The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520–1810
The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520–1810

Author: Robert J. Antony

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-03-30

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1538161540

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520–1810 exposes readers to the little-known history of Chinese piracy in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries through a short narrative and selection of documentary evidence. In this three-hundred-year period, Chinese piracy was unsurpassed in size and scope anywhere else in the world. The book includes a carefully selected and wide range of Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Japanese sources—some translated for the first time—to illustrate the complexity and variety of piratical activities in Asian waters. These documents include archival criminal cases and depositions of pirates and victims, government reports and proclamations, memoirs of coastal residents and pirate captives, and written and oral folklore handed down for generations. The book also illuminates the important role that pirates played in the political, economic, social, and cultural transformations of early modern China and the world. An historical perspective provides an important vantage point to understand piracy as a recurring cyclical phenomenon inseparably connected with the past.

The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520-1810
The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520-1810

Author: Robert J. Antony

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9781538161531

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the waters around China, the "golden age of piracy" stretched for nearly three centuries from the mid-sixteenth to early-nineteenth centuries. Over those years, there was an unprecedented advance in Chinese piracy unsurpassed in size and scope anywhere else in the world. This book uses primary source documents to uncover the history of "dwarf bandits," "sea rebels," and "ocean bandits."

The Penguin Book of Pirates
The Penguin Book of Pirates

Author: Katherine Howe

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2024-04-30

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 059351159X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Real-life accounts of the world’s most notorious pirates—both men and women, from the Golden Age of Piracy and beyond—compiled by the New York Times bestselling author of A True Account: Hannah Masury’s Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself A Penguin Classic Spanning three centuries and eight thousand nautical miles, and compiled by a direct descendant of a sailor who waged war with pirates in the early nineteenth century, The Penguin Book of Pirates takes us behind the eye patches, the peg legs, and the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger and into the no-man’s-land of piracy that is rife with paradoxes and plot twists. Here, in a fascinating array of accounts that include trial transcripts, journalism, ship logs, and more, are the grit and patois of real maritime marauders like the infamous Blackbeard; the pirates who inspired Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, Stede Bonnet in Max’s Our Flag Means Death, and the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride; the astoundingly egalitarian multi-ethnic and multilingual crews that became enmeshed in historical horrors like the slave trade; and lesser-known but no less formidable women pirates, many of whom disguised themselves as men. By turns brutal, harrowing, and inspiring, these accounts of the “radically free” sailors who were citizens more of the oceangoing world than of any nation on land remind us of the glories and dangers of the open seas and the seductive appeal of communities forged in resistance. For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates
White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates

Author: Wensheng Wang

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2014-01-06

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 0674726618

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The reign of Emperor Jiaqing (1796-1820 CE) has occupied an awkward position in studies of China's last dynasty, the Qing. Conveniently marking a watershed between the prosperous eighteenth century and the tragic post-Opium War era, this quarter century has nevertheless been glossed over as an unremarkable interlude separating two well-studied epochs of transformation. White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates presents a major reassessment of this period by examining how the emperors, bureaucrats, and foreigners responded to the two crises that shaped the transition from the Qianlong to the Jiaqing reign. Wensheng Wang argues that the dramatic combination of internal uprising and transnational piracy, rather than being a hallmark of inexorable dynastic decline, propelled the Manchu court to reorganize itself through modifications in policymaking and bureaucratic structure. The resulting Jiaqing reforms initiated a process of state retreat that pulled the Qing Empire out of a cycle of aggressive overextension and resistance, and back onto a more sustainable track of development. Although this pragmatic striving for political sustainability was unable to save the dynasty from ultimate collapse, it represented a durable and constructive approach to the compounding problems facing the late Qing regime and helped sustain it for another century.

The Blue Frontier
The Blue Frontier

Author: Ronald C. Po

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-08-23

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1108424619

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Argues that Qing China was not just a continental empire, but a maritime power protecting its interests at sea.

Routledge Handbook of the Global History of Warfare
Routledge Handbook of the Global History of Warfare

Author: Kaushik Roy

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-01-23

Total Pages: 654

ISBN-13: 0429795467

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This handbook examines key aspects of the development of the global history of warfare and the changing patterns of warfare over time. Although scholarship has long eschewed a chronological narrative of the evolution of warfare that privileges the Western experience, global histories of warfare have had difficulty avoiding an overemphasis on the West. The present volume is a collection of themes rather than a history per se; it provides important perspectives on the emergence of warfare as a global historical experience from the ancient past to the present day. Drawing together numerous experts, it tells a broader, more inclusive story of the global, human experience with wars and warfare. The 35 cahtpers are organised in eight thematic parts: Part I: Origins of Warfare Part II: Polities and Armed Forces in the Pre-Modern Era Part III: Steppe Nomads of Eurasia Part IV: Naval Warfare and Piracy in the Pre-Industrial World Part V: The Impact of Gunpowder Part VI: Transition from Industrial to Total War Part VII: Wars of Decolonisation and Cold War Part VIII: Postmodern/New Wars These Parts offer an overview of the global experience of warfare to help readers understand how the wars and the militaries we see today have been shaped by historical developments across the globe. This handbook will be of great interest to students of military history, naval history, strategic studies and world history in general.

Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers
Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers

Author: Robert J. Antony

Publisher: Hong Kong University Press

Published: 2010-10-01

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 9888028111

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Piracy and smuggling are as great a problem today as they were several hundreds of years ago. The studies in Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers, for the first time, carefully describe and critically analyze piracy and smuggling in the Greater China Seas region from the sixteenth century to the present. Because piracy and smuggling involve complex historical processes that are still evolving, to fully understand contemporary problems it is important to place them in larger historical and comparative perspectives. The essays in this book add significantly to the scholarship on East and Southeast Asian history, and in particular to the maritime history of the region we call the Greater China Seas. This is the first book to analyze the whole region from Japan to Southeast Asia as a single, integrated historical and geographical area. This book takes a radical departure from the standard terracentered histories to place the seas at the center rather than at the margins of our inquiries. By focusing on the water we are better able to stitch together the diverse histories of Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. The contributors to this anthology show that, although often dismissed as historically unimportant, pirates and smugglers have in fact played significant roles in the development of the modern world. Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers should appeal to undergraduate and graduate students in history and Asian studies, as well as to general readers interested in pirates and maritime history.

A People's History of the World
A People's History of the World

Author: Chris Harman

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2017-05-02

Total Pages: 753

ISBN-13: 1786630818

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Building on A People’s History of the United States, this radical world history captures the broad sweep of human history from the perspective of struggling classes. An “indispensable volume” on class and capitalism throughout the ages—for readers reckoning with the history they were taught and history as it truly was (Howard Zinn) From the earliest human societies to the Holy Roman Empire, from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, from the Industrial Revolution to the end of the twentieth century, Chris Harman provides a brilliant and comprehensive history of the human race. Eschewing the standard accounts of “Great Men,” of dates and kings, Harman offers a groundbreaking counter-history, a breathtaking sweep across the centuries in the tradition of “history from below.” In a fiery narrative, he shows how ordinary men and women were involved in creating and changing society and how conflict between classes was often at the core of these developments. While many scholars see the victory of capitalism as now safely secured, Harman explains the rise and fall of societies and civilizations throughout the ages and demonstrates that history moves ever onward in every age. A vital corrective to traditional history, A People's History of the World is essential reading for anyone interested in how society has changed and developed and the possibilities for further radical progress.

Oceanic Histories
Oceanic Histories

Author: David Armitage

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1108423183

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Freshly presents world history through its oceans and seas in uniquely wide-ranging, original chapters by leading experts in their fields.

The Currency of Empire
The Currency of Empire

Author: Jonathan Barth

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-06-15

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 150175579X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In The Currency of Empire, Jonathan Barth explores the intersection of money and power in the early years of North American history, and he shows how the control of money informed English imperial action overseas. The export-oriented mercantile economy promoted by the English Crown, Barth argues, directed the plan for colonization, the regulation of colonial commerce, and the politics of empire. The imperial project required an orderly flow of gold and silver, and thus England's colonial regime required stringent monetary regulation. As Barth shows, money was also a flash point for resistance; many colonists acutely resented their subordinate economic station, desiring for their local economies a robust, secure, and uniform money supply. This placed them immediately at odds with the mercantilist laws of the empire and precipitated an imperial crisis in the 1670s, a full century before the Declaration of Independence. The Currency of Empire examines what were a series of explosive political conflicts in the seventeenth century and demonstrates how the struggle over monetary policy prefigured the patriot reaction to the Stamp Act and so-called Intolerable Acts on the eve of American independence. Thanks to generous funding from the Arizona State University and George Mason University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.