in terms of settling maritime and trade disputes. The early customary law of the sea is called the ‘Rhodesian Sea Law.’ The principle of freedom of navigation today was established through the Rhodesian Sea Law. Young Caesar sought a refuge in Rhodes, in the name of studying abroad. On the way to Rhodes, the ship that he was aboard was seized by Cilician pirates in 75 B.C. Pompey’s massive counter-pirate campaign was still 10 years away, so piracy was still rampant in the area. When the pirates demanded a ransom of 20 talents, the equivalent of annual salaries for 4,300 soldiers at the time, Caesar began to laugh loudly. If he could not afford to pay the ransom, he would have been sold into slavery or been killed. In this midst of this crisis, Caesar came up with a clever ruse. Hoping to buy time, he offered to pay 50 talents, implying that he was worth a much higher ransom if only the pirates could be patient. The pirates were fascinated by his offer. They thought that there would be nothing to lose for them, except a delay in ransom payment, and besides, they could always execute him if it turned out he wasn’t worth keeping alive. Caesar sent his followers to raise money while he was held hostage with his two servants. The pirates, who believed that they held a son of a wealthy Roman nobleman, were excited about the enormous ransom. During his captivity, Caesar laughingly told them he would have them all crucified once he was released – thinking this a good joke, the pirates laughed along with him. For 40 days, until his followers came back with the ransom that he had offered, he stalled for time and lived among the pirates. As soon as he paid it and was set free, he rushed to nearby Miletus to prepare attacks on the pirates. Sailing from Miletus, he raided the pirates’ base and captured nearly all of them. Entrusted by the governor of Asia Minor to deal with the pirates, he crucified all of them, as he had promised. After two years in Rhodes, Caesar came back to Roman politics. Caesar’s support for granting imperium to his rival Pompey might have been derived from his bitter firsthand experience with the pirates

Chapter 3. Mediterranean Pirates After. the Collapse of the Roman Empire. Introduction. This chapter deals with Saracen pirates who dominated the Mediterranean after the collapse of the West Roman Empire, commonly referred to as the Roman Empire. But before discussing the Saracen pirates who looted the Mediterranean Sea off the Italian Peninsula while Muslims ruled the Middle and Near East and North Africa, we first need to know about the late Roman Empire and its decline. Moving straight into the era of Muslims and Saracen pirates without understating the late Roman Empire would only provide a partial understanding of what led to their rise. Any particular historical event is a result of the interaction of numerous complicated factors throughout a long history. The appearance of Saracen pirates is also a historical event brought by a power vacuum after the collapse of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire is often considered to be synonymous with ancient European history itself. Saracen pirates were totally different in nature from previous Mediterranean pirates. Piracy before the collapse of the Roman Empire was an internal problem of the Roman Empire, and in many cases, these were Christian pirates attacking other Christians. However, in the Mediterranean which came under Muslim control, Muslims from North Africa attacked the Italian Peninsula and the Christians under the rule of the Byzantine Empire. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The brilliant history of the Roman Empire over a millennium ended with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476. The Eastern Roman Empire, based in the capital of Constantinople, would continue to exist until the city was captured by Osman Turks in 1453. The Byzantine Empire, built on the Greek Orthodox religion and Byzantine culture, was a totally different empire from the Western Roman Empire. In this sense, the Roman Empire is widely considered to have ended with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The territory of the Roman Empire at its height extended to Spain in the west, Asia Minor and the Near East in the east, and North Africa in the south. Extending north into modern-day Europe, the Rhine River to the west and the Danube River to the east had served as the frontlines of the empire over several hundred years. Romans built military posts along the frontlines and stationed troops to defend them. The frontlines were not only defense lines, but also boundary lines which divided the land between what Romans considered ‘civilization’ and the lands inhabited by tribal peoples. The Roman Empire was a civilized society where people enjoyed economic prosperity, academics, and arts flourished, and the value of individuals under the rule of law was highly regarded. By a stark contrast, beyond the frontlines, there was a barbaric world which had remained tribal states and eked out a living from aggressive actions and sackings. For Romans, it was vital to formulate laws and institutions which could be universally applied to various nations with different cultures, ethnicity and religions under their rule. Besides, it was also essential to build traffic networks to connect Rome with its provinces across several continents. The Roman roads, built initially for military purposes, enabled the rule of the emperor to reach every corner of its territory, and at the same time, any event that happened across the provinces could be reported swiftly to the emperor in Rome. As the saying goes: “all roads lead to Rome.” The Roman roads operated like a body’s nervous system, allowing troops to move swiftly in the event of rebellions in the provinces or the aggressive actions of barbarians across the frontlines. In the period of the “five good emperors” (96–180), the Roman Empire enjoyed its most majestic days. The political situation remained stable, the economy prospered, and the empire’s territorial reach was at its height. The empire’s defenses were so secure that barbarians could not attempt to cross the frontlines. The values of Rome were regarded as universal. The era of Pax Romana, which meant peace or order established by Romans, was at hand. Following a period of peace and expansion during the rule of the five good emperors, the Roman Empire entered its so-called ‘Crisis of the Third Century.’ After the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (120–180), a number of unqualified rulers ascended to the throne. Throughout this period, several proclaimed themselves emperor simultaneously, setting off a series of assassinations. Concurrently, rebellions in Palmyra (an ancient city in what is now Syria) and Gaul (mainly modern-day France and Belgium) broke out. The Roman Empire was challenged by the largest crisis it had faced since its foundation. Meanwhile, the spirit of noblesse oblige of the ruling class, along with their open-mindedness, gradually faded away, and the economy was on the wane. As the wealth inequality grew, social conflicts intensified. Romans were no longer able to maintain adequate military forces to defend the frontlines, while barbarian aggression was growing. At the same time, a new civilization was born at the frontier of the empire. The barbarians who had looted and pillaged the territories of the Roman Empire grew more civilized as they integrated advanced Roman culture and technologies through wars with Romans. The barbarians increased the intensity and frequency of anti-Roman aggression, while evolving into tribal states with systemic ruling organizations and military forces. It is not easy to pinpoint exactly when the decline of the Roman Empire started. However, what is apparent is that the Roman Empire, after the Crisis of the Third Century, started to decline rapidly in the late fourth century. The Roman Empire in decay was incapable of financing military forces to defend its huge frontlines. The massive provinces across several continents had been a symbol of expansion of the Roman Empire, but their defense became an extremely heavy burden for the Roman Empire as it fell into decline. As a consequence, the barbaric mercenaries who had lived in the Roman territories took the place of Romans. This meant that the national defense of Rome itself was actually handed over to the tribes that had been its enemies. The Roman Empire, which had become impossible for a single emperor to rule, was eventually divided into the Western and the Eastern empires in 395. The Western Roman Empire was totally vulnerable to the barbarians who invaded deep inside the territories. In the end, the brilliant millennium of the Roman Empire came to an end in 476 with attacks led by tribal chief Odoacer. Advent of Muslims. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, German barbarians occupied the Italian Peninsula and North Africa. Justinian the Great of the Byzantine Empire, who sought to revive the empire’s greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the historical Roman Empire, recovered the Italian Peninsula from the barbarians over 20 years. After he died, however, the southern territories of the historical Western Roman Empire were occupied by the Longobards. As such, the Italian Peninsula was divided into two parts – one part ruled by the Eastern Roman Empire and the other, by the Longobards. Meanwhile in the Arabic Peninsula, which had been under the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire, one of the most seismic events in world history took place. That is, Islam was founded. The Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, received the revelations of God delivered by Gabriel at the age of 40 while he prayed in a mountain cave, named Hira. After he started preaching in 613, Islam spread rapidly throughout neighboring regions, the religion spreading like wildfire through a dry field. Muhammad, who proclaimed “God is One” was persecuted by Meccan polytheists, and he escaped to Medina in 622 in the Hegira which marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Mohammad conquered Mecca with his followers in 629. Islam expanded into a dominating force that ruled nearly all the Arabian Peninsula in less than 20 years since its foundation. Following Mohammad’s death in 632, the Islam community led by the Caliph, a supreme religious, political and military leader, evolved towards an enormous empire as it continued to conquer the neighboring regions. At last, the Caliph completed the conquest of the entire Arabian Peninsula in 634, and in the following year, Damascus in Syria. The Byzantine Empire sent troops to recover its province but was defeated, and as a result, Damascus came under the full control of Islam. The Islamic forces advanced to Mesopotamia in the east, West Asia to the west and Egypt to the south and conquered Alexandria in 642, making Egypt an Islamic state. The Islamic forces continued to conquer North Africa, bringing most of the region under its control by 689. The conquest of the entirety of North Africa in a short period was made possible in large part because of its flat geography, allowing Islamic forces to move swiftly on their Arabian horses. The grain belt, which had supplied one-third of the Romans’ food, came under the rule of Islam. Islamic Conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Following the conquest of North Africa, the Islamic force crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to advance upon the Iberian Peninsula in 711. The Islamic force, which attempted to go into France through the Iberian Peninsula, was blocked by the Frankish Kingdom after the Franks won the Battle of Poitiers in the Pyrenees Mountains in 732. As a consequence, the ambitious Islamic goal of expansion into Western Europe failed. Afterwards, the Muslims stayed in the Iberian Peninsula for about 780 years, until they were forced to leave Granada, the last bastion of Muslims, in 1492 during the Reconquista – otherwise known as the Christians’ recovery of those conquered territories from Muslim rule. Assumption is not allowed in history. However, supposing that the Franks had been defeated in the battle, Western Europe would have been under the rule of Islam, and the history of modern Europe – and by extension, the history of the world – would be greatly changed. The tremendous wave of the Islamic forces, represented by the phrase “A sword on the right hand, Quran on the left hand,” swept through Central Asia, conquering the Sassanid Persian Empire (226–651). Most of the former territories of the Roman Empire came under control of Islam, except for Western and Eastern Europe. As a consequence, Christians and Muslims confronted each other across the Mediterranean Sea. A totally different circumstance from the era of the Roman Empire, in which Christianity was the state religion, appeared. The conditions for Saracen pirates, who left a big scar in the history of Europe and the Mediterranean over several centuries, emerged. Saracen Pirates. The term ‘Saracen’ is derived from ‘Saraceni’ that ancient Greeks and Romans had used in reference to Arabs. Initially, Europeans had called Arab Muslims ‘Saracens.’ Later on, they referred to all Muslims living in North Africa, including Berbers and Moors, as Saracens. Despite the fact that North Africa was a fertile region, the Arabs, Berbers and Moors who occupied North Africa had no interest in or aptitude for farming in settlements. Instead, the nomads in desserts were attracted to the plundering of Christians across the Mediterranean. At this juncture, one might be curious of how a desert people, not familiar with sea-faring, could become engaged in looting by sailing across the harsh Mediterranean Sea. The answer to the question might be found in the facts that Arabs developed the highest level of science and math as well as technology at the time, even to the extent that they used compasses. They employed Greeks who had the highest level of navigation skills, as crews. Additionally, they felt they had found a righteous cause in looting Christians, making piracy a front in a holy war against non-Muslims. It was known that Islamic pirates first attacked a Christian community in 652. The Muslim ships that had departed from Alexandria raided and looted Siracusa, Sicily, capturing 800 locals as prizes. The pirates sold the captives at slave markets. This event was recorded as the beginning of the Saracens’ lootings across the Mediterranean, which would persist for the next millennium. The Saracen pirates, based in cities on the coast of North Africa, such as Cairuan, Carthage and Tunis, continued to attack the Sicily Island. While the Islamic forces advanced to the Iberian Peninsula, their plundering ceased for a while until they resumed in 725. During the period between the 7th and 8th centuries, the Mediterranean Sea was ‘the Sea of Islam.’ The Mediterranean Sea off the Italian Peninsula under the attacks of Saracen pirates turned into the ‘Sea of Lawlessness’ itself. Despite the constant aggression of Saracen pirates, the Byzantine Empire did not have naval power to protect its shipping from pirate attacks, and it also lacked the capability to combat the pirates. As for the Byzantine Empire, which had lost the Near East, North Africa and Asia Minor to Islamic force, even the security of Constantinople was at risk. The Byzantine Empire was also under attack from northern Slavs. Such instability was also the case for the Longobards who had controlled the southern part of the Italian Peninsula. They still remained divided and thus had no ability to deal with the pirates. Under these circumstances, the seas off the Italian Peninsula were exposed to the uncurbed lootings of Saracen pirates. The vulnerability of navigation off coastal areas to pirate attacks resulted in the shrinking of sea-borne trade. Merchant ships that had been actively engaged in shipping valuable goods across the Mediterranean gradually disappeared. Fishing vessels operated only inshore, instead of going to distant waters. As such, the pirates were no longer able to rely on their typical method of plundering the ships traveling offshore. Thus, they opted to raid settlements or towns in coastal areas. This was quite a different method from piracy attacks in the Age of Discovery, in which pirates engaged in marauding merchant ships passing through major sea routes. The ships that Saracen pirates used for looting were small galleys, known as the ‘fusta,’ which were mainly propelled by rowing. Their speed, mobility, capability to move without wind and their ability to operate in shallow water made them ideal for piracy. They took Arabian horses aboard the fustas and rode them inland, looting coastal areas and returning with plunder. The fusta was a small size ship, but it required at least 16 to 20 rowers. The rowers were mostly Christians captured during raids. Other Christians were sold at slave markets to serve as rowers for other Muslim ships, or they were sent to the military after they were forced to convert to Islam. Otherwise, they were sent to concentration camps, called ‘bathhouses.’ Romans had a strong tradition of communal bathing, and had built a large number of bathhouses across their territories. The bathhouses built in North Africa changed to concentration camps after the fall of the Roman Empire. The Saracen pirates, with a small fleet of less than 10 ships that had been concentrated in Sicily and its coastal area gradually expanded their activities towards the southern coastal areas of France and Italy. The pirates, based on islands like Sardinia and Corsica, used the seasonal summer winds to propel their ships on raiding missions to the coastal areas of Italy. They expanded their activity even further, getting closer to the pope’s stronghold in Rome. Residents in these areas of the Italian Peninsula could no longer expect that the emperor in Constantinople would protect them. Thus, they sought to protect the security of themselves, their families and their towns without outside help. Torre Saracena. Residents in coastal areas built watchtowers as a way of protecting themselves, to spot pirate ships’ approach early and give themselves time to escape. Many old pirate watchtowers still exist to this day. They are called Torre Saracena in Italian, which means the ‘Tower of Saracens,’ and they dot the coastal cities in Italy and along the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily. Today they are tourist attractions that provide a scenic view of the blue Mediterranean, but their history tells of the pain that came with living in fear of Saracen pirates. It was difficult to tell whether approaching ships were friendly or not, as the invention of the telescope was still many years off; in many cases, pirate ships were only identified when they came near to the shore. The pirates did not fly the now-famous ‘Jolly Roger,’ skull and swords flag – that symbol came into being several hundred years later during the Age of Discovery. Neither did they fly any flag of piracy, or even the Islamic symbol of the crescent and star. Speaking of the symbolic flag of Islam, it was derived from historic events of Islam. On the night when the Prophet Muhammad had received revelations at the mountain cave Hira, a crescent and stars were twinkling in the dark sky. On the night when Muhammad escaped to Medina from Mecca to avoid persecution, there were also a crescent and stars in the dark sky. For this reason, the crescent was regarded by Islam as a symbol of truth, ushering light through darkness. Osman Turks were the first to use the flag of a crescent and stars. Following the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, the Osman Turks had built a great empire that stretched over much of Asia, Africa and Europe. Thus, for the Europeans who came under attack by Islamic pirates, the flag of a crescent and stars symbolized only terror

Torre Saracena. Saracen pirates also sailed in disguise by flying the flag of a Christian state or the ally of the target area. Thus, it was hard to tell by only the flag of a ship if it was a pirate ship or a merchant ship traveling for trade. This historical legacy might have led to the provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea today: It affirms that ships should sail under the flag of one state, and that changing the flag during a voyage is not allowed; a ship which sails under the flags of two or more states, using them according to convenience, may be regarded as a ship with no nationality. The coastal residents of southern Italy frequently weren’t aware of an approaching raid until the pirates came inshore, setting off a panic in which residents fled – often, too late to save themselves. Since shores were left defenseless, pirates were able to go on shore with ease. The Byzantine Empire, beleaguered from external aggression, was incapable of defending the southern coast from the sacking of Saracen pirates. Thus, the coastal residents had no choice but to flee as quickly as possible when pirate ships came inshore. Watchtowers helped the locals buy themselves at least a little more time to escape. The best option for the locals was either to flee, carrying valuables, deep inland or hide away somewhere out of reach of pirates. Otherwise, they would lose their property and even their lives at the hands of horseback-riding pirates who destroyed and set fire to villages and committed various atrocities. Those who were captured would live a hellish life either as rowers aboard ships or in labor camps for life. The coastal residents had built multiple watchtowers along the coast. If the first watchtower onshore emitted signal fumes, the next watchtower would relay the message to those inland. At that time, the residents hid out deep inland, where the fourth or the fifth watchtower was located. When the pirates left, this method was provided the signal to confirm that it was safe to return to the sea. The main targets of Saracen pirates were monasteries and churches. Monasteries, which owned abundant properties and lands, were located in remote areas, making them a good target for pirates. The pirates also preyed on churches that served as hideouts for locals. Pirates were able to capture a large number of residents at once and to loot their properties with ease. The houses of wealthy landlords and rich people were definitely a good target. Borgo and Casbah. Saracen pirates gradually expanded their activities deeper inland, looting settlements and towns and capturing residents as plunder. To flee or hide away from the pirates was merely a temporary solution. Thus, the residents decided to move their settlements to remote areas, out of reach of pirates. It was a desperate effort for residents as they fought for their survival. The residents who hid away in a remote area in the mountain might build a town on the rugged and steep cliff, for example. The medieval towns built for the purpose of avoiding pirate aggression were called borgo in Italian. This led to a new lifestyle: Coastal residents would stay in the borgo in the summer, during peak raiding season, and return home in the fall. In a sense, it was natural for coastal residents to return to the sea, which was the base for their livelihood, when the risk of pirate attacks diminished. However, on the part of city residents, it was an entirely different situation since a city of thousands could not be moved out every season. Thus, citizens had to rely on existing structures, build new defenses, or rely on geography to defend or escape from pirate attacks. One of the main defense structures was a labyrinth of a city, known as a casbah. These days, the legacy of the casbah is found in the northern cities of Italy, like Amalfi. When building a city, the focus of design was on defense for survival, rather than functional considerations, such as convenience and comfortableness. In this design, complicated and twisted alleys made it hard for pirates to find targets and easy for them to get lost. The divergent roads distracted the pirates, and thus allowed people time to escape or provided spaces to hide out

Casbah. The Holy Raman Empire’s. Campaigns Against Pirates. The region of Gaul (Gallia in Latin, modern-day Western Europe), which had remained divided and ruled by several Germans, became united under Charles the Great (Charlemagne, 742–814) of the Frankish Kingdom. Western Europe had gone through the period of division over the 400 years following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. During that period, it had been ruled by numerous kingdoms. Most of Europe, except Britain, the Iberian Peninsula and the southern Italian Peninsula, became united under the rule of the Franks. Against this historical backdrop, the origin of the European Union (EU) today can trace its roots back to the unification of Western Europe by Charles the Great. Following the unification of Europe through a series of wars, he undertook a military expedition to Rome across the Alps in 800. Pope Leo III greeted and crowned him Holy Roman Emperor and ‘Augustus of the Romans’ in Saint Peter’s Cathedral in the Vatican. The creation of the Holy Roman Empire might be attributed to following historical conditions: conflicts between popes and the Byzantine Empire, and corresponding interests between Charles the Great and Pope Leo III. Even though Saracen pirates came to the front door of Rome – the symbol of Christianity as well as the residence of popes – the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople were helpless. Meanwhile, in 726, the Byzantine emperor instructed the pope to dismantle icons because they were believed to promote idolatry. The pope rejected the instruction and excommunicated the emperor. On this occasion, the emperor and the pope were engaged in serious conflict. In response to excommunication, the emperor encouraged the Longobards to attack the pope. The pope, with no military force to defend himself, had no choice but to rely on the Franks for survival. This was a strategic consideration that prompted the pope to crown Charles the Great Holy Roman Emperor. For his part, Charles the Great, a leader from a barbarian tribe, desired to become the successor of the Roman Empire. In this context, he used ‘Roman’ and ‘Holy’ to express his identity as a Christian and his will as its protector as well. Charles the Great, as the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was responsible for safeguarding Christianity from the aggression of Muslims. The Franks, who had lived in a state of barbarism north of the Rhine River, were not familiar with sea-faring at all. But Charles the Great created two naval fleets to carry out his responsibility. One was responsible for the coast of southern France, and the other one for the Italian Peninsula and Sicily. These two fleets were quite successful in combating Saracen pirates – so much so that Pope Leo III sent a thank you letter to Charles the Great for protecting Christians. However, the situation totally changed after Charles the Great died in 814. The Holy Roman Empire was taken apart in less than 30 years after his death and divided by his descendants into present day Italy, France and Germany. The two fleets had disappeared, although it is unknown exactly when this happened. Western Europe went back to a time of war. People were engaged only in ongoing wars, and thus had no time to be concerned with the safety of the sea at all. The Battle of Ostia. Taking advantage of the chaos in Europe, Saracen pirates took to the sea for piracy again. The pope, without help from guardians of Christians like Charles the Great, had to fight the pirates alone to safeguard Christianity and Rome. At that time, on the Italian Peninsula, a number of coastal city-republics, known as ‘Maritime Republics,’ were thriving. They included Genoa, Amalfi and Naples on the west coast and Venice on the east coast. These coastal city-states were ruled by a small number of merchants who had accumulated wealth by sea-borne trade. They were engaged in direct trade with Muslims in North Africa across the Mediterranean or transit trade with Western Europeans, trading valuable goods that they had brought from China and India through the Middle East. Although they were small city-states, they had naval fleets. For the city-states that lived on sea-borne trade, the security of navigation was vital for their survival itself. Since they had to protect themselves while being engaged in trade with Muslims in North Africa, building strong naval power was an essential issue. Saracen pirates built a large fleet and attempted a massive invasion that went beyond small-scale looting. With the aggression of Saracen pirates on the horizon, Pope Leo IV was determined to fight the pirates firsthand, so he reinforced the fortresses around Rome. He also strung across the Tiber River to deter pirate ships from sailing inland. The pope called in the leaders of Naples and Amalfi to discuss the strategy to combat pirates and formed a league with them. He recruited volunteers and ships across Italy in the name of holy war against Muslims. The league decided to wage a battle off the port of Ostia. In 849, the fleet of the league commanded by the Neapolitan commander confronted Saracen pirate ships face to face. Pope Leo IV addressed the fleet to boost their spirits and prayed for victory. When the battle was about to take place – whether or not thanks to the pope’s prayer – stormy southwest winds struck the Saracen fleet from the back. The fleet of the league swiftly moved back towards the safety of the port, but the Saracen fleet was directly hit by the stormy winds. As a result, the Saracen ships collided with each other and were destroyed and went adrift inshore. Many of them struck on rocks and ultimately sank. When the sea calmed down, the fleet of the league was able to seize the pirate ships and capture the pirates with ease. The battle ended with an enormous victory for the Christians. The Muslim captives were taken to Rome and the pope put them to work building the walls around the Vatican. In preparation for possible Muslim invasions, the pope built the walls to protect Saint Peter’s Cathedral. Ironically, the walls to protect one of the holiest buildings for Christians were built by Saracen pirates. The walls were named after Leo IV. The Battle of Ostia was portrayed by Raphael in the era of the Renaissance. Following the defeat of its large-scale fleet, Saracen pirates went back to their old method of small-fleet looting. They could not afford to give up the enormous income generated from piracy. Conquest of Sicily. Saracen pirates, who had remained inactive for quite some time in the aftermath of their defeat in the Battle of Ostia, were reengaged in piracy. The target was the island of Sicily. The pirates launched a full-scale attack on Sicily. Siracusa (the province of modern Syracuse), Sicily was a beautiful and flourishing city, called the ‘Pearl of the Mediterranean.’ Siracusa, which had been under the control of the Byzantine Empire since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, served as an outpost of Christianity in the midst of Muslim aggression. Siracusa had remained unoccupied even in the midst of Islam’s persistent attempts to conquer Sicily, but eventually fell into the hands of Islam in 878. With the collapse of Siracusa, Sicily came under a full control of Saracen pirates. The pirates totally devastated Siracusa in retaliation for the massive damage they sustained during the attacks. In addition to the nobles and soldiers who had resisted them to the last moment, they indiscriminately slaughtered residents, young and old, and captured them for slaves. Churches and icons were ravaged, and the destroyed buildings were rebuilt as mosques. The Muslims’ rule in Sicily lasted for 200 years, until Normans occupied the island in 1072. Following the conquest of Sicily, Saracen pirates’ movements were unconstrained. Their aggression extended to the central and northern as well as southern Italian Peninsula. Through the coast of northern Italy off the Ligurian Sea, Saracen pirates advanced to the coast of southern France. Marseille was attacked twice. The coast of southern France was fully exposed to attack, and the pirates even built a base on the shore. Popes in the Vanguard of Combating. Saracen Pirates. Medieval popes in the Dark Ages, regarded as an agent of God on earth, were considered the sole and perfect guardian for Christians. Because the security of Rome was threatened, popes like Leo IV, were directly engaged in military campaigns to combat pirates in the name of safeguarding Christianity. Pope John X, for instance, commanded troops to fight Saracen pirates in southern Italy. He had first formed an alliance with Emperor Constantinus IV of the Byzantine Empire and King Berengar of Italy. Then he recruited volunteers in the name of a holy war against Islam. A large number of people volunteered at the news that the pope was directly recruiting soldiers and would command them to fight pirates. The pope believed that naval forces were likely to be a key to recovering the Garigliano River in central Italy, which was used as a base for Saracen pirate ships. As such, he called for maritime republics such as Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta to join in the holy war. In 916, Pope John X undertook an expedition to recover the Garigliano from the rule of pirates. The pope commanded the troops during a three-month-long series of battles with the marauders. Literally, he was ‘a pope with a sword in his hand.’ The battles ended with the victory of the Christian forces. In a sense, this was the ‘Maritime Crusades’ to combat Saracen pirates. The first of the actual crusades took place in 1096, about 200 years later, under the slogan of ‘God Wills It.’ “It” meant the recovery of the Holy Land from Muslim rule. The campaign for the recovery of the Garigliano might be viewed as the beginning of the crusades, given that the Christians gathered in the name of a holy war to recover territory from the Muslim occupation. Pope John X made a great contribution to combating pirates, but his career was unfortunate. He was ousted by Roman nobles and sent to prison, where he was smothered. Afterwards, Saracen pirates disappeared everywhere from the Garigliano to the Tyrrhenian Sea, ranging from central to southern Italy. However, it did not necessarily mean that the Saracen pirates completely ceased piracy. For internal reasons, they suspended it for a while. Peace was short-lived, however. Christians were under the illusion that the problem had been settled by the victory in the battle. Thus, they were not concerned with preparations for renewed attacks from pirates. They had even made an agreement that they would pay 22,000 pieces of gold annually to the pirates on the condition that they would not attack their merchant ships. Being overconfident in their victory, they relaxed their vigilance. Maritime Republics’ Efforts. to Combat Pirates. Saracen pirates sailed across the Mediterranean using seasonal winds in the summer. In this way, they could easily reach Provence in southern France, the coast of Liguria in northern Italy, the coast of Tosca in central Italy and the southern coast of Italy, depending on their departure points on the coast of North Africa. Summer was a fearful season for Italians. The coastal residents had undergone enormous loss of life and damage to properties from Saracen pirate attacks between the 8th and 10th centuries. Maritime republics such as Genoa, Pisa, Naples, Amalfi and Venice prospered after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. They were small coastal city-states, typically with populations of less than 100,000 – Genoa and Pisa had less than 50,000. They had no choice but to engage in sea-faring for livelihood because of the shortage of farmland in their territories. These republics, which lived on sea-borne trade, had naval fleets to protect their merchant fleets and homeland from attack by sea. During the period of the crusades, Genoa, Pisa and Venice had built up relatively large fleets composed of 100 to 200 warships. In fact, they were a significant driving force that had sustained the crusades. Interestingly, the more closely a republic was located to North Africa, the earlier it developed into a powerful maritime republic. This is likely because they had to build up their ocean-going capabilities to help fend off pirate attacks. Since Venice was located far up the coast of the Adriatic Sea, it was harder for Saracen pirates to access than other republics. For that reason, the development of Venice into a maritime state came later than others. Venice was founded by Romans who had escaped from the aggression of Huns that had invaded in 452. Seeing that they had nowhere else to flee when they arrived on the northeast coast, the escapees desperately built a city in a swamp. It was Venice, nicknamed the ‘City of Water.’

Chapter 4. The Vikings. The Emergence of Vikings. While Saracen pirates were rampant across the Mediterranean, Vikings were terrorizing England and the northern coasts of Europe. In terms of the etymology of ‘Viking,’ various theories have been put forward. A leading theory is that the word means ‘a person from a valley river.’ Presumably, this word was derived from the unique Scandinavian geography, specifically the formations known as ‘fjords’ – long, narrow inlets with steep sides or cliffs, created by glacial erosion. Over 800 years, the word Viking has been used to indicate the Scandinavians both at home and abroad who had lived in Sweden, Norway and Denmark throughout the era of aggression, trade and colonial activity. Originally, the Vikings had been ordinary people actively engaged in trade. By the first century, they had traded with Romans, and by the fifth century, they invited foreign merchants to thriving Scandinavian commerce cities and were actively engaged in trade with them. While trading with foreign countries, the Vikings observed the wealth of their trading partners and dreamed of taking it by force. The Vikings first ruthlessly looted monasteries in England and on other European coasts, and they killed or enslaved monks. Afterward, the Vikings developed a reputation as brutal, bloodthirsty predators. One might be curious about what made the Vikings turn to piracy instead of continuing normal trade. Amongst various factors, the infertile natural environment of Scandinavia is usually considered the most salient. Other than fishing and hunting, the cold weather and barren soil of Northern Europe made the Vikings struggle for their livelihood. The population had constantly increased, and farmlands were insufficient to support it. Under these circumstances, they took to the sea. Because of the Viking tradition that the first son was to inherit the entirety of the family’s wealth, younger siblings had no choice but to engage in trade or plunder at sea. Additionally, political instability served as a driving force. In the late ninth century, King Harald of Norway, who had unified small kingdoms throughout Scandinavia, intended to get rid of the rulers of provinces. These provincial lords escaped to foreign countries with their people. But above all, it is believed that the Vikings had a natural drive to explore, along with fearlessness in sea-faring, and a toughness of spirit derived from their harsh natural environment

Vikings. Outstanding Navigational Skills. Outstanding navigational skills of the Vikings made them the masters of the sea. The Vikings sailed inshore, using geography and natural features as landmarks to guide their navigation. They relied on primitive positioning equipment, but principally located their position at sea using the position of the sun and stars, the direction of winds, the shape of waves, the color and temperature of water, and the existence of sea birds and sea mammals. The Vikings were able to sail long distances at extraordinary speeds, with the maximum speed of 28 km per hour on open oceans. The Vikings could operate on the rivers as well. Since the Vikings believed that their outstanding navigational skills would allow them to go back home safely, they were not afraid of ocean-going beyond offshore seas. The Vikings’ prominent contribution to navigation would be the development of tacking skill. Tacking is a maneuver wherein a sailing ship proceeds windward. Tacking indicates that a sailing ship has turned its bow toward the wind so that the direction from which the wind blows changes from one side to the other, allowing for a ship’s progress in the desired direction. The Vikings set the sail at an angle of 45° to the wind and maneuvered their ships to proceed windward. The Vikings’ tacking was possible with a set of outfitting and steering, although they were primitive. The Vikings originated the tacking techniques commonly seen on modern-day yachts. The Vikings was the masters of latitude sailing. When they made a long and distant sea voyage, they relied on latitude sailing to find their way around. Latitude sailing involved maintaining a certain latitude that followed, as closely as possible, the latitude of their destination. If the Vikings were sailing for a known island or point on a faraway continent, they would know the latitude of the destination. Once the Vikings got to the proper latitude, it was simply a matter of keeping the ship on that latitude and traveling in the direction of their destination until they reached it. At night, they steered their ship according to the position of Polaris, or the North Star, if they intended to go northwest. They continually observed the position of Polaris and changed the course of their ship according to the relative position between themselves and the star. The Vikings’ latitude sailing was possible with two navigational aids – the sun compass and sunstone. The sun compass was a primitive inclinometer that the Vikings used to determine their latitude. The sun compass was made on the circular plate, with a peg inserted through the hole in the center of the plate. The peg was known as the gnomon. The Vikings marked the edge of the shadow cast by the gnomon and then inscribed a line connecting the points. This line is known as the gnomon line. When a Viking navigator wanted to find the same latitude later, he kept the tip of the shadow on the gnomon line. If the shadow of the gnomon extended past the gnomon line, he knew that he was too far north of his desired latitude. If the shadow fell short of the gnomon line, the navigator knew that he was too far south. A principal navigational instrument that the Vikings used to locate their position in a cloudy sky was a sunstone, a translucent rock. The sky of Europe off the Arctic was frequently shrouded in heavy fog, rain and clouds. On such occasions, the Vikings used the sunstone. The stone turns a blue and purple color when it is turned at right angles to the sun, even on cloudy days, so Vikings could detect the direction from which polarized light was striking the sunstone and set their course accordingly. The Vikings were not simply predators, but adventurous explorers. With outstanding navigational skills, they sailed across the oceans beyond their world. Across the North Atlantic, they sailed further to Canada, Iceland and Greenland. Since Viking ships were an open deck structure, the Vikings were fully exposed to strong waves and rain as they sailed. The Vikings wore fur and oiled leather clothes, but they usually remained wet and cold. At night when they sailed inshore, they went on shore and camped on the ground. During a long-distance voyage, they slept in leather sleeping bags on the deck. Their food on the voyage was dried and salted fish and jerked meats. Even though the Vikings were the masters of the sea, they were simply weak human beings before Mother Nature. Numerous Vikings lost their lives on harsh voyages in in the midst of strong waves or cold and wet weather. However, the harsh condition of the sea could not discourage their will for exploration. The Vikings went anywhere there was prey to loot and did not avoid bloody battles. The phrase “the Vikings had lived on the sea,” found in runic inscriptions that recorded the Vikings’ lifestyles, demonstrates their inherent talent for survival at sea as well as their predatory natures. Viking Ships. The Vikings were required to be strong master shipbuilders and to have the navigational skills to sail long distances. The Vikings had held a long tradition of sailing across the fjords on ships with no sails, traveling further to the distant sea in good weather. Over 2,000 years, the Vikings had held a tradition for building light and speedy ships. They reinforced their traditional ships with a sail to increase speed, along with a robust mast and a keel to stabilize at sea. There were many types of Viking ship, built for various uses. The best-known type is probably the longship. A longship, designed for speed and agility, was suitable for sailing in the distant sea. The longship had a long, narrow hull and shallow draught to facilitate landings and troop deployments in shallow water. Of the various types of longship, the largest was Drekar, a dragon-headed longship, named after its dragon shaped hull. Drekar was designed for attack and for the transport of troops. The ships were the Vikings’ most important instrument, allowing them to explore the unknown world and to loot by sailing across seas or rivers. When the Vikings built a ship, a man in charge supervised the craftsmen specialized in each part of ship. They used a long and straight oak tree for the keel and other trees for the curved parts of the hull. When they completed building the hull, they installed round shields on the sides of the hull and a dragon head-shaped decoration on the bow. The sail of the Viking ships was made of squared woolen fabric, which provided extremely powerful mobility. However, the problem was that it was hard to steer the ship in strong winds or when the sail was wet with rain. The Vikings, who had great pride in these sails, used to paint slashes or diamonds on them. The Pillage of England. In the period between 800 and 1100, the Vikings’ voyages to new lands – as well as their attacks on these lands – were at their peak. The first attack on Christian sanctuaries was a monastery on Lindisfarne Island, off the northeast coast of England on 1 January 793. The Vikings had raided the monastery, destroyed and pillaged it, setting it on fire. They slaughtered the monks and held survivors as captives for selling in the slave market. The monks who resisted were thrown into the sea. Afterwards, the Vikings kept raiding the British islands and the coastal areas of Europe. Christians viewed the Vikings as the incarnation of evil. The Vikings’ pillage of Christian sanctuaries was not an act of hostility toward Christianity specifically. They were simply preying on places that were the richest targets with the fewest defenses. Monasteries and churches had a wealth of valuables, such as golden crosses and people who could be sold as slaves. In 877, the Danish Vikings raided England and occupied the western and eastern regions, which were half of England. The occupied regions were called the ‘Danelaw,’ which means the regions under the law and customs of the Danish Vikings. Even though England, prosperous and fertile, was a main target for the Vikings’ pillaging, it was not the only target. Ireland – the hub of Christian arts and studies – was an attractive target for the Vikings. The monasteries and churches in Ireland were like a storehouse of riches, and Ireland itself had abundant green lands that the Vikings could lay claim to. By the middle of the 9th century, the Vikings settled on the coasts of Limerick, Waterford, Wexford and Cork. At first, the Vikings used these settlements as winter bases to expand inland and quickly sack villages and run away. However, as time passed, these settlements turned into permanent settlements as well as a base for expanding further inland. By 950, the Vikings had opted for living in settlements, instead of pillaging, and thus the aggression of the Vikings virtually ended. With the defeat in the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, the Vikings’ rule in Ireland came to an end. The legacy of the Vikings is found in the cities that they built, as well as trade and place names. Expansion to Russia. As years passed, the Vikings’ raids became more daring, and they ventured deeper inland. By the early 800s, they traveled up along the rivers by ships that were navigable in shallow waters. Some traveled to the Russian continent across the Baltic Sea. The Vikings had built trade bases inland near the Baltic Sea and ventured to the Black Sea through the Dnepr River and to the Caspian Sea through the Volga River. They had to travel a long distance inland to reach the two rivers in central Russia. The ships that the Vikings used for venturing inland were much smaller in size than typical Viking ships. Known as dugouts, the ships were built by hollowing out a log. The Vikings used a small sail to increase mobility in fair winds. The most prominent feature of dugouts was their lightness. The Vikings carried them on land when they could not sail in rough in shallow waters. The Vikings pillaged throughout Russia and captured locals for slave-taking. The Russian slaves, known as ‘Slavs,’ were traded in Sweden. The words ‘Slave’ and ‘Slavery’ were derived from Slav slaves. One can guess how large the number of Russian captives was from the origin of the words. The Swedish Vikings, called ‘Rus’ (by Slavs) who took to the Black Sea attempted to occupy Constantinople by force several times. According to the historical records of the Byzantine Empire, tens of thousands of Rus attacked Constantinople by sailing across the Black Sea. As part of peace deals, the Byzantine emperor offered the right to pay tributes and trade with them. Despite such deals, the Rus resumed the sacking of monasteries and towns again years later, including the attack on Constantinople. Allegedly, the Rus named the occupied lands ‘Russia’ and built a trade network with the Byzantine Empire as well as the Arab world. The Byzantine Emperors could do nothing about the Vikings’ predations. Ironically, some of the Swedish Vikings were enlisted in the guard of Byzantine emperors or served as mercenaries in the service of the empire

Chapter 7. The Rise of the Iberian Peninsula. Iberians: Main Initiators. of the Age of Discovery. The Iberians, who had been in the outer edge of Europe, by no means missed an opportunity to explore new trade routes to the Orient. Geographically, the Iberian Peninsula has open access to the Atlantic. Situated on the boundary of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the Iberian Peninsula could take geographical and commercial advantage of transit trade between the Orient and Europe. The Iberians boldly rode the back of fate – when fate approached, they grabbed it by the bridle and held on, rushing forward. That is, they created their new destiny of becoming the main player of the Age of Discovery. As a result, the Iberians could emerge as the main players of the new Oriental trade, taking the place of Venice and Genoa, which had dominated Oriental trade through the Mediterranean. Indeed, the pioneers in creating the new destiny were the Portuguese. A new era often gives birth to new heroes. But, sometimes it’s the pioneers who have special insight into the trends of an era that are the ones who are best able to create a new era. Prince Henry the Navigator (1394–1460) of Portugal was the right figure at the right time. He was full of passion for new knowledge and the exploration of the unknown world. While serving as governor of Ceuta, which had been conquered by his father, Prince Henry sponsored Portuguese explorations. At the age of 25, he returned to Portugal and opened a school of navigators, ship builders, astronomers, cartographers, craftsmen and explorers in Sagres, situated in the southwestern part of Portugal. He collected a variety of travel books, maps and navigation materials. The international community for information, knowledge and creation was founded in Sagres. The Sagres school would play a pivotal role in the expansion of Portugal, along with Lisbon. The navigation school was made possible because the Portuguese had developed a spirit of tolerance toward different religions, cultures and races during the rule of Arabs over previous centuries. Their open-mindedness allowed them to learn about the knowledge and technology of Arabs and to employ Arab scholars without hesitation. They made use of the wealth and knowledge of Jews as well, and on the basis of this openness, the Portuguese were successful at creating a cocktail of civilizations that mingled Christianity with Islam and Judaism. At the age of 26, Prince Henry was appointed Grand Master of the Military Order of Christ. This had a significant implication in the history of Portuguese expansions. He became a key figure for the explorations of the Atlantic because he was able to use the human and material resources of the Military Order of Christ, sponsored by the pope. The Military Order of Christ, as with other religious organizations, established a well-organized chain of command. As he deftly exercised his power, he was able to mobilize the resources necessary for the exploration of the Atlantic, while fighting opposition voices that claimed the voyages were reckless and unprofitable. The pope promised that he would regard the expeditions of the Portuguese Military Order of Christ as crusades and grant an indulgence to those partaking in the expeditions. With the support of the pope, who held the ultimate authority in Christendom, Prince Henry justified the expeditions by saying that they were businesses to convert pagans to Christianity

Sagres School. Jewel of Iberia: Caravel. In order for the Iberians to take to the Atlantic, new ships suitable for ocean-going navigation, durable enough to withstand strong waves and harsh sea conditions, were required. The traditional galleons with masts with a triangular sail, primarily powered by rowers, could not sail across oceans. As such, ocean-going sailing required sailing ships which could use the winds. In early expeditions sponsored by Prince Henry, small sailing ships, referred to as barques, with three or more square-rigged masts, were commonly used. However, the barque had a decisive drawback: It was not suitable for sailing windward. The new type of ship, the caravel, also known as the ‘Jewel of Iberia,’ was developed by the ship builders in Sagres to address the drawback. The caravel was the product of efforts made by Prince Henry that combined the rigging of Viking ships with Muslims’ ships. The early caravels, which had two square-rigged masts, were highly maneuverable in sailing windward. As voyages grew longer, caravels with three masts became common. The salient feature of the caravel was its central steering gear, which allowed crewmen to steer in a pilot house and greatly improved maneuverability. The attachment of central steering gear was somewhat like the fins of fish. With ocean-going sailing increasing, caravels, originally developed for sailing inshore, demonstrated their limitations in voyages across oceans. Thus the square-rigged caravel, known as caravela redonda, was newly created by the Portuguese in the second half of the 15th century. The caravela redonda was larger in size than the caravel. To improve its ability to withstand ocean-going voyages, its foremast was square-rigged, and the main and stern masts were lateen-rigged (triangular sail). A triangular sail allowed a ship to tack against the wind. The lateen evolved out of the dominant square rig by setting the sails more fore-and-aft – along the line of the keel, while tailoring the luff and leech. Indeed, the evolution of the caravela redonda was a great revolution in shipbuilding history in that it connected the Atlantic world together and made the Age of Discovery possible

Caravela Redonda. Guns had been mounted on the decks of ships since the 14th century. However, the improvements of the guns starting in the mid-14th century considerably increased their weight, forcing ships to mount them low on the hull for stability. A gun port – an opening in the side of the hull of a ship – above the waterline, allowed the muzzle of artillery pieces mounted on the gun deck to fire outside. Ships featuring gun ports were said to be pierced, since the ports were cut through the hull after the construction. Piercing gun ports had grown into a common practice by 1501. As a result, a heavier armament for large ships was possible. Even with more cannons in the hull, the stability and maneuverability of a ship were better than if cannons had been mounted on the deck. A musket, which was a muzzle-loaded, smoothborelong gun, capable of penetrating heavy armor, was developed in Sagres. Caravels, cannons mounted in the hull and muskets were new forces that ushered in the Age of Discovery. Searching for the Golden State. For ocean-going sailing, navigational aids such as the compass and quadrant were essential. Prince Henry instructed the leading engineers, invited from Italy, to devise navigational aids. He also employed experienced Italian sailors. While Prince Henry had ruled Ceuta, he learned of an interesting story about Africa. It was about the legendary Christian empire that the priest king Prester John had built as well as the Golden State that was presumed to be situated somewhere south of the empire. Prince Henry, motivated by religious passion and economic gains as well, sent expeditions to the coast of West Africa, upon the completion of preparations for voyages. Allegedly, he was greatly influenced by The Travels of Marco Polo, a book that recorded Marco Polo’s travel to China and other Asian countries. As described previously, Marco Polo, an Italian merchant born in Venice, traveled to China with his father and met Kublai Khan for the first time in 1269. A year later, he embarked on another journey to Asia. He returned after 17 years in Asia to find Venice at war with Genoa. Marco Polo was imprisoned in Genoa and dictated his stories to a cellmate. Coincidentally, Marco Polo’s book described Prester John and a small island country in Asia, covered with gold and also known as ‘Zipangu’ (Japan) or ‘the Land of Gold.’ This might indicate that the zeal for searching for gold was a principal motivation that spurred Prince Henry to engage in voyages across the Atlantic. Prince Henry the Navigator and. Sinbad the Sailor. We run across an interesting story about the Arab scholars who worked for Prince Henry. We can find that the Portuguese explorations of new trade routes were closely related to the tales of Sinbad. The tales of Sinbad are a late addition to the compilation of Arabic folk tales called ‘One Thousand and One Nights.’ After Sinbad misspent his inheritance, he went to the sea to rebuild his fortune. During his seven voyages throughout the seas east of Africa and south of Asia, Sinbad had fantastic adventures in magical places, meeting monsters and encountering supernatural phenomena. Sinbad ventured out to the Gulf of Persia, the Gulf of Bengal and the South China Sea. On his seven voyages, he visited many cities along the Malabar Coast and traded in Sri Lanka, traveling to ports in Sumatra, the Malacca Peninsula and Singapore. Sinbad advanced further to Guangdong, China, using seasonal winds called ‘southwesters.’ The tales of Sinbad formed a kind of logbook that went beyond simple legendary tales. They were a record of marine observations. The tales included lessons about people in the unknown world, the implications of winds and weather in various waters, warnings of pirates and dangerous waters, navigational skills and information, statements on navigation route selection, advice on the practices of ports. The vivid information contained in the tales would be analyzed by scholars in Sagres and were extremely useful to Prince Henry, who intended to travel to the same regions. The tales explain that Sinbad was from Baghdad, but he was possibly from Suhar, Oman. I have had a chance to read an interview article by the vice minister of the Ministry of Tourism of Oman, made during her visit to the 2013 Yeousu Expo, held in Korea. While stressing that Oman and its capital city of Muscat were chosen as one of the ultimate bucket-list items by National Geographic, she also claimed that the tales of Sinbad were about a sailor as well as explorer who had existed in Oman. Oman is situated on the southwest coast of the Arabian Peninsula, with ports of Muscat, Sur and Suhar, along the lengthy coast, which had been open to the world since ancient times. Ships traveling from the Persian Gulf, Egypt and Africa to India and Asia, called in those ports. Given that Suhar was called the ‘Gateway to China’ and ‘the Asian Department Store,’ I assume that it is highly possible that the tales of Sinbad originated in Oman. Voyages beyond Cape Bojador. Cape Bojador was considered by Europeans to be the frontier of the world over a thousand years. Cape Bojador is a headland on the northern coast of West Sahara. The cliff is 20 meters high and was formed by several tall sand dunes projected into the sea. A rocky shoal and patch widely extend into the sea to the north and west of the cape. Arabs called the cape ‘Abu Khatar,’ meaning the ‘father of danger,’ due to the risk of sailing over the rocky spots under the sea. Beyond the cape, Europeans believed that there was boiling water and the Green Sea of Darkness. Mariners were fearful of taking to the coast of West Africa south of the Iberian Peninsula because they believed that nobody would return home around Cape Bojador. Indeed, no sailor had survived sailing beyond the cape since the navigation of Phoenician galleons. Ultimately, the myth was broken by the Portuguese mariner Gil Eanes, who first discovered a passable route around Cape Bojador in 1434. His expedition beyond the cape was considered a major breakthrough for European explorers and traders en route to Africa and later to India. Today, Christopher Columbus is commonly referred to as an initiator of the Age of Discovery. However, it seems that people do not much know about Eanes’s expedition, which was a prelude to the Age of Discovery. In the 15th century, Eanes and Cape Bojador were more highly regarded than Columbus and India because at the time sailing beyond the cape was recognized to be a bolder and more valuable deed for mariners than navigating across the Atlantic. Following Eanes’s exploration of Cape Bojador, Portuguese expeditions ensued. They sailed along the coast of West Africa and went further to the Cape of Good Hope and ultimately they took to India after sailing around it. Prince Henry planned and arranged the expeditions in Sagres. The expeditions required vast expenses. He spent his personal assets at first for the expeditions and later was financed by the Military Order of Christ as he became its Grand Master. In the period from 1419 through 1433, he had sent more than 40 expeditions. He firmly believed that he could find enormous treasures by sailing south. The barrier to his expeditions was definitely Cape Bojador. Despite persistent attempts, no sailors were successful in taking to the south after sailing around Cape Bojador. Some captains who led his expeditions feared to sail southward and thus took to the west. They ran across many islands in the Atlantic, such as Madeira and the Azores. The discovery of those islands was considered a poor accomplishment at the time. Thereafter, they were used for midway bases of voyages across the Atlantic. In 1433, when Prince Henry almost ran out of patience in the midst of continued failures, he picked Eanes as a captain of his new expedition. Among all captains, Eanes had a reputation for being the most capable and loyal. He was ordered to advance a few miles beyond Cape Bojador. He failed in his first attempt, as many previous captains had. He tried again under the orders of Prince Henry, with the same ships used in the first attempt, that had to sail south beyond Cape Bojador. In late May 1434, Eanes embarked on a voyage toward the south of West Africa again. The type of ship that Eanes sailed was a barque, a prototype of a caravel. The ship had a gross tonnage of 55, with two masts. It was greater than 18 meters in length and no greater than 6 meters in width. The freeboard, which means the distance from the waterline to the upper deck level, was no fewer than 1.5 meters. The ship was suitable for inshore sailing. Ten days after departure from Sagres, the Fuerteventura Island, situated east of the Canary Islands, appeared. The sailors were dismayed to believe that they would shortly get to the frontier of the world. The sailors feared that there would be a sea monster preying on ships, and that the sun was hot enough to boil the ocean, and people would be burned to death. When they arrived in the shallow water where the water appeared to be boiling, the ship began to roll. The extremely terrified sailors gathered at the bow and began to make the sign of the cross. They witnessed water boiling under the keel, like white milk. They begged that they should return. Instead of sailing back, however, Eanes ordered the sailors to put down an empty wine barrel into the water and fill the barrel with water and pick it up. Then, he put his hands into the water and ordered the sailors to do the same. Eanes shouted that “Just like the sea on the coast of Algarve, water here is not boiling. It is simply the white bubbles made when the waves break after crashing into the cliff on the coast.” Eventually, the sailors were soothed. However, the sailors’ calm did not last long. A sailor responsible for measuring the depth of the sea reported that it was fewer than three meters. At this juncture, Eanes made a historic decision which led to the Age of Discovery. He changed the navigation course to the west, rather than continuing to sail inshore. Then, he sailed all day long until the coast was not visible. Around the daybreak, after sailing to the west all night, he sailed toward the south again. He slowly proceeded at the angle of 60 degrees, sailing windward. The sight of a new coast appeared. The sailors gathered at the bow, looking fearfully at an unfamiliar coast. The land stretched southward, far away. The coastal area had sands that were flat and shining in the sunshine. There was no headland on the coast. The sailors finally realized that they had passed through the frontier that they believed they would never cross. At last, they had sailed beyond Cape Bojador. The Opening of African Trade Routes. In the summer of 1434, the myth had crumbled. For the Europeans who believed that the world ended at the underwater reef of Cape Bojador, it took more than a thousand years for them to travel merely 1.6 kilometers farther from the coast of West Africa. Eanes’s expedition laid a foundation for Portuguese voyages to the south of West Africa. Thereafter, Prince Henry sent several more expeditions. In 1444, a sailing ship that Prince Henry had sent came back with gold dust and Africans aboard from 480 kilometers past Cape Bojador. This addressed to a certain degree Prince Henry’s lack of financial gains from his many sailing expeditions, but it marked the beginning of slave trade, which remains a disgrace in the history of the Atlantic. The slave trade, prior to spice trade, was a lucrative business generated from the exploration of African trade routes. In 1445, a caravel of Prince Henry arrived at the Cape Verde Islands, situated in the westernmost end of Africa. Active trades took place on the coast of Guinea there. Portuguese merchants traded their firearms, dyed linens and cottons, clothes, necklaces, mirrors and steel goods with slaves brought by the regional leaders. In 1450, 25 of Prince Henry’s ships came back fully loaded with slaves and goods. At last, Prince Henry’s long-held investments were rewarded. With the discovery of the Cape Verde Islands, Prince Henry made hydrographical charts based on his findings. The discovery of Madeira and the Azores, and their subsequent use as a midway supply base were an unexpected gain for Prince Henry. After Prince Henry died in 1460, King Alfonso granted Ferdi­- nando Gomez the right to explore 100 leagues (equivalent to 550 km) each year. However, the king decided to directly take control of the explorations to realize vast incomes generated from the business. John II, who succeeded King Alfonso, was no less an explorer than Prince Henry himself. As Prince Henry had done, John II sent expeditions out several times around the south of Africa. Thereafter, the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488 made it much easier for the Portuguese to take to the Indian Ocean. Competition of Iberians for Ocean-Going. The Iberians took to the Atlantic Ocean while France and England were engaged in the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) over control of Western Europe. After the death of Prince Henry, the Portuguese accelerated their efforts to get to the Atlantic. John II, following his grandfather Prince Henry, continued to support exploration of the Atlantic. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias, instructed by John II, discovered the Cape of Good Hope in southernmost Africa. In the stormy weather, which had lasted 13 days, they passed around the southernmost part of Africa, while not knowing their whereabouts. Dias named it Cabo das Tormentas, meaning ‘Cape of Storms.’ However, John II was reluctant to use the name because of its sinister meaning and thus ordered it changed to the Cape of Good Hope, signifying that the discovery marked a new starting point to explore trade routes to India. In 1498, Vasco da Gama arrived at Calicut (modern Kozhi­kode), southwest of India, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese exploration of the trade route to India was in the aftermath of Columbus’s Spanish-sponsored voyage to the New World a few years prior. Vasco da Gama sailed safely across the Indian Ocean, with assistance from the Muslim navigator Ahmad Bin Madjid off Malindi, Kenya, and arrived in Calicut in May 1498. Vasco da Gama visited many ports on the west coast of India, gained spices by barter and retuned to Lisbon the following September after departing from India in October. Out of his expedition, composed of four ships and 170 sailors, only two ships and 55 sailors came back home due to diseases such as cholera and fever. Despite a large loss of life and harsh voyages, the Oriental trade would certainly bring tremendous economic wealth. The spices brought to Lisbon turned out to be 60 times more profitable than the expense of the voyages. Apart from the profits gained from the voyages, Vasco da Gama and his sailors were acclaimed by the Portuguese for their efforts to explore the trade route to India. The information on the trade route that Vasco da Gama had explored had been classified highly confidential. As the Portuguese fleet continued to sail toward India, sea-borne trade expanded, and as a consequence, disputes with Muslim merchants over commercial rights also intensified. When Vasco da Gama went to India with the fleet of 15 ships in 1502, he was attacked by a combined fleet of Muslims and Hindus. The Portuguese forces that defeated them established trade bases in Goa, Cochin and Cannanore, and dominated trade with India. Thereafter, the Portuguese, centered in Goa, exclusively controlled sea-borne trade for 150 years. The exploration of the trade route to India by Vasco da Gama had an enormous impact on Europeans’ expansion to the East. His exploration allowed the West and the East, engaged in indirect trade by land, to trade directly with each other by ship. The prices of European goods plunged as Oriental goods flowed in enormous volume. This greatly changed the daily and economic life of Europeans, becoming a trigger of the commercial revolution to come. Europeans, who began to learn about the weak military power of the East, began to conquer many regions by using their dominant forces armed with cannons and firearms. In the early 16th century, the Portuguese occupied the regions of Hormuz, Goa, Malacca and Timor

New Trade Routes Explored by Iberians. Portuguese Expansion to Asia. The Portuguese, armed with Christianity, cannons and muskets, advanced to the Far East, following back the expedition routes that Zheng He had explored during the early Ming Dynasty. After a captain named Pinto led a Portuguese expedition to Macao, China for the first time in 1513, the Portuguese landed in Tanegashima (種子島), an island belonging to Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, in 1543. The Portuguese there handed over two muskets to the Japanese. For this historical background, the early type of Japanese musket was called tanegashima or hinawaju (火繩銃). The Japanese produced more than 600 muskets less than six months after the acquisition of these muskets from the Portuguese. None would expect that the two muskets would bring about a revolutionary change to armed forces throughout Asia. Tanegashima was used by the samurai class and their foot soldiers (ashigaru) and within a few years the introduction of the tanegashima in battle changed the way that war was fought in Japan forever. Among powerful daimyos (大名), a feudal ruler subordinate to the shogun (將軍), in the Senkoku period(戰國時代, 1467–1603), during which powerful feudal lords fought against each other over control of Japan, Oda Nobunaga was the initiator of the use of muskets in battle. He devised a way of consecutive firing where after soldiers in the front row fired, soldiers in the back row fired while the front row soldiers reloaded. In the Battle of Nagashino in May 1575, he saw success by using his firing method. Under the direction of Oda Nobunaga, the shooters stood up in 23 rows and began to fire row by row, allowing the soldiers to fire a thousand bullets every 20 seconds. The battle was regarded as a historic turning point that changed warfare during the Senkoku period. When Japan invaded the Chosun Dynasty (on what is now the Korean Peninsula) in 1592, the muskets were used as the main firearms of Japanese soldiers. Oriental trade became the core of the Portuguese economy in the 16th century. The Portuguese court, which enjoyed enormous income generated by the Oriental trade through the trade route to India, justified it as ‘God’s Business.’ Spanish Ocean-Going. Spurred by the Portuguese exploration of trade routes to India and the wealth they gained by the exclusive control of Oriental trade, the Spanish joined the rush for the exploration of new trade routes. This coincided with the period when Spain completely drove Muslims out of the Iberian Peninsula in the name of ‘Reconquista.’ The Spanish were afraid that if Spain, a latecomer in the explorations, followed the Portuguese trade route to India, it would remain behind Portugal. Spain, which did not intend to provoke Portugal either, opted to explore the Atlantic – a tactic that Portugal had not attempted. It was Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer and navigator born in Genoa, that made it possible. Thanks to Columbus, Spain was able to catch up with the front-runner Portugal in terms of the exploration of new trade routes. On the basis of the information on African expeditions and his belief that the Earth is round, Columbus concluded during his stay in Portugal that sailing west would be a quicker way to reach the Indies. In the years of 1484 and 1488, he presented his plan to John II of Portugal to request his sponsorship for the Atlantic expedition. John II, inflated by Dias’s discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, rejected the Columbus’s proposal because Portugal was only interested in an eastern trade route around the Cape of Good Hope. Columbus turned his eyes to the Spanish crown. After continued lobbying at the Spanish court and two years of negotiations, Columbus was finally successful in January 1492 in having financial support from the Spanish crown. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had just conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula. On the evening of 3 August 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships: a larger carrack, the Santa María, and two smaller caravels, the Pinta and the Nina. The voyage went smoothly. Columbus arrived at an island 69 days after departure. Columbus called the island (in what is now the Bahamas) San Salvador, meaning Holy Savior, to express gratitude for safe arrival. Following the first voyage, he made three more voyages and built a base on modern-day Haiti and explored the West Indies and the coasts of Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Panama and Honduras. Columbus always insisted, in the face of mounting counter-evidence, that the lands where he visited were part of the Asian continent, as previously described by Marco Polo and other European travelers. Columbus refused to accept that the lands he had visited and claimed for Spain were not part of Asia. Why did he firmly believe that the lands he had visited were the Indies? The most convincing answer might be found in his wrong nautical count. He vastly underestimated the distance to East Asia from Europe. He estimated that the western route to India from Europe would be 8,000 kilometers shorter than the route around Africa and the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan would be 2,400 nautical miles. He also needed to believe that his voyages, sponsored by the Spanish crown, were successful. Whatever the reason, he firmly believed until he died that the lands he had visited were the Indies. The Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci found later that the lands Columbus had visited were not the Indies, but an entirely new continent. The American continent was named after him. Geographical Re-Discovery. Encountering claims contrary to commonly known historical facts can be an embarrassing thing. However, our understanding of history extends by rediscovering evidence and records. There are convincing claims that the lands that great explorers such as Columbus, Dias, and da Gama had reached were actually a ‘rediscovery,’ and that others had in fact reached these lands hundreds of years before. German author Bernhard Kay in his book Navigation History tells some amazing stories of navigation and exploration of the unknown world. Two thousand years prior to Bartolomeu Dias’ voyage, the Phoenicians sailed around the Cape of Good Hope from the east to the west. The Irish priest Saint Brendan was the first European who had visited the American continent around 570. His exploration was first described in the book Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot. His journey was said to be inspired by religious passion to search for the Garden of Eden. He set out on the Atlantic Ocean with 16 monks. From the descriptions of geography of their arrival, they are presumed to have arrived somewhere around the Chesapeake Bay and visited the Ohio River over the Appalachian Mountains. It was alleged that the Vikings who arrived in the new continent somewhere between the 10th and the 11th century discovered traces of the Irish. The exploration of the trade route to India by Vasco da Gama is said to be not the first venture. Around the 1st century B.C., 1,400 years prior to his exploration, the route to India was said to be explored by unknown sailors. It is alleged that there existed a regular voyage shuttling between the Mediterranean and the Orient. It is hard to imagine, but it is alleged that 120 ships had shuttled the route annually. In the absence of hydrographical charts, the logbooks that previous navigators recorded were essential for the safety of navigation. The Eritrean logbook served as an accurate and detailed navigational guidebook for navigation from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. By 60, the logbook was recorded by the Berenice (modern Benghazi) merchants. The logbook tells that merchants in the 1st century traveled in August to India from Africa. They sailed aboard ship of 750 tonnage, which could load a large amount of goods. They sailed toward India using the southwest monsoon in the late summer. In India, the merchants traded goods along the coasts. If all these things are true, our perception of navigational history should be greatly enhanced. Treaty of Tordesillas: Division of Control over the Southern Hemisphere. As Spain was actively engaged in the exploration of trade routes to Asia, competition between Spain and Portugal over the ownership of the lands that they found had intensified. With the latecomer Spain reaching a previously unknown continent, Portugal’s discontent ran high. As a consequence, the threat of war overshadowed the two countries. In the midst of the higher threat of war, Pope Alexander VI was involved in meditating the two sides. Under the mediation of the pope, the two countries agreed to divide the Atlantic and the Pacific in the Southern Hemisphere. In May 1493, Pope Alexander VI decreed in a papal bull that all lands west of a pole-to-pole line 100 leagues west of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands should belong to Spain. The bull did not mention Portugal or its lands, so Portugal could not claim newly discovered lands even if they were east of the line. Another bull in September1493 gave all mainlands and islands, “at one time or even still belonging to India” to Spain, even if east of the line. Indeed, the pope’s mediation favorably reflected Spain’s position. Requested from Queen Isabel to consolidate the Spanish title of the lands that Columbus had reached, the Vatican, which had been under Spanish influence, took sides with Spain. The Portuguese King John II strongly protested that arrangement, arguing that Portugal was prevented from controlling events on the newly found continent. In 1494, the representatives from Spain and Portugal met in Tordesillas, a small town in the northwest of Spain, and reached an agreement that the initial demarcation line should move 270 leagues (equivalent to approximately 1,296 kilometers) west. Under that arrangement, the new continent America came under the full control of Spain. The adjusted demarcation line stretches to the tip of the eastern part of Brazil. Accordingly, Portugal was able to advance and establish control over Brazil. This is why modern-day Brazil remains the single Portuguese-speaking country in all of Latin America. Spain and Portugal, which divided the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere in half, enjoyed the status of maritime hegemons. Ships from the two countries were allowed to sail freely, but ships from other countries were prohibited from sailing without permission. In fact, sailing these oceans without permission was regarded as piracy. Portugal made an enormous income by selling passage licenses in Asia, on the grounds that the pope had granted the exclusive right of control. The Vatican officially approved the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1506. The treaty served as a precedent for the linear demarcation of boundaries in the 19th century, regardless of nations, natural environment and culture, in the lands that European powers had conquered

Chapter 8. Navigation in the Age of Discovery. Navigation in the Age of Discovery. Even in the Age of Discovery, navigational knowledge and skill still remained rudimentary. Navigation totally relied on dead reckoning. When engaged in navigation toward the new continent in the early modern times, navigators had no prior knowledge of the geography marking the boundaries of the oceans or a hydrographical chart on new oceans, either. Instead, navigators fully relied on the sky. They used Polaris to find the north at night and know geographical longitude. It was not until the end of the Middle Ages that Europeans were able to actively use celestial navigation, also known as astronavigation. Celestial navigation is the practice of position fixing that enables a navigator to know their position without relying on estimated calculations or dead reckoning. It enables one to locate a position by the use of angular measurements (sights) between celestial bodies and the visible horizon at sea. Before this, Europe had been in a deep sleep for more than 1,000 years. Much earlier, the Greeks believed that the earth is round by witnessing that mountains rose from the sea as a ship neared the shore, and that the roofs of houses appeared to set into the sea as a ship sailed away from shore. By 200 B.C., Eratosthenes, a Greek mathematician and geographer, calculated the circumference of the earth for the first time. He did it by comparing the altitudes of the mid-day sun at two places that were a known north-south distance apart. However, in the Middle Ages, Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the universe (that the earth was the center of not only the solar system, but the entire universe) was a dominant doctrine of Christianity. Ptolemy, a Greco-Romanmathematician, astronomer and geographer, argued that the earth is a stationary sphere at the center of a vastly larger celestial sphere that revolves at a perfectly uniform rate around the earth, carrying with it the stars, planets, the sun and the moon. Whosoever doubted or denied the doctrine throughout the Middle Ages was referred to the Inquisition and doomed to be killed. In the Middle Ages, during which time religion had dominated other values and authorities, Christian values had driven out prior scientific knowledge and development. The Medieval belief was that the earth was like a flat disk floating on a sea of darkness. Such belief was derived from Ptolemy’s misjudgment, wherein he attempted to reflect the earth’s spherical surface onto the flat surface. Ptolemy mistakenly calculated the circumference of the earth to be 29,000 kilometers, 28 percent shorter than the actual circumference. On his world map, the coast of eastern Africa extends to the east and is linked to the Asian continent. As a result, the Indian Ocean was drawn as a vast enclosed sea. On Ptolemy’s map, the longitudinal and latitudinal lines were first used to specify terrestrial locations. On his map, eastern Asia and Europe appear to be very close to each other. This served as a critical cause that led to Columbus’s misjudgment. Columbus attempted to discover India in the west, assuming it was nearly adjacent to Europe. The advances in celestial navigation relied on the development of sea surveying. Sea surveying allowed sailors to specify their position with numbers. It enabled sailors to specify any location with a grid of longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates. A ship could reach its destination by trial and adjustment, based on a grid of longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates. The development of navigational skills was dependent on the development of surveying, and in doing so in a way that made it easily applicable. So, how was surveying developed and made applicable? A quadrant and an astronomical observation device were used to measure the altitude of stars. Since 1472, a goniometer, a device to measure angle measurements, was used. One might have doubts about how accurately a moving ship could make measurements, but the measurements were amazingly accurate. Sailors frequently had to land on shores or islands to enhance the accuracy of measurements. The list of latitudes measured in 1509 showed that any latitudinal error was less than one degree, and the gap from the actual location was less than 25 minutes. In the early 17th century, as scientific knowledge further advanced, the goniometer and astronomical observation device were replaced by an octant, which was more accurate. The introduction of algebra made the complicated calculation of star angles much easier, and the invention of the watch and telescope laid a foundation for safer celestial navigation. Another essential factor to specify the location of a ship was the measurement of ship speed. Since the invention of the compass enabled sailors to set a certain course, the measurement of a ship’s speed became a critical concern. Without knowing the ship speed, sailors could not calculate how far they sailed and their present position. Columbus and his contemporaries used a sandglass to measure time. The invention of sandglass allowed navigators to fully measure time. Because a 30-minute sandglass was for the measurement of time on a daily basis, it was not adequate to measure a long time and distance. However, it enabled navigators to roughly measure the ship’s speed. Navigators could specify the estimated position of a ship by taking into account the current and wind, and by marking their course, speed and time on the hydrographical chart. It is interesting to note the way that an hourglass was used to calculate the speed of ship. A sandglass was used for multiple purposes, depending on the time limit. There were a variety of different types of sandglass: a four-hour sandglass for watch; a 30-minute sandglass; 15-second, 28-second, and 30-second sandglasses to measure the ship’s speed. The 28-second sandglass in particular was like a kind of speed gun. Sailors threw a string, which had knots every 14.4 meters, into the water, and could figure out the ship’s speed by calculating the number of knots which had passed for 28 seconds. In order to measure the ship’s speed with a 30-minute sandglass, the most commonly used sandglass – also known as ‘ampolleta’ – sailors had to turn it upside down 48 times for 24 hours. Against this background, a day on the calendar is marked as 48 ampolletas. The logbook of Columbus tells that the ship sailed 12 kilometers during five ampolletas, which was equivalent to 3.2 knots per hour (5.9 kilometers per hour) Since watch rotated every fourth hour, a sailor on watch had to turn the sandglass upside down eight times during his watch. This was supervised by the deck officer. If the sailor on watch made the glass sphere of the sandglass warm with candlelight or his clothes, he was subject to a heavy punishment. This was because the swell of warmed glass allowed for the faster flow of sands, shortening watch hours as a result. Most importantly, the erroneous calculation of time could endanger navigation. Since the invention of the watch, the ringing of a bell on a regular basis let the captain and sailors know the status of watch. Watch started with ringing a bell, with eight bells rung over the course of a watch – one every 30 minutes. This began a long sailing tradition of making each watch last for eight bells. Ships in the Early Age of Discovery. One might be curious as to the size of ships that sailed across the oceans in the Age of Discovery. How big were they? One might imagine that the ships at the time would be fairly large, given the size of modern merchant and cargo ships engaged in international navigation, most of which are tens of thousands of tons. To the contrary, indeed, they were unbelievably small vessels. To begin with, we need to take a look at the types of vessels that explorers in the period of the Age of Discovery used. As described in the previous chapter, the caravel was the principal type of vessel used for ocean-going throughout the period. The caravel was a ship that combined a European hull, Oriental rigging and a Northern European key. First and foremost, the caravel was excellent in maneuverability due to its robust structure as well as in seaworthiness due to a deep draft (the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull). In addition, the caravel was capable of having a large number of sailors aboard ship. It also had an outstanding speed. It had a jib – a triangularstaysail set forward of the foremast, as with the Arabian traditional sailing vessel, the dhow. The caravel could sail as quickly as a 19th century clipper – a remarkably fast ship – in a fair wind. The ship records found in Venice described the caravel as the best ship. “There is not any reason that this ship cannot reach any port of the world. This is because this ship is the best ship of ships sailing across the seas.” For these reasons, it would become a key player in geographical discovery. The caravel was the product of advances in European shipbuilding in the 15th century. The fundamental part of hull remained unchanged, because sailors tend to distrust ships that they are not familiar with. However, shipbuilding at the time had flexibility in which various experimental factors were applied as well, depending on the hull of ships. Ships engaged in ocean navigation were much smaller than one might expect. Being small in size was itself a feature of ships at the time. Expeditions overseas were very risky projects, and thus a heavy investment from the beginning was not possible. Due to the enormous expenses involved, the expeditions could not afford to build large ships. On top of that, the merit of small ships – good maneuverability in shallow water – was a critical consideration. Ships at the time mostly sailed inshore, and as such, large ships had greater risk of getting stranded in shallow water or going ashore on a strange coast. Table 1 – Vessels in the Age of Discovery

Source: Jou, Kyung Chul, The Age of Maritime Expansion (Seoul National University Press, 2008) As Table 1 indicates, the ships operated in the Age of Discovery were rather small from the perspective of contemporary standards. This might demonstrate that the size of ships is not necessarily the most essential factor for ocean-going. The fact that these small ships could traverse the open ocean was classified as a national secret that should not be revealed to other countries. There are some episodes concerned with this issue. For example, John II of Portugal ordered a gag to be put on a navigator who had worked for Vasco da Gama and had spoken in public that they could reach the coast of Guinea with even a small vessel. In 1535, when Diago Botellu returned from the Indies aboard a small galleon, John II ordered that it be burned. In 1610, sailors sailed with a small junk ship from Japan to Acapulco, Mexico, across the Pacific. The fact that they managed this crossing should demonstrate that size is far from the only determinant in whether a ship is able to cross the ocean. Ships in the Era of Conquest and Trade. Following the era of exploration and discovery, circumstances totally changed as the era of conquest and trade began. Although small ships were suitable for the exploration of unknown seas and lands, large vessels were advantageous for trade. However, all ships did not necessarily become equally bigger in size. The size of ships tended to be specific to trade routes and cargo. For Northern European trade, which largely shipped corn, sugar, salt and wine, small vessels, which were speedy and sailed on schedule, were preferred. On the contrary, for trade with the Mediterranean, American colonies or the West Indies, which mostly traded in food, sugar and tobacco, large ships were required. Generally, 11 to 14 sailors aboard a ship of 150 to 200 tons were involved in ocean navigation, which took six to nine months. Slave ships had the largest number of sailors. Roughly 20 to 25 sailors were aboard a slave ship of 200 tonnage class. This was a safety measure against the possible mutiny of slaves, as well as the high rate of mortality on a voyage. Navigation for the slave trade took 10 to 11 months. The largest slave ships belonged to the East India Company. These ships were as large as warships of 300 to 500 tons because they had to load a large number of personnel and goods, enough to last for voyages that could take more than two years. The size of vessels differed according to their types of trade as well as their trade regions, and different regions also required different numbers of sailors aboard. There was a notable distinction in size between the ships engaged in trade with Asia and the ships engaged in American trade, for example. Portuguese ships engaged in trade with India were fairly large – an average of 400 tons in the first half of the 16th century. They grew larger, to 750 tons in the late century, with 100 crewmen aboard. On the other hand, Spanish vessels engaged in voyages to America were on average 150 to 250 tons. Table 2 – Size of Spanish Vessels Engaged. in Voyages to America

Source: Jou, Kyung Chul, The Age of Maritime Expansion (Seoul National University Press, 2008) The explorers in the Age of Discovery ventured out on ocean journeys aboard incredibly small vessels. The fact that the explorers navigated across the oceans aboard small ships, relying on celestial observation, wind and currents, might prove that their indomitable courage and initiative spirit of adventure were not merely rhetoric, bur real. Risks of Ocean Navigation. Portuguese ships that departed for India set sail in March to April and arrived in September to October. The return journey from India usually started in December or January, bringing them back home anytime between June and September. It took approximately 20 months for a round trip. In the period between 1600 and 1635, out of 912 Portuguese ships that departed from Lisbon, 60 ships (6.5 percent) returned home without completing their voyages; 84 ships (9.2 percent) went missing; and 768 ships (84.2 percent) arrived safely at their destinations. The statistics show that other than the ships that immediately returned, 10 percent of 825 ships were involved in accidents on a voyage. Of those ships that arrived at their destinations, a total of 510 ships, excluding the ships that needed repairs or were used for patrol, embarked on a return voyage to Europe. Seventy-five ships sank and the rest of the 435 ships safely returned home. The rate of accidents on the way back home was 14.7 percent, higher than that of voyages to India. In generic terms, the rate of accidents was up to 20 percent, given that 159 ships out of 852 ships that set sail from Lisbon were subject to maritime casualties. In 1662, when a ship from the Dutch East India Company was sinking, it was said that the captain, without hesitation, had thrown 40 sailors into the water to prevent the rescue boat from being overloaded. Subsequently, he threw another 13 sailors into the water. Eventually, he threw five more sailors out so that the rest of the crew could come back home safely. Sailors. Sailors were one of the largest and most significant wageworker groups in the 18th century international market economy. Overseas trade in the 18th century, called the Era of Trade, required enormous capital investments. Capital was invested by individuals (often two to ten merchants who banded together to form a joint investment). Joint investment not only helped defray the risks of the investment – it made investing possible in the first place, because often a single investor could not afford to sponsor a ship alone. Most of the Atlantic trade, which concentrated on sugar, tobacco and the slave trade, were capital intensive. A voyage required 2,000 to 10,000 pounds in expenses. In addition, an essential factor in international trade was maritime labor forces. The century of trade was an era during which the maritime labor class inevitably expanded. As capital became concentrated on shipping, anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 sailors were involved in maritime jobs in the period between 1700 and 1750. This period was an era in which sea-borne trade with America remarkably expanded and the British shipping industry matured. It was in this period that the British established control over the sea, and their dominance over the sea remained stable and persistent. In the meantime, sailors grew to become one of the first and largest wageworker groups in the British and American economies. What was life like for these sailors, who explored the unknown world and fueled maritime trade? Sailors were often depicted as romantic, free-living figures, puffing a pipe in the sunset. However, the romantic image of navigation hides the real life of sailors. Sailors were not those who sought adventure in a vagabond lifestyle. They were merely a maritime labor class who struggled for their survival in the closed and self-contained space – the ship – that battled against the harsh nature of the sea. Ocean navigation was a life of constant stress. Sailors were fully exposed to harsh labor and brutal violence. They lived always with the threat of death. Such life was well described by historian Marcus Rediker, who defined the sailors as being caught between evil and the dark blue sea. On one side, there were captains, who wielded tyrannical power and violence with the support of merchants and bureaucrats. On the other side, there was dangerous and harsh Mother Nature. In between, sailors existed. Generally, sailors went to sea in their late teens or early twenties. In the early 18th century, the average age of sailors was 27. The low-ranking sailors were mostly in their late 20s, and the captains and navigators were largely their early 30s. Most of them were the sons of poor farmers or small landlords who had come to cities to find jobs; those who were forcibly recruited by the navy and later became seamen on merchant ships; those who were attracted by high wages in wartime; or those who were deceived by brokers. The majority of them had to go to the sea for economic reasons against their will. The sailors who lived the harsh life at sea had their own features in appearance, lifestyle, language, behavior and clothing. They lived together in a certain area of the city. Their appearances was menacing and tough. They had their own way of talking, with expressions and sounds that were often a mix of curses and crude language. Their walk was also unique – they swayed like pendulums as they walked, a habit which helped them stay stable on the decks of ships. Their clothes, too, were distinctive. They wore loose pants made of heavy, coarse and red-colored fabrics. Pants were water-proofed with tar to prevent their legs from being paralyzed by cold water. Their shirts were blue and white checked linen with, blue or grey woolen jackets, grey socks and a flat and round cap, called the Monmouth Cap. The sailors generally lived a wanton and dissipated life. It was common that the sailors who returned to port quickly spent the small wages that they had risked their lives to earn. During their stay on land, they squandered the wages by drinking and visiting prostitutes. One anecdote is particularly telling: A sailor rented three carriages – one for his cap, one for his pipe and the last for his cigarette case – and went scuttling around downtown Amsterdam. When they ran out of money, the sailors continued the vicious cycle and returned to sea. Recruitment of Sailors. As shipping developed, the number of sailors required to operate a ship tended to diminish. Changes in the technology of shipbuilding between 1700 and 1750 had a significant impact on sailors’ labor. By 1700, ships were designed to need a smaller number of sailors aboard. Since merchants preferred the Dutch-type hull, which had a wider bottom, to load more goods with fewer sailors, the number of sailors became fewer relative to the weight of ships. The number of sailors who worked on a typical trade ship at the time, Virginia, for example, was 20 to 21 in 1700, but this was reduced to 16 in 1756 and 13 in 1770. As a result, the amount of goods and various tasks that a sailor was in charge of gradually increased. This meant that merchants could benefit from hiring fewer sailors, but the sailors themselves would have to work harder. Sailors were disgruntled with the smaller numbers taken aboard a ship. In 1722, a group of sailors refused to embark on a voyage from London to northern Europe because the captain did not take aboard 11 sailors that he had promised to. In 1732, sailors sued a captain in the Admiralty Court on the charge of having an insufficient number of sailors aboard. As life aboard ship grew tougher, people avoided becoming sailors and thus the recruitment of sailors became a significant social problem. As a consequence, the recruitment of sailors itself turned violent. It was carried out largely by innkeepers in ports, or brokers. They were called ‘Soulless Dealers,’ ‘Dogs’ or ‘Pigs.’ They often steered youngsters hanging around ports or other job-seekers aboard ships, often by deceiving them. When they signed a contract with shipowners, they brought robust sailors and registered them. However, they frequently fraudulently also brought weak sailors to the ships. As a consequence, the quality of sailors diminished, and captains had a hard time controlling them. Those who made a deal with innkeepers or brokers to become sailors could not embark immediately. They had to wait until recruiters visited. In the meantime, they waited for long periods in damp basements or freezing attics, with minimal food and poor conditions. When the recruitment squad, playing trumpet, flute and drum, visited, applicants signed a contract. Shipowners paid them a certain amount of advance payment. Then, sailors paid for food and drinking during their stay and bought the necessities for life aboard ship such as cap, pillow, blanket and knife. The innkeepers received from shipowners a certificate that stated the information about the sailors that they had recruited, certifying that the innkeepers earn a certain amount of income from the sailors’ earnings. The innkeepers could not be paid until the ship and the sailors safely retuned. If the ship sank or the sailors died, they would not earn a cent. Since ocean navigation took several months at a minimum or several years at a maximum, those involved in the brokerage of sailors were paid considerably later. If they needed money faster, they could sell certificates in advance at a discount. Those who bought the certificates were merchants, and thus, merchants ultimately made big money after the voyages completed. In 1651, the Navigation Act of England prescribed that three out of four sailors should be British, but the provision was often not enforced. This was especially the case during wartime or during worker shortages. In certain cases, half the crew was foreign-born – a circumstance the British government allowed during worker shortages. Sailors were from various ethnic groups. A ship was full of a variety of regional, national and ethnic identities, including sailors from England, America, the Caribbean, the Netherlands, France and Spain as well as others from Asia and Africa. Compared to merchant ships, warships had a more serious problem in recruiting sailors. Beyond the risks of dying in a battle on the sea, navy ships were home to widespread epidemics such as typhoid. In the 17th and 18th centuries, almost the half of those drafted to the navy died at sea. Those who were fortunate enough to return home safely were often not paid. Some commanders delayed payment three to four years or six and a half years to prevent the sailors from attempting to leave their posts prematurely. Recruitment became a national issue. For this reason, a ‘compulsory recruitment squad’ that recruited navy sailors out of the merchant sailor ranks was established. The compulsory recruitment squad got onboard a ship, wielding sailor’s knife, known as cutlass, and forcibly took the sailors when the ship called in a port. Sailors’ resistance against compulsory recruitment brought about a kind of small-scale civil war, with sailors inciting revolts or overthrowing the ship’s command. Some sailors hurt themselves, making wounds that imitated the effects of scurvy by burning themselves with sulfuric acid; others pretended to be paralyzed or acted as though they suffered from seizures or were feeble-minded. Painful Life Aboard Ship. Work aboard ship was just like imprisonment, with constraints everywhere. All the things necessary for life aboard ship, such as space, liberty, movement and food, were constrained. Space, for example, was very tight. Sailors lived in the meager space, packed like bean sprouts in a jar, while the captain and senior sailors had their own rooms. Sailors often left home unsure whether they would survive their journeys, as casualties were very common. One of the most favored songs among the sailors was ‘Loath to Depart,’ reflecting this painful awareness that a goodbye could be forever.’ The first stage of a voyage was to load cargo. Sailors, wharf men and other handymen carried boxes, barrels, goods, ballast, food and ship’s stores to the deck. Many types of equipment were employed to lift cargo. Loading required a consideration of weight, shape and type of cargo as well as its overall balance. Ballast had to be loaded in order to keep the ship balanced on its journey. A water pump was installed to survive any water leakages. For aged vessels or vessels damaged by storms, sailors had to spend much time pumping, which was a hard job. Once loading was completed, the work of sailors shifted from handling cargo to operating the ship, which included steering, controlling the mast, and operating sails. The skillful handling of these works led to shorter journeys, and therefore greater profits. Steering was an essential part of work aboard ship, along with observation and the measurement of water depth. The steersman adopted a ship’s course according to the instruction of a senior officer on duty, watching the compass and the position of the sun and the moon. Sailors steered in rotation. On a voyage, they climbed up the top of the mast to control the sails. For merchant ships, masts were 18 to 23 meters high; sailors climbed to the top to make sails wider or narrower, depending on the winds. As described earlier, sailors were assigned watch duty as well. Half of them were for right watch and the rest were for left watch. The captain was in charge of supervising one side, and the navigation officer was in charge of the other side. Watchmen were on duty for four hours and off duty for four hours over a period of 24 hours. The shift from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. was called ‘Dog Watch,’ during which time sailors rotated every two hours. Sailors were assigned to a 10-hour duty and a 14-hour duty on rotation. They were not free even during off duty. They could not sleep over four hours at night. On a windy day, they had to close the topsails by climbing up the top of main mast or the foremost mast. Sailors slept in their clothes while on standby. In the event of a ship’s rolling or pitching in a storm, they had to tie up themselves with ropes to prevent themselves from falling out of the ship. At night, they could not see each other. On windy days, they could not even hear each other at close distances. There were a great deal of chores aboard ship that seemed minor but could mean the difference between life and death. Work aboard ship was relentless, with constant tasks such as checking rigging, rewinding ropes, maintaining gears, oiling, repairing sails, painting tar on ropes, cleaning cannons and painting the deck. When they called in a port, the work of unloading began. At the first stage of the work, the same equipment and workforce as had been used for loading did all the work in reverse. Following the lifting of cargo from a ship’s stores, they transferred it to small boats, like a barge. In the case of a small port, sailors transported goods to shore by rowboat. Dangerous Work Aboard Ship. Work aboard ship was always dangerous. Many sailors were killed either by falling down from the mast, drowning in waves or getting hit by ship gears. Above all, the shortage of supplies was the most painful possibility. Fresh food ran out less than a few weeks after departure, and afterwards, sailors had to live on salted meat, fish and beans. The largest problem was the shortage of drinking water. Water loaded aboard ship was easily spoiled. Drinking foul, spoiled water, with moss floating in it, was painful. They found later that wood barrels caused the problem, but metal barrels did not come into common use until much later. Some sailors chewed lead bullets to quench their thirst and as a consequence, they became addicted to lead. The fundamental cause of food and water shortages was the limited space aboard ship. Every extra bit of space went to load cargo, which was more profitable for shipowners than supplying sailors. According to the records in the 16th century, sailors were daily allocated 1.5 to 2 pounds of biscuits, 0.5 to 1 pound of salted meat, 0.25 pounds of rice or dried vegetables, 1 liter of drinking water, 0.75 liter of wine and 0.25 liter of oil. Calculating the amount of drinking water and food required for a month, 500 kilograms of supplies per person should be loaded. In the event of a long voyage or an uncertain schedule, more supplies were necessary, just in case. Christopher Columbus loaded the amount of food needed for 15 months and drinking water needed for six months. This meant a supply of 1,300 kilograms per person. Vasco da Gama, for a voyage to India, loaded supplies of 2,600 kilograms per person, necessary for three and a half years. Sailors also shared their space with rats, cockroaches, maggots and moths. Dogs, cats and parrots and pet penguins were also aboard. Cows, sheep, goats, pigs were raised aboard ship to supply milk and meat. Violent Discipline Aboard Ship. Along with the shortage of supplies and dangerous life aboard ship, sailors had to endure the horrible discipline and brutal violence of the captain or senior sailors. Details of this oppression against sailors can be found in the files of lawsuits referred to the Court of Admiralty. Today, sailing boats are viewed as a symbol of beauty and proud history, but at the time, the ship itself was a torture chamber. Things that could be used as torture devices, such as hooks, poles and iron sticks, were everywhere aboard ship. There were also axes, hammers, knives and the ropes which could be used to tie around a neck and pull a body and hands and legs. Ropes for sails and rigging were at an ideal height for hanging up uncontrollable sailors for several hours. There was a salty water box that could be showered over an injury after a whipping, and a great amount of salt that could be used to add to suffering. The captain and senior sailors had exclusive control over the ship and wielded violence in the name of keeping order, using such instruments. The most common punishment was flogging. For this, the captain often used the Cat-O-Nine Tails, made of nine slim strings, which signified the authority of captain and was the main symbol of violence. In the name of establishing discipline aboard ship, the captain nominated Sunday as the day of flogging and drubbed the sailors. Violence was committed as a punishment against the violation of discipline aboard ship. However, occasionally, brutal violence was committed for unknown reasons. Lashing was rather better than other brutal violence. Some cases of violence aboard ship referred to the Court of Admiralty are presented here. “They held my hair and put my head beneath the second cannon on the left side and drubbed me. I was beaten so long and brutally that I could not lift my hands and arms over my head.” “For coming back late, I was beaten by the captain with an oak stick so that I could not eat food for a while,” “I was beaten with fists, ropes, sticks, canes and sail strings, and lost an eye,” “Four teeth were broken by a beating with stone mugs,” “I was beaten until my face swelled and eyes were almost pulled out,” “He poked my left eye with his thumb and beat the thumb with his right hand three times,” “I was beaten with a sharp iron stick, and the captain had me climb up the top of mast in a very cold day in rain. Sailors being flogged with a cat-o-nine tails

Chapter 9. Legacy of the Age of Discovery: Light and Shadow of. the Atlantic World. Historical Significance of the Atlantic World. Despite Christopher Columbus’ erroneous belief that he had visited India – a belief he persisted in until his death – his voyages were an extremely significant global event in history. The era of ocean navigation, widely known as the Age of Discovery, was a critical turning point throughout the world history, not to mention for Europeans. With the exploration of trade routes to Asia, Europe opened a new era, ending the chaos of the Middle Ages. The eyes of Europeans turned towards the world beyond Europe. As Europe accepted the advanced culture and technology of Asia and explored trade routes, it was able to regain the status it lost with the fall of the Roman Empire. With Europe’s rise to global dominance, it was able to create a European-centric modern history of the world. On the other hand, Asian states, such as China, which had been passive in taking to the sea and had a closed off, self-centered view of the world, saw the beginning of a long history of colonization and submission under dominant European military and maritime powers. The new continent that Columbus had discovered was subject to a harsher destiny. Its civilizations were conquered by Europeans armed with Christianity, canons, firearms and swords. The European civilization became the global standard. The standards of ‘civilized’ Europeans in religion, languages, institutions, clothing, and way of life became a benchmark of legitimacy and created a justification to conquer the lands of people who were regarded as living a barbaric life and to force their culture upon them. The two sides of light and dark always exist together in history. The more critical the historical event, the more apparent this contrast becomes. On the part of European-centric history, the Age of Discovery was the ‘brilliant light of the Atlantic.’ On the contrary, it was the beginning of painful history for the new continent or colonial people that persists even today. An episode that happened at the 1992 World Expo held in Seville, Spain where the Columbus museum is located might symbolize the light and dark of the Age of Discovery. Right next to the poster of ‘The 500th Commemoration of the Discovery of the New Continent,’ the poster of “500 Years of Shame” was hanging. In the European-centric view, the discovery of the new continent by Columbus in 1492 was the great event that rediscovered a barbarian world and civilized it. By contrast, those who paid attention on the humiliating aspects of the discovery of the new continent claimed that the West should be ashamed of the barbarian acts it committed in the name of civilization over 500 years. Apparently, the Age of Discovery was the era that handed down many legacies of light and dark on both sides of the Atlantic. The light and dark still densely overshadow contemporary history. One might wonder what the light and shadow consist of? Before exploring the answers, it’s obvious that the historical facts reviewed here are colored by contemporary standards as well as the views of the conquerors. The Leap of the European Economy. and the New Crops. The European economy, which had long lagged behind Asia’s, leapt ahead through the Age of Discovery, with Iberia at the forefront. Iberians were able to directly import precious spices from Asia through their new trade routes, without relying on Muslims merchants. To the west, treasures such as gold and silver, and new crops such as corn, potatoes, beans, pumpkin, cotton and tomatoes, flowed in from the new continent. These new plants made a significant contribution to the relief of starvation which were prevalent throughout Europe. The Vicious Hunt for Gold and Silver. Europeans who first arrived in America looked to exploit the availability of gold and silver. Indeed, gold had been a motivator for exploring trade routes in the first place. Upon arrival in America, Europeans were engaged in harsh exploitation of the resources found there, gold and silver first among them. A study tells that the entire supply of gold that the natives of America had amassed for a thousand years was completely looted by conquers within two to three years of their arrival. The natives were forced to pan for gold after their gold was depleted. Since female natives were forced to produce additional gold, agricultural production became paralyzed and the birth rate significantly dropped, and as a consequence, population rapidly diminished. Afterwards, the outflow of silvers became more serious. Europeans, who had depleted gold in the West Indies, turned their eyes toward silver in America. In 1545, the massive scale of silver mines was explored in modern Bolivia and Mexico. In Potosi, Bolivia, an unprecedentedly enormous amount of silver was mined. Potosi, built in 1546 to support the mining operation there, grew to the largest city in America with a population of 200,000, as enormous riches were generated from mining. According to a study, the amount of silver produced in the mines in Spanish America was 25,000 to 30,000 tons between 1560 and 1685. In the period between 1685 and 1810, the amount doubled. Potosi was the largest producer of those riches. The amount of pure silver and gold mined in Potosi, nicknamed Cerro Rico (‘rich mountain’) was up to 45,000 tons. The silver shipped from the coast of Spanish America was mostly produced from the mines in Potosi. The gold exploited from the Aztecs and the silver from Potosi were shipped to Spain in the form of lumps. Spanish colonial rulers established mints across their colonies to mint gold and silver into coins. In 1536, the first mint was established in Mexico City, and subsequently the second in Lima in 1565 and the third in Potosi in 1573. The mining of the massive amount of gold and silver was possible with the harsh exploitation of natives’ labor. European conquerors took advantage of the native population’s traditional compulsory labor system, called Mitta, to draft the workforce required for mining. This was the compulsory method that every village was required to send a certain number of people into compulsory labor. The labor of the indigenous people forcefully brought into mining was extremely harsh. They were allowed to come out after crawling in dark, narrow mines for six to seven days. They had to climb up 250-meter-high ladders, carrying ore mined deep underground. In this way, they had to transport to the surface 25 bags of 50 kilograms each for 12 hours a day. If they failed to achieve the goal, their payments were cut. It was said that the population of Chucuito, Bolivia was reduced to one-third during the period between 1628 and 1754. On top of harsh labor exploitation, mercury addiction was a principal cause of indigenous deaths. As strip mines were depleted, conquerors developed a technology to extract silver out of low-silver-content minerals using mercury. When they smelted, they milled rough stones with water-powered machines and mixed the flour with mercury at a normal temperature and had the native people step on the mixture to grind it. Then they heated the mixture and extracted mercury out of it. At this moment, the deadly moisture came out, and laborers were fully exposed to it. For this reason, going to Potosi for compulsory labor was regarded as a death sentence. Indigenous people held a memorial service in advance when they sent their sons to the Potosi mines. As labor forces diminished, the shortage of labor was filled with African slaves. According to a research result, conquerors made a petition to the king in Madrid to allow the import of 1,500 to 2,000 African slaves annually. It is estimated that a total of 30,000 African slaves were brought to Potosi throughout the colonial period. African slaves, treated like ‘human mules,’ were forced to do harsh labor. Since mules to spin the machine to mill rough stones died within a few months, they were replaced by African slaves, with the ratio of four to 20. Indeed, gold and silver distributed across the world in modern times was produced by the heartbreaking sacrifice of indigenous and African slaves. America overwhelmed the rest of the world in terms of gold and silver production, accounting for 85 percent and 71 percent for each. American silver was distributed worldwide. A massive amount of silver flowed into Europe, of which a fairly large amount went on into Asia to purchase ceramics and silks from China and spices from South Asia. Although the silver spread across Europe caused inflation, it created good circumstance for commerce and industry, as the prices of industrial goods went up faster than the prices of grains or wages. As a result, the massive flow of silver prompted capitalism in Europe. By contrast, silver that flowed into Asia invigorated its commerce, but undermined the growth of Asia by leading to an outflow of wealth. Influx of Epidemics and Collapse. of Traditional Society. The most fundamental change during the Europeans’ colonial rule of America was a massive reduction of the Native American population. Out of various studies of the population reduction in America, an astonishing finding was that the indigenous population of 80 million at the time when Europeans had explored the new continent was reduced to 10 million by the mid-1500s – in other words, within 50 years. In another 50 years, by 1600, the population was ultimately reduced to one-tenth of the population of the mid-1500s. David Brion Davis, professor at Yale, called the unprecedentedly rapid reduction of the indigenous population ‘the largest ethnic massacre in history.’ How can this phenomenon be explained? To begin with, many were killed in battles with Europeans and some even opted to commit group suicides as Europeans expanded their conquests. For Europeans armed with Christianity, indigenous practices were seen as unholy and war against these peoples could be justified. However, on the new continent, rampant epidemics was a more critical cause of population reduction even than war. The introduction of new germs to a population with zero immunity to them caused incredible damage. A wide array of epidemics and parasites spread to America from across the Atlantic, including smallpox, measles, diphtheria, trachoma, malaria, cholera, influenza, mump, pertussis, tuberculosis and yellow fever. Not only did Europeans spread the diseases, but the livestock that Europeans brought with them also played host to germs. Europeans had been experiencing these diseases for centuries, but not so for the native populations in the Americas. Indigenous people were felled by the strange diseases like dried leaves. When Columbus arrived in Santo Domingo in December 1492, the entire native population was 200,000. However, in 20 years, the population was reduced to 14,000 and in 30 years to 200. Devastated by the epidemics, the native society fell totally into chaos. On the part of Europeans, the epidemics served as a critical contributing factor to establishing control on the new continent. The local upper classes of native people died of the diseases, and thus the ruling structure collapsed. This made the military resistance impossible. These circumstances were well described in the book of Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel. The principal force that allowed Cortes to conquer the Aztec Empire with only 600 soldiers was smallpox. The disease was brought in 1520 to Mexico by a slave infected in Spanish Cuba. Since then, smallpox killed the half of the population of the Aztec, including the emperor. In the face of the horrible disease which killed their people in such large numbers and did not create nearly the same amount of devastation among Spanish soldiers, many indigenous people lost their will to resist the invaders. The population of Mexico, which had been up to approximately 20 million, plunged to 1.6 million by 1618. The same case occurred when Francisco Pizarro landed the coast of Peru with 168 Spanish soldiers in 1531 to conquer the Inca Empire. By 1526, the smallpox brought through land routes killed most of the population of the Inca, including the emperor and the royal family. While the sons of the emperor were engaged in a civil war over the emperorship after the death of the emperor, Pizarro was easily able to conquer the Inca. Since the arrival of Columbus, 95 percent of the entire population of the New World diminished over one to two centuries. Such phenomena had an enormous impact on the mentality of both native people and European conquerors. European conquerors had a sense of superiority. On the other hand, the indigenous people suffered a sense of inferiority and defeat. European conquerors used the widespread epidemics for a justification of their conquests. A Spanish governor in America said that “God cleansed these lands for us.” Harsh Exploiter of the New Continent: Spain. This was the brutal violence and destruction of the native American society committed by the conquistadors, led by Portuguese and Spanish. To spread Christianity and trade, their conquests began with the destruction of native Americans’ religion and culture, as well as oppression of them. Notably, whereas the Portuguese established trade bases in their conquered regions and were engaged in business, the Spanish totally concentrated on destructive conquests. The Spanish who landed on the Caribbean islands were extremely destructive from the outset. Las Casas, a 16th-century Spanish historian as well as Dominicanfriar, wrote in his book about the brutalities and massacres committed by the Spanish colonizers against the indigenous people. “Christians began massacres by using horses, swords and spears, and when they attacked a village, they did not allow anyone alive, regardless of children, elderly, pregnant women and women giving birth. Beyond stabbing and cutting limbs with swords, they tore them up. The Spanish soldiers made bets as to whether they could cut off heads with a single blow. They snatched children out of their mothers’ arms and threw them into the rivers, laughing. Commemorating Jesus Christ and his 12 disciples, they hung up 13 Native Americans and burned them alive.” Las Casas recorded that the death toll of Native Americans slaughtered by conquistadors was up to 15 million. The atrocities and cruelties committed by the Spanish conquers was believed to be real enough – these acts have been referenced as a ‘Black Legend,’ while there is also a ‘White Legend’ that counters the narrative and describes the Spanish conquerors in a more favorable light. The Spanish built fortified villages in the conquered regions and distributed lands to conquistadors. The conquistadors enslaved Native Americans and forced them to engage in labor for them. The forced labor resulted in diseases, abuses, a high rate of suicides, and thus a high rate of mortality and rapid reduction of the birth rate, ultimately leading to the collapse of the indigenous society. In return, the Spanish brought home 19 tons of gold in the period between 1503 and 1510

Native American Genocide. Conquest of Aztec and Inca Empires. and Exploitations. The economic benefits gained from the exploitation of the West Indies were used to fund additional conquests elsewhere. The Spanish conquerors rushed to the mainland of America, following the conquests of the West Indies. Accompanied by about 11 ships, 500 men (including slaves), 13 horses, and a small number of cannon, Hernan Cortés landed on the Yucatan Peninsula in the Mayan territory in 1519. He took over Veracruz, and conquered nearby native tribes. In the face of the invasion of the Spanish soldiers armed with horses and cannons that they had never encountered, Native Americans were extremely terrified and readily surrendered. Exploring deep into the continent, the Spanish troops marched on to Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), the capital city of the Aztec Empire. The emperor of the Aztec greeted the white soldiers on horseback, regarding them as gods descended from the heaven. Cortés raided the defenseless palace and occupied it, ending the Aztec Empire. The Aztec Empire, with a population of 5 million, was totally destroyed by the 500 Spanish troops armed with horses and guns, without any resistance. In a few years, following the fall of the Aztec, the Inca Empire, which blossomed into a brilliant civilization among the highlands of the Andes, was faced with the same fate as the Aztec Empire. The key actor was Francisco Pizarro. Born out of wedlock, he raised swine during his childhood. He led an expedition composed of merchants to Hispaniola Island (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). While in Panama, he served as a mayor. In 1523, when he was 48, he attempted to explore the coast of South America, but the governor of Panama refused to grant him permission. Pizarro returned to Spain to appeal directly to King Charles I. His plea was successful and he received not only a license for the proposed expedition, but also authority over any lands conquered during the venture. He was joined by his family and friends and the expedition left Panama in 1530, with a ship carrying 180 soldiers and 37 horses aboard. Encountering the delegation of the Incan emperor at the gateway to the Inca Empire, Atahualpa, Pizarro demanded that the empire accept Christianity and pay tribute to King Charles I. Atahualpa’s refusal led Pizarro and his army to attack the Incan army. Armed with stone spears and bronze weapons, the 7,000 Inca troops were totally defeated by Pizarro’s troops. Emperor Atahualpa was held captive. For ransom, he vowed that he would fill the room with gold. Allegedly, the amount of gold that he paid was up to 11 tons. However, Pizarro, afraid of counter-attacks of Incans, sent him to trial and sentenced him to be burned to death on the charges of idolatry, incest and the killing of his brother. The Incan believed that persons who burned to death were not allowed to the world of the dead, so Atahualpa converted to Christianity to avoid this fate and instead was hung with the baptismal name of Juan Santos. Pizarro’s troops were able to occupy the capital city of Cuzco in 1533 without engaging in battle. As a result, the Inca Empire, whose territory stretched from modern Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and part of Chile, ended. The Incan Empire, which had a population of 14 million and 100,000 troops, helplessly collapsed in the face of a small group of Pizarro’s troops, composed of only 180 soldiers and 37 horses. Harsh exploitation of the native people after the collapse of the Inca Empire followed. The Spanish exploitations were built on the systems of repartimiento and the encomienda. Repartimiento was a colonial forced labor system imposed upon the indigenous population of Spanish America. It was similar to other tribute-labor systems, such as the mita of the Inca Empire. The natives were forced to do low-paid or unpaid labor for a certain number of weeks or months each year on Spanish-owned farms, mines, workshops, and public projects. In the fear of depleting native labor forces under the repartimiento, the Spanish court introduced the encomienda. In the encomienda system, the Spanish court granted a person a certain number of natives from a certain community. Indigenous leaders were charged with mobilizing the assessed tribute and labor. In turn, encomenderos were to ensure that the native people were given instruction in the Christian faith and Spanish language, and protect them from warring tribes or pirates; they had to suppress rebellion against Spaniards, and maintain infrastructure. In return, the natives would provide tributes in the form of metals, maize, wheat, pork or other agricultural products. The encomienda was intended to prevent the depletion of native labor forces and address the malpractices of repartimiento, but actually it served as an institution that permanently enslaved the native people. Tragedy of the Atlantic World: The Slave Trade. As described earlier, the conquerors addressed their labor shortages in the mines by importing slaves from Africa. With the large increase in sugarcane plantations in the West Indies, African slaves were imported on a large scale. Previously, the Spanish court had dispatched colonial governors to rule the colonies, and they had initially enslaved indigenous people for labor. However, as the management of colonies with only native people became harder, they turned their eyes to new labor forces. In the intermediate stage of replacing indigenous slaves with African slaves, lower-class Europeans were brought to the new continent on a large scale. These were indentured servants, who were awarded money and land after a certain period of labor for landlords. European farmers were not much interested in going to the new continent. Instead, all kinds of vagabonds, including prisoners and criminals at large, embarked on the ships sailing to the new continent. The landlords, who had spent much money to import these servants to the new continent, forced them to do harsh work to gain the greatest profits possible. The indentured workers, living in terrible conditions, frequently went on strike or committed sabotage. Consequently, the landlords turned their eyes to African slaves to replace indentured workers who had cost much money and were hard to control. Apart from this, the newly booming sugarcane industry in the West Indies required a large scale of new labor forces. The coast of the Atlantic, including Barbados, was the most suitable for the cultivation of sugarcane. Sugar production required more than three times the workforce of cotton or corn cultivation, so labor needs were vast. The African slave trade boomed, becoming one of the worst tragedies in human history. However, to the main players of the Age of Discovery, the slave trade was no more than a means of generating enormous profits. The number of African slaves shipped to America is estimated to be 20 million over 300 years. Of those, 5 million were brought to the Caribbean region and 3.5 million to northeastern Brazil and 0.4 million to the southern part of the U.S. The frontrunner of the slave trade was Portugal. As Portugal fell behind its competitors, like Spain, in the exploration of colonies, it concentrated on the slave trade. Portugal transferred its efforts to the slave trade in an effort to avoid competition with England or France and exercised the exclusive right of slave trade, which was Asiento. However, in the late 17th century, England rose to become the leading country in the slave trade. England became a dominant power in Europe, while Portugal was pushed to the sidelines. Beginning in 1670, England remained a leading country in the slave trade for 240 years until it was banned by parliament in 1807. England, led by the Royal African Company of England, was engaged in a triangular trade connecting England, Africa and the West Indies. In the wake of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession, England gained the right of asiento to export slaves to Spanish colonies. Triangular Slave Trade and Slave Hunting. The triangular slave trade describes the slave trade that operated from the late 16th to the early 19th centuries, carrying slaves, cash crops and manufactured goods between West Africa, Caribbean or American colonies and the European colonial powers. European traders shipped cotton, rum, guns, gun powder and steel products to countries on the west coast of Africa, such as modern Angola, Nigeria and Senegal. They traded these items with regional chieftains for African slaves. Then, they sailed to America to sell off the slaves. After selling the slaves, European traders bought regional products and shipped them their home countries. Bristol and Liverpool were hubs of the British slave trade. The reason that Liverpool could become the center of slave trade was that it was adjacent to industrial cities, like Manchester, Birmingham and Sheffield, and it was a good location as a port. These cities produced merchandise with which to purchase African slaves. The most popular merchandise in Africa was colored cotton fabrics. Africans were eager to have them, and European traders exchanged these goods when they purchased slaves, called ‘black diamonds.’ Since 1750, however, they had shifted to slave hunting. The total number of slave ships engaged in the slave trade in 1771 was up to 190, which shipped 47,000 slaves annually, making 30 to 100 percent in profit. The slave trade generated enormous income if even one of three slave ships came back safely. At first, African slaves were captured on the coast of Africa. But as demand for slaves constantly grew, slave hunters gradually expanded deep into the interior. The captured slaves had to walk dozens of kilometers a day to be brought to the coast. According to one record, 40 percent of the captured slaves died from the harsh treatment of traders, as well as malnutrition and disease while on the move. Concentration camps where slaves were held before being loaded onto slave ships were like hell. Hundreds of naked slaves, curled in an extremely narrow underground dungeon, awaited export alongside animals for weeks. The shipment of the captured slaves from the coast of Africa to America across the Atlantic was called the ‘Middle Passage.’ The middle passage, which took one to six months, was like a living hell for the slaves who became extremely weakened while being brought to and held in the camp. As many as 500 slaves were packed into the steerage of a small ship of 100 to 300 tons. Slave traders loaded as many as possible onto the slave ships to make greater profits. Slaves chained together were packed between the bottom and the ceiling of steerage. They could not afford to move at all because numerous slaves were laid on top of one another. Chained together, they often lay together in their own excrement. The air quality was so bad, candles often could not stay lit due to a lack of oxygen. Due to these unsanitary conditions, allegedly one-sixth of slaves aboard a ship died on a voyage. The Cape Coast Castle built on the Gold Coast of West Africa (now Ghana) by European traders was the hub for exporting slaves to America across the Atlantic in the 18th century. When the slave trade was at its height, as many as 1,500 African slaves awaiting export were held in the underground dungeons there. They are now a tourist attraction that shows the miserable reality of the slave trade. The scribbles that slaves wrote on the wall of their underground dungeons are carefully preserved. As one writer put it, “Screams resound from the scribbles on the wall over several centuries.”

Chapter 10. The Golden Age of Pirates. Era of Pirates in the Age of Discovery. Most of the episodes of pirates that we know today are associated with the so-called ‘Golden Age of Pirates’ in the period between the 1650s and the 1730s. There is no doubt that pirates existed since ancient times. As described earlier, piracy began as soon as human beings took to the sea. Piracy is one of the oldest professions that human beings have devised. Pirates have been rampant anywhere there is available prey to plunder, regardless of the age and the region. The world became connected through the sea during the Age of Discovery. Pirates were also capable of navigating across oceans, and thus their activities expanded to the oceans across the world. Most importantly, the opening of the Age of Discovery shifted the activities of pirates from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. The principal locus of pirates was America and the Caribbean Sea, which were the focus of exploitation of European maritime powers. Pirates were by nature maritime syndicates who committed atrocities at sea, such as looting, kidnapping and murder, for their own purposes. From a historical view, however, the context of their existence becomes more apparent. The emergence of the Caribbean Sea as the home of pirates was a result of European states’ reactions against the exclusive Spanish exploitation of America and the Caribbean Sea. Pirates rampaged in between the Spanish exploitation and the reactions of other European states. The rampage of pirates also stemmed from the outraged voices and revenge of sailors, who had undergone harsh treatment under miserable labor conditions aboard ship, against the authority of states and capitalist classes. Pirates were primarily outlaws who wielded violence to satisfy their greed. However, they occasionally worked for their homelands. The privateers who appeared in the 15th century were the best example. During the period between 1571 and 1572, the Dutch pirates, known as Sea Beggars or Watergeuzen, fought for the independence of the Netherlands from Spain by joining the army of national independence led by William of Orange during the Dutch War of Independence (1568-1648). The Mediterranean pirates participated in a holy war between Muslims and Christians. Pirates at their height were present everywhere across the world. Most Caribbean pirates were based in French ports. The pirates who looted in the English Channel were based in the Dunkirk port in northeast France. Asia at the time was no exception to piracy. Larger pirate groups than those found in the Atlantic were rampant across Asia. The Red Sea and the Gulf of Persia were notorious for piracy. The Malabar Coast was home of Mahratta pirates, who looted the ships from the East India Company in the early 18th century. The Ilanoon pirates of the Philippines sailed across the seas off Borneo and New Guinea with a large galleon with 40 to 60 pirates aboard. They brutally plundered coastal areas and ships until they were completely destroyed by the U.S Navy’s expedition in 1862. The most horrible in Asia were the South China Sea pirates. They were an enormous pirate group, composed of 40 junk ships and 40,000 pirates, who were engaged in looting settlements in coastal areas and merchant ships. Their heyday ended when they were expelled from their hideouts and their leaders were hanged. The pirates during the golden age of pirates have often provided inspiration for novels, dramas and movies. These days, this has contributed to the image of romantic pirates. The golden age of pirates began with the emergence of the Caribbean pirates. It was the era that legendary pirates, like Henry Morgan and Captain Kidd, were active. By the 1720s, piracy was at its peak. At the time, up to 2,000 pirates were engaged in looting on the both sides of the Atlantic. The pirates were the largest threat to Spanish exploiters, with large fleets and trade with colonies. The Spanish Main. Since the discovery of the new continent by Christopher Columbus in 1492, Spain had expanded its colonies and had much of South America and the Caribbean Sea under its control. The New World was the Spanish overseas empire that the Spanish and their relentless troops explored, following its discovery by Spanish fleets. They slaughtered and enslaved indigenous people and exploited their wealth through forced labor of indigenous people and shipped the exploited wealth back to their homes in the old world. As described in the previous chapter, Spain and Portugal divided the seas in the Southern Hemisphere and the new continent under the Treaty of Tordesillas, and they had an exclusive control on trade across the Atlantic. As a result, Spain could afford to exclusively exploit wealth in the Caribbean Sea, known as the Spanish Main. ‘The Spanish Main’ refers to a region that was once under Spanish control and spanned roughly between the isthmus of Panama and the delta of the Orinoco River. The term can also refer to the Caribbean Sea and adjacent waters, especially when referring to the period when the region was troubled by pirates. The territories under the Spanish Main included modern Florida, Texas, Mexico, Central America and the northern coast of South America. The Spanish Main between the 16th and early 19th centuries was the departure point of merchant ships that carried home the treasures and goods exploited from the New World. The gold and silver mined in the coastal areas of the Pacific was brought by llamas and mules to the Spanish Main via Potosi. Goods from the Far East brought to Acapulco in southern Mexico were transported to the Spanish Main by land. The treasures and goods gathered in the Spanish Main from the Far East and America were shipped to Spain by the treasure fleets. Since the Spanish Main was the place where various treasures were loaded and shipped, it quickly became the favorite hunting ground of pirates

The Spanish Main. Against this backdrop, the Spanish Main has become the background setting of pirate novels today, as well as a term used frequently to evoke the Caribbean pirates. Spain had built a large number of fortresses in ports across the Spanish Main and reinforced its defenses to ensure the safety of merchant ships sailing to and from the Spanish Main. The main ports included modern Cartagena, Veracruz and Panama. The second-level cities, such as Portobello, Santo Domingo and Campeche, served as local administration and trade centers. These ports were regarded as a symbol of the wealth of the Spanish empire and thus subject to attacks by European invaders and pirates between the 16th and 17th centuries. Voyages of Spanish Treasure Fleets. Spanish merchant fleets shipped European merchandise and explorers to the Spanish Main and brought back treasures exploited from the New World. In the 16th century, the treasure fleet was the best prey for pirates. Spain had been constantly plagued by pirates from neighbor countries while engaged in reckless overseas expansion. Due to the rampage of pirates, the Spanish merchant fleets operated under the convoy system in which merchant fleets were accompanied by convoy ships. The Spanish merchant fleets were divided into three groups according to their routes once they reached the Spanish Main. The Tierra Firme Fleet sailed to Cartagena to load South American products, especially silver from Potosí. Some ships went to Portobello on the Caribbean coast of Panama to load Peruvian silver that had been shipped from the Pacific coast port of Callao. The New Spain Fleet sailed to Veracruz in Mexico to load not only silver and the valuable red dye cochineal, but also porcelain and silk shipped from China on the Manila galleons. The Asian goods were brought overland from Acapulco to Veracruz by mule train. The Honduras Fleet sailed to Trujillo and loaded dyes and spices from Central America. The New Spain Fleet that sailed to Mexico departed from Cadiz on 1 July, reached the Caribbean Sea in August and arrived at Veracruz in September. This voyage schedule was intended to avoid the stormy summer weather in the Gulf of Mexico. While spending the winter time in the region, they engaged in trade. Then they sailed to Havana in May to June and sailed back to Spain in the late summer. The Tierra Firme Fleet departed from Spain in March through May, reached Cartagena around June, and arrived in Panama in two months. The New Spain and Tierra Firme Fleets accounted for 85 percent of trade between Spain and its colonies. According to research, approximately 100 ships on average sailed across the Atlantic annually in the 1520s and carried 9,000 toneladas (toneladas is equivalent to approximately 920kg) on average annually. By the end of the 16th century, the volume shipped by 150 to 200 ships on average increased to 30,000 to 40,000 toneladas. The rapid increase in trade volume might demonstrate that trade with colonies had surged. Spain made a great effort to protect its territories and wealth in the New World from the invasions of England and France. For their part, England and France attempted to get involved in the Caribbean trade in order to generate the kind of wealth they saw Spain bringing in from its colonies. France built settlements off the Spanish Main and used them as footholds to attack Spanish merchant fleets and coastal settlements. As the Spanish settlements were occupied, the French occupants became known as buccaneers who attacked the Spanish empire. France and the Netherlands both plundered the Spanish Main. However, it was England that plundered the Spanish Main for a strategic purpose. Spain had expelled early English traders out of the Caribbean Sea, but the captains of privateer ships, like Francis Drake, came back and engaged in revenge attacks. Under these circumstances, the Spanish fleets gathered in Havana, Cuba and prepared to return home under the heavy convoy system. The goods that the fleets shipped were a tremendous amount of treasures, like gold and silver, reflecting the nature of American trade. They were literally treasure ships. Since numerous pirates were targeting the treasures, a fleet of galleons convoyed them. Twice a year, a fleet composed of 30 ships brought the goods from Spain for colonial rulers. The fleet anchored under the cannons of coastal fortresses and unloaded the goods and equipment. Then they loaded sealed gold and silver boxes and returned to Seville under the convoy of armed ships. The convoy system added to the costs of sailing across the Atlantic since enormous expenses were required to operate the large-scale convoy fleets. Spain sought a large-scale measure to prepare for attacks by English and French privateers to protect the storage of gold and silver. Spain built enormous fortresses in treasure ports, such as Veracruz, Cartagena, Portobello and Havana, to protect villages from sea-borne attacks. Despite a fortified defense, vulnerabilities existed, and pirates targeted them. Pirates took advantage of loose watches and raided while the ship was at anchor in port. These were the tactics that Drake used to attack Cartagena. The New World that Spain had explored rapidly declined in the 17th and 18th centuries, as exclusive trade was no longer possible. By the early 17th century, the Spanish convoy system began to gradually decline. The influx of enormous amounts of silver into Europe downgraded the quality of merchandise and caused inflation. The number of merchant fleets was reduced to fewer than 10 by the late 17th century. By the 1740s, the treasure fleet system almost disappeared, and separate warships carried goods to Spain. The trade network which had been the envy of the rest of the world, and the prey of pirates, disappeared. Concept of Modern Pirates and Typology. How might these Age of Discovery pirates be classified in terms of their piratical activities and the regions in which they operated? Generally, pirates may be described as the persons engaged in depredation and looting by force and coercion at sea. As international maritime law was formulated in modern times, the definition of piracy was provided in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, widely known as the Constitution of the Sea. However, it is only the legal definition of piracy and was formulated in modern times. Contemporary pirates can be classified in accordance with the typology of criminal acts. Pirates in modern times may be classified depending on their relationship with states or the regions in which they operate. What is apparent is that regardless of their typology, the nature of piracy – depredation by force and threats to the safety of navigation – remains unchanged. Modern piracy might be described as a social phenomenon, in which pirates fight against the ruling order of society by forming groups based on their own rules, deviating from established maritime order and practices. The principal reason that pirates were prevalent in early modern times was that state power did not extend to the sea. Pirates exercised violence in the sea where state power was invalid. At first, pirates exercised violence for states, and later they did so outside of the control of states, and ultimately, they exercised violence against states. As such, in order to understand modern pirates, we need to explore how the relationship between pirates and states has changed. Privateer. A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. The commission, also known as a letter of marque or reprisal, empowers the person to carry on all forms of hostility permissible at sea by the usages of war, including attacking foreign vessels during wartime and taking them as prizes. The letter of marque was a certificate written in legal terms. Originally, the letter of marque was granted by a ruler to the merchants who had been looted or lost their ships or goods by enemies, to allow them to engage in revenge or recovery of their losses. In the 16th century, European states made use of the permission to make it easier to attack enemy ships during wartime. European maritime powers encouraged armed private ships to attack and plunder enemy ships by empowering them to seize enemy ships. This was the empowerment of the private sector to participate in the state’s task of warfare. Thus, states could save the costs of creating and maintaining standing troops. Privateers with a letter of marque were exempted from the indictment of piracy and recognized as war prisoners once they were seized by enemies. On the other hand, from an economic perspective, privateering was a national project carried out under the strict control of the state. Those who intended to get engaged in privateering would apply for the letter of marque and pay deposits on the conditions imposed by the government. Prior to departure, a privateer, a notary and two witnesses signed the contract, and they checked compliance with the regulations when a privateer returned to port. The captain was required to complete a logbook and report it. The ships and cargos captured by a privateer were transferred to the admiralty court to be assessed their values. A certain portion of income reverted to the state, and the rest was distributed among the shipowner, the captain and crew. For European maritime states, privateering was just like killing two birds with one stone since they could inflict damage to enemies using private ships without spending state finances – all while earning income from privateering. For privateers, they could have a sense of serving their homelands while making money by attacking enemy ships. Privateers at the time did not attack ships from their own countries. As time passed, however, privateering was abused. Privateers turned into pirates, as they continued to commit acts of looting after war had ended. Corsair. The pirates operating in the Mediterranean were called corsairs. The most widely known among them were the Barbary pirates. As described in the previous chapter, they operated along the coasts of Algeria, Tunis, Sale, and northern North Africa. Corsairs were granted permission by Muslim rulers governing these regions to attack the ships from Christian states. Saracen pirates also fall within the category of corsairs. And although they are not as well known, Maltese pirates were also corsairs. The Maltese corsairs were engaged in looting ships from the Knights of St. John, which was created to fight Muslims during the crusades. Regardless of the causes of piracy, corsairs were the pirates for ships sailing across the Mediterranean. European states had sent fleets of warships to fight the corsairs, but these actions were not very effective. At last, in 1816, combat against corsairs by a massive joint fleet made the threat of corsairs disappear. Buccaneer. Buccaneers were the pirates who had been active in the Caribbean Sea and off the coast of South America in the 17th century. Originally, they were hunters who had lived in the woods and valleys in the Hispaniola Island (modern Haiti and Dominican Republic). Most of them were French who raised cattle and pigs brought by early Spanish settlers. They cooked with outdoor stoves or barbeques, and dried meats. They were described as boucaner in French and the term ‘buccaneer’ was derived from it. They lived a harsh life, like wild beasts. They loved to eat the skull of animals and enjoyed drinking and gambling. They looked like butchers because they put on bloody furs, carrying axes and swords. Buccaneers complied with their own rules, living in groups of six to eight. The Spanish government had hunters kill wild animals Santo Domingo. This deprived poachers of their living. Under this circumstance, they had no choice but to become pirates and they began to fight against the Spanish government. In the 1620s, they moved from the interior of Hispaniola Island to the northern coast of the island, especially the coast of Tortuga Island. Tortuga Island became a base for attacking Spanish merchant ships and for galleons sailing back to Spain, carrying treasures exploited from Mexico and Peru. Tortuga Island, situated in the northern part of Hispaniola, was a small, turtle-shaped island. It had fertile lands and abundant water, and a good geography for defense against invasions – an ideal hideout for buccaneers. In 1640, the Tortuga pirates began to call themselves ‘Sea Brothers.’ The buccaneer organizations were not large, but they evolved into a loose coalition, known as the ‘Brethren of the Coast.’ They attempted a joint attack on important prey. The most notable example was the attack on Panama in 1671 under the command of Henry Morgan, in which they destroyed and burned Spanish cities. Golden Age of Pirates. The period between the late 17th century and the early 18th century (1690–1730) was called the ‘Golden Age of Pirates,’ during which piracy was at its height. Over 40 years, Caribbean and African pirates mainly targeted the merchant ships shuttling between Europe and Africa and the slave ships transporting African slaves to the Caribbean Sea, which brought alcohol and sugar back to Africa. This was the era that novelists such as Robert Louis Stevenson or J.M Barrie, illustrator Howard Pyle, and Hollywood movies depicted when they portrayed the life of pirates. As England and France signed the Treaties of Utrecht to end the War of Spanish Succession (1701–1714), the West Indies and colonies were booming. England ascended to the dominant position in slave trade and commerce, taking the place of a declining Spain. The booming colonial business of England, France and the Netherlands provided pirates a good opportunity to grab wealth. Spain also operated treasure ships, which were the best attraction for pirates

Chapter 11. Life of Pirates. Who Became a Pirate? One might wonder why people were motivated to become pirates, especially in light of the heavy punishments of hanging or grueling slave labor that were meted out for the crime. The motives for becoming a pirate were mixed: a combination of individual desire and social structural factors. Among them, the individual desire to enjoy an affluent life and rise out of the misery of the lowest class was the principal motive. Piracy allowed pirates to have money to spend, food to eat, and drink and women to indulge in. The pirate community, known for the fair allocation of prizes and equal treatment among crew members, was very attractive to merchant ship sailors who suffered from hunger, low wages and hard labor. At worst, a pirate could expect to be hanged. However, this fear was minimal for a hungry, oppressed person who saw piracy as a path to affluence, pleasure and freedom. The immediate and realistic goal of pirates was to live a short but pleasant life. English pirates were mostly from the lowest class in the West or Wales. Of the 52 pirates sentenced to hanging in the west coast of Africa in 1722, more than half were from these regions. Escaped slaves and the biracial offspring of black and white parents, already disfavored in society, were readily ushered into piracy. The pirate group composed of those from Scotland, England, Spain and Portugal, as well as mixed-race people, had dominated the Bahamas region for over 20 years. Most pirates were unmarried and vagabonds without family. Married persons were not accepted because it was assumed that they would be more concerned with supporting their families than being loyal to their shipmates. Although it was very rare, a few well-educated nobles were among the pirates. Pirate John Hinchey graduated from Edinburgh University. When he was arrested, he appealed on the grounds that he was forced to become a pirate, and ultimately he was freed. The case of Henry Mainwaring was very interesting. He received a law degree from the Oxford University in 1602. After military service, he bought a ship to take to the sea and turned to piracy. Mainwaring engaged in the looting of Spanish ships in the English Channel and off the coast of Spain between 1613 and 1615. He was eventually pardoned, and later he served as the Minister of Navy and a member of the House of Commons and a novelist. The example of Stede Bonnet, known as the Gentleman Pirate, showed how the wealthy and educated man could have a miserable fate by recklessly engaging in piracy. Bonnet, who became tired of his comfortable life in Barbados, bought a ship and arms, recruited 70 sailors, and then engaged in piracy. He joined the infamous pirate Blackbeard in Nassau as he engaged in piracy along the coasts of Virginia and Carolina. Bonnet, who lacked sailing experience, ceded his ship’s command to Blackbeard and stayed as a guest. Later, he was pardoned and received a commission to go privateering against Spanish ships. However, Bonnet was tempted to resume piracy. So as not to lose his pardon, he went back to piracy under the alias Captain Thomas. He was captured by a naval anti-piracy expedition sent by the governor of South Carolina in October 1718. In trial, the judge referred to him as “a well-educated, polite and respected gentleman.” However, his good education and background rather worked against him, and he was sentenced to death. Bonnet wrote to the governor appealing for clemency, but the governor endorsed the judge’s decision. Eventually he was hanged in Charles Town in December 1718. Captain John Silver in Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevens was alluded to as an intelligent person in the conversation of his fellow pirates: “John is not an ordinary man. He was well educated when he was young. He knows how to speak and act in a noble manner, like someone out of a book.” Many pirates were from merchant ships, naval ships and privateers. The pirates from merchant ships were mostly those who had volunteered to become pirates when their ship was captured by pirates. Merchant ship sailors, who suffered from rampant disease, poor food, barbaric discipline and low wages, did not hesitate to become a pirate once their ship was held captive. When the captain or quartermaster of the pirate ship asked the captives if they would work under the flag of the King of Hell, many of them stepped forward without hesitation. For the sailors who had nothing to lose, they regarded being a pirate as a better way. Cooper Mower to Become a Pirate. Becoming a pirate was not necessarily voluntary. After taking a ship, one of the pirates’ principal tasks was to recruit skilled men needed for the pirates’ vessel. Skilled men were forced to join the pirates one way or another. The most in-demand were carpenters for repair and maintenance, and coopers to manage barrels. The job of carpenter was very important for warships. They worked under the apprenticeship system at shipyards and were qualified shipbuilders. They were responsible for the maintenance and repair of the ship, ranging from the keel to the mast. Carpenters were always busy because the pressure of harsh waves on the ship was very heavy. The carpenters played an essential role in repairing holes and broken gears, and replacing broken parts during or after a battle. For the pirates who could not repair their ship in the shipyard, the carpenter was even more critical. Tropical downpours and intense heat in the Caribbean caused seams to open and wood to rot. Besides the growth of seaweed and barnacles, the warm water encouraged the teredo worm to attack the ship. Under these circumstances, ships were required to be regularly checked and repaired for the safety of the voyage. The role of cooper was no less critical than the carpenter, although less essential for the safety of the ship. The cooper was a key person for providing food for the crew. In the 17th and the 18th centuries, most food on ship was stored in barrels. The bottom of a merchant ship or a warship was fully loaded with various sizes of barrels holding beef, biscuit, water, beer and wine. The cooper made and repaired barrels and managed the stored foods in barrels. For this reason, pirates first searched for these skilled craftsmen when they took a ship. The dramatic account of the pirates’ need for skilled craftsmen appeared in an article of the Boston Gazette on November 29, 1725. When the ship that a man called Cooper Mower was aboard was approached by a pirate ship, he “shewed more concern than any of us, crying and saying he was sure they would force him because he was a cooper.” And just as he suspected, he was forced to join them as soon as pirates took the ship. The methods that the pirates used left him little choice. “One of the pirates stuck Mower many blows on his head with the helve of axe. His head was bruised and bloodied. The same pirate forced Mower to lay his head down on the coaming of the hatch, and lifting the axe over his head swore that if he did not sign their Articles immediately, he would chop off his head. Mower begged hard for his life. After the same pirate carried Mower into the Round House where they continued a short time, Mower coming out told the declarant and other prisoners that he was ruined and undone, for they forced him to sign their Articles.” Pirates and the Irony of Peacetime. In peacetime, a greater number of pirates appeared. Many pirates were granted the privilege of privateering during wartime in the 18th century, but after the war ended, numerous sailors and seamen lost their jobs. Thus, they opted to become pirates as a last resort for their survival. Since England, France and Spain ended the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714, ironically, the number of pirates soared during the next 25 years. The rolls of the Royal Navy of England help explain why: In 1703 the navy had 53,785 sailors – by 1715, that number was reduced to 13,439, with 40,000 sailors losing their jobs. The unemployed seamen and sailors had no homes and no livelihoods, and if they did find jobs, they made less money in harsher conditions. For the privateers, which were granted the authority to plunder enemy ships during wartime, the letter of marque became void with the end of war. As such, the sailors or privateers had no choice but to become pirates. Against this backdrop, England and France tacitly acknowledged their piracy, and the pirates took advantage of it to expand their activities. Some mutinied in their own merchant ships, stealing the vessel and engaging in piracy. With the sufficient replenishment of the labor force, the wages of sailors plunged, the quality of food deteriorated and violence aboard ship became prevalent. Some sailors mutinied against harsh working conditions, took a ship and flew a black flag. Especially in the period between 1716 and 1726, crewmen onboard slave ships bound for West Africa mutinied against poor working conditions, shaking the foundation of the slave trade. The ages of pirates at the time ranged from 17 to 50, of which the ages of 20-29 were the vast majority. According to the findings of historian Marcus Rediker, the age distribution was almost equivalent to that of merchant ships. This might demonstrate that piracy was equally attractive to sailors of all ages. Democratic Pirate Community. The term ‘democratic’ may not match the image of pirates who committed brutal violence and illegal activities, especially in the oppressive, authoritarian Golden Age in which these pirates lived. Nevertheless, the term ‘democratic’ may apply, given the way that pirates ran their community. Pirates created a new order. They drew up a pirate code, which was a common discipline for pirates, to maintain order among them. The code was self-imposed, often improvised discipline from the bottom, agreed upon by sailors. The pirate code was tough, but was based in equalitarianism under which the authority of the captain was placed under the control of sailors. Exploring the motives these people had in choosing a life of piracy helps shed light on why equality was such a highly regarded value in their society. These people desired to escape the oppression and abuses of their ships, live lives free of the oppressive authority of the captain and senior sailors, and be free from harsh labor. In fact, pirates’ labor was much less intense than that of sailors on merchant ships. Much greater numbers of pirates were aboard ship in comparison with merchant ships of the same size. As illustrated previously, for a merchant ship of 200 tons, 13 to 17 sailors were aboard, but about 80 pirates were aboard the same size pirate ship. As a result, the allocation of work and labor intensity was much less. On pirate ships, the captain was elected by a majority of sailors and only retained his authority by permission of the crew. The captain was granted full authority in chasing prey and plundering, but had to follow the decisions of the majority of pirates for other things. The pirates decided the destination of voyages and the ships or coastal settlements to attack. The formation of a new pirate code or the election of a new captain required approval from all pirates. The captain was not given special treatment such as additional food or special facilities. He was, however, to be expelled for cowardly acts or a refusal to loot. If the captain exercised power beyond his authority, he would even be executed. The pirates protected their interests by having a quartermaster elected by the rank-and-file pirates. The quartermaster was not only a representative of the pirates, but also a trustee for all. He had authority to impose punishment, like whipping and beating. He was responsible for leading attacks and managing the prizes. A principal policy that could affect the well-being of pirates was decided in the pirate council, which was the body of highest authority in the ship. The decisions made in the council were irreversible. The equalitarianism was notable in allocating the prizes. The captain and the quartermaster were allocated from one and half shares to two shares of a prize. Senior sailors such as gunner, boatswain, navigator, minister, doctor, and craftsman were given from one share and a quarter to one share and half of a prize. The rest of sailors were given one share. Notably, the gap between the top and the bottom in the allocation of prizes was largely lessened by balancing the wage hierarchy. It was the most equal allocation system across society in the early 18th century. This might be because pirates regarded themselves as sharing the risks together, not merely as wage laborers. Pirates faithfully complied with the rule that no one deserved more than their proper share. They had to take an oath before the allocation of prizes that they would not take more than their proper shares from the seized ship and would not deceive their fellow pirates upon this point. Once they violated the rule, they were expelled from the pirate community and never allowed to come back. The nine complete and nearly complete sets of pirate codes that have survived were chiefly from Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates, first published in 1724, and from the records kept by Admiralty Court proceedings at the trials of pirates. The below, contained in Johnson’s book, is the pirate code made by the pirates under command of Bartholomew Robert. By exploring the code, one might take a look at the life of pirates at the time. The accounts in parentheses were added by the author

In most pirate codes, the values of democracy, equality and discipline were the most highly regarded, but a particular value was highlighted in some codes – namely, a provision that the sailor who discovered a target for plundering would be rewarded with money, the best guns or arms. Other provisions in the code warned of punishments: Article 6 of Captain John Phillips’ articles, set for his men in 1724, provided: “That man that shall snap his arms, or smoke tobacco in the hold, without a cap to his pipe, or carry a candle lighted without a lanthorn, shall suffer the same punishment as in the former Article.” Interestingly, there existed an early form of disability insurance in the pirate community. Pirates were always exposed to the risk of being injured. Injured pirates were paid rewards in accordance to the degree of their wounds. If one lost his right arm in battle, he was paid 600 silver pesos, which was the highest reward; for the left arm, 500 pesos; for the right leg, 500 pesos; for the left leg, 400 pesos; for an eye or finger, 100 pesos. Discipline aboard a pirate ship. The discipline aboard pirate ship was less arbitrary and barbaric. Although some of the rules were strict, generally some acts that warranted punishment in other maritime sectors were tolerated here. As illustrated in the code of Bartholomew Roberts, some method of managing disputes among pirates was required in order to maintain order and unity in the closed space of a ship where 80 tough men lived together. In the event that a quarrel turned into a fight, a duel was not allowed aboard ship, but must take place on the shore. It was a tactic for maintaining unity among the pirates. The rule of duels was clearly stated so that victory or defeat was apparent, and thus prevented the dispute from escalating into a gang fight. Those who were intolerable to their shipmates or violated a principal rule were punished with marooning – in other words, being left alone on an uninhabited island, a practice sardonically referred to as ‘being appointed the governor of the island.’ In the event of defrauding colleagues to take more than one’s proper share, desertion or pretending to be sick in battle, or stealing, the probability of punishment by marooning became higher. Indeed, marooning was a much harsher punishment than death. There is an episode in Treasure Island about Ben Gunn marooned on an uninhabited island. Ben Gunn persuaded his colleagues to go to Treasure Island to explore the treasures that Captain Flint had hidden. As the pirates had no success in finding treasures, they turned on Ben Gunn, and finally marooned him. Ben Gunn was given only a gun and an axe when he was abandoned on the island. He had been marooned for three years, living on wild goats, strawberries and oysters, until he was discovered by Jim Hawkins. The last resort to maintain order aboard ship was execution. The punishment of execution was exercised when pirates had a boy or woman aboard ship, but was mostly used to punish captains who abused their authority. When a new pirate joined the crew, he was required to take an oath of allegiance and not deceive his colleagues. If a man was willing to leave, in many cases pirates did not force him to stay; as many had undergone the closed and authoritarian world of the merchant ships, they held the freedom to come and go as one pleased in high regard. Opponents to the captain used to leave the ship by drawing up a new pirate code. When a new group was created, the social homogeneity of pirates was secured. Fast Living. Pirates at sea wore trousers and jackets made of coarse fabric. In battle, they protected themselves by putting on clothes coated with pine resin or made of thick fur. However, on the shore, they put on luxurious clothes looted from the ship. Some pirates looked like the London playboys of the day by putting on wigs and makeup. They loved luxurious decorations, and wore jewelry of gold and crosses of pearl. Pirates had their own way of speaking as well, with speech heavily layered with curses, vile language and profanity. Using this language was a signal of their belonging to the group and a way to forge bonds between them. Pirates loved hot and spicy foods and strong liquors. Drunken merrymaking was their daily life. Drinking strong liquor was routine. They relieved the harsh working conditions aboard ship and the tension of piracy by drinking. Pirates who had always lived with hunger in their previous lives weren’t worried about going without food here, where they spent their days eating and drinking. Famous pirate drinks involved cocktails called bombs – one was a blend of rum, water, sugar and beans, while another was a combination of egg, sugar, sherry and beer. Brandy, sherry and wine were also eagerly consumed. Many pirates died of alcoholism. When pirates were hanged, they blamed drinking for leading them down the wrong path and engaging in heinous acts of piracy. In 1724, before William White was hanged, he regretted: “I was ruined by drinking and was drunk when I embarked on the pirate ship for the first time.” John Archer, who was hanged on the same day, shed tears of regret: “Excessive drinking made me commit crimes that were worse than death. Charles Johnson in A General History of the Pyrates depicted the life of pirates enjoying fast living. According to his depiction, since pirates had a strong bond with each other, they helped fellow pirates who found themselves penniless. Not everyone was so helpful, though: Although the owners of pubs were generous about providing drinks and foods on credit, they sold out the pirates once debts piled up. A pirate spent 3,000 pesos to see the nude body of a prostitute and was sold out by those debts in three months. Methods of Pirate Attack. Pirates generally used a large sailing boat when they attacked targets. But they sometimes used a small boat with no deck. The West Indies pirates used canoes taken from local fishermen, for example. A small canoe could accommodate five to six people and a large canoe 25 people at maximum. Canoes were powered by either oars or sails. Attacks using a small boat without a deck was a tactic preferred by buccaneers in the late 17th century. Henry Morgan, especially, frequently used canoes to attack Spanish coastal settlements. The raid of Portobello was the most dramatic example – Morgan used canoes to land because they were much harder to spot from shore. On 23 April 1680, pirates rowing in canoes left their mother ship and attacked a Spanish fleet of three ships at anchor. The 68 pirates, aboard five canoes and two larger dugouts, approached and attacked the Spanish fleet. They used muskets to precisely target and kill a number of sailors on deck. Despite being heavily armed and vigilant about possible pirate attacks, the Spanish fleet was helpless against the clever tactics of bold pirates. Only 26 out of 86 aboard the flagship survived, and the ship was seized by the pirates. Pirates had always an upper hand in terms of selecting targets and attacking, but they were very cautious when planning an attack. Pirates were able to chase the target ship for several hours, speculating about its defensive capabilities and estimating the number of sailors and cannons aboard. In the event that the target ship was an Indian merchant ship – which had strong defenses – pirates changed their route to search for a ship with weaker defenses. If the target ship was identified as attackable, pirates could choose to do a raid or a frontal attack. As illustrated in the case of Saracen pirates, the best way to make a target ship defenseless was to fly a fake flag. This method had been used by warships during wartime. Before wireless communications and Morse Code were invented, the only way to identify the nationality of ships at sea was to fly flags. In the 1700s, national flags were used, and skilled seamen were able to identify the nationality of a ship by the flag that flew on the top mast. The method of attack used by the pirates who dominated the Caribbean Sea in the 18th century was slightly different. When they approached the target, they rushed toward the ship without hiding their intentions. The typical method of attack was to fly the black flag on the top mast and attack by firing on the target ship. Their weaponry and number of sailors was greater than that of their targets, and the pirates believed in their own infamy. Since there were few sailors aboard merchant ships who had battle experience, the pirate ship’s attack was like being attacked by a warship. Furthermore, the sailors could not afford to resist, out of fear that they would be tortured or killed once they were caught. Some pirates escalated the horror by firing lethal sniper shots. Above all, the most powerful and destructive method of pirate attack was a broadside, firing all guns on one side of ship. Pirates rarely used this method so as not to damage their prizes. However, they did not hesitate at all to use a broadside to have a target ship surrender

Pirate Attack. Pirates did not get onboard the target ship immediately after stopping it. Instead, they usually had the captain come over to the pirate ship in a boat that they provided. This was for holding the captain hostage while they looted the merchant ship. An interesting point is that the sailors obediently surrendered without resistance once they were attacked by pirates. They knew that they could not afford to fight against a pirate ship armed with heavy cannons and 100 sailors aboard. Of the victim ships of pirate attacks in 1719, the largest ship had 12 cannons and 30 sailors aboard. Most other merchant ships were armed with four to six cannons and 14 to 16 sailors. A merchant ship loaded with heavy goods could not easily escape a swiftly moving pirate ship. Methods of Looting. Pirates refrained from beating sailors once they surrendered without resistance. Indeed, some pirates behaved gently. They treated the captain warmly or, in rare cases, refrained from looting or even paid them money. However, that was extremely exceptional. Typically, pirates heavily punished the captains and senior sailors who abused rank-and-file sailors. Another feature of pirate attacks was that pirates took time in their looting, contrary to contemporary pirates, who loot and run away swiftly. Pirates were not hasty. They had sufficient reason to loot at their leisure. Most attacks were committed in the distant sea, invisible to the land. Since these events were prior to the invention of wireless communication, there was no way for the victim ship to call for rescue. This was also the case in the event that pirate attacks occurred off a port or shore. For example, in the Caribbean Sea, which stretches 2,000 miles to the east and west and 1,500 miles to the north and south, the patrol in 1715 was conducted by only four warships and two sailing ships. Under this circumstance, pirates were able to loot without worry that a patrol would catch them. As we are well aware, pirates had a keen interest in treasures, and most pirates joined up to attain them. Interestingly, however, household items were also highly prized. After all, pirates who spent a long time at sea could not survive on treasure alone, no matter how valuable. They needed essential items for life aboard ship – not only food and drinks, but also ropes and sails. Pirates could not repair their ships at port, unlike merchant ships. They could not call in ship items to vendors and repairmen either. Since they had to repair their ships in the sea or in an uninhabited estuary by themselves, they looted necessary ship items for their use. In 1717, when the pirate ship attacked a small sailing boat Restoration, the pirates took all goods aboard ship, including food, masts, pumps, bolts, needles, strings, kettles and frying pans. In October 1723, pirates took 14 boxes of candles, jib, strings, anchors, wire ropes and other woodworking tools when they attacked a ship off Barbados. Clamor for Revenge. Historian Eric Hobsbawm described the revolt of farmers against oppression and poverty as a clamor for revenge, and piracy was no different. Pirates, mostly from the lowest class, suffered the painful trauma of oppressive social systems or abuse on board merchant ships or warships. For this reason, in many cases, pirates named their ship ‘Revenge.’ Such naming was intended primarily to threaten the target ship. However, it was also a result of the internal sense of injustice and the grudge they bore against their entire society. The legendary pirate Blackbeard named his ship Queen Anne’s Revenge. The infamous captains Stede Bonnet and John Call named their ships Revenge and New York’s Revenge, respectively. The primary target of this revenge was the captain of a seized merchant ship. Pirates exercised ‘justice’ in their own manner once they seized a merchant ship. They asked the sailors how the captain had treated them, then they exercised the ‘judgement of justice’ in their own way for any captain who was believed to have abused the sailors and exercised oppressive authority. The most common punishment was to spray salt over a captain’s sores after whipping. In the ship of Bartholomew Roberts, an ‘executer of justice’ was appointed. One of these punishments against the captain was known as ‘sweating.’ This involved poking and prodding the victim with cutlasses, swords and various sharp instruments while he tried to dodge the blows. The victim’s only option was to ‘run’ or ‘dance’ around the mast, all the time accompanied by the sound of the ship’s fiddle. Many of the captains held captive were punished with sweating, by which infamous captains were executed immediately. The acts of revenge were a tit for tat against the tyrannical and arbitrary authority that the captain had wielded. Nevertheless, punishments against the captains were not necessarily imposed indiscriminately. The captain known to have never abused sailors was greeted cordially by pirates. The example of Captain William Snelgrave, captured and freed by pirates, may illustrate the case. He was captured by a group of pirates along the coast of West Africa in 1719. He was originally attacked by the quartermaster for failing to surrender. He was beaten and shot in the arm, but his men cried out “For God’s sake, don’t kill our captain, for we were never with a better man.” The quartermaster stopped the beating and interviewed the sailors over the captain’s abuses. No one spoke ill of him. Eventually, Snelgrave was spared. The pirate captain apologized for his men’s violent acts, saying that their acts were to revenge sordid merchants and cruel captains. Recognizing that Snelgrave was respected by his men, the captain returned the ship to him and offered to buy the goods aboard ship. The pirates intended to demonstrate to merchants that good luck would befall a good captain. The offer was decided unanimously among the pirates, but Snelgrave hesitated to accept the offer in fear that he would be suspected of collusion with pirates. The pirates accepted his refusal, believing that it was better to let any man live in his own way. Pirates cried out that vagabonds and poor men like themselves never received the benefit of law and justice, and that just punishments were never exacted against merchants or captains. So, they took matters into their own hands. Pirates’ Flag: Jolly Roger. Pirates had their own flags, known as ‘Jolly Roger,’ which is the traditional 18th century name for the flags flown to identify a pirate ship about to attack. The design most commonly identified as the Jolly Roger today is the skull and crossbones symbol on a black background, which was used during the 1710s by a number of pirate captains, including Black Sam Bellamy, Edward England, and John Taylor. The symbol went on to become the most commonly used pirate flag during the 1720s. Jolly Roger

Chapter 12. End of the Golden Age of Pirates and Privateers in America. The Brutal Torture and Violence of Pirates. Although pirates were often forced into piracy to escape from violent working conditions, abuse and cruelty aboard lawful ships, they were no more than outlaws at sea who committed all kinds of atrocities. Pirates who made the sea into the realm of horror were regarded as sub-human beings. They were called ‘cruel sea monsters,’ ‘blood hungry monsters,’ ‘merciless monsters,’ ‘sea wolves’ or ‘dogs of hell’ – terms which highlighted their cruelty. These nicknames were derived from the brutal violence, slaughter and torture that they committed while they attacked and looted ships. They exercised brutality to discover hidden treasures and to exact revenge. But beyond that, captives were often tortured simply for pirates’ amusement. This fact makes it easier to understand why the term ‘monster’ was so often used to describe them. Pirates located hidden treasures by threatening captives with all kinds of methods. Walking the plank was a commonly used method to horrify captives. Captives were bound so that they could not swim or tread water and forced to walk off a wooden plank or beam extended over the side of a ship. Pirates fired at the foot of captive to weaken him before forcing him into the sea. Pirates were amused to see it. One of the most commonly used tortures at the end of the 17th century was to pull the legs and arms of a captive with a rope while beating him with sticks or other instruments. They burnt captives alive by lighting a fuse inserted between their fingers. Pirates used a method to twist the head of a captive using a thin string until their eyes bulged out of their sockets. When pirates occupied a village, they committed cruelties against villagers, both men and women. In particular, women captives were the target of sexual attack and torture. A woman captive was once roasted naked when she refused to reveal the location of her money. There were infamous pirates who terrified seamen with brutal tortures. The French pirate Francois l’Olonnais was notorious for cruel tortures practiced on captives. He was a natural sadist who amused himself with torture and was obsessed with the desire to see blood. When he attacked a small port in Cuba, he seized warships and killed all the captives except a sailor. If a captive did not answer the pirate’s questions quickly, he slashed the captive all over his body and then licked the blood off the knife. He cut out the heart of one captive and forced another captive to eat it. Another form of torture was to cut the ears, noses, arms and hands of a captive, then rub the wounds with honey, and tie him to a tree to let bugs bite into the injuries. French buccaneer Daniel Montbars, better known as Montbars the Exterminator, devised a most creative and cruel torture method. He liked to slit open a victim’s belly just enough to reach in and pull out one end of the man’s bowels. This he nailed to a tree or wall, whatever was close at hand, then he beat the man with a burning log so he twitched and jerked in agony, unwinding his own bowels in the process. The Dutch pirate Locke was also infamous for atrocities. If someone ran into an occupied village, he would slash their arms and legs. If anyone tried to intervene, that person would receive the same treatment. He burnt captives alive after tying them to a wooden stick. The pirate captain Vane harshly beat sailors after seizing their ship. He tied their hands and legs to the mast and then put a burning match into their eyes and a pistol into their mouths. There were acts of perversion and violence practiced to simply alleviate boredom among the pirates. Edward Low, also a sadist, discovered a passenger had hung a bag of his gold outside a ship’s window to hide it from the pirates. He cut the lips off the passenger and burnt them in front of him. Subsequently, he murdered all 32 crew members. Pirate Trials. Out of various art works featuring pirates, the paintings illustrating a pirate hanged in front of many onlookers perhaps best symbolizes their miserable fates. They illustrate the image of pirates making their last statements before being executed – whether by being hanged or hanging on a gibbet like Captain Kidd. There are a number of paintings of Howard Pyle depicting hanging of pirates. Pirates were the common enemy of states because they disturbed international trade. These acts were regarded as treason. When pirates were found guilty, they were mostly hanged. When less serious involvement in piracy or similar offenses were discovered, pirates were occasionally punished with labor or imprisonment, but these incidents were rare compared with hanging. Cases where pirates were found innocent or had their executions suspended were extremely rare. Pirate trials proceeded expeditiously, usually within a day or two, even though 20 to 30 pirates were put on trial at a time. Expeditious trials were the norm in part because busy judges wanted to finish trials early. Other than that, trials were swift because the pirates could put up no serious defense. They were not well educated and had no means to protect themselves. They merely claimed that they had been drunk while committing piracy or their ships were forcefully seized or they were forced to sign the pirate code or otherwise forced to engage in piracy. How the British government handled piracy was well illustrated in an indictment handed over to juries by the Admiralty Court Judge Nicolas Trot at a trial held in Charleston, South Carolina in 1718. “The sea, which was accorded by God to human beings for use, is subject to rule and ownership, like land. Under international law, pirates are not authorized to change the ownership. Pirates are the common enemy of mankind and beasts as well as predators for whom faith or allegiance cannot be achieved. Other than the lesson learned from their death, any goodness or benefit cannot be expected from pirates.” Such view of pirates by the British government generated a vicious cycle of terrorism. As the British government announced rewards for capturing pirates, pirates responded that they would pay unlimited rewards to those who captured government officials. In 1720, one of six pirates who were about to be hanged cried, “a curse with the governor, a chaos with the colony,” while drinking wine. The rest of his colleagues agreed. Outraged, Governor Woods executed them by chaining four pirates together to make them more terrified. Distrust and disdain of the authority of government did not change even when George I granted a pardon to pirates. Some pirates refused to convert to a good life even though they were granted a pardon. Some of them ignored it, while the most provocative pirates tore up the royal letter of pardon. Hanging. In London, the execution of pirates was carried out in a place called the ‘Execution Dock.’ It was located in the River Thames near the shoreline at Wapping. Today in Wapping, East London, there is a pub called ‘Captain Kidd’ named after pirate William Kidd in the 17th century, who was executed at the nearby Execution Dock. On the signboard, the face of captain Kidd is painted and an imitation scaffold is set up at the entrance. You can look over the Execution Dock from there. The Execution Dock was the place where all the infamous pirates in the 18th century were executed. The scaffold for hanging was set up beyond the low-tide mark. The bodies of pirates remained untouched and were submerged during high tide. After three changes in low and high tide, the bodies could be claimed. It is interesting to note the reason for submerging corpses in water. Since the commander of the Navy was responsible for the punishment of all crimes committed at sea, from the high seas to the low-tide mark, it symbolized that the execution of pirates was carried out within his jurisdiction. An execution at the dock usually meant that crowds lined the river’s banks or chartered boats moored in the Thames to get a better view of the hanging. The pirates who had been sentenced to death were usually brought to the Execution Dock from the Marshalsea Prison. The condemned were paraded across the London Bridge and past the Tower of London. The procession was led by the High Court Marshal on horseback. He carried a silver oar that represented the authority of the admiralty. Prisoners were transported in a cart to Wapping. With them was a chaplain who encouraged them to confess their sins. The condemned prisoners were allowed to drink a quart of ale at a public house on the way to the gallows. When they arrived at the river, the prisoners were allowed to talk to the crowds. Some spoke of repentance, but most of them were still confrontational. Its last executions were in 1830. Marcus Rediker vividly portrayed the scene of an execution in his book Villains of All Nations: “In the early afternoon of July 12, 1726, William Fly ascended Boston’s gallows to be hanged for piracy. His body was nimble in manner, like a sailor going aloft; his rope-roughened hands carried a nosegay of flowers; his weather-beaten face had a smiling aspect. He showed no guilt, no shame, and no contrition. Once he stood on the gallows, he threw the hanging rope over the beam and made it fast and carefully inspected the noose that would go around his neck. He soon turned to the hangman in disappointment and reproached him for not understanding his trade. Fly offered to teach him how to tie a proper noose. He, with his own hands, rectified matters, to render all things more convenient and effectual. Then informed the hangman and the crowd that he was not afraid to die and he did nothing wrong.” When attending minister Cotton Mather asked for the last words of pirates in order to provide an example and a warning to those who were assembled to watch the execution, three pirates warned all to obey their parents and superiors and not to curse, drink, whore or profane the Lord’s day. They acknowledged the justice of the proceedings against them and thanked the ministers for their assistance. Fly, however, did not ask for forgiveness, did not praise the authorities, and did not affirm the values of Christianity, but he did issue a warning. He proclaimed his final and fondest wish: that all masters of vessels might take warning by the fate of the captain that he had murdered and to pay sailors their wages when due and to treat them better; that their barbarity to them made so many turn pirates. Fly thus used his last breath to protest the conditions of work at sea, what he called “bad usage.” A gallows was a simple frame where a horizontal crossbeam was tied to two upright poles and the rope noose was attached to the crossbeam. Pirates ascended the ladder with assistance from a hangman and a noose went around their necks. When a law enforcement officer made the signal, the hangman released the prisoners. In the case that the pirate was not killed immediately, friends or relatives of the pirate pulled his legs so as to make the process go more quickly and relieve his pain. Occasionally the noose was broken and the almost-dead pirate was hanged again. The bodies of pirates at the Execution Dock were not immediately laid down following death. Customarily, these corpses were left hanging until at least three tides had washed over their heads. This practice stopped at the end of the 18th century. Ultimately the bodies were either buried at sea or used for autopsy and hung in chains. The autopsy of corpses had been acknowledged since Henry VIII and became a custom throughout the 18th century. On the part of the most notorious offenders, the admiralty would order that their bodies be tarred and hung in chains on the River Thames, as a warning to all seafarers of the fate awaiting those who turned to piracy. The infamous Captain Kidd, for example, who had been convicted of piracy and murder, was taken from the Newgate Prison and executed at the dock in 1701. During his execution, the rope was broken and Kidd was hanged on the second attempt. His remains were gibbeted at Tilbury by the Thames River for three years

Chapter 13. Asia, Enclosed in the Sea. Asia Enclosed in the Sea. What were Asian states like when European states were navigating around the world? Asian states like China, Japan and Korea, which were enclosed in Sino-centrism () and Confucianism (), were focused on being completely continental states, and were largely blind to the power and potential of using the sea. When Europeans were prevailing in maritime trade by sailing around the world, Asians completely banned sea-going. Asian economies fell into closed and self-sufficient economies, as a consequence of enforcing a ‘Forbidden to the Sea’ () policy and restricting overseas trade. China, in particular, indulged in the idea of Sino-centrism, regarding itself as the center of the world and its neighbors as barbarians since ancient times. China was obsessed with the idea that ‘The territory is enormous and goods are sufficient enough’ (). China was complacent in its belief that there was no need to trade with the outside world, since China could be self-sufficient without trading with other states for goods. In this context, China was implementing a strong closed-door policy. As a result, China fell behind a major global trend and ultimately underwent a shameful colonial history. During the Ming () dynasty, where Confucianism dominated society as a ruling ideology, the sea was no longer a space for trade and exchange. The sea was a security vulnerability, as well as an area where coastal residents could secretly communicate with enemies. Because the Confucian view was that ‘agriculture is the foundation of nations,’ maritime affairs were regarded as very low and ignoble. Maritime trade was actively undertaken during the Song () and Yuan () dynasties. However, it declined following the foundation of the Ming dynasty by Chu Yuanchang () in 1368, which advocated exclusive Chinese nationalism. In 1371, shortly after the foundation of the Ming dynasty, Chu Yuanchang proclaimed a Ban on Sea-Going (). It was an extremely strict ban, saying “any piece of a wooden board is forbidden to fall into the sea.” As a consequence, the overseas trade that had been booming during the Song and Yuan dynasties was completely prohibited, and private trade was replaced by the tributary trade. After Zheng He ()’s expeditions ended, enormous fleets were left unrepaired and the building of ships for going to distant waters was prohibited. The imperial decree that “all ships with more than two masts should be demolished” was proclaimed. When Europe took to the oceans, Asia was busy isolating itself from the outside world, turning its eyes away from the sea. Asia increasingly became a continental power, and as such the sea became a barrier that interrupted international relations. As the booming overseas trade diminished, shipbuilding and navigation skills declined. The capability and means for sea-going had totally disappeared. Literally, Asia ended up ‘being enclosed in the sea.’ This was a watershed moment that set Asia on a path to being colonized by European maritime powers. Why did China, a former maritime power that had taken to the sea much earlier than Europe, proclaim a ban on ocean navigation? Among a number of reasons, primarily it was because pirates were rampant at the end of the Yuan and the early Ming dynasties. Rebel groups based in the coastal areas of Zhejiang and Fujian plagued the newly born dynasty, in connection with Japanese pirates who were prevalent along the coasts of the Korean Peninsula and southeast China. The founder of the Ming intended to prevent the rebel groups from growing into a serious force while being linked to low class people in the coastal areas. Along with the Ban on Sea-Going, the founder of the Ming prohibited overseas as well as private trade and strengthened the tributary system as a mode of international relations. He regarded agriculture highly and suppressed commerce and industry to prevent the pursuit of individual wealth – a pursuit that he believed would harm society – and by doing so he intended to maintain the traditional Sino-centric hegemonic order. However, the strategy of isolation and the abandonment of ocean-going resulted in a far worse outcome: seven major invasions from European maritime powers, and ultimately China’s subjugation as a colony. The Chosun Dynasty Ban on Sea-Going. Chosun (, 1392–1910), the dynasty which ruled the Korean Peninsula for 500 years and had served China, had a similar ban on sea-going. In fact, it enforced a much stricter policy that suppressed maritime force. There had not been a significant maritime force on the Korean Peninsula since Jang Bogo (), an admiral at the end of Silla dynasty (, BC 53-AD 935), had dominated trade in the southern Yellow Sea, established the Chunghae Jin naval base and established the maritime order throughout Northeast Asia. However, the overseas trade with merchants from China and Japan as well as Arabia was very active throughout the Korea dynasty (, 918–1392). In the southern coastal areas of the Korean Peninsula, trade with Japan was booming. One key factor that turned the Chosun away from the sea was the implementation of the Empty Island ( policy and the Ban on Sea-Going. The Empty Island policy decrees that islands be left uninhabited – no one was allowed to live there. For the rulers of Chosun, thousands of islands on the southwest coast were viewed as very vulnerable. The driving force that led to the Empty Island policy was Japanese pirates, who were prevalent at the end of the Korea dynasty. The Empty Island policy, which began in 1403, was mitigated in the wake of Japanese invasions of the Chosun (1592–1598) for a while and ultimately abolished in 1882. Unlike in the Korea dynasty, in which the policy was confined to some islands, the Chosun expanded it to include the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. As a result, all but a few large islands were left uninhabited. The Confucian Chosun was loyal to the idea of ‘agriculture first,’ represented by the principle: “Focus on the loftier jobs, ignore the lowly jobs.” () The Chosun banned trade with foreign countries while discouraging jobs that were considered “low” such as commerce and industry, instead encouraging the “principal” work of agriculture. The ruling class of Chosun believed that the Ban on Sea-Going would discourage commerce and prevent the fast flow of people and goods, and thus enhance the stability of an agriculture-centric society and help strengthen government control. Under these circumstances, engaging in private trade by using large ships was treated like a treasonous act, which would harm the stability of society. On the part of the Chosun, which tied up with Confucianism, the sea was not a space of opportunity that could generate wealth by fishery and overseas trade – it was merely a place where rebellious people and lowly seamen were engaged in lowly jobs. While European maritime powers created a ‘sea of imperialism,’ the ruling class of the Chosun was devoted to the anti-maritime Confucian ideology. Envoys to China took a land route, which took several months, instead of traveling only a few days by sea. It was the only channel by which the Chosun could know about the outside world. For the Chosun, which had been closed and continentally oriented, the sea was merely an outer area as well as a dangerous space. Against this backdrop, the abolition of the Ban on Sea-Going was one of the major goals that reformists for independence and modernization pursued at the end of the 19th century. Ok-Kyoon Kim, the main player of the political coup in 1882, wrote in his book: “those who were discussing urgent national affairs should employ competent people, save finances and discourage luxury, and abolish the Ban on Sea-Going policy.” The Sea of Colonization. In China, the problem of the Ban on Sea-Going had been raised much earlier than it had been for the Chosun. As the demand for the Open Sea () grew stronger, the Ming opened Guangzhou in 1509 to merchants from tributary states. In 1576, the Ming permitted private trade, the first since its enforcement of the ban 200 years ago. However, it was not completely free trading. The port for trade with Southeast Asia was limited only to Changchou, and merchant ships were limited to making 50 voyages. With the mitigation of the Ban on Sea-Going, trade routes that had been either closed or hidden were quickly recovered. Accordingly, permission to conduct overseas trade was extended to 100 ships in 1577 and 137 ships in 1597. However, limited permission did not change the fundamental results of the Ban on Sea-Going. Even though the Ban on Sea-Going, the suppression of commerce, and the tributary trade had brought stability internally, these policies also caused China to lose its power in the sea – allowing European maritime powers to dominate. Shrinking in maritime activities resulted in the fall of China. European maritime powers threatened China with fleets armed with cannons. Ultimately, China and the Chosun were exploited by enemies that sailed across the sea. They paid a harsh price for turning their backs on the ocean, creating a ‘sea of colonization’ for themselves. Maritime Exchange in East Asia. In fact, East Asia did not stay away from the sea in the beginning. In ancient East Asia, sea exchanges were more active than in any other place. Secure land routes were used for exchanges among regions and states, but sea routes were also active. China and the Islamic world developed an advanced culture and economy between the 8th and 10th centuries. The two civilizations did not remain isolated, but communicated with each other by the sea. This brought synergy in the development of civilization. The two worlds affected other parts of the globe by spreading their civilizations. This was made possible because these two worlds, across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, were connected with a maritime Silk Road. The two worlds were able to transport goods more cheaply, and could understand each other better through repeated exchanges. Trade through the maritime Silk Road was driven by Arabs. Arab merchant ships departed from Port Siraf or the Hormuz Island in April, when monsoon began, and called in at ports in Sohar or Muscart in Oman first. They supplied themselves water, food and live cows for the voyage across the Indian Ocean. After a month of travel, they arrived in a port in southwest India. After resupply, they set sail for Malacca, which served as the middle point for maritime trade between the West and the East. They arrived in the Gulf of Siam via Singapore. In 10 or 20 days, they stopped over small islands and resupplied with water and food. In another month, they arrived in their final destination in China, Guangzhou (), called Canton. Between the 10th century and early 11th century, merchant ships from the Song Dynasty called in at ports of Japan. In the early 12th century, as the compass was widely available and the building of large ships was possible, Chinese merchants advanced to East Indonesia and further South India. In the 11th century, exchange between China and Japan was very active, to the extent that there was a Chinese town in Hakata of Kyushu. Since the middle of the 11th century, merchants from Hakata had sent merchant ships to Korea. In the early age of the Southern Song () dynasty in the 12th century, trade was very active and extended to China. The Song’s initial position was to disallow maritime trade with Japanese merchants, but the relationship between the two countries became very close after the Southern Song was founded. As a result, the exchange of people and goods was very active and Japanese merchant ships were engaged in the free private trade in the estuary of the Yangtze River, centered in Mingzhou () During the Yuan dynasty, powerful feudal lords called “Daimyos” (), along with the merchants under their control, actively undertook overseas trade in Japan. The Yuan officially banned private trade, and thus Japanese merchant ships called in Fuzhen, instead of the official trade port. The Ming dynasty was devoted to rebuilding the economy after it collapsed at the end of the Yuan dynasty. Even though the Ming very strictly enforced the Ban on Sea-Going, smuggling was booming along the coastal areas in Zhejiang, Fuzhen and Guangdong. Growth in the handicraft industry and an increase in navigational skills lead to smuggling by large ships. It was contrary to the Ban on Sea-Going, enforced since the early Ming dynasty. Since the ban strictly prohibited people living in coastal areas from taking to the sea, the private trade prospered with through piracy. On the Korean Peninsula, trade with Arabs had been undertaken through the land-route Silk Road prior to the Unified Silla Kingdom (676–935). During the 8th century, maritime trade became active through Arabs who resided in the Arab community in the coastal region of China. The Silla community, built in the Shandong Peninsula and Jiangsu, served as a trade hub. The merchants from Silla were engaged in transit trade, in which they sold the goods from Arab traders to northern China, Silla and Japan. Since maritime trade routes connecting China, Korea and Japan were under the complete control of Jang Bogo, the trade between Silla and the Arabs had been indirect. Following the death of Jang Bogo, the Arabs directly engaged in trade with Silla by the sea. Apparently, maritime trade routes in Asia had been open since ancient times, and the maritime trade was booming when heated controversies over the Copernican theory and the Ptolemaic theory were underway in the West. Zheng He’s Expeditions. The rule of the third emperor of the Ming dynasty, Yongle (), brought China’s greatest period of ocean navigation. This was the work of Admiral Zheng He (), who completed great maritime expeditions from 1405–1433 – during the Ban on Sea-Going. One might be curious as to how enormous expeditions were possible at the early era of the Ming dynasty, during which the strict ban was enforced. In fact, China had been the most powerful maritime state during the 450 years before the implementation of the Ban on Sea-Going. Larger ships from China were able to carry 500 people, and navigators sailed using a hydrographical chart and a compass. During the Song dynasty, trade with Japan and Southeast Asia in coastal regions boomed. The Song, which highly regarded exchange with foreign countries, expanded their exchanges to include Central Asia, India and eastern Africa as well as Japan and East Asian countries. Even though the Chinese economy declined and overseas trade shrank when the Song fell to the Mongols, the Yuan dynasty shortly thereafter recognized the importance of shipping, trade and traffic by the sea. Oriental goods loaded in Guangzhou and Fuzhou, such as ceramics, peppers and spices, arrived in the coastal regions of the Mediterranean, like Alexandria, via the Gulf of Persia and the Red Sea. These oriental goods were collected by traders from Venice and Genoa and sold to Western Europe through the Gibraltar Strait in the Iberian Peninsula. As illustrated in active oversea trades in the Ming and Yuan dynasties, China had the highest capability of maritime expansion, despite the Ban on Sea-Going. This was demonstrated by Zheng He’s seven maritime expeditions. Zheng He was a Muslim with colored eyes, captured in Yunnan in 1381 in the transitional period from the Yuan to the Ming. As a eunuch, he had served the Emperor Yongle since he was a prince. He made a great contribution to the success of Yongle’ coup against his younger brother Chienwen (). When Yongle took emperorship, Zheng He became his closest aid. Following his emperorship, Emperor Yongle made the unprecedented move of appointing eunuchs to important positions, and sent three fleets commanded by them to proclaim his emperorship across Southeast Asia from Java to southern India. Yongle, who had been more strategic than any other emperor in Chinese history, intended to be recognized by foreign rulers. As such, he commanded Zheng He to take expeditionary voyages. The Magnificence of Zheng He’s Fleets. Zheng He’s expeditionary fleets were so magnificent, they were unprecedented in world history. His fleets were composed of 60 larger ships, known as ‘treasure ships’ (), which stretched 138 or 150 meters in length and 60 meters in width, and 200 smaller ships. The number of crewmen who participated in each expeditionary voyage was up to 27,000. Those figures create a strong contrast to the fleet Vasco da Gama used to explore the trade route to India: Three ships, the largest of which was 120 tons and 27 meters in length, while the other two were 100 tons and 50 tons, respectively. ‘Treasure ships,’ which were literally carrying treasure, were the mainstay of fleets. The treasure ships carried the emperor’s presents for the rulers of the regions where the fleets visited and the tributes that the rulers paid to the emperor. Each treasure ship was structured with 16 compartments, so even though two of them were flooded, it did not sink. Parts of some compartments, which were designed to hold water, were used as an aquarium to raise fish or an entrance for divers. Zheng He’s first voyage departed on 11 July 1405 from Suzhou and visited more than 30 regions and countries, including Brunei, Java, Thailand and Southeast Asia, India, the Horn of Africa, and Arabia, dispensing and receiving goods along the way. During the voyage, he deployed a special unit to Aden, Mecca and Mogadishu in Kenya. For the last expedition, which used his largest fleet, the total navigational distance was up to 20,000 kilometers. The fleets navigated at an unbelievably fast speed at the time, sailing 5,000 kilometers from Hormuz to Malacca in less than 44 days. Zheng He died in 1433 during his last voyage. His body, wrapped in white fabric, was thrown into the sea amid the sound of prayers. The Purposes of Great Expeditions. One might wonder what led the early Ming dynasty, which began to enforce the Ban on Sea-Going, to attempt these costly and resource-draining voyages. Of various arguments on the topic, one theory posits that the voyages were motivated by the events of Emperor Yongle’s coup. The emperor occupied Nanjing, the capital, three years after starting the bloody conflict against his nephew Chienwen. However, the whereabouts of his nephew was not known. Since his body was not discovered, there was speculation that he might have been burnt to death or gone into exile overseas. There was a rumor around that the supposedly exiled Chienwen pursued his reinstatement, and Zheng He’s expeditions were meant to discover Chienwen’s whereabouts. This argument, however, collapses when one considers that Yongle’s emperorship was already stable, and the scale of the expeditions was extremely large and costly. Another argument claims the purpose was to create a Sino-centric order built on a tributary system. Emperor Yongle was a strong ruler who had invaded Mongol territory beyond the Great Wall. Another purpose was to protect the safety of trade routes and to promote trade by combating the pirates that ran rampant in the waters off Malacca. Just as it is today, the waters off the Malacca Strait were a hub of maritime traffic and commerce, as well as a hotspot for piracy. Indeed, Zheng He’s fleets sank 10 pirate ships in the second expedition. The fleets captured the head of the pirates and brought him to China to execute; thousands of other pirates were killed on the spot. However, it is hard to accept that anti-piracy operations were a single purpose of these expeditions. There seems to be no need to undertake seven expeditions at tremendous cost over 30 years, advancing even as far as Kenya, merely for the purpose of fighting pirates. It seems that Zheng He’s expeditions sought to achieve a combination of the purposes above. Perhaps the most convincing argument is that the main purpose of these expeditions was to spread the dignity of the emperor to Southeast Asian countries and to create a Sino-centric order by subjugating them under the tributary system. The dream of Emperor Yongle was to build a maritime imperial state that would dominate oceans, a feat that Kublai Khan had never achieved. This was claimed on the ground that Zheng He’s fleets were deeply involved in civil wars or political affairs in Malacca, Java and Ceylon, and he brought those who resisted them to execute in China. Such an argument was supported by the fifth emperor Xuande()’s decree delivered to the seventh expedition fleets, stating that “all things are going smoothly, but countries away across the sea do not know about it. Thus, Admiral Zheng He was specially dispatched to teach them respect and obedience.” After Xuande died in 1435, China allowed its maritime powers to diminish as it quit sea-going and turned into a land-focused state. In the face of a growing threat from barbarians in the northern territory and the rebellions of farmers, the Ming could not afford to continue expensive expeditions. As a result, the strict Ban on Sea-Going was enforced. Treasure ships were dismantled to be used for fuel, and crewmen were re-deployed to become construction workers and general soldiers. The records of the expeditions were completely destroyed. However, this was only the superficial reason for discontinuing the voyages. The true motivation behind it was that Confucian bureaucrats saw these expeditions as incompatible with the ideology of the Confucian Ming dynasty. China, which had taken to oceans more than 80 years before the European maritime powers, began to lose its dominance and eventually handed over their maritime Silk Road – stretching from India to China – to those European countries. Great Voyages of Zheng He’s Fleets. Due to the lack of historical records, it is hard to figure out the exact number of Zheng He’s fleets. There is an argument that the full scale of the fleet, which included newly built and repaired ships, was 2,020 vessels throughout the seven expeditions. Emperor Yongle ordered Zheng He to build 1,681 ships, other than warships and merchant ships. These consisted of traditional Chinese junk ships. Under the emperor’s ambitious plan, there had been a significant progress in shipbuilding technology. By virtue of advanced shipbuilding technology and the use of good timber, Zheng He built robust ships which were capable of navigating through harsh oceans. The preparation for enormous and long voyages required a great deal of time. In addition, shipbuilding and navigational skills were prerequisite for the success of voyages. Yongle inspired the development of navigational skills. Following the imperial order to make precise hydrographical charts, Zheng He and his admirals collected data on currents, islands, mountains, straits and the position of stars, and they updated existing hydrographical charts with their newly collected data. Two years prior to the departure of the first expedition, they were directed to visit countries in the distant westward sea and to employ skillful navigators. For voyages in distant waters, they needed to have local navigators who were well aware of regional seas

Chapter 14. Pirates in Asian Seas. Pirates in Ancient China. China had been a maritime power since ancient times. Because it had been active on the sea before many other regions, its encounters with pirates predate that of many other regions as well. The first pirate who appeared in Chinese history was Zhang Bairo in the era of the Eastern Han (, 25–220 A.D.). The record tells that Zhang ravaged nine coastal areas and killed local officials in July 109, with a pirate group composed of 3,000. The Eastern Han government sent a special force to combat the pirates. Zhang pretended to surrender, but regrouped and attacked local governments in collaboration with bandits, and set prisoners free. The pirate group led by Zhang was so extensive that the organization referred to itself as a state. The Eastern Han government engaged in combating the pirate group. Zhang fled to the sea and was killed when he failed to attack the local government. There are some records about pirates operating in the late Eastern Han and the Three Kingdoms (220–280 A.D.) – the tripartite division of China between the states of Wei (), Shu () and Wu (). In 206, Cao Cao (), chancellor of Wei, made an expedition to the eastern region and suppressed a pirate group. After the pirate group based in the Shandong Peninsula was defeated, they fled to islands. At the end of the Eastern Han, there had been frequent sea-based rebellions that went beyond mere piracy. The rebels were similar to Japanese pirate groups in the later era in that they used the ocean as a home base to avoid the suppression of government attacks on the land. The first incident involving pirates during the Tang () Dynasty (618–907 A.D.) was that King Mu of Balhae (, 698–926) had Zhang Munhwi attack Dengzhou with pirates in 732 during the Balhae-Tang War. In response, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang sent a punitive force and suppressed the pirates. The pirate group, led by Zhang Munhwi, was actively engaged in piracy in the Bohai Bay. At the time, a pirate group was operating on the southeast coast of China. They attacked the coastal area of Zhejiang. During the Tang Dynasty, there had been rampant human trafficking, where the victims were largely the people from the Silla Kingdom on the Korean Peninsula. In 821, a local governor sent a letter asking for the central government to prohibit the trafficking of Silla people by pirates. He argued in the letter that since the Silla people paid taxes to the Tang, they should be treated the same as the Chinese – and, he pointed out, the Chinese coastal people were also in danger of kidnapping by pirates. This was similar to Admiral Jang Bogo’s report to the King of Silla, made when he returned from Tang. Jang Bogo was a powerful maritime figure who effectively controlled the Yellow Sea and dominated the trade between Silla, Heian Japan, and Tang China for decades. This may indicate that piratical activities at the time extended to the Korean Peninsula beyond the coast of China. During the Tang dynasty, the maritime trade that was centered in Guangzhou prospered, along with western trade through the Silk Road. Prosperity in maritime trade led pirates to rage in this region as well. Arab merchant ships sailing for Tang with valuable goods aboard were good prey for pirates. During the Song Dynasty (, A.D. 960–1279), following the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, the maritime trade of China greatly prospered. As a result, along with the expansion of maritime trade in the South China Sea, maritime trade in East Asia, including in the Korean Peninsula and Japan, boomed as well. As river transport also developed, piracy in the river increased. For the Song Dynasty, committed to addressing the unrest brought about in the Five Dynasties period, it was essential to control and conciliate pirates to maintain stability in the coastal regions. The Song suppressed the pirates operating offshore of Jiangsu and Dengzhou several times. As illustrated earlier, Dengzhou was the region where pirates had been rampant since ancient times. Since Shandong and Jiangsu were a trade hub at the time, they became a hotspot of piracy. The political order in this period greatly changed with the fall of the Northern Song and the foundation of the Southern Song based in Hangzhou . Maritime trade greatly expanded in the Southern Song Dynasty due to threats posed from the northern territory. The prominent feature of piracy in this era was that it centered in the regions of Zhejiang and Fujian, likely because those regions had become political and economic hubs. The Shandong Peninsula had been the main region where merchant ships called in until the Northern Song Dynasty, but the circumstance had greatly changed. Chenzhou of Fujian, which had rapidly grown during the Southern Song dynasty, was a stopover for merchant ships and the largest beneficiary of such trade circumstances. It appears natural that pirates were attracted to this region to target merchant ships carrying valuable goods. The Southern Song, beyond merely combatting pirates, employed them as military resources. In 1135, when a pirate group surrendered, they were assigned to the navy. On the part of the politically unstable Southern Song, such gestures were a conciliatory measure for locals as well as an opportunity to build up the military. Political Pirates in China. The prominent feature of Chinese pirate groups that had operated off the shores of China and Southeast Asia was that they were ‘political pirates,’ who were closely linked to particular political groups in the transitional period of dynasties, and they shared a destiny with those political groups. Chinese rulers did not make use of them as a means of exploring trade and overseas colonies. However, the political chaos in the transitional period of dynasties provided these pirates with an opportunity to rampage. These pirate groups reached the South China Sea as the threat of Japanese pirates was alleviated by the 16th century. Piracy committed by political pirates in Far East Asia was eventually terminated by European powers. Europeans had been responsible for the safety of trade routes since China’s defeat in the Opium Wars in the 19th century. Piracy committed by the political pirate groups in China and Southeast Asia for over a thousand years was doomed by Europeans who employed far-reaching anti-piracy measures in the South China Sea and Indonesian waters. In the sections below, the infamous political pirates who dominated the South China Sea and China at the height of piracy in Far East Asia are highlighted. Zheng Zhilong (鄭芝龍) and His Son. Zheng Chengong (鄭成功) In the 16th century, a pirate empire built by Zheng Zhilong emerged. Zheng Zhilong, a Chinese merchant, pirate and military leader in the late Ming Dynasty, built enormous wealth and went to Macao to trade with Europeans. He joined the pirate group in 1624 and engaged in looting Chinese and Dutch merchant ships. Taking advantage of a power vacuum in the central government, he expanded his power and ruled most of the coastal areas of Fujian and the islands of Twain by the 1630s. As the Ming underwent political chaos in its late years, it appointed him a government position responsible for combating pirates. By virtue of his contribution, he was appointed to defend Fujian in 1629, as ‘Admiral of the Coastal Seas.’ With legal power in his hands, Zheng Zhilong had no barrier to prevent his plans. By exclusively controlling the maritime trade of this region, he protected trade by using junk ships, which were built for war. Meanwhile, he continued to be engaged in his main job – that is, piracy – and thus expanded his activities from the estuary of the Yangtze River to Hainan Island, plundering the ships sailing the region. Traders were required to pay money to the captains he employed in order to guarantee their safe passage. If they refused, they were subject to attack. As the power of Zheng Zhilong grew, the emperor could not help appointing him to a higher position to combat pirates in 1641. In the transitional period from the Ming to the Qing, he made a risky attempt in between the falling and emerging dynasties. When Nanjing was felled by the Manchu in 1644, Zheng enthroned a new emperor. He served as commander-in-chief of the imperial forces and was ordered to defend the newly established capital in Fuzhou. He made use of the emperor as a political hostage to the fullest extent but eventually surrendered to the Qing, believing he would be shown mercy. Upon his surrender, however, he was placed under house arrest and executed in Beijing in 1661. After Zheng Zhilong’s death, Zheng Chenggong, better known as Koxinga, fully succeeded to his father’s ‘pirate empire.’ When the castle of Fujian fell to Manchu forces, the young leader, at the age of 22, led his fleet to Taiwan. He regarded the Manchu who had killed his father as an irreconcilable enemy and became a leader of Ming loyalists. His junk ship fleets attacked the ships of the Qing and effectively contained the estuary of the Yangtze River – thus blocking Nanjing from maritime trade between Chinese and Europeans. In 1650, the Zheng force occupied Xiamen by attacking from the land and the sea. Over a decade, he fully dominated a coastal region ranging from the Yangtze to the delta of the Mekong River. However, Zheng Chenggong returned to Taiwan after his coalition with the anti-Qing force was defeated. Witnessing how Europeans were expanding their territory, an outraged Zheng drove the Dutch from Taiwan and established a dynasty which ruled the island as the Kingdom of Tungning from 1661 to 1683. The Qing contained coastal regions and imposed an embargo to suppress the Zheng forces. Subsequently, the embargo was imposed on the coastal regions of Fujian, Guangdong and Zhejiang, and villages and settlements were completely destroyed. In 1662, when Zheng Chenggong died of malaria at the age of 37, the Zheng regime was taken over by his son Zheng Jing. In 1683, following the death of Zheng Jing, Taiwan was placed under the complete rule of the Qing. To this day, the pirate Zheng Chenggong is respected as a national hero in Taiwan. Zheng Yi (鄭一) Zheng Yi was a powerful Chinese pirate who operated from Guangdong and throughout the South China Sea in the late 1700s. He was born in Vietnam in 1765, the son of a Chinese pirate. The Tay Son Dynasty (1778–1862) in the late 18th century employed Chinese pirates on a grand scale. The pirates were deployed to the navy of the dynasty and engaged in sea battles. Zheng Yi was the most famous among them. In 1795, Zheng Yi and his colleagues organized a pirate group and engaged in piracy on the frontier of China and Vietnam. Eventually, he had eight pirate groups under his control. After he was defeated in battle in 1801, he moved to Guangdong. Over four years, he incorporated the pirates operating in coastal areas into a single massive coalition. The pirate coalition consisted of six fleets, and each fleet had its own color. Each fleet was assigned an area of activity and given autonomy; they did not fight each other. He maintained loose control over the coalition of pirates and commanded the Red Flag Fleet, one of the most powerful pirate fleets in all of China. By 1804, the coalition had grown into a formidable force. He kept raiding coastal fortresses and looting merchant ships. He contained the Portuguese colonial city of Macao on the grounds that Europeans refused to pay him for safe passage. The British Navy, responsible for offshore patrol, was incapable of combating the fast-growing pirate coalition. The fleets of the coalition started out with 200 ships. By 1807, massive fleets were composed of 600 junk ships and 30,000 troops under the direct command of Zheng Yi. Zheng Yi’s organization, with more than 150,000 personnel, became the largest in history. Zheng Yi died in Vietnam on 16 November 1807. Allegedly, he died in a typhoon or in an accident, falling overboard. Zheng Yi Sao (鄭一嫂) and Cheung Po (張保) Shortly after Zheng Yi’s death, the command of the pirate coalition was succeeded by his wife Zheng Yi Sao. Zheng Yi Sao, who had been a Cantonesebrothelmadam or prostitute known as Shi Xianggu, married Zheng Yi in 1801. She skillfully took control over the coalition. She quickly acted to solidify the partnership with her stepson Cheung Po, taking him as a lover. Their first success came when they were able to secure the loyalty of Zheng’s relatives. She appointed Cheung Po the commander of the Red Flag Fleet. Previously in 1798, Zheng Yi had kidnapped Cheung Po, a 15-year-old son of a Tankan fisherman, and pressed him into piracy. Cheung Po’s natural talent helped him adapt well to the pirate life, and he rose swiftly through the ranks. As he built a reputation among his fellow pirates, he was adopted by the Zheng couple as their step-son, making him Zheng’s legal heir. Shortly after Zheng Yi’s death, they married. Afterwards, Zheng Yi Sao acted as commander-in-chief of the pirate coalition. Cheung Po was merely an aide to her as vice commander. The couple commanded the pirate coalition with strict regulations, stricter even than the pirate codes of the West Indies in the 1720s. Those who disobeyed orders or stole prizes or public funds were subject to execution. Those who abandoned their posts were subject to having their ears cut off. Those who hid or withheld prizes were punished with whipping. Those who repeatedly committed misdemeanors were also subject to execution. The same punishments were applied to women. The rape of women captives was punished with execution. If love affairs with women captives were discovered, men were executed and women were thrown overboard with a weight on their legs. The pirate coalition led by Zheng Yi Shao and Cheung Po defeated all Qing’s anti-piracy forces. In January 1808, the Qing Navy was defeated in a large-scale sea battle off the coast of Guangdong. As a consequence, the Qing Navy fled when encountering the pirates afterward. They ultimately quit doing sea patrols. The pirate coalition was so powerful that a pirate ship could defeat four Qing warships. The pirates began to threaten the cities of Guangdong Province. When their supplies were blocked in the sea, they landed on shores and attacked coastal settlements. By the end of 1808, all the Qing’s anti-piracy forces were defeated. The pirates committed brutal revenge against villagers who resisted them. When Cheung Po attacked an island in 1809, 1,000 islanders were slaughtered and 20 women were kidnapped. The scale of the pirate coalition led by Zheng Yi Sao and Cheung Po was larger than that of the European pirates who had operated in the West Indies during the Age of Discovery. In 1809, at the height of the coalition, it was stronger than the navies of a number of countries combined. The pirate coalition had 200 ships for ocean-going, armed with 20 to 30 cannons and 400 crewmen aboard. It had 600 to 800 ships for offshore, equipped with 12 to 25 cannons and 200 crewmen aboard. They also had dozens of junk ships for river sailing, with 20 to 30 pirates aboard. These junk ships, with approximately 20 oars, were used to plunder inland towns and the farmland of landlords who were delinquent in paying protection money. The heyday of the pirate coalition ended in 1810. The Qing had to call for assistance from Portuguese and English fleets, even though such a move harmed the dynasty’s dignity and pride. England accepted Qing’s offer to protect tributes from Thailand, and sent a privateer armed with 20 cannons. Portugal provided six warships for six months. The Qing government built up its navy and enforced the Ban on Sea-Going to prevent the maritime activities of pirates. The Qing government stepped up its anti-piracy operations as it offered the pirates a chance to surrender in exchange for a pardon. Because of the Qing’s anti-piracy efforts and the more strict Ban on Sea-Going, Zheng Yi Sao and Cheung Po decided to accept the offer of pardon. They handed over their ships and arms to the Qing Navy. They negotiated the terms of surrender, under which the surrendered pirates would be employed by the Qing Navy if they wanted. Cheung Po was offered the rank of captain and to lead a fleet of 20 junk ships. At last, the negotiations reached an agreement on 20 April 1810. Under the agreement, a total of 17,318 pirates officially surrendered, and 226 pirate ships were handed over. However, not all pirates were exempt from punishment. Sixty pirates were expelled for two years and 151 were exiled for good. Another 126 pirates were executed. Zheng Yi Sao and Cheung Po settled in Guangdong. Later Cheung Po was promoted to colonel and died in 1822 at the age of 36. After his death, Zheng Yi Sao opened a gambling house with abundant funds in Guangdong. She died in 1844 at the age of 69. The end of the infamous Chinese pirate was quite peaceful. Zheng Yi Sao was very shrewd and charismatic. For this reason, some argue that she was the greatest pirate in history. Some argue against that, but it is beyond dispute that she successfully led a massive pirate group – she reacted intelligently to new circumstances and was fully committed to implementing her decisions. Japanese Pirates: Wakou (倭寇) Japanese pirates, better known as the Wakou, were groups of outlaws who wore their hair in topknots (chonmage, ), wore traditional white undergarments (fundoshi, ), carried long swords as they looted, kidnapped, burned homes and settlements, and murdered along the coasts. The Wakou significantly affected the history of East Asia while operating in in the regions ranging from China, Japan and Korea to Southeast Asia. In particular, the ceaseless invasions of Japanese pirates during the Age of the Three Kingdoms (, B.C. 57–A.D. 668) significantly influenced the history of the Korean Peninsula. In the late Korea () Dynasty, their persistent attacks caused chaos in the government and a decline in a national power. Ultimately, it led to the fall of the Korea Dynasty and the foundation of the Chosun () Dynasty by General Lee Sung Kye, who won popular support by taking a strong stand against the Wakou. As illustrated previously, the Chosun feared the connection between islanders and Japanese pirates, and so enforced the Ban on Sea-Going. This, inevitably, affected the Chosun destiny

Chapter 15. Contemporary Piracy. Emergence of Contemporary Piracy. Piracy is undoubtedly the oldest threat to safe navigation and seafaring. As illustrated in previous chapters, the origin of piracy. goes back to ancient times, and corresponds with the history. of shipping. Varying with regions and times, piracy had been prevalent across the oceans throughout the history of the world. Piracy was believed to have disappeared in the early 19th century across the oceans, as a result of enormous counter-piracy efforts. In the absence of piracy threats, the oceans remained stable and secure during the past century. Pirates, meanwhile, became a popular subject of novels, dramas, movies and other literary works, in which pirates and their life were described as romantic and adventurous. This has helped people have a misconception of pirates, who were outlaws and committed heinous atrocities at sea. However, piracy has never been eradicated throughout the history of the mankind. It would be right to argue that piracy over that period had merely been latent due to strong anti-piracy measures. Unfortunately, this proved to be merely a short-lived respite. In the 1970s, less than a century after piracy’s supposed demise, a steady rise in the number of attacks ushered in the present phenomenon of modern-day piracy. Contemporary piracy, taking advantage of advanced information technologies and weapons, appears in many different forms. The loss of life and damage to property, as well as costs incurred by piracy to the shipping industry at the global level, are tremendous. Piracy has emerged as the gravest threat to the safety of navigation and seaborne trade, becoming an urgent global security issue that the international community needs to address together. The phenomenon of contemporary piracy has not appeared out of nowhere. This is the result of an interaction between a wide range of international and regional factors and stakeholders. The factors that have contributed to the emergence of contemporary piracy may be identified as follows. First, a booming shipping trade, in tandem with the expansion of seaborne trade in the era of globalization, has served as a primary factor. As it was in the Age of Discovery, valuable cargoes, particularly of energy resources, are a tempting target for pirates. Second, the collapse of maritime supremacy in the post-Cold War era brought about a power vacuum in the oceans, and this has resulted in the weakening of policing and deterrence of piracy. Third, the unstable political situations in some coastal states have helped contribute to the problem. Many piracy attacks are committed by rebels in those countries to finance their activities. Furthermore, those coastal states lack resources for law enforcement and the capability to prevent and suppress piracy. Lastly, geographical conditions suited for piracy, and a long-held tradition of piracy for livelihoods, are also important contributing factors. The problem of contemporary piracy extends beyond a particular region or a single coastal state – it is a common concern of the international community, as often described as hostis humani generis (enemy of mankind). This chapter explores various aspects of acts of piracy and unravel the nature and reality of the global piracy issue from a multi-faceted perspective. Examining aspects of piracy in international law, it provides an overview of the global trend of piracy attacks and global counter-piracy efforts at the international and governmental as well as industry level. How is piracy defined in international law? The definition of piracy varies with the perspectives and interests of those concerned. The most challenging problem with defining the term ‘piracy’ might be that there exists a considerable degree of disparity between the legal definition of piracy and its general usage in journalism or elsewhere. The common usage of the word ‘piracy’ by the public, which is supposedly derived from the historical context, refers to any unlawful acts of violence at sea or in coastal areas against ships, crews and locals, irrespective of the elements that constitute the legal term. Outside piracy, there are different forms of violence at sea, such as armed robbery, terrorism and other unlawful acts. This occasionally brings about confusion in the distinction between the definition of piracy and other acts of violence at sea. In legal terms, the definition of piracy in international law is very restrictive, covering certain aspects of unlawful acts at sea. Thus, what constitutes an act of piracy in international law has remained controversial. For this reason, it is crucial to identify the legal elements of acts of piracy in international law, and to separate them from other acts of maritime violence in terms of law enforcement and criminal jurisdiction. Piracy is defined under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as “any illegal acts of violence, detention or depredation committed for private ends by the crew or passengers of a private ship against another ship or persons or property on board it, on the high sea or outside jurisdiction of any state.” “Any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship intended to be used for such purposes, and any act of inciting or intentionally facilitating such acts are also piracy.” Despite being a universally accepted legal term, however, a number of problems with the definition of piracy are identified. The problems become more apparent when the definition is applied to the trend of piracy attacks worldwide in recent years. First, the criterion of ‘private ends’ appears to be inapplicable to an increasing number of piracy attacks in South Asia and West Africa supposedly committed by terrorist groups fighting for political ends or religious beliefs. Second, the two ship-rule requires that at least two ships must be involved in a piracy attack. This requires that a piracy attack should be committed by a ship against another ship. However, the modus operandi of piratical acts in Southeast Asia, in which in many cases locals and a small group of people are aboard rubber dinghies and canoes, is unable to meet the requirement. Under this criterion, the growing piratical incidents in West Africa, concentrated in the Gulf of Guinea, in which pirates attack oil and gas tankers and offshore oil rigs for oil theft, are not qualified as piracy defined in the UNCLOS. Third, the criteria of ‘on the high seas’ and ‘outside the jurisdiction of any state’ make the suitability of piracy very restrictive. Given that the majority of unlawful acts at sea take place inshore or offshore, either in the territorial sea or in port, the criteria do not correspond with what is happening, particularly in Southeast Asia. The criterion that the place of the crime is restricted to the high seas is ill-suited for Southeast Asia, where states are situated adjacent or opposite in an archipelagic geography. The underlying tenet of the criterion is understood to declare that the unlawful acts of violence committed within states’ jurisdictions can be enforced by coastal states. However, in many cases, unlawful acts of violence at sea – even within a state’s jurisdiction, such as off the coast of Somalia – are transnational and beyond a state’s capability. Typology of Contemporary Piracy. For contemporary piracy, a number of international organizations involved in maritime affairs have developed their own criteria to classify various types of piracy attacks to serve their activities. By taking account of the classifications of piracy by various international organizations, a number of different categories of piracy attacks, based on modus operandi, geographic location, violence level, and faciliatory factors, etc. are put forward. Petty Theft. The goal of this type of attack is to quickly steal movable items on ships, which appear to be valuable and profitable, while ships are in their berths or at anchor. For the most part, the intention of theft is to steal cash and valuables from the safe, or to steal IT equipment, personal effects and ship stores. This type of attack is the most typical in South Asia, particularly in. Indonesia. Robbers take advantage of relatively relaxed security of many small ports in the region. The typical method is that robbers approach near the bow or stern and attempt to board, usually with grappling hooks. The robbers are usually not armed and flee when they are noticed, and thus this type of crime is generally considered to be less violent. Robbers are mostly locals and generally operate in a small group. This type of robbery has been a way of earning a livelihood in the coastal areas of Southeast Asia. Cases of theft of cash or personal effects have generally less significant impacts compared to armed robberies. Armed Robbery: Maritime Mugging. This type of attack occurs when pirates armed with weapons board the ship and steal ship stores, equipment and the crew’s personal effects. Attacks are committed against ships while at anchor/berth or underway. This type of attack is a common form of piracy in Southeast Asia. The purpose of these ‘shoot and scoot’ pirate attacks is to rob cash and valuables from the safe, the crew, and ship stores, rather than commit more serious acts such as hijacking entire ships and their cargoes. Attacks committed against ships that are underway usually take place within a short distance from the territory of coastal states, especially in the Malacca Strait where ships sail at low speeds due to narrow sea lanes and underwater features. The typical method of these attacks is that first the target ship is approached by one or more small craft that varies from primitive, homemade vessels to modern high-speed motorboats. The ship underway is boarded alongside or near the stern, depending on the freeboard and ease of access. In general, ships with low freeboard that sail at a relatively low speed are prime targets for piracy attacks. Pirates, heavily armed with various weapons, including knives, machetes, pistols and automatic weapons, board during the night when ships slow down while they go through the narrow sea lanes off the coast. This type of pirate attack involves threatening, assault, serious injury, and even kidnapping and killing of the crew. A large number of pirates, who belong to organized syndicates, are engaged in an attack, and the level of violence is much higher than with petty theft, in which the perpetrator flees upon being noticed. This type of pirate incident is considered more significant because it involves large vessels as well as a high probability for use of force. Phantom Ship: Hijacking of Vessels. and Conversion. The phantom ship indicates that an entire ship has been hijacked by pirates, and it has been re-born as a ‘phantom’ ship. The typical modus operandi is that cargo on board a ship is seized, and the crews is killed and thrown overboard or, if they are lucky, set adrift in boats. Then, the ship is renamed, repainted, re-crewed, registered over several times, and made available in international maritime trade. The phantom ship is given a temporary certificate through the ship registration office in an Asian port. The ship is then fraudulently reregistered – typically under the nationality of Honduras, Belize, Panama or Liberia – and issued with false documents to enable them to board a fresh payload. The new shipper loads his cargo onto the pirate vessel and receives his bill of lading. The ship, instead of heading for the port named on the bill of lading, sails to a different port, unloads the cargo to a conspirator or an unsuspecting buyer, then sheds its temporary registration for another. Phantom ships are often used for smuggling and other unlawful acts at sea. The phantom ship may illustrate the transnational nature of piracy, given that these piracy attacks are pre-meditated, well-organized and committed by crime syndicates across borders, involving a large number of operatives at each stage. The crime syndicates are well-resourced and carefully laid-out international criminal networks, and the operatives are highly trained, heavily armed and fully prepared to use firearms. Phantom ship piracy attacks, which had been prevalent until the early 2000s in Southeast Asia, were a grave concern in the region and among the shipping community. Southeast Asia accounted for the vast majority of phantom ships worldwide, recording 48 incidents out of a total of 53 incidents between 1996 and 2013. Phantom ship piracy culminated in 2003 and began to sharply decline since 2005. This type of attack has not been reported in Southeast Asia in recent years. A case of a phantom ship incident that occurred in Southeast Asian waters is presented here as an example: On 27 September 1998, a Panama-registered cargo ship owned by a Japanese citizen, the Ten Yu Ho disappeared three hours after departing from Kuala Tanjong, Indonesia. The ship, loaded with a cargo of 3,000 tons of aluminum ingots, was bound for Incheon, Korea. Three months after the ship disappeared, it was found in Zhangjiagang in Jiangsu Province, China, repainted, re-crewed, and renamed the SANE-1. The renamed ship was identified as the Ten Yu Ho by confirmation of the engine number. Fourteen crewmen (twelve Chinese and two Koreans) and cargo still remain missing. Hijacking, Hostage-Taking and Ransom-Seeking. The typical method is to hijack a vessel while it is underway and bring it to the pirates’ base. There, the pirates will hold the crew hostage for a period of time and negotiate a ransom payment with a shipowner in exchange for the release of the crew and ship. This has been most prevalent off the Somali coast and the Gulf of Aden over the last decade. Piracy attacks in the region, which are perceived as the symbol of contemporary piracy, are at the most significant level in all aspects, such as scale of attack, level of sophistication, degree of violence, damage inflicted, and impact on the international community. Unlike traditional piracy attacks, the crews are held hostage for a relatively extended period of time and released after a ransom is paid. The use of violence against crews is not common, although pirates carry weapons. This happens because piracy is motivated by the prospect of large monetary gains from ransom payments. This type of attack is usually committed by a relatively large number of pirates under the command of a well-organized criminal network – for instance, one that is connected to rebel groups in Somalia. These piracy attacks have become a business model involving a complex web of interactions between numerous stakeholders, including financers, instigators and the pirates themselves. The missions of stakeholders are well coordinated and each participant has a role to play, including planning, recruitment, funding, information-gathering, commission of the attack, hostage management and negotiation for ransom, using advanced information technologies and equipment. These piracy attacks are committed against ships that are underway far from offshore or on the high seas by using a mother ship and one or two skiffs, which are small and fast-moving. Hijacking, Hostage-Taking and Cargo Theft. Unlike Somali pirates seeking a ransom payment, West African pirates, concentrated in the Gulf of Guinea, are engaged in hijacking, hostage-taking and cargo theft. Unlike off the coast of Somalia, which has been in a state of anarchy over the last decade, the piracy-prone region in West Africa is under the rule of developed central governments and is subject to in-port policing. Under these stable circumstances, pirates lack the capacity to capture ships and hold them for a ransom for an extended period of time. Thus, they have developed a combined model of armed robbery, kidnapping for ransom and cargo theft, of which the concentration is on cargo theft. The prominent feature of such piracy is oil theft. Vessels carrying refined oil products are targeted and attacked specifically for the value of the oil cargo that they carry. When the vessel is hijacked, the crew is often forced to navigate the vessel to an unknown location where the cargo can be lightered to another vessel or to a storage facility on land. The refined oil product then finds its way onto the black market. Eventually, the oil product makes its way back into the clean, mainstream supply and is sold domestically or in the global marketplace. Aspects of Contemporary Piracy Attacks. Contemporary piracy is a complex and global phenomenon, despite regional variations, and these features may change over time and over space. This section explores and compares the various aspects of contemporary piracy attacks worldwide, including the frequency of piracy occurrences, regional concentrations, contributing factors, modus operandi and damage inflicted. Overview of Piracy Attacks in Recent Years. The occurrences of piracy attacks have an irregular trend, varying with geographical location and time. In terms of a global trend of piracy occurrences, piracy attacks had been constantly on the rise since the mid-1990s and peaked in the period of 2000–2004, averaging 350–450 incidents annually. Over the last decade (2008–2017), a total of 3,010 incidents worldwide were reported to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), of which Asia and Africa account for 1,325 and 1,455 incidents, respectively. The figures show that piracy attacks are concentrated on the two continents, each accounting for 44 percent and 48 percent of global piracy attacks. After a peak in 2010 with 445 incidents, piracy attacks worldwide have dramatically declined. Over the five years since 2013, average annual piracy attacks have numbered 225 incidents, which is a significant drop from the past decade. Of particular note is that in 2016, record low occurrences, with 180 incidents overall, were reported. It remains to be seen whether a global trend of piracy reduction will continue or not. Nonetheless, it may indicate a positive sign that piracy attacks are curbed in piracy-prone regions such as the Somali coast and the Malacca Strait. The statistics of piracy occurrences are based on the data reported to the IMB, which employs a broad piracy definition encompassing the acts of piracy under the UNCLOS and armed robbery together. However, the actual occurrences of piracy are believed to be higher than the statistics of the IMB, given non-reporting or under-reporting. Under-reporting is due to concerns over increases in insurance premiums, disruption of shipping schedules during an investigation, and fears that the ship company and shipmaster will gain a reputation for incompetence. Features of Piracy Attacks by Region. Piracy is a global phenomenon, reported in the seas of 62 countries in four out of five continents. Of those countries, it is highly concentrated in a number of countries, including Indonesia, Yemen, Malaysia, Somalia, Nigeria, Oman, Bangladesh and India. Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia has been a traditionally piracy-prone region since ancient times. The vast majority of piracy attacks in Asian waters are concentrated in Southeast Asian seas. In the period from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s, two thirds of piracy attacks worldwide were concentrated in the waters of Asia. In particular, the Malacca Strait, which is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world (with an annual traffic volume of over 50,000 ships), as well as a strategic choke point for the global seaborne trade, has been the most vulnerable in the region. But since the mid-2000s, piracy attacks in Southeast Asia have been dramatically reduced. This change was driven by the littoral states of the Malacca Strait, such as Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, along with other regional and user states. The stable piracy situation in Southeast has changed since 2010, however, with the waters off Indonesia reemerging as a hotspot of piracy. In 2015, 201 piracy attacks in Southeast Asia were reported, accounting for 82 percent of a total 246 incidents worldwide. The gravity of the piracy issue in this region may be illustrated by the 2016 figures of piracy occurrences: Four incidents (out of a total of seven) ship hijackings and 34 (out of a total of 34) crew kidnapping occurred in that region. The features of piracy attacks in Asian waters in recent years are identified as follows. First, armed robbery and kidnapping of the crew onboard ships that are underway have been constantly on the rise, while traditional petty theft remains dominant. This may indicate that piracy attacks in that region are becoming increasingly violent. Second, the growing modus operandi is that a group of pirates, composed of a maximum of 17 people, armed with rifles and knives on board a fast-moving boat, hijack fishing boats or tug boats that have a low freeboard, and kidnap the crew for a ransom. A notable trend is that kidnapping of general cargo ships and crude oil carriers, attributed to the Philippines militant group the Abu Sayyaf, have been significantly increasing. Third, the Sulu-Celebes Seas off the Philippines have newly emerged as a piracy-prone spot. As recently as in October 2016, the ten gunmen of the Abu Sayyaf boarded a 11,391-ton Korean cargo ship off Tawi-Tawi Island and kidnapped the Korean master and a Filipino crew and abandoned ship. The rise in piracy attacks in Southeast Asia can be attributed to some contributing factors: (i) permissive environment toward piracy as a source of livelihood for locals; (ii) archipelagic geography dotted with small islands; (iii) channel for funding militant groups; (iv) lack of law-enforcement capability of littoral states; (iv) bad economic and unstable political situation and relaxed counter-piracy efforts. East Africa. The region of the Somali coast and the Gulf of Aden have been hotspots of piracy over the last decade. The shipping industry and the international community have greatly suffered from tremendous damages inflicted by piracy attacks in that region. A distinctive feature of piracy has been a hijack-for-ransom business model, which depends for its success on a supporting infrastructure on land and which attaches a high economic value to hostages. The number of piracy attacks in that region continued to rise until 2010, with 111 incidents in 2008 (of a total of 293), 197 (of a total of 410) in 2009, 192 in 2010 (out of 445), which accounted for one-third of piracy attacks worldwide. Unlike in other regions, where piracy attacks tend to occur in coastal waters or nearby trade lanes, Somali pirates have widened their geographical presence and are moving farther away from the coast and territorial waters into the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Mozambique Channel, the Maldives and Indian territorial waters. Thus the list of countries directly affected by piracy has become extensive, including the Comoros, Djibouti, India, Iran, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Oman, Qatar, Seychelles, Tanzania, Arab Emirates and Yemen. The piracy problem in that region has dominated other regions in the scale, scope, severity and damage of the attacks. Several pirate groups have operated in Somali waters, according to a study of the UN and independent sources. Reports suggest that there may be seven to 10 distinct gangs or ‘pirate action groups’ financed by so-called ‘instigators’ who organize the funding and delegate operations to group leaders. Poverty, lack of employment, environmental hardship, pitifully low incomes, reduction of pastoralist and maritime resources due to drought and illegal fishing and a volatile security and political situation are attributed to Somali piracy. In some cases, it is believed that Somali businessmen and international support networks provide pirate groups with financing and supplies in return for shares of ransom payments that are also distributed among pirates themselves. Somali pirate groups have developed highly sophisticated operational capabilities. The typical Somali pirate team is equipped a variety of small arms, including AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenade (PRC) launchers. Many pirate teams use fishing skiffs powered with large outboard motors to give chase to larger but slower-moving tankers, cargo ships, yachts, cruise ships, barges and tug boats. Local Somali fishermen are often forced to support pirate activities in some cases, while in other cases, coastal Somalis lend their fishing boats, equipment and navigational expertise to teams of would-be pirates from inland communities. Since 2011, piracy attacks in that region have been dramatically curbed, with only a small number of attacks being reported. For instance, there were no reported attacks in 2015. Various counter-piracy measures implemented by the international community and the shipping industry are credited with the dramatic reduction. Among those, combined naval patrols and escorts and the employment of armed guards onboard ships in the high-risk areas off the Somali coast and the Gulf of Aden are the most salient and successful, deterring piracy attempts and greatly reducing the success rate of piracy attacks as well. Despite the significant drop in piracy attacks since 2012, piracy is expected to remain a major concern in East Asian waters. This is because Somali pirates may not have totally given up on piracy as a source of revenue – they may be changing their strategy by increasingly targeting ships at anchorage

Somali Pirates. West Africa. Of particular concern is the recent escalation of piracy attacks in the Gulf of Guinea, which has newly emerged as a hotspot of piracy in West Africa. The littoral states in the Gulf include Benin, Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea and Nigeria. Piracy in that region is highly concentrated in Nigeria, which accounted for 92 percent (33) out of 36 incidents in 2017. Of growing concern is that piracy attacks committed by militant groups, such as Boko Haram and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, are increasing. The militant groups commit piracy to finance their activities and their modus operandi tends to be more violent than any other region. A distinctive feature of piracy attacks in that region is that pirates are increasingly targeting oil production infrastructure and tankers carrying oil, usually in territorial waters. Pirate networks appear to be generally well informed about the operations of the oil industry and to have access to important information, including the names of ships, intended voyage courses, the value of the cargo, whether or not armed guards are aboard, and the extent of the insurance coverage. Given the gravity of the piracy situation, the region was designated by the insurance industry as a ‘war risk zone’ for shipping, with Benin, Nigeria and Togo waters being identified as ‘high risk’ areas – that is to say, in the same risk category as Somalia. Costs of Piracy. The global costs of piracy, including the cost of piracy off eastern Africa, remain uncertain. Studies of global piracy costs tend to primarily focus on calculating first-order costs such as the cost of ransoms, security deterrence equipment and naval forces deployment. The secondary costs of piracy, including the effects on foreign investment in the affected and neighboring regions, or on commodity prices, remain uncovered due to difficulties in estimating the scope of the effects and related costs. The costs associated with piracy vary with research organizations or institutions, with divergent estimates and conclusions. The RAND Institute and the IMB, for example, have estimated piracy costs to range between $1billion to $16 billion per year. The One Earth Future (OEF) Foundation, as part of its Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP) Project, estimates that the total cost of Somali piracy was at $7 billion to $12 billion in 2010, $6.6 billion to $6.9billion in 2011, and $5.7 billion to $6.1 billion in 2012. While over 80 percent of these costs were estimated to be borne by the shipping industry, 20 percent were estimated to be borne by governments. Averaging out all related expenses, the cost per incident was valued at $82.7 million in 2012, a total 189 percent increase from the $28.6 million estimated for 2011. In 2013, the World Bank has estimated the global economic cost of piracy off the coast of Somalia at $18 billion, with a margin of error of roughly $6 billion. International Counter-Piracy Efforts. and Policy Reponses. The Global Level. With growing concern over the piracy problem across the oceans, the international community has struggled to combat piracy, undertaking a wide range of anti-piracy measures and policies. The international efforts to respond to the threat of piracy have taken on a multi-faceted approach. International counter-piracy efforts are driven by the UN and the IMO, in collaboration with principal state stakeholders, including coastal states of regions with high piracy rates, the U.S., and other major trade states. UN Security Council. The UN Security Council has issued a series of resolutions since 2008 to facilitate an international response to Somali piracy. Among those, Resolution 1816 (June 2008), which was issued first in this regard, authorized relevant states to exercise the right of pursuit into the territorial waters of Somalia for a period of six months. It states that states acting in cooperation with the Somali government are granted to “enter the territorial waters of Somalia for the purpose of repressing acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea” and to “use, within the territorial waters of Somalia, in a manner consistent with action permitted on the high seas with respect to piracy under relevant international law, all means to repress acts of piracy and armed robbery.” This measure, by which the period was extended to one year and has been renewed on a yearly basis, has been a principal international cooperative mechanism in fighting pirates. Resolution 1838 (October 2008) calls on states with military capabilities to “take part actively in the fight against piracy on the high seas off the coast of Somalia, in particular by deploying naval vessels and military aircraft.” The UN Security Council has also adopted resolutions to facilitate the prosecution of the Somali pirates. Resolution 1897 (December 2009) encouraged states to conclude special agreements or arrangements that would allow governments to embark law enforcement officials (‘shipriders’) to facilitate the investigation, and allowed for prosecution of persons detained as a result of anti-piracy operations. Resolution 1918 (April 2010) calls on states to “criminalize piracy under their domestic law and favorably consider the prosecution of suspected, and imprisonment of the convicted, pirates apprehended off Somalia.” Resolution 1976 (April 2011) considers the establishment of Somali courts to try suspected pirates both in Somalia and in the region. CGPCS. Based on UN Security Resolution 1851 (December 2008), which encourages states to establish an international cooperation mechanism to act as a common point of contact on all aspects of combating piracy at sea off Somalia, the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS) was created in 2009. The CGPCS, composed of approximately 60 member governments, 20 international organizations, and shipping associations, has four working groups. The CGPCS is tasked with: (i) improving operational and informational support to counter-piracy operations; (ii) establishing a counter-piracy coordination mechanism; (iii) strengthening judicial frameworks for arrest, prosecution and detention of pirates; (iv) strengthening commercial shipping self-awareness and other capabilities; (v) pursuing improved diplomatic and public information efforts; and (vi) tracking financial flows related to piracy. The CGPCS has established a trust fund, contributed to by member governments, international organizations, non-governmental organizations and shipping associations to support the activities of states combating piracy off Somalia. IMO. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has had a program to combat piracy off Somalia and has successfully engaged on a multilateral basis in other regions to improve anti-piracy cooperation. To assist in the implementation of international instruments to fight piracy, the IMO has promulgated a number of circulars on guidance to ship owners, ship operators and crews on preventing and suppressing piracy, and recommendations to governments for preventing and suppressing piracy. It has adopted the Code of Practice for the Investigation of Crimes of Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships. The IMO has also held seminars and regional training programs to assist states in developing the appropriate national framework for combating piracy. As part of those efforts, an IMO-sponsored international meeting in Djibouti in 2009 adopted a code of conduct concerning the repression of piracy in the western Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. In accordance with the code, three regional facilities were established to support information-sharing: (i) the Maritime Coordination Center in Mombasa, Kenya; (ii) the Sub-Regional Coordination Center in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; (iii) and a new regional maritime information center in Sana’a, Yemen. The parties also agreed to the establishment of a regional training center in Djibouti. In addition, based on collected data and experience by the military, the IMO has developed detailed guidance and recommendations, commonly known as best management practices for governments and commercial vessels in seeking to prevent, deter and respond to pirate attacks. The Regional Level

ReCAAP. In order to combat piracy in the Malacca Strait and other Asian waters, the littoral states and other Asian countries formed a multilateral cooperative framework, known as the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP). The agreement provides: (i) general obligations of member countries for the prevention and suppression of piracy and armed robbery, and arrest of perpetrators and seizures of pirate ships or aircraft; (ii) rescue of victims of piracy attacks; (iii) establishment of an Information Sharing Center (ISC); (iv) cooperation in the arrest and extradition of pirates; and (v) mutual legal assistance and cooperation in capacity-building. The ReCAAP, initiated by Japan in 2001, was concluded on 11 November 2004, and came into force on 4 September 2006. As of 2018, the contracting parties include 20 countries, including five extra-regional countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, the U.K and the U.S. The ISC, based in Singapore and composed of one representative from each member state, plays a pivotal role in piracy reporting and response coordination among the participating countries. Operation MALSINDO. The littoral states of the Malacca Strait, including Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, have conducted a trilateral patrol, called Operation MALSINDO, a year-round, coordinated naval patrol launched on 20 July 2004. The three littoral states agreed to patrol their respective waters in the 900-km strait with 17 ships and to coordinate their moves through a 24-hour communications link. The arrangement addresses the legal challenge in the narrow strait that the right of hot pursuit is restricted to beyond the territorial sea of the vessel’s state or of a third state by allowing warships into one another’s waters when pursuing pirates. Eyes in the Sky. In September 2005, the three littoral states launched coordinated aerial surveillance, named the Eyes in the Sky (EIS) initiative, pursuant to which each country patrols twice per week along the Malacca and Singapore straits and each flight carries a maritime patrol team made up of military personnel from each participating state. To improve the effectiveness of the naval and air patrols, terms of reference and standard operating procedures were agreed on in April 2006, and the combined efforts were renamed the Malacca Straits Patrols (MSP) The MSP has three elements: (i) the Malacca Straits Surface Patrols (MSSP); (ii) EIS; and (iii) the Intelligence Exchange Group (IEG). The IEG developed the Malacca Straits Patrols Information System (MSP-IS) to improve coordination and situational awareness at sea among the three countries. In September 2008, the MSP was given a boost with the participation of Thailand in both the MSSP and the EIS. Thailand’s area of operation is the northern approaches to the Malacca Strait in the Andaman Sea

The European Union (EU), the African Union, the League of Arab States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are actively engaged in combating piracy off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden. Naval ship patrols are viewed as the most effective deterrent to piracy attacks, as demonstrated in the significant drop in piracy incidents in recent years in this region. Over 40 countries are engaged in counter-piracy operations in East Africa, either in a national capacity or through joint forces. Naval operations to combat piracy in the region include: Operation Ocean Shield by NATO; Operation Atlanta by EU; and Combined Task Force 151 led by the U.S. Operation Ocean Shield. NATO first deployed a maritime group in 2008 to conduct an anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia, with its principal aim the protection of World Food Program (WFP) assistance shipments in the region. In August 2009, NATO replaced the operation with a new anti-piracy mission, called ‘Operation Ocean Shield.’ While participating in capacity-building efforts with regional countries, three to five naval ships on a daily basis patrolled the high-risk areas, and these efforts have made a great contribution to suppressing piracy in the region. As piracy attacks off the coast of Somalia greatly diminished, NATO decided to terminate the mandate for Operation Ocean Shield in December 2016. Operation Atlanta. In December 2008, the EU launched EU NAVFOR ‘Operation Atlanta,’ its first naval operation under the framework of the European Security and Defense Policy. Operation Atlanta, involving approximately 1,200 personnel, four to six ships and two to three aircraft, has been tasked with providing protection for World Food Programme vessels and merchant vessels in the south of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. For this purpose, it is authorized to employ the necessary measures, including the use of force, to deter, prevent and intervene in order to bring an end to acts of piracy and armed robbery. In May 2012, the aircraft of EU NAVFOR for the first time attacked a land base of pirates in Harardhere, Somalia. In November 2016, the EU extended the mandate for EU NAVFOR to December 2018. CTF 151. Combined Task Force (CTF) 151 is one of three task forces operated by Combined Maritime Forces (CMF), which is a multi-national naval partnership composed of 31 member states. CMF is commanded by the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, which covers the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman and parts of the Indian Ocean. CTF 151, established in January 2009 and replacing CTF 150, is tasked with counter-piracy missions in these regions under the authority of UN Security Council’s resolutions. CTF 151 is a multinational force commanded in rotation by participating countries on an approximately three-to-six-month basis. The force flow in CTF 151 is constantly changing, as ships and aircraft from a variety of countries assign vessels, aircraft and personnel to the task force. CTF, in conjunction with other counter-piracy operations from NATO and the EU, carries out counter-piracy missions, including patrols and escorts of merchant vessels transiting the Internationally Recommended Corridor in the Gulf of Aden. CTF 151 has played an essential role in combating piracy off Somalia and the Gulf of Aden

Of various counter-piracy efforts in West Africa, the establishment of a sub-regional Integrated Coast Guard Network (ICGN) has been underway. In the absence of a sub-regional agreement on the right of hot-pursuit across national maritime boundaries, sub-regional countries lack an effective means to pursue and interdict pirates and armed robbers. Against this backdrop, the Maritime Organization for West and Central Africa (MOWCA), with the support of the IMO, developed a Memorandum of Understanding on the Establishment of a Sub-regional ICGN in West and Central Africa, which was adopted in Senegal in July 2008. The planned ICGN would enable sub-regional countries to collectively respond to unlawful acts at sea, addressing legal challenges in combating pirates. The planned ICGN divides the sub-region into four Coastguard Zones, in which not more than five coastal member states are in a coastguard zone in order to ensure more effective zone coordination. As of 2017, it has been signed by 15 of its 20 coastal member states. In June 2013, 25 West and Central African countries adopted the Yaounde´ Code of Conduct, developed with technical support from the IMO. The primary objective is to manage and considerably reduce the adverse impacts of piracy, armed robbery against ships and other illicit maritime activities. The Shipping Industry. The private sector and shipping industry have struggled to cope with the threat of piracy in various ways. With a growing piracy threat off the coast of Somalia, some vessels opted to circumnavigate south of the Cape of Good Hope, rather than risk piracy attacks in the Gulf of Aden while transiting the Suez Canal. Ships are recommended to operate at speeds above 15 knots when transiting high-risk areas. The shipping industry has developed a spate of counter-piracy measures and best practices and employed a variety of security equipment to prevent and abort pirates’ attacks

In response to the growing violence of pirate attacks, some assert that crews need to be armed for self-protection. However, the shipping community and the international community are opposed to the argument, largely due to a concern that it may lead to an escalation of violence and incur tremendous costs as well. Recognizing such concerns, the IMO advises that the carriage and use of firearms by crews for protection of personnel or ship is strongly discouraged. It is also concerned that the carriage of arms on board may encourage attackers to carry firearms, thereby escalating an already dangerous situation, and that any firearms on board may themselves become an attractive target for an attacker. Another concern is that the use of firearms requires special training and proficiency, and thus the risk of accidents with the use of firearms by undertrained crews would be great. In this connection, a worrisome scenario is that if crews equipped with firearms are unable to repel pirate attacks, this may lead to serious casualties in retaliation, such as kidnapping and killing. There is also fear that an exchange of fire between the crews on board a ship carrying chemicals, oil or other flammable substances with pirates who are themselves heavily armed with automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenade (PRC) launchers could inflict disastrous casualties. By all accounts, the carriage and use of firearms by crews as a way of self-protection against piracy attacks is discouraged in the shipping community

With the increased threat to shipping, ship owners employ privately contracted armed security personnel (PCASP) to protect their vessels, cargo and crews against piracy attacks. The employment of PCASP appears to be quite effective in preventing and suppressing pirate attacks, given that Somali pirates tend to avoid attempts to attack a ship when PCASP is verified on board. In the absence of applicable international regulations to govern the employment of PCASP on board ships, the positions and policies of states vary significantly. Some coastal states that are highly affected by piracy, including Oman, Djibouti, Durban and Sri Lanka, allow ship owners to employ PCASP on board ships. It is believed that the increased presence of PCASP has contributed to a significant drop in Somali piracy

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Chapter 8

Navigation in the Age of Discovery 104

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