Show notes
At its height, the Red Flag Confederation taxed, policed, and protected the coast of Guangdong rather better than the Qing Empire managed to – 20,000 men , 1,800 hulls, and a woman from a Canton floating brothel who ran the whole enterprise on paperwork. Then Canton went looking for help, and found six Portuguese ships.
Time Period Covered:
1804–1809 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 [1783–1822]
Zheng Yi, founder of the Confederation [d. 1807]
Guo Podai, Commander of the Black Flag Fleet [178?–181?]
Liang Bao, Commander of the White Flag Fleet [d. 1809]
Qing Empire:
The Jiaqing Emperor (Aisin-Gioro Yongyan) [r. 1796–1820]
Bailing (Zhang Bailing), Governor-General of Liangguang [1748–18??]
Sun Quanmou, Provincial Fleet Commander
Lin Guoliang, Brigade Commander at Humen [d. 1808]
Xu Tinggui, Brigade-General [d. 1809]
Portuguese Empire:
Lucas José de Alvarenga, Governor of Macau
Miguel José de Arriaga Brum da Silveira, Ouvidor of Macau
Captain José Pinto Alcoforado de Azevedo e Sousa, Commander of the Macau Flotilla [177?–18??]
Pereira Barreto, “the Sea Tiger”
Gonçalves Carocha, pilot of the lorcha Leão
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).
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