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- [00:01]
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- [00:58]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
Few pirates in history wielded as much power as Zheng Yi Sao, the woman who rose from obscurity to command one of the largest pirate fleets the world has ever seen, challenging the Qing Empire's control of the South China Sea. Yet despite her extraordinary achievements, surprisingly little is known for certain about her life, and many of the stories told about her blur the line between history and legend. For this Life of the Week episode of the History Extra podcast, I spoke to Diane Murray, author of Pirates of the south China coast, 1790-1810, to explore what the historical record can really tell us, tracing her remarkable rise to power, her carefully negotiated surrender, and the enduring legacy of history's most formidable pirate queen. Thank you so much today to join me to talk about this remarkable life on the podcast. Diane, it's a real pleasure to have you on. Now, before we get started, I understand that there are multiple pronunciations of the character we are going to talk about today. So just so we're clear, would you mind just explaining a bit more about this and why this is the name
- [02:14]
Diane Murray
is complicated because of the way Western people have romanized Chinese pronunciation and characters. In the time that Jiang Yi Sao lived, there was no standardized way to romanize those Chinese characters of her name into English. So the name that first came into Western usage was Jing Shi. I am not sure whether that is just the first free for all for the Romanization of Chinese or whether that is a romanization of the Cantonese pronunciation of those characters. When I came to the texts, I saw her name used in all the government documents as Zheng Yi Sao. And Zheng is a very common last name in my book. I romanized it according to what we call the Wei Giles system. That system was the first one to romanize Chinese characters and Chinese sounds into English by two British consul generals in China in the middle of the 80s, 1800s, 1850s, and that was used in all the academic circles everywhere until the rise of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The official American system changed in I think it was 1979, after we recognized the People's Republic. Then the common way to Romanize was to use the Chinese system called Pinyin, and that's where you get into the Z. So her name would be Zhang Z H E N G. And so it's complicated. In my book, I used the White Giles because that was written earlier and before this had all gelled in the U.S. subsequently, I have used the Pinyin system. It's all the same, and she's the same woman. But it looks very complicated because these systems look very different when they're spelled out into text of English material. So I just called her Madam Jung, figuring that was the easiest way and the least complicated way. And so she can be Madam Zheng or Madam C H E N G. Either way, fantastic.
- [04:30]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
So that's really helpful as we speak. So maybe as we go through this conversation, we can use both Madam Zhang or Jiang Yi Sao. First thing I really want to ask you, having clarified that, is how much do we know about her early life? Can we start with talking about her earliest years?
- [04:47]
Diane Murray
I think I had figured that she was probably born in 1776, and she was a native of one of the townships or districts, probably along the Pearl river in Guangzhou Province. We know that about her. There was a rumor, and I don't know if it's true or not, but it makes a certain amount of sense that she spent some time on a flower boat, and the flower boats were the brothels of the South China Sea, if you will. We have to remember this was a world where water was the medium. There weren't a lot of roads, there were rivers everywhere, and commerce, lifestyle, everything was conducted on the waves. And there were actual villages that extended out into water where some of the residents on these houseboats, as they were called, never set foot on land during their entire lives. There were vessels for marriage. There were all kinds of different seafaring things that brought them the things they needed in life. And also it was a tradition where commerce by sampans, these three board boats or these flat little boats would go between the various waterways and boats and traffic and either sell things or unload things. And those were often sculled or rowed by women. So this is a very different kind of context from the one we associate in the west with the water. And so it was likely that she did spend time on a flower boat. We don't know anything more about that. She perhaps got there. We don't know this, but maybe she was sold by her family, because this was a very common thing. When families couldn't make ends meet, they might sell a child. And so that could have been it. But we don't know that. We don't know much about her at all.
- [06:36]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
Well, as we don't know a great deal about her earliest years, perhaps. Could you tell us a bit more about the world of China and the South China Sea in the sort of late 18th, early 19th century? Can you give us that context?
- [06:48]
Diane Murray
The whole China Seacoast was an area of very small amounts of land that was tillable. So farming was not an option for a lot of the residents who lived there. And as I said before, there was this seafaring community. Most of those people were fishermen. And they had a season for fishing that was about half a year. And when the fishing season was not optional, many of them resorted to piracy. And so what I've called petty piracy was rampant along the South China coast historically. And this would be a very small scale event. It would consist of maybe a boat, a junk or two, and a handful of people who would go up the coast, raid either the domestic seafaring traffic or foreign commerce if they had enough wherewithal to do that. And the problem with that was this piracy was so small scale and such a nuisance that they could go back into their native villages. And it didn't raise alarms in Beijing or with the imperial system much. It was just a local nuisance. A couple of things were happening as we move into the late 1700s and the early 1800s. For one thing, the pressures on land were increasing, so more and more people were having to flee off the. And there was an appreciation then of people to become pirates in this off season. And the other thing then that really gave this small scale piracy a boost was a rebellion in Vietnam which broke out in the 1770s. And what this did was it sent the Vietnamese, who the Vietnamese rebels became the emperor. And they had the country united for the first time in a very, very long history. But they didn't have a navy. And their suzerainty was constantly challenged by those who had been dethroned during this takeover. And so they went up the coast, they sent expeditions up the coast into China to recruit these fishermen, pirates as a privateer force. And so this gave them a base in Vietnam. It enabled groups that had maybe been a few dozen to become a few hundred junks to cooperate and to form what ultimately became a confederation. So piracy during this period, from the 1770s until about 182 is very much an affair of what we would call privateering for the patrons of the Vietnam who sponsored them. So now we have groups that are gathering, they're learning how to work together, they're learning how to cooperate. In 1802, when these Vietnamese rebel emperors are overthrown, the pirates lose their base and they have to go back to China. But now they're too big. And so what happens is there are six or seven predominant fleets and they start fighting each other. But they soon realize this is not a very productive strategy. So they join forces. And in 1805 they drew up a contract that explains their organization a confederation, how they're going to sort of divide up the territory. And so we had six or seven fleets at that time, each with a demarcated territory to operate in. All vessels had to fly the flags of the fleet that they were affiliated with. And there were procedures for what you do when you have a heist and how you divide the profits, who gets to keep what. And there were even provisions to put into a common treasury for the those who were not doing quite as well to also be supported. So this was sort of the impetus then that led to large scale piracy during the early 1800s on the coast of South China. The top down, from the government's perspective, this maritime water world in Guangzhou was a long ways away. The problems and the orientation of China prehistorically and into the modern period was always to the northwest. That's where the Mongols invaded from. It's where the horsemen from Central Asia would come down. It's why the Great Wall was buil to protect against those kind of raids from the north. So that's where the security was. That's point one. Point two is in this same period, the early 1800s, not only was there this problem on the coast, but there were some rebellions in the north. There was a Muslim rebellion, there was a White Lotus, which was a kind of a Buddhist millenarian rebellion that was also going on simultaneously. So the ability of the government to deal with all these resources at the time was strained. And bureaucracy was a very small bureaucracy given the enormous size of the population in the country. So that also hindered the ability of the government to put this down immediately and we could go into its military organization which was fragmented and that further complicated it. So there were some reasons from the top, kind of reasons why it was unable to get out of hand. And the push from below as people needed employment. People were suffering from hard times and were taking to the sea, they were fleeing. And there was a town on the border between China and Vietnam called Jiangping. And this seems to have been a kind of a no man's land. It was a fishing market, but it also was a kind of recruitment place. And, you know, ne' er do wells from the upstate or the upland would come down there. There were fishermen, it was a milieu, there were boats. And it was easy to outfit your pirate crew and to get ready to engage in this enterprise from this particular base. And it changed. Sometimes it was in China, sometimes it was in Vietnam. This was an era when borders did not exist in the way we have them today. Hong Kong was an incense producing village. It had not yet come under British suzerainty. So the only foreign enclave in this area was Macau, which was Portuguese.
- [13:06]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
This is fantastic context for the life we're about to cover in this episode. So this is the world that Madan Jiang is born into, she grows up in. How does she first enter the world of piracy?
- [13:20]
Diane Murray
We see her entering in the world of piracy, linked up to the man who presumably becomes her husband. We don't know how their courtship or their acquaintance began. It may have been a flower boat, it may have been something else. But he was one of the pirates who was involved in supporting the rebellion and the rebel emperors in Vietnam, the Taishan. So that's where they first come into play. And at that period he had a distant relative named Zhang Qi, who was the leader of the family, if you will, the family pirates, if you will, and was the sort of the main organizer. But this gentleman died very shortly thereafter and the whole enterprise of the so called Red Fleet fell into the hands of Jung Yi. And as that emerges, we see her linked up with him.
- [14:18]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
And what did their partnership look like? Do we have any insights into that at all?
- [14:23]
Diane Murray
We don't have much. We don't really see her coming into her own until a little bit later. But. But there is an interesting phenomenon, I think, that occurs that will be something that will not be widely known in the West. And that is one of the ways that these pirates, as they become professional, which happens after 1805 and even before. One of the ways they enlarge their fleets is by capturing others. And so one of the captives of the jungs, Zheng Yi, Mr. Zheng and Zheng Yi Sao, his wife, was a young man by the name of Zhang Bao. He was the son of a fisherman and was apparently captured while they were at sea fishing one day. Zhang Bao had a lot of prowess, and as such he was made a captain of a ship. At a very early age. He also was adopted into this Jung family. Now, adult adoption in China was not unheard of. It was something of a common phenomenon because in order to do business, you had to have a family relationship. For example, if you were a business family or an entrepreneurial family or a commercial family, and you had a business, let's say, in Guangzhou or in Canton, and you wanted to extend to Manila or to Japan, you would have to have a family member who would go to take on that responsibility. And if you didn't have that, well, where are you going to get it? Well, you're going to get it from a male. Also, male heirs were important. So if a family did not have an heir, they might adopt a child or probably more likely an adult to come in, take the family name and to carry on the business. So Zhang Bao becomes then a member of this group, of this family, and he then rises to a very high position within the Red Flag Fleet, which is the important one. And then it's at the point where Zhang Yi, Madame Zhang's husband, dies in 1807 that Zheng Yi Sao, his wife, Madame Zheng, inherits the Red Fleet or takes over the Red Fleet and makes Zhang Bao her chief lieutenant and her right hand man, and in effect, the de facto commander of that fleet.
- [16:45]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
Why did they choose to do this? Why did they get married? What was the purpose? Was there a reason why that was a good thing to do?
- [16:52]
Diane Murray
That's a good question. I don't know why they got married or what that actually meant in that context, but there were provisions about families on board ships, and certain women were allowed on board ship. And if females were captured and held for ransom, some of them could be purchased by the pirates or they could live with them on board ship. And so it may have been in compliance with some of the regulations and practices that were enforced on board ship, but we really don't know. So it's kind of interesting to speculate why particularly. There's another dimension to this that I forgot to mention. When Zhang Bao was taken into the family and adopted, he also had a homosexual relationship with Madam Jung's husband, Zhang Yi. I found that to have been a very widespread phenomenon. When I did my research, I had something like 89 cases that talked about apprehension of pirates in the South China Sea. And this was early on. This was before the confederation was a big deal. And in, I think, something like 54 of them, sodomy or homosexual relations were mentioned. And the reason for this, I believe, is that homosexual behavior, or sodomy, as they called it, was punishable, but it was not a capital offense. And when pirates were captured, they were allowed to be processed locally. They did not have to be sent to Beijing to be tried. So the governor and governor's general who were in charge were allowed to determine their fate. And in doing that, though, they had to send to Beijing a cover letter or an explanation, a memorial, explaining what the case was and what legal sanctions were being employed. And so we learn very much about how this whole process was litigated from these documents. And one of the things that was mentioned then was Sodom. So early in my career, I was speculating, now, what did all this mean? Did it mean, one, a love relationship at sea, which was not an uncommon thing? Two, did it mean some kind of power drive on the part of a superior vis a vis and inferior? Did it mean a kind of initiation? We don't know. We don't know. But I just spent a lot of time trying to imagine what that could have met and what that did in terms of that whole milieu of seafaring people who were aboard ship, Largely male populations, although there were women on board. And then how she ultimately, upon the death of her husband, took over the relationship and had a child and was associated with Zhang Bao for the rest of his life.
- [19:54]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
It's a really interesting thing to debate and think about. How does the Red Flag fleet become the central authority in the pirate world at this time? And what role did Madame Zhang take in this?
- [20:05]
Diane Murray
The Red Flag fleet may have been the largest collection of Jungs and sailors when the Vietnamese rebel emperor was overthrown in going back to China. And I think that its territory enhanced its ability to grow and maintain its size. For example, it seemed to operate within the Pearl river delta in the area that today is Hong Kong and Macau. In that area, there is a sea goddess temple at a place called Liu Min, which is on the. If we're looking at a map, it's on the eastern edge of that Victoria harbor and that Guangdong. It's where the water is the narrowest. And that was allegedly founded by progenitors of this family in the 1700s. And it was to keep an eye on traffic coming through the water so that they could be potential prey that have been a part of what was going on here, that would have been the richest area because the other thing that was happening in this world was increasing commerce. And the Chinese government had mandated that all Western shipping participate in what was called a canton system. It's complicated, but Western, the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, no one could have a base in China proper at that time. So the only way to get to Guangzhou, where the trade would be conducted, would be to go through Macau. Macau was a Portuguese colony. It had been so since the 1550s. And it acted as a kind of an entree point. And ships that were going to go up the Pearl river to Guangzhou or to Canton had to stop there, get a Chinese pilot to take them on through those. Those waters. So by the time of the late Seventeens and the early 1800s, Western shipping, Western commerce was increasingly active and present in those waters. Also, there was a rising local trade, domestic trade, that was with China and Southeast Asia. That trade was going, and its terminus was primarily up the coast in Fujian province. But there was a lot more traffic. And I think that the Red Flag fleet was positioned in a way to take the fullest advantage of it. And so that's what seems to have happened.
- [22:35]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
Okay, so that's why they rise to that preeminence. Now, after the death of her first husband, Madame Zheng then takes this quite prominent leadership role. How does she assume control over the fleets and then a wider confederation?
- [22:50]
Diane Murray
That's a kind of a mystery. The sources don't give us much detail, but. But there is an allusion to the fact that she was a good, strong manipulator, if you will. A lot of these fleets had a lot of family members and had connections that way. And she seems to have been able to prevail over any relatives, male relatives of the family. And we really don't know how that worked or what enabled them to cause them to support her. But. But it may have been the fact that she might have been the lesser of two evils. Maybe better a woman than my uncle here or my cousin over here or my brother here. Or it may have just been that she was able to use the resources at hand to quell any internal dissension within that fleet. So it's a bit of a mystery, but she certainly was able to prevail over any rival power sources that may have challenged her.
- [23:53]
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- [26:17]
Diane Murray
The bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew.
- [26:29]
Progressive Insurance Advertiser
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- [26:31]
Diane Murray
The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for from a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook.
- [26:41]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
Now that she's a leader, how does she then assert her power? Asserts her control over the Red Flag fleet And then perhaps the wider confederation, when that expands, Part of her authority
- [26:53]
Diane Murray
may lie in this aspect of the confederation that we talked about forming in 1805. And part of it, I think, also has to do with. With the expertise of Jiang Bao, who by this time is an adult and is the sort of de facto person who probably operates much of the red flag fleet. There seems to be a situation where she can give an order and the ships have to obey, otherwise there are sanctions. And so one of the clearest examples of this comes in November of 1809, when, part of the red flag fleet, they are headquartered on Lantau island. The fleet, I think, had that island as their base. And there's kind of a narrow strip of water. There's a little island at the top, and there's a dip in there where there's a bay. And I think the boats were there. They were being careened. The barnacles were being swept off the bottom, and they were being re caulked. And she saw these mandarin or these Chinese warships approaching, and she gives the signal, you know, come here, guys. And I think there were what were called fast boats, and I think they acted as couriers so messages could be delivered. There were also a series of flags that I think could be flown with different signals for communication. There were pretty sophisticated means of communication that took place. That's how the word got out. The seriousness and the effectiveness of their communication abilities were also evident when they dealt with westerners who had been captured by the pirates, and they were dealing with their governments or their representatives for ransom or for whatever else was going to take place for their freedom to be secured. And so there were some extensive negotiations and communications that were all effected here. So they had a system that was able to extend communication fairly rapidly among the various.
- [28:55]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
And one thing we should maybe point out here is when we're talking about a confederation, just how big is this confederation?
- [29:01]
Diane Murray
There was a sailor from the east India Company named Richard Glasspool, and in, I believe it was September 1809, he was captured by the pirates. And he was held until sometime in December. I think at that period, the fleet and the confederation was probably at its apex. He estimated there were between 50 and 70,000 individuals involved at that point. I believe there were six flag fleets. And the red flag fleet was by far and away the largest. When they finally surrendered to the government, there were several thousand members and several hundred vessels. I think they estimated that the vessels may have been 1200 junks with 800 little boats that could have gone into the shallower waters. So they were large.
- [29:54]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
That's truly extraordinary. Now, we've spoken about the communication side of things, but how about sort of rules and discipline? I've heard that there was a law that was put in place. Is that correct?
- [30:05]
Diane Murray
The rules and the discipline that I think is the most reliable and the most enforceable Were the articles of the confederation that I mentioned a minute ago that were done in 1805. There are references, and I have seen and translated some of the other supposed rules about conduct and how one had to behave. Their origin, I assume, was from either Zhang Bao or Jiang Yi Sao, or the two of them working together, but we can't be sure on that. But there clearly were rules. And there is another British captive who from 1806 reported seeing the rules enforced and violators of the rules being punished on board ship. So there does seem to have been some degree of discipline and order being maintained.
- [30:57]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
One of the other things that I've heard about this wider confederation was that it acted a bit like a shadow state. Would you agree with that?
- [31:06]
Diane Murray
I think I would. Especially in light of a lot of the scholarship today where non state actors and non state formations have become kind of a hot topic. If you think of a state as having control of violence and military power, I think we'd have to say yes. The pirates, particularly the Red Flag Fleet and the Black Flag Fleet was a close ally, Were able to pretty much decimate the Imperial Water forces. Now, there was no national navy, but there were certain fortresses or forts along the coast. And there were ships that were connected to those. And the Governor and the Governor General had control of some ships. But by the mid-1806, 1807, 18, those had been largely destroyed. And it was reported that some of the official sailors for the water forces were afraid to go out of port and would damage their own vessels to make them leak so that they didn't have to take to the water. So at that point, the pirates are in control. There was what was called assault gabelle or assault monopoly. Salt was a commodity that was important for the diet and for the livelihood in China. And its production, transport and sale was a government monopoly. There were salt beds in what was called the Leizhou Peninsula. And if you go west from Hong Kong, There's a peninsula that sticks out down there in the South China border. And about four times a year, the harvest of salt would be collected and put on vessels. And it would be shipped then to Guangzhou for distribution. Didn't take the pirates long before they had under their control they had captured all those fleets or had them under control. So what finally happened there was they were paid to escort the salt fleets so that they could have a safe transport. So that's another sign of their prowess, of their military prowess. They were also able to extend their raids into some of the coastal villages. So if we can agree that they've got a kind of military ability that the state. State doesn't have, and if we can think of financial regularity as being a second aspect of a state, the ability to tax. Well, these guys had posts set up along much of the South China coast, and there were offices and connections in Macau as well. And in these posts were sold documents, you could call them passports, if you will, or documents for safe passage. And so if you wanted, as a fisherman or a trader or. Or a passenger to set out to sea, you had better buy one of these. And if you had one in your possession and you could show it, pirates could not attack you. And if they did, they had to do recompense. You had to be reimbursed. That regularized their income. So they weren't living on a heist just here and a capture over here. They had a regularized source of income. And this extended not only to seafaring traffic, but to the inland coastal villages as want to be attacked, you better pay tribute. And Mr. Glaspool, whom I mentioned a moment ago, was an unwilling participant on one of these tribute collecting missions that the pirates launched in. It was in September, October of 1809, where they did. And he reports going into the villages and collecting from those who paid and raiding and attacking those that were not ready to pay up. And the captures, and particularly the women who were captured as a. And the way they were dispatched and sold, et cetera. So if you consider those aspects, I think you probably do have a state within a state. And certainly they had. Then the other thing they had were connections on shore to get rid of their. To unload their proceeds and that kind of thing. And somebody reported that there was never a shortage of cash on board those vessels. Their financial stability was pretty regularized. And it would have to be, because if you've got thousands of, you can't be living off of a chance encounter. Also, by 1809, they were picking the coast pretty clean. There wasn't a whole lot to get anymore.
- [35:44]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
Wow, that is extraordinary. Just how responsible was Zhang Yi Sao for this prowess of the confederation? Can we tell?
- [35:53]
Diane Murray
We can tell that when she gave an order, it was obeyed. And the clearest example is the one that I mentioned a few moments ago who, when she was sort of trapped on Lantau island and in a position where she couldn't really set to sea immediately because these vessels had to be cured and caulked when she gave the order come, they did come. So we don't know to what extent she was the sole authority, but I think the evidence is pretty strong that they respected her and when she spoke, people had to obey. Also, her ability finally comes to the fore again when the pirates end their careers at sea. They had successfully staved off blockade In November of 1809, when government forces and Portuguese forces were supposed to be working for their demise, for their ultimate extinction. And what happened was the government forces were sending fireboats in into the pirates enclave. The pirates were sort of blockaded in and they thought that would destroy them. But the wind changed and the pirates were able to take the fireboats and push them off and send them back to the government vessels which were the ones that were destroyed. And the pirates got out. And it was shortly thereafter that internecine struggles between the Black Squadron and the Red Squadron led to the beginning of the breakdown of the Confederation. And in time honored fashion, the members of the Black Squad Flag fleet surrendered to the government and became officials in charge of piracy suppression. And this caused some ripple effects in the other units as well. And so it was not too much after that, maybe four or five months, when the Red Flag fleet decided it was time for them to surrender as well. And initially in I believe it was February of 1810, it was arranged and the guys were going to pull this thing off and something happened. As the procedure got underway, there were some shots fired. And it may have been welcoming shots on the part of the government, but they were mistaken as wartime shots on the part of the pirates. And whatever reason, it fell apart. And so it was finally in April of 1810 that the Confederation ceased being. And it was the result of Jeung Yi Sao. And she apparently went into the governor's yamen in Guangzhou with a of bunch of the women pirates and pulled off the success or negotiated the successive surrender. So I think that is a sign of the fact that she did have and exercise a lot of authority over this group.
- [38:36]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
Can we say that this is Zhang Yi Sao knowing when to quit? It wasn't a surrender from cowardice. It was perhaps more knowing when to call time on the fleet.
- [38:46]
Diane Murray
I think that's right. What had happened is, as I said, they had sort of picked the coast clean. There had been a new Governor general sent down to Guangzhou. And he had implemented a kind of cordon sanitaire along the coast where there were supposed to be no commerce with the pirates. And so their food, I think their food was becoming a little bit more difficult to get. Perhaps raids at sea were not as easy. The pirates had seen what happened to the Black Flag fleet and they thought, well, why should we continue when we can basically surrender, get what we want, and live happily ever after? And being a government official was always the high point and the career goal of any Chinese, particularly on land. They had adopted and implemented the first and the most successful civil service system that went way, way back in Chinese history. And these were a series of very intense examinations that occurred all over China. And males of all stripes, but those who could basically afford an education would sit for these exams. And if they succeeded, they could ultimately become a government official. Well, the people who were called the mean people, M e a n people, were people who were the kind of ne' er do wells. And some of those ne' er do wells were the boat people that we have been referring to. They were called tanja egg families. They lived off the coast. They had had this kind of world that was so shaky in terms of what the government thought of them that they couldn't take the exam. They didn't have an opportunity. Not that they would have been able to do that, but they could rise militarily. And by surrendering. The leaders of the Black Flag fleet, Zhang Bao in particular, they got commissions in the government. And ultimately Zhang Bao was allowed to keep a certain number of his ships to engage in the salt trade. And he became an official and ultimately rose through the military ranks. He was stationed at one point in the Pescadores and then ultimately in Fujian Province. He was on his way up. He hadn't quite become a brigadier general, which was the highest position, but he came to the attention of another. Another man, Linza XU, who in 20 or 30 years was going to be sent down to Guangzhou to halt the opium trade that was going on between China and Britain. And he objected to the fact that this, you know, former ne' er do well pirate was rising so high in the government ranks, and this was not a good thing, yada, yada, yada. Before that could be completely litigated or failed, Zhang Bao died. And at that point, there was a source. I think this was the Chinese Recorder, which was a Christian periodical that came out about every month or every quarter, reported that Zheng Yi sao Madam Cheng had moved back to Guangzhou and was living off the proceeds of her bordellos and gambling dens. So that's sort of the end of the story that we know. But I think that the surrender then was a good deal. You had to show your willingness. And so what this also involved was a good faith effort where you would go capture some of your fellows, or the people in the Red Flag fleet would go after the people in the Green Flag fleet if they didn't want to surrender, and they'd bring them in. And that showed their sincerity. And they became government officials put in charge of piracy suppression. And ultimately this episode receded.
- [42:28]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
That surrender seems unusually strategic, but it seems that it worked. They were able to live out the rest of their lives with relative spending success, considering. Now, I've got to ask you, why has Zheng Yisao, Madame Zhang become such a magnetic figure in terms of historical storytelling? She's got this really evocative legacy.
- [42:50]
Diane Murray
She isn't or wasn't in China. When I did my research, nobody had heard of her. The only pirate of any fame down in the Hong Kong region was down. Pirates were not a big deal in terms of either history or literature in China. I mean, there had been some big pirates, some major pirate episodes, but they were not romanticized. The pirates were not legends in literature in the way that they were in the West. And I think that her fame or her reputation has come because of Western scholars. This began in the 1830s. 30s. There was a book written by an underling in one of the offices in Guangzhou. He was a government clerk of some sort, and he was writing this tale about the pirates to serve as a warning to keep your guard up on the coast and, you know, don't let this happen again. That was serialized and translated and published in one of the papers. By this time, Hong Kong was coming into its own as a British colony, and it was published serially. So this brought the episode into light in an English readership. And then the other piece that was published was Mr. Glaspool's narrative of His Time in China. And that was first published in a forum in 1814, I think. So this stuff was there, there in the early 1900s, 1920s, 1930s. Certain scholars, they were interested in piracy and they would write these sort of anthologies of famous pirates, sort of like what Daniel Defoe had done much earlier for some of the famous pirates in Western history. And so there would be these anthologies and they'd have somebody from the Barbary coast, and they would have Henry Morgan from the Caribbean, and they'd have Blackbeard. And because. Because this episode of Chinese pirates had a woman that attracted their attention. So it was there. I didn't know anything about this, and I kind of stumbled on it. I can remember when I started my research, there was a woman named Grace Fox who had written an account. She had written about, I think, British naval encounters in China or something. And she mentioned pirates and a woman, and that was sort of it. And so I just started researching and I kept seeing this name and brought it to light. Nobody in China knew about it. And most of what was said in that translation was really not very. It was not particularly well translated. So I guess if she has a following, it's owing to the fact that in the west, pirates have been a source of historical imagination. There has been a lot of romanticizing about them. And the fact that she's a woman is very rare among Western sources where women were regarded as dangerous objects aboard vessels. And so anytime, you know, Grace o', Malley, Ann Bonney, Mary Reed, these are big time deals. And so here we have a woman who really was a big time deal. And I think she's captured the popular imagination.
- [46:13]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
Obviously, she's come more to light in recent years. But how do you think that we should be thinking about her today? How do you think we should understand her, her story and her legacy?
- [46:24]
Diane Murray
I think we should see her less as an object of fiction and more as an historical figure who lived in a time and appreciate the fact that she had certain abilities, she had certain talents, she must have been extraordinary. But she was not out of the question in the sense that the milieu in which she lived was one where women were at active on the sea and active as seafarers. And I think we can think of her as somebody for whom the real challenges of historical research are apparent in her life. There's so much we'd like to know, so much we don't know. And so the problem I see with this, with her legacy and the legacy of probably a lot of historical characters is when we lack for historical information, you go to the realm of fantasy. And that's fine if you're doing a novel or if you're doing a piece of literature and you're very conscious of that. But it's not fine when you're doing history and you're passing it off as history, as these guys in the 20s and the 30s were doing. I would say have fun with her, but also acknowledge where the reality ends and the imagination takes over.
- [47:40]
Podcast Host (Emily Brifitts)
That was Diane Murray speaking to me. Emily Brifitts. Diane is emeritus professor at the University of Notre Dame, a historic historian specializing in the maritime world of South China during the 19th century and the author of multiple books, including Pirates of the south China coast, 1790-1810. To read more about when pirates Ruled Asia's waves, head to the link in the episode Description.