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During the first decade of the nineteenth century Guangdong province was plagued with an unprecedented upsurge in piracy. At that time over 50,000 pirates in hundreds of vessels actively plundered ships at sea and towns along the coast. All along Guangdong's jagged 1,500-mile coastline several powerful pirate fleets had joined together into a loose confederation under such capable leaders as Zheng Yi, Wushi Er, Guo Podai, and later Zhang Bao (see Map 1). They effectively challenged Qing authority and disrupted legitimate commerce in the region for over ten years. Yet all of a sudden in 1810, while at the height of their power, the huge pirate leagues utterly collapsed.1 How can we account for their sudden demise? Ever since 1810 writers and scholars have been debating about the causes for the collapse of the Guangdong pirate confederation. Official documents, particularly the palace memorials (zouzhe), emphasized the role of Governor-general Bai Ling's harsh embargo, while gentry-sponsored gazetteers highlighted the role of community self-defense efforts in bringing about the demise of the pirates. Other accounts, notably Yuan Yonglun's Record of the Pacification of Pirates (Jing haifen ji) published in 1830, stressed the importance of internal dissension among the pirates, particularly between the two powerful leaders Zhang Bao and Guo Podai. Contemporary Western eyewitness accounts tend to agree with Yuan Yonglun's version, while also emphasizing the part that European warships played in the defeat of the pirates.2 Modern historians have likewise grappled with interpreting the downfall of large-scale piracy in 1810. In his seminal Strangers at the Gate, Frederic Wakeman argued that the "virtual exclusion" [End Page 1] Click for larger view Map 1 of piracy from Guangdong waters after 1810 was due chiefly to local militia (tuanlian) that had been "in existence thirty years before the Opium War."3 Other recent studies, however, emphasize the internal dissension among the pirates themselves as "the most fundamental causes" for the pirate demise.4 [End Page 2] In this article I revisit this debate by re-examining each of the arguments presented above. I suggest that no single explanation is adequate in explaining the collapse of the pirate confederation in 1810. Rather, I stress that the crisis of 1809–1810, an occurrence that is slighted or ignored by other scholars, played a vital role as a catalyst in the downfall of the pirates. I therefore begin with a brief description of the crisis, and then go on to discuss the inadequacy of the imperial naval and coastal establishment as background for understanding the rise of community self-defense efforts. Next I re-examine the internal dissensions among the pirate leadership, placing the discord in the context of the crisis of 1809–1810. The final section analyzes the government's annihilation and appeasement policy, which successfully brought an end to the pirate troubles in Guangdong by the summer of 1810. In re-examining this debate I also wish to draw attention to important issues concerning how the state and local communities reacted to the unprecedented upsurge in piracy, especially during the crisis years 1809 and 1810. Occurring only a few years after the White Lotus Rebellion, the massive pirate disturbance in south China was one of the earliest and most important instances of social disorder in the nineteenth century. Given the Qing minimalist approach to governance, officials favored more indirect strategies through cooperation and accommodation with local elites in suppressing pirates.5 Although the late imperial period witnessed an expansion of community-based organizations, this was not necessarily done at the expense of, or in opposition to, the state. Indeed, the elimination of social disorder was important to both state and society, and therefore provided the grounds for mutual interaction and collaboration. At the height of the pirate upheaval in 1809 and 1810, local communities overcame parochial interests not only to work with officials, but also to build area-wide...
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