Bloodthirsty Pirates? Violence and Terror on the South China Sea in Early Modern Times

Abstract

Abstract All pirates had reputations for violence and terror, but in Asia people also depicted them as bloodthirsty demons who practiced cannibalism and human sacrifices. But how deserved were those reputations? Here I examine the images, nature, and meanings of pirate violence in the South China Sea between the fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Pirates consciously used violence and brutality to obtain money and goods, to seek vengeance against their enemies, and to instill fear in anyone who might resist them. In this article I focus on what I call the cultural construction of violence with Chinese characteristics.

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Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501 brill.com/jemh
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/15700658-12342337
Bloodthirsty Pirates? Violence and Terror on the
South China Sea in Early Modern Times1
Robert J. Antony
University of Macau
Abstract
All pirates had reputations for violence and terror, but in Asia people also depicted them as
bloodthirsty demons who practiced cannibalism and human sacrifices. But how deserved
were those reputations? Here I examine the images, nature, and meanings of pirate violence
in the South China Sea between the fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Pirates con-
sciously used violence and brutality to obtain money and goods, to seek vengeance against
their enemies, and to instill fear in anyone who might resist them. In this article I focus on
what I call the cultural construction of violence with Chinese characteristics.
Keywords
Piracy, violence, torture, rumors, South China Sea, Ming dynasty, Qing dynasty, dismem-
berment, cannibalism, human sacrifice
Introduction
Asian pirates had notorious reputations for violence, terror, and cruelty.
Two examples will suffice. In the fifteenth century, we have this vivid
record of the barbarities of a gang of wakō pirates on the coast of southern
China:
In the fourth year of the emperor Zhengtong’s reign (1439), pirates attacked Dasong,
burning and plundering the town and desecrating graves. ey tied infants to polls
and splashed them with boiling water, laughing at their screams. ey wagered on the
1 e author wishes to acknowledge Arne Bialuschewski and the two anonymous read-
ers for their thoughtful comments, and also the University of Macau for funding to carry
out this research.

482 R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501
gender of fetuses of pregnant women they had captured and then slashed their bellies
open to see who won the bet.2
In another incident, in the winter of 1807, off Macao, pirates abducted
John Turner, first officer of the ship John Jay bound for Bombay, and held
him prisoner for several months. During his captivity he witnessed the
daily activities and routines of the pirates and later wrote about his harrow-
ing experiences. On the eighteenth day of captivity, he described how the
pirates captured a small “Mandarine boat,” with a crew of four sailors; the
pirates brought one of the captives aboard their junk and brutally tor-
mented him:
He was nailed to the deck through his feet, with large nails; then beat with four rat-
tans, till he vomited blood. And after remaining sometime, in this horrid state, he was
taken on shore and cut to pieces.
Turner later witnessed another prisoner, also a military officer,
put to death with circumstances of particular horrors, being fixed upright, his bowels
were taken out and his heart likewise, which they [the pirates] afterwards soaked in
spirits and ate. e dead body I saw myself.
Such “shocking treatment,” he assured his readers, was common for any-
one who “annoyed” the pirates. Turner witnessed many other unsettling
horrors during his captivity.3
What are we to make of these stories of extreme violence and terror?
How did such tales get started and how did they spread? How typical or
common were these horrifying incidents? Were these merely the actions of
2 Wozhi [Record of the wakō] (Taibei, 1985; originally published in the Ming dynasty),
447. Although mention of wakō (in Chinese wokou) raids on the China coast date back to
the early thirteenth century in the Yuan Dynasty, they only became a serious problem in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By and large, important differences between the wakō
activities of the Mongol and Ming periods were that in the former case Japanese constituted
the majority of pirates and they mostly raided the Korean coast, and in the latter case the
pirates were multinational in composition, and they mostly raided the Chinese coast.
3 John Turner, A Narrative of the Captivity and Sufferings of John Turner, First Officer of
the Ship John Jay of Bombay, among the Ladrones or Pirates, on the Coast of China, Showing
the Manners and Customs of the Natives—their Mode of Warfare, Treatment of Prisoners, and
Discipline, with the Difference between the Pirate and the Chinese, in the Year 1807 (New
York, 1814), 12, 19.

R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501 483
a few deranged, psychopathic men? Was there some deeper meaning and
logic to all this violence and terror? Were such stories even true or real?
is article addresses these and other questions concerning the nature and
meanings of pirate violence and terror in the South China Sea in the early
modern period, roughly between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.4
Over those five centuries we can discern several cycles of piracy in the
seas around China. Much of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the
age of the wakō pirates, composed of ethnically mixed crews of Chinese,
Japanese, and occasionally European marauders who combined trade,
smuggling, and piracy. is was followed in the middle of the seventeenth
century, during the turbulent Ming-Qing dynastic wars, by a wave of
mostly ethnically Chinese rebel-pirates who took advantage of the anarchy
to pursue personal, political, and economic ambitions. Following a lull of
nearly a century, a new upsurge in piracy appeared in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, when tens of thousands of pirates, who
were mostly poor Chinese fishermen and sailors, took to the seas to indis-
criminately plunder ships and coastal settlements all along the South China
coast. Finally, another wave of piracy occurred during the mid-nineteenth
century, in the wake of the disorders caused by the Opium War and Taip-
ing Rebellion.5 Although each of these cycles had its own distinct charac-
teristics and activities, in this study I take a Braudelian approach to
emphasize the common, shared features of pirate violence over the longue
durée, what I call a cultural construction of violence with Chinese charac-
teristics. My focus, therefore, is on the physical, emotional, and magico-
religious aspects of pirate violence, and since I am dealing mainly with
images of violence and the motives of individuals who are long deceased
much of what I have to say is speculative.
4 Although there is no general agreement about the dates of China’s early modern period,
nonetheless a number of historians use the term to broadly describe the period encompass-
ing the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911), a period also often labeled late imperial
China.
5 On early modern Chinese piracy see, for example, So Kwan-wai, Japanese Piracy in
Ming China during the Sixteenth Century (East Lansing, 1975); Tanaka Takeo, Wakō: Umi
no rekishi (Tokyo, 1986); Ota Koki, Wakō: Shogyo, gunjishiteki kenkyu (Yokohama, 2002);
Dian Murray, Pirates of the South China Coast (Stanford, 1987); Robert Antony, Like Froth
Floating on the Sea: e World of Pirates and Seafarers in Late Imperial South China (Berkeley,
2003); and Robert Antony, “Piracy on the South China Coast through Modern Times,” in
Piracy and Maritime Crime: Historical and Modern Case Studies, ed. Bruce Elleman, Andrew
Forbes, and David Rosenberg (Newport, 2010), 35-50.

484 R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501
Rumors, Reputations, and Terror
Encounters with pirates, such as the ones mentioned above, created pirate
reputations for violence and terror throughout the maritime world. Para-
doxically such reputations may have helped to reduce unnecessary blood-
shed. As the economist Peter Leeson suggests in his book on Western
piracy in the age of sail, pirates skillfully manipulated their images of sav-
agery and cruelty to minimize resistance and to maximize profits. If piracy
was fundamentally a profit-seeking venture, then it made sense to avoid
battles that could result in the damage or destruction of ships and prop-
erty, as well as injury and deaths of both pirates and victims. Battles not
only raised pirates’ operating costs but also endangered their revenues.
erefore, contrary to our expectations, pirates did everything they could
to avoid fights and to encourage victims to surrender peacefully. To accom-
plish these ends, Leeson argues, they relied upon their reputations for vio-
lence, brutality, and ruthlessness.6
Rumors and tales about pirates’ brutality flew like the wind between
ships and ports across the South China Sea and throughout the maritime
world. While occasionally pirates became heroes in sea yarns, more com-
monly story-tellers spoke of pirates as murderous, cruel, and insane villains.
Rumors were a sort of “improvised news” under constant construction;7 they
also were vital sources of information which, although unsubstantiated,
were often taken as true. Transmitted by word of mouth, rumors often
arose out of pre-existing fears among a group of people, a community, or
society at large.8 Although today most of our images of pirates come from
movies and television, rumors always have been important in the spread of
pirate reputations.
As an oral tradition, most rumors have been lost, but occasionally they
were recorded and thus we have some knowledge about their content and
how they were transmitted. For instance, one writer described the famous
early nineteenth-century Fujian pirate, Cai Qian, as a bloodthirsty scoun-
drel who wantonly disemboweled victims and ate their livers. It was said
that “he could eat as many as four livers in a day.” As the author explained,
6 Peter Leeson, e Invisible Hook: e Hidden Economics of Pirates (Princeton, 2009),
ch. 5. See also the discussion in Michael Pearson’s article in this issue.
7 Tamotsu Shibutani, Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor (Indianapolis,
1966), 16.
8 On rumors in imperial China, see Barand ter Haar, Telling Stories: Witchcraft and
Scapegoating in Chinese History (Leiden, 2006).

R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501 485
he had heard this story from his father “who had heard it from his teacher,
Wu Zhipu, who lived in Quanzhou during the Jiaqing reign, just a few years
after Cai Qian had been killed.”9 Obviously the teacher had heard stories
circulating along the waterfront of Quanzhou, Cai Qian’s home area.
Storytelling was a favorite pastime among all sailors. Most everyone
aboard ships heard bloodcurdling tales about pirates from shipmates. Tales
were told and retold, fashioned and refashioned many times. Edward
Brown, who was captured off the Vietnamese coast by Chinese pirates in
1857, related how during his voyage his crew of Asian sailors told stories
about how pirates cut to pieces anyone who dared to resist them.10 John
Turner and Richard Glasspoole had heard similar stories aboard their own
ships before being taken by pirates in the early nineteenth century. Fanny
Loviot, who wrote a best-seller about her captivity among Chinese pirates
in 1854, related how Capt. Rooney told passengers over dinner about an
earlier voyage in Southeast Asia when his ship had been taken by “Indian
pirates,” who murdered his entire crew in front of his eyes and then bound
him to the ship’s mast and cruelly abused him.11 Loviot also reported how
within a couple of days after being captured by pirates, rumors already
were flying in Hong Kong that she had been sold into slavery or viciously
murdered.12
In telling their stories, victims rendered pirates as barbarous ruffians.
Brown described the pirates that attacked him as “a savage race of beings.”13
Pirate attacks, which often occurred late at night when everyone was asleep,
became “frightening nightmares.” Just to mention the word “pirate” con-
jured up images of gruesome characters and awful brutality. Loviot opined
that “such is the terror of the pirate-name that . . . they ravage the seas with
impunity.” She described the pirates who attacked her ship as “barbarians”
who “seemed to delight in our terror.” “e sight of these monsters was
alone sufficient to make death welcome.” She continued:
9
Maxiang tingzhi [Gazetteer of Maxiang subprefecture, Fujian] (1893), 235.
10 Edward Brown, Cochin-China, and My Experience of it. A Seaman’s Narrative of his
Adventures and Sufferings during a Captivity among Chinese Pirates, on the Coast of Cochin-
China, and afterwards during a Journey on Foot across that Country, in the Years 1857-8
(London, 1861), 25-26.
11 Fanny Loviot, A Lady’s Captivity among Chinese Pirates in the Chinese Seas, trans. Ame-
lia Edwards (London, 1856), 67.
12 Ibid., 132-133.
13 Brown, Cochin-China, 75.

486 R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501
ey looked unspeakably hideous. . . . ey wore scarlet turbans on their heads, and
round their waists broad leather belts garnished with knives and pistols. In addition
to this each man carried in his hand a naked sword. . . . I believed my last hour was
at hand.
What was most frightening for her and other captives was their helpless-
ness, being, as she put it, “utterly in their power.”14
e fearful images of Asian pirates made them appear more like wild
beasts or demons than humans. e first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang,
said that wakō pirates made sounds like the “croaking of frogs,” and a
Chinese literati a century and a half later reported they made “bird-like
sounds” when they spoke. In Treatise on Japan, the authors described wakō
pirates having long disheveled hair, blackened faces, and tattooed bodies,
which gave them the appearance of ghouls.15 Likewise, Fanny Loviot
depicted pirates: “ese creatures seemed like demons, born of the tem-
pest, and bent upon completing our destruction.” ey attacked with a
frightful yell that “sounded like nothing human.”16
Pirates apparently knew well the effects that such images had on people
and, in fact, they may have deliberately cultivated terrifying demeanors.
Some wakō purposefully created frightful appearances by wearing demon
masks and horned helmets. Similarly, eighteenth century Chinese pirates
wore ragged, blood-stained clothes, blackened their faces, and let their hair
long and uncombed, like beggars, butchers, and ghosts. eir long,
unbound hair not only sent a political message symbolizing denunciation
of the Qing dynasty, but also unbound or disheveled hair was a distin-
guishing trait of demons and ghosts.17 Pirates very likely perpetuated or
constructed self-images as fearsome, indeed demon-like, beings to frighten
victims and to discourage resistance.
Besides reputations for cold-blooded, inhuman brutality, pirates also
cultivated reputations for treating badly anyone who resisted them but not
harming those who surrendered peacefully. It was well known, or at least
widely believed, that those who dared to resist would be tormented and
14 Loviot, A Lady’s Captivity, 68, 69, 70, 73, 84, 97.
15 Li Yangong and Hao Jie, Riben kao [Treatise on Japan], in Xuxiu siku quanshu [Con-
tinuation of the Book of the Four Treasuries] (Shanghai, 1995; originally published in the
Ming dynasty), 744: 736; also see Wozhi, 385.
16 Loviot, A Lady’s Captivity, 69.
17 Barand ter Haar, Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads: Creating an Identity
(Leiden, 1998), 116.

R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501 487
killed. In Turner’s words: “If a vessel they [i.e., pirates] capture happens
to have made resistance, they in general murder some of the crew and cru-
elly treat the residue. . . . In other cases they are satisfied with the plunder
and detention of the crew,” implying that no one would be harmed.18 Dur-
ing his captivity, Brown witnessed what the pirates did to the crew of a
Fujianese junk that defied them. After the attack ended Brown boarded
the prize:
Oh what a slaughter house! ere were more than fifty bodies lying mangled on the
deck, some without heads, some without arms or legs, others run through, and welter-
ing in their gore; in fact, the picture is too dreadful to describe. ere had been no
quarter given; young and old were alike slain: they had not left one alive.19
With such a reputation for slaughtering anyone who resisted no wonder
few victims fought back.
Actually pirates relied on survivors who could spread tales of their
ordeals. Although in some instances pirates murdered some or all of the
crews of the ships they attacked, at other times they actually released some
or all of their victims to return home where they could convey their experi-
ences to others. It appears that in a large number of cases victims surren-
dered quietly without a fight. Many Western victims were dismayed by
Chinese crews and passengers who just passively stood by and calmly
watched the pirates overrun the ship without the slightest attempt at resis-
tance. What these Western observers took as cowardliness was in fact
sound, pragmatic judgment, for the Chinese knew to resist meant certain
injury and perhaps death. ey also knew if they did not fight back the
pirates would most likely just rob them and then be on their way. No one
would be wounded or killed. Westerners missed the point and often paid
dearly for it. Usually Western officers and passengers were the ones who
resisted and usually they were the ones tortured and murdered.
e Meanings of Torture
Pirates and governments both tortured prisoners, and they did so for simi-
lar reasons—to extract confessions, as punishment, and for revenge. More
specifically, pirates used torture on captives to elicit information, usually
18 Turner, Narrative, 38.
19 Brown, Cochin-China, 76.

488 R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501
about where they hid valuables; to punish soldiers and officials who
opposed and attempted to arrest them; and as a form of reprisal against
foreigners, especially Westerners. In the first scenario the purpose was not
to kill prisoners, but in the other two scenarios torture often resulted in
death; in fact, a gruesome, painful death seems to have been the purpose
in most of the latter two scenarios. In imperial China the government’s use
of torture was legal, but frequently exceeded the legal limits, and therefore
occasionally resulted in death. Judicial courts routinely used torture to
extract confessions, which were necessary to close most cases. Sometimes
officials also used torture for revenge or retribution.20
Pirate torture was rarely arbitrary, but rather calculated and purposeful.
As Leeson suggests, among Western pirates torture was “a rationally chosen
means to develop a reputation” for barbarity and wickedness.21 It seems the
same for Chinese pirates. Because some victims were unwilling to disclose
where they had hidden valuables, torture had to be applied to loosen their
tongues. To force information from reluctant captives, torture had to be
gruesome and agonizing, but not cause death. Dead prisoner could not
reveal where valuables were hidden, could not be sold into slavery, and
were worth considerably less in ransom.22 A certain amount of torture and
even killings, however, was necessary to maintain reputations for cruelty,
insanity, and fearsomeness. If pirates did not occasionally kill or torture
victims then, I would argue, few people would be afraid of them, and there
would be more resistance and less cooperation.
Pirates were quite skillful in inflicting pain on reluctant captives. Brown
described how the pirates treated the owner aboard his lorcha: they “hauled
[him] up on deck in a rough manner” and with their knives took turns
cutting him several times across his abdomen, not to kill him but to
encourage him to confess where he stowed his treasures. Brown: “I felt
extremely sorry for him; he must have been in great pain, mentally and
bodily.” Although the pirates repeated the ordeal several times, the owner
refused to confess, and in the end the pirates left him.23
20 On the regulation and abuses of legal torture, see Timothy Brook, Jérôme Bourgon,
and Gregory Blue, Death by a ousand Cuts (Cambridge, MA, 2008), 46-49, 178-179.
21 Lesson, Invisible Hook, 115.
22 In one case, for example, pirates kidnapped for ransom the younger brother of a man
named Xu Ze, and when the payment was not paid on time the victim was brutally mur-
dered; afterwards Xu Ze still had to pay the pirates a ransom to recover the corpse. Jinmen
zhi [Jinmen Gazetteer] (1882), 195.
23 Brown, Cochin-China, 29-30.

R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501 489
Flogging was a common mode of torture used by pirates and govern-
ments, and sometimes even privately within family compounds. According
to Loviot, after taking a prize the pirates “cruelly interrogated passengers”
in order to “wring from them a full avowal of their riches.” e victims
were suspended from the masts bound by “only one thumb and one toe”
and “swung violently backwards and forwards,” while from time to time
they were severely beaten with canes.24 Turner reported that if prisoners
were suspected of destroying or secreting valuables they were put to a sim-
ilar torture:
e unhappy victim being first stripped of his clothes, has his hands tied behind him,
a rope passing from the mast head, then made fast to his joined hands by which he is
hoisted from the deck; and while thus suspended, repeated stripes are inflicted on
every part of his body with a rod formed of two or three rattans twisted together.
Blood frequently follows the stripes, and in some cases the miserable sufferer is left
suspended by his hands for upwards of an hour.25
Another captive, Richard Glasspoole, reported a few years later that the
pirates who had abducted him not only used a similar torture to elicit infor-
mation, but also to force reluctant captives to join their gang.26 Figure 1
depicts an illegal form of “private torture” similar to the ones mentioned
above.
Pirates also occasionally nailed prisoners to the deck, not only to inflict
pain but also to make sure they could not escape. We already have noted
Turner’s account where pirates nailed a captured officer to the deck with
large nails and beat him repeatedly with rattan whips before finally muti-
lating his body. George Cooke, the Times correspondent in China during
the 1850s, reported that when a British gunboat captured a pirate vessel
near Hong Kong in 1857, the sailors found two male captives “nailed to
planks, each with a stink-pot tied round his neck and slow matches
burning.”27
24 Loviot, A Lady’s Captivity, 113.
25 Turner, Narrative, 38.
26 Richard Glasspoole, “A Brief Narrative of my Captivity and Treatment amongst the
Ladrones,” in History of the Pirates, comp. and trans Charles Neumann (London, 1831),
114-115.
27 George Cooke, China: Being ‘e Times’ Special Correspondence from China in the Years
1857-58 (London, 1861), 68.

490 R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501
Apparently officials and runners also used the same barbarous tech-
niques. In the 1850s, while on a road to Beijing, Évariste Régis Huc passed
a cart-load of prisoners in the most horrible circumstances: “these unfortu-
nate creatures were nailed by the hands to the planks in the cart.” When
questioned, the officers explained that these men were all thieves and
because they did not have sufficient chains to bind them, they nailed them
to the cart to prevent them from fleeing.28
Physical torments were not enough. Pirates were also adept at mental or
psychological torture. Turner and all of the other victims who survived
pirate attacks and later wrote about their experiences explained that they
were “continually threatened with death.”29 Glasspoole relates that soon
after being captured the pirate chief interviewed him and his fellow prison-
ers to elicit information, with threats to put them all to death if they did
28 Évariste Régis Huc, e Chinese Empire: A Sequel to Recollections of a Journey through
Tartary and ibet, revised edition (London, 1859), 443-444.
29 Turner, Narrative, 11-12; also 16, 26, 27.
Fig. 1. Beating as a form of private punishment (Source: Dianshizhai huabao, Shang-
hai, 1884).

R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501 491
not cooperate. On the chief’s command, several pirates took out their
swords “and laid them on our necks, making signs that they would soon
take us to shore, and cut us to pieces.” At any moment he expected to be
tortured and “put to a cruel death.” On several other occasions he and his
fellow captives were likewise threatened with being brutally killed, which
in fact, “I am sorry to say was the fate of some hundreds [of other prison-
ers] during my captivity.”30
During her captivity, Loviot was in a constant state of mental “anguish”
and “despair,” expecting to be raped or put to death at any moment. She
also experienced another sort of mental torture that she and a Chinese pas-
senger had to suffer. Her captors forced them into “a kind of trap, about
two feet square,” what she could only describe as a “narrow dark hole below
deck,” with no room to either stand up or lie down. At first the pirates
nailed the trap door shut and Loviot could only imagine a horrible, slow
death, as if being “buried alive.” She pondered, “Was this hole destined to
be our coffin and our tomb?” “A cold chill ran over all my body.” After a
few hours, however, the pirates let them out, and crowding around them
sadistically laughed at their anguish: “It was, but a cruel jest.”31
Actually such treatment of prisoners was not unusual. Chinese jails were
not much better than black holes. When pirates were apprehended, they
expected to be treated brutally by the authorities, often also being confined
in small cages. John Gray explained that there were different size cages.
One was “too short to allow the prisoner to place himself in a recumbent
position, and too low to admit of his standing. Another is a narrow cage,
not high enough to admit of the offender standing altogether upright. To
the top is attached a wooden collar or cangue, by which the neck of the
criminal . . . is firmly held.”32
Dismemberment and disembowelment were extreme forms of torture
(or, as jurists prefer to say, torment) regularly inflicted against soldiers
and officers captured by pirates. Wakō pirates badly treated officials, often
mutilating their bodies in the cruelest manner, whenever they were cap-
tured.33 Several centuries later, according to Turner and other witnesses,
whenever a Mandarin boat fell into the hands of pirates, officers and men
30 Glasspoole, “Brief Narrative,” 103, 104; also 106, 116, 117.
31 Loviot, A Lady’s Captivity, 73, 103-106.
32 John Gray, China: A History of the Laws, Manners, and Customs of the People (London,
1878), 1: 57.
33 See, for example, Zheng Ruozeng, Chouhai tubian [Illustrated compendium of sea-
board strategies] (Beijing, 2007; originally published in 1562), 334.

492 R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501
were routinely killed in the most brutal manner, whether they attacked
pirates or not. We have previously mentioned how pirates nailed the feet
of a captured officer to the deck, beat him with rattans until he vomited
blood, and then afterwards took him ashore and “cut him to pieces.” e
same pirates later disemboweled another officer.34 Glasspoole also reported
witnessing similar atrocities. For example, on November 23, 1809, after
victory in a battle, sixty or seventy officers and soldiers were taken prisoner
and immediately “cut to pieces and thrown into the river.”35 Pirates pur-
posely used torture and dismemberment to deter the authorities from
fighting or trying to arrest them. Evidence suggests that pirates’ reputation
for extreme violence towards officials and soldiers did put pressure on
authorities to think twice before launching attacks.36
When pirates decapitated or dismembered officers and soldiers they did
so out of hatred and revenge against a state that treated them with equal
vehement and brutality. Pirates mimicked state executions. In China the
imperial state usually summarily executed pirates either by beheading or
by death-by-slicing, if they had resisted officials or soldiers.37 Afterwards
the severed heads were hung from poles for public display in markets and
ports. e sight of dangling heads of pirates was ubiquitous along the
south China coast in the early nineteenth century, when thousands of
pirates were executed.38 Similarly, in a number of instances pirates cut off
the heads of soldiers and villagers and then suspended the severed heads
from trees.39
e state and even local villagers occasionally used extreme violence
against enemies they considered particularly vile. Actually disembowel-
ment was an accepted, but rarely used, form of punishment in ancient
China, used as a just retribution in homicide cases involving slaves and
34 Turner, Narrative, 12, 19, 39.
35 Glasspoole, “Brief Narrative,” 121.
36 See, for example, Shangyudang fangben [Imperial decrees], Qianlong 60.4.27 [1795],
Jiaqing 11.9.6 [1806], and Jiaqing 12.6.19 [1807] (National Palace Museum Archives,
Taibei, Taiwan); and Guangdong haifang huilan [A conspectus of Guangdong’s coastal
defense] (Guangzhou, n.d.), 26: 3b.
37 Ernest Alabaster, Notes and Commentaries on Chinese Criminal Law and Cognate Top-
ics (London, 1899), 469.
38 Between 1795 and 1810, there were no fewer than 2,803 executions of pirates in
Guangdong alone; see Robert Antony, Like Froth Floating on the Sea, 97-101.
39 Guangzhou fuzhi [Gazetteer of Guangzhou prefecture] (Guangzhou, 1879), 81: 20b.

R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501 493
servants who murdered their superiors.40 In 1808, for example, the Jiaqing
Emperor ordered an extraordinary execution of a servant who had killed
his master. e murderer was mutilated before his victim’s grave, and his
heart ripped out and presented as a sacrificial offering to pacify the dead
man’s ghost, as well as to serve as a warning to others.41 Near the end of the
nineteenth century, the Rev. J. Turner related an incident that he witnessed
on the Guangdong coast: “a crowd of villagers fell upon some pirate junks
in the bay, hacking to pieces all the occupants, with the exception of two
men whom they solemnly sacrificed to the spirit of the headman’s son,
whom the pirates had previously murdered.”42 Such instances of revenge,
retribution, and bloody sacrifice were not so unusual, as we will see in the
next section.
Dismemberment and disembowelment aimed not only to torment the
body but also the soul. Significantly, a disembodied corpse “violated the
filial obligation to parents and ancestors to keep the physical body in one
piece, even in death.”43 ese were acts of extreme punishment that went
beyond the world of men into the afterlife for all eternity. ey were more
than just physical ordeal for they aimed “to destroy the future as well as the
present life” of the victim, who became “unworthy to exist longer either as
a man or a recognizable spirit.”44 Cutting the body to pieces was part of a
process of dehumanization, reducing the mutilated bodies to nothing
more than comestibles. e executed subject was transformed into a beast
or, even worse, a ghost. “An incomplete corpse, or mutilated caucus, would
render the body unfit to receive the soul again.” us, the soul of the
disembodied person became forever a malevolent ghost.45 Such extreme
violence was also reminiscent of popular Chinese depictions of hell, as
40 See, for example, Wang Yongkuan, Zhongguo gudai kuxing [Cruel punishments of
ancient China] (Taibei, 1991), 62-71.
41 Joanna Waley-Cohen, “Politics and the Supernatural in Mid-Qing Legal Culture,”
Modern China 19, no. 3 (1993): 337-338.
42 J.A. Turner, Kwang Tung or Five Years in South China (London, 1894), 174.
43 Donald Sutton, “Consuming Counterrevolution: e Ritual and Culture of Canni-
balism in Wuxuan, Guangxi, China, May to June 1968,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History 37 (1995): 145.
44 Alabaster, Notes and Commentaries, 57.
45 See Virgil Kit-yiu Ho, “Butchering Fishes and Executing Criminals: Public Execu-
tions and the Meanings of Violence in Late Imperial and Modern China,” in Meanings of
Violence: A Cross Cultural Perspective, ed. Göran Aijmer and Jon Abbink (Oxford, 2000),
145-146.

494 R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501
illustrated below (Fig. 2), in which demonic figures tore apart and disem-
boweled victims for misdeeds they had committed during their lifetime.
Perhaps there was also a political message in such pirate executions.
Since at least the ancient Han dynasty, the imperial state claimed a monop-
oly on violence, particularly with regards to capital punishment. Indeed,
the right to execute criminals helped to define and legitimize imperial
authority. At least from the imperium’s perspective, when pirates decapi-
tated, dismembered, and disemboweled captives they were appropriating
important prerogatives of the state. Pirates did not simply mimic state
practices, but they also sent a political message that challenged its author-
ity, and at the same time claimed a sort of legitimacy for themselves.46
Pirates also used torture and murder as forms of reprisal against foreign-
ers. When taken by pirates, Capt. Rooney of the Caldera, told his captors
that he was Spanish and that the passengers and crew were composed of
various other European nationalities, but not English. e year was 1854,
and the pirates in this case did not like England. e lie worked, according
to Loviot, “for the pirate [chief ] instantly replied that, had we been Eng-
lish, our throats should have been cut upon the spot.”47 Yet, for Brown,
who was also English, and taken a few years later, during the Arrow War
(1856-1860), when the provincial authorities in Canton had offered
rewards of 100 taels of silver for the heads of every Englishman, his captors
treated him politely and assured him that they would not harm him if he
cooperated. Later the pirate chief explained that he wanted to befriend the
English to help fight the Manchus, whom he hated even more. In fact, the
chief claimed that he and his men were Taiping rebels, not pirates.48 Here,
then, was another form of anti-foreignism, in this case against the alien
Manchu rulers of China.
However, it would be rash to declare that in all or even most cases where
pirates tortured foreigners it was because of anti-foreign sentiments. ere
are actually many cases in which Westerners were not badly treated by
their pirate captors. In some cases, we do not know if the pirates treated
46 On the concerns of the state on blood sacrifices, see Terry Kleeman, “Licentious
Cults and Bloody Victuals: Sacrifice, Reciprocity, and Violence in Traditional China,” Asia
Major 7, no. 1 (1994): 191-197; and on imperial and popular legitimation lore, see ter
Haar, Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads, 306-324. e pirates’ appropriation of
popular legitimation rhetoric, however, did not mean that they actively challenged state
authority.
47 Loviot, A Lady’s Captivity, 74.
48 Brown, Cochin-China, 10, 28, 34.

R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501 495
Fig. 2. Tortures in Chinese hell (Source: Yuli baochao, Taiwan, undated).

496 R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501
Western victims cruelly because they hated Westerners or because the vic-
tims resisted the pirates. ere was usually much more involved than
mere anti-foreignism. Western officers, crew, and passengers tended to be
wounded or killed mainly because (as mentioned above) they were the
ones most likely to resist pirate attacks. Brutality towards foreigners may
not have had anything to do with hating foreigners, but rather everything
to do with hating anyone who dared to oppose them.
Marcus Rediker and others have argued that, at least in the case of sev-
enteenth and early eighteenth century Atlantic pirates, torture was used
against unjust, predatory sea captains, as a sort of popular justice.49
Although there were a number of instances where Asian pirates abused or
killed sea captains and ship owners—such as when the pirates who attacked
Brown’s vessel tortured the owner—nevertheless, there is no clear evidence
that this was done as a form of justice. I have not seen any cases that men-
tion brutal or dishonest captains, or that pirates specifically picked cap-
tains to teach them a lesson (though, of course, this is not to say there were
no bad captains sailing the South China Sea). is then does not seem to
have been an important reason for torture. Evidence, to the contrary, indi-
cates that torture was chiefly used to extract information or for hatred
against those who resisted.
Bloodthirsty Pirates?
is brings us back to the question posed in the title: were Asian pirates
bloodthirsty villains? We have already noted two instances where Chinese
pirates disemboweled and cannibalized their victims. Turner described
how he witnessed pirates cut out a victim’s heart, soak it in spirits, and eat
the mixture; and we have read another account about how Cai Qian like-
wise ate the livers of his victims, as many as four each day.
ese, however, were not isolated cases. In fact, there were many other
similar tales, told over a long period of time and by many different people,
Chinese and foreigners alike. In some cases, witnesses claimed that they
had seen these horrendous acts with their own eyes; in other cases, people
merely had transmitted them from hearsay. But whether true or not, what
49 See, for example, Marcus Rediker, “e Pirate and the Gallows: An Atlantic eater
of Terror and Resistance,” in Seascapes: Maritime Histories, Littoral Cultures, and Transoce-
anic Exchanges, ed. Jerry Bentley, et al. (Honolulu, 2007); and Leeson, Invisible Hook,
126-131.

R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501 497
is important is that many people believed these tales to be true. In ancient
China a pirate named Sun En was known not only for his perverse cruel-
ties, but also for cannibalizing victims and even forcing their wives and
children to share in the bloody feasts.50 At the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury a pirate named Chen Laosan, who operated off the coast of Guang-
dong, followed in Sun En’s footsteps. After his arrest Chen confessed that
when a passenger on a Chaozhou trading junk had tried to resist him, he
sliced and quartered the poor man and then had his liver and heart mixed
with spirits for his gang to consume. A week later, a helmsman on a fishing
boat who had resisted also suffered the same fate.51 Years later, a Fujianese
pirate, He Song, and some members of his gang, admitted at trial that on
more than one occasion they disemboweled victims and devoured their
blood and organs.52 Brown, too, witnessed how the pirates, who had tor-
tured the lorcha’s owner with repeated cuts across his abdomen, “caught
the poor man’s blood, and actually drank it!”53 e pirates, however, were
not alone in perpetrating such gruesome acts.
Although there undoubtedly were some sadistic, psychopathic pirates
who had perverse pleasure in mutilating and eating victims, nevertheless
we can also perhaps find deeper purpose in such apparent madness. Cer-
tainly these horrendous acts would have added further to pirates’ reputa-
tion for brutality, perverseness, and insanity. Yet there were still other
possible and more pragmatic reasons: for medical and prophylactic pur-
poses, for the magico-religious benefits derived from human sacrifice, and
for political purposes. Such appalling practices, in fact, were highly ritual-
ized and had profound meanings for participants and victims. Indeed,
more than one scholar has explained that China had a “culture of cannibal-
ism” deeply rooted in its history and literature.54
Generally speaking, only specific body parts were chosen to be con-
sumed, not the whole body, and usually not even the flesh (as would have
been the case in instances of survival cannibalism). In most cases only the
50 Antony, Like Froth Floating on the Sea, 22.
51 Gongzhongdang [Unpublished Palace Memorials] (no. 2779), Jiaqing 2.r6.21 [1797]
(National Palace Museum Archives, Taibei, Taiwan).
52 Gongzhongdang (no. 8052), Jiaqing 7.5.12 [1802].
53 Brown, Cochin-China, 29.
54 See, for example, Sutton, “Consuming Counterrevolution,” and Yue Gang, e Mouth
that Begs: Hunger, Cannibalism, and the Politics of Eating in Modern China (Durham,
1999).

498 R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501
blood, heart, liver, and other internal organs were consumed.55 Why these?
Because human blood and internal organs were thought to contain a con-
centration of life-force, therefore, they were considered very effective in the
cure of many ailments.56
According to popular belief, the blood and internal organs of people
who met violent deaths, such as by execution either by the state or by
pirates, were particularly potent. What is more, the potency and efficacy of
the life-force contained in human blood and organs could be greatly
enhanced “by means of gruesome torture” before they were removed and
consumed.57 erefore, the consumption of the blood and organs, whether
of executed criminals or the innocent victims of pirates, was an especially
potent cure-all for illnesses and a prophylactic for warding off demons.
at is why we find numerous stories, both oral and written, about crowds
attending executions and afterwards taking steamed buns or rags to soak
up the blood or to take some body parts home as medicine or prophylac-
tic. Indeed, executioners reportedly did a brisk business in selling the
hearts, livers, and blood of executed criminals; executioners even rented
out their blood-stained swords to eager customers.58 Because of the dehu-
manizing or demonizing process involved in mutilation there was also a
widespread conviction that the blood and organs of executed persons pos-
sessed important menacing properties that could frighten away evil spirits
and ghost, the very elements that brought on illness and death.59
e cannibalistic practices of pirates were extreme acts of ritualized vio-
lence. For the pirates (and others) they signified blood sacrifices purport-
ing magico-religious importance, which they believed bestowed them with
supernatural strength to vanquish their foes. Ritualized cannibalism was
an awesome act of empowerment by which the life-force of victims was
incorporated into those partaking of the sacrifice. When pirates drank the
blood of their victims, they consumed life’s vital force, and when they ate
the hearts and livers of their foes certain desirable characteristics, namely
55 e male and female genitals were also favored, but I have not come across any cases
where pirates consumed these organs.
56 Sutton, “Consuming Counterrevolution,” 152; and ter Haar, Ritual and Mythology of
the Triads, 157.
57 Ter Haar, Telling Stories, 136.
58 Gray, China, 2: 31; also Turner, Kwang Tung, 127.
59 Ho, “Butchering Fishes,” 156.

R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501 499
courage, strength, and longevity, were transferred from the dead to the
living.60
Such blood sacrifices, however, were nothing new in China. Since
ancient times, war and sacrifice were closely linked; the victors in battle
would present prisoners, often killing and devouring them, as offerings
to the gods and ancestors. Even China’s most famous cultural hero, the
Yellow Emperor, was said to have killed and made a stew out of the flesh
and bones of his enemy, Chi You, which he then shared with his followers
in a victory feast.61 From ancient to modern times, both rebels and officials
made sacrifices of animals and humans to military banners. According to
Paul Katz, “Such rituals were more than acts of random violence; they
served as a creative force to strengthen bonds between members of armed
groups, as well as to draw sharp boundaries between group members
and their enemies.”62 I would further suggest that when pirates, bandits,
and rebels joined together in blood sacrifices, they called upon the gods to
witness and consecrate their actions and to solemnly bind everyone together
as blood brothers. e human sacrifice underlined the seriousness of pur-
pose and strengthened their resolve, loyalty, and solidarity as a group.
e killing, offering, and consumption of animals or humans were, in
fact, central features of sacrifices. e bloody sacrifice and shared feasting
on the meat (or blood and organs) at the end of battle was a ritual climax,
a celebration, whereby both gods and men shared in the spoils of victory.
Because the offerings were believed to be sanctified, they were imbued
with magical powers that conferred health and power on those making the
sacrifice. Making sacrificial offerings and then ingesting those offerings
were the chief means by which men and gods interacted and reciprocated.
e gods depended on men for sustenance and in return granted them
material benefits.63
From the state’s perspective, and perhaps also from the pirates them-
selves, blood sacrifices were compelling political acts. ey not only legiti-
mized group solidarity and dominance over those they had defeated, but
also represented an exercise of power. Such acts formally challenged state
60 See the discussions in ter Haar, Ritual and Mythology of the Triads, 157; and Kleeman,
“Licentious Cults and Bloody Victuals,” 186-191.
61 Mark Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany, 1990), 23-27, 148.
62 Paul Katz, “Banner Worship and Human Sacrifice in Chinese Military History,” in
e Scholar’s Mind: Essays in Honor of Frederick W. Mote, ed. Perry Link (Hong Kong,
2009), 219.
63 See Kleeman, “Licentious Cults and Bloody Victuals,” 185, 189-190.

500 R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501
authority and at the same time claimed legitimacy for the activities of the
pirates. Because in ancient China the heart was a metaphor for the sover-
eign, to devour the heart may have symbolized the desire to usurp power.64
Pirates and rebels who practiced human sacrifice directly challenged the
state’s prerogatives to control and define orthodox religious practices,
which, after all, were monopolized by the state. An important instrument
of rulership was the supernatural support of the gods. “To usurp this aid
through unauthorized sacrifice was to raid the state’s arsenal and threaten
it with its own weapons.”65 erefore, any challenge to its legitimacy was a
grave concern of the state. Because human sacrifice gave pirates awesome
power that was beyond the state’s control, it was very dangerous.
Although in many cases these tales of bloodthirsty pirates may not have
been factual, but rather metaphorical, nonetheless they were well-accepted
and widely believed as true. Importantly, what these stories do show is that
tales about cannibalism and human sacrifice were familiar to many people.
As Gang Yue has explained, “Myth, symbol, or metaphor may not reflect
facts, but they are not necessarily false either.”66 Whether real or not seems
unimportant; what is important is that many people believed these stories
to be real.
Conclusion
Piracy was a metaphor for violence and terror. It conjured up images of
brutality and savagery. To the ruling class and to victims, pirates were wild,
uncivilized, and lacking in true human qualities. ey were often likened
to beasts and demons. But the violence that was senseless and irrational to
the ruling class and victims was perhaps meaningful and rational to the
pirates. On sea and shore pirates consciously used terror and violence to
obtain money and goods, to punish those who resisted, to reek vengeance
against their enemies, and to instill fear in anyone who might fight back.
ey apparently promoted and deliberately constructed reputations for
brutality to minimize resistance and maximize profits. eir reputations
for violence and terror may actually have helped to reduce unnecessary
bloodshed.
64 Sutton, “Consuming Counterrevolution,” 152.
65 Kleeman, “Licentious Cults and Bloody Victuals,” 195.
66 Yue, e Mouth that Begs, 27.

R.J. Antony / Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 481-501 501
e types of extreme violence and torture employed by the Asian—
mostly Chinese—pirates examined in this study were not so unusual, as
the cases of such Western pirates like François l’Olonnais and Edward Low,
who also reportedly mutilated and ate their victims, suggest.67 However,
what were different and unique in the Chinese cases were the meanings
that pirates and victims placed on violence. In fact, what we are dealing
with here was a cultural construction of violence with Chinese characteris-
tics. When Chinese pirates dismembered and disemboweled victims, such
gruesome acts were meant not only to torment the body but also the soul.
ese acts intentionally transcended the world of men into the afterlife.
Cutting the body to pieces, whether by pirates or the state, was a dehu-
manizing ordeal that reduced the body to a mere slab of meat. It also
transformed human beings into wandering, malevolent ghosts.
When bloodthirsty pirates devoured the internal organs and blood of
their victims this was much more than simply violence for the sake of vio-
lence. ese were ritualized sacrifices imbued with deep magico-religious
significance. Blood was the vital force of life important in curing illnesses,
warding off evil spirits, and bringing good luck and fortune. When pirates
tortured, dismembered, and then drank the blood and ate the hearts and
livers of their victims they did so to acquire for themselves power, courage,
longevity, and luck. Human sacrifice empowered pirates and directly chal-
lenged the state’s authority and legitimacy. ese acts were part of a well-
established, but heterodox, tradition that was deeply imbedded in everyday
life and popular culture of the South China Sea.
67 Alexander Exquemelin, e Buccaneers of America, trans. Alexis Brown (Mineola, NY,
2000), 107; and Daniel Defoe [Capt. Charles Johnson] A General History of the Pyrates, ed.
Manuel Schonhorn (Mineola, NY, 1999), 323-324, 334. Although these two examples
may have been untrue, nonetheless they were widely accepted at the time as real.