Show Notes
Please check out this entire series-arc, re-written, expanded, & re-recorded as of Aug 2026:- Ep. 306: Dead Men Tell No Tales: https://megaphone.link/ARML5251369441- Ep. 307: Murders & Acquisitions, Mostly: https://megaphone.link/ARML6215286599 - Ep. 308: The Shadow State:
https://megaphone.link/ARML7890860851
Bottled up in Tung Chung Bay, subsisting for three weeks on caterpillars & boiled rice, the largest pirate fleet in the history of the world meets six Portuguese ships and the arithmetic that finishes it. What follows is the biggest criminal amnesty the world had yet seen, and a question very few pirates ever get to ask themselves: what does a cutthroat do with retirement?
Time Period Covered:
1809–1844 CE
Major Historical Figures:
Red Flag Confederation:
Zheng Yi Sao (AKA Ching Shih, née Shi Yang), Commander of the Red Flag Confederation [1775–1844]Zhang Baozai (Cheung Po Tsai), Fleet Commander of the Red Flags, later Qing navy vice-commander at Penghu [1783–1822]Guo Podai, Commander of the Black Flag Fleet [178?–181?]Mei Ying, a captive of the Red Flag Fleet [d. 1809]
Qing Empire:
The Jiaqing Emperor (Aisin-Gioro Yongyan) [r. 1796–1820]The Daoguang Emperor (Aisin-Gioro Minning) [r. 1820–1850]Bailing (Zhang Bailing), Governor-General of Liangguang [1748–18??]Sun Quanmou, Provincial Fleet CommanderZhou Feixiong, physician of MacauWu Yaonan, government official [fl. 1810–1840]Lin Zexu, Viceroy of Liangguang [1785–1850]
Portuguese Empire:
Miguel José de Arriaga Brum da Silveira, Ouvidor of MacauCaptain José Pinto Alcoforado de Azevedo e Sousa, Commander of the Macau FlotillaGonçalves Carocha, pilot
British East India Company:
Richard Glasspoole, second mate of the Marquis of Ely [1788–1846]
Major Sources Cited:
Andrade, Tonio. The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History.
Antony, Robert J. Like Froth Floating on the Sea: The World of Pirates and Seafarers in Late Imperial South China.
Glasspoole, Richard. A Brief Narrative of My Captivity and Treatment Amongst the Ladrones (1809); see also Owen Rutter, ed., Mr Glasspoole and the Chinese Pirates (Golden Cockerel Press, 1935).Leonard, Jane Kate. “Maritime China in Transition, 1750–1850,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 9, Part 2: The Ch’ing Dynasty to 1800.
Murray, Dian H. Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810.
Van de Ven, Hans J. Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China.
Yuan Yonglun. Jing hai fen ji (靖海氛記, 1830), translated by Karl Friedrich Neumann as History of the Pirates Who Infested the China Sea, 1807–1810 (London, 1831). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from The History of China
The leaves are blood-red once again, the coffee’s back to hot, and somewhere in old China, the dead begin to stir restlessly. Grave robbers, well-diggers, strange hobbyists... plenty of folks out there far too willing to go sticking a spade into dirt it doesn't belong. And, of course, consequences ensue...
In the summer of 1861, the strangest siege of the war took shape on the banks of the Yangtze. As Heaven itself sent forth cosmic signs – of victory or disaster, no one could be quite sure – an imperial army had a rebel city completely surrounded.Only for a different rebel army to surround that imperial ringing army.But they were, all of them, deceived... for somewhere out past the hills, another ring was made...
By the autumn of 1860, the Qing Dynasty had run out of armies to lose. What was left of its war was being run out of a mountain valley in southern Anhui by a half-blind scholar-official who was, at that very moment, politely refusing a direct order from his emperor.
For two days in mid-October, ash fell like snow atop Beijing. All that remained of one of the greatest cultural storehouses in all of human history, put to the torch as an extremely personalized punishment... after everything not nailed down inside it had already been looted off, of course.
A suspicious ship of dubious registry is boarded by Qing marines off Canton, 12 of her crew are taken captive for piracy, and the British allege their flag was hauled down in the process. That last part, at least, was almost certainly untrue... not that that stops it all from spinning entirely out of control.