Great Ming has a pirate problem on its hands. Unable to effectively suppress it militarily, the officials in charge turn to wheeling and dealing to get the seabooters to give up their outlaw ways. But when the Jiajing Emperor starts sticking his nose in to such affairs from way up in Beijing, suddenly all bets are off...

Time Period Covered:

1549-1567 CE

Major Historical Figures:

Ming:

The Jiajing Emperor (Zhu Houcong) [r. 1521-1567]

Grand Chancellor Yan Song [1480-1567]

Nanjing Minister of War Zhang Jing [d. 1555]

Censor Zhao Wenhua [d. 1557]

Censor Hu Zongxian [1512-1565]

Commander Yu Dayou [1512-1579]

Commander Qi Zhiguang [1528-1588]

Pirates:

Wang Zhi, CEO of the High Seas [d. 1559]

Captain Xu Hai [d. 1556]

Lord Shimazi of Osumi Province

Works Cited:

Andrade, Tonio and Xing Hang. “Introduction: The East Asian Maritime Realm in Global History: 1500-1700” in Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai: Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1500-1700.

Chin, James K. “Merchants, Smugglers, and Pirates: Multinational Clandestine Trade on the South China Coast, 1520-50” in Elusive pirates, pervasive smugglers: violence and clandestine trade in the Greater China Seas.

Geiss, James. “The Chia-ching reign, 1522-1566” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part I.

Laver, Michael. “Neither Here nor There: Trade, Piracy, and the ‘Space Between’ in Early Modern East Asia” in Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai: Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1500-1700.

Petrucci, Maria Grazia. “Pirates, Gunpowder, and Christianity in Late Sixteenth-Century Japan” in Elusive pirates, pervasive smugglers: violence and clandestine trade in the Greater China Seas.

Wills, John E. “Maritime China from Wang Chih to Shih Lang: Themes In Peripheral History” in From Ming to Ch’ing: Conquest, Region, and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century China.

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