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Shuangyu
Shuangyu () was a port on () off the coast of Zhejiang, China. During the 16th century, the port served as an illegal entrepôt of international trade, attracting traders from Japan, Southeast Asia, and Portugal in a time when private overseas trade was haijin, banned by China's ruling Ming dynasty. Portuguese sources called the place Liampó, taking the name of the nearby city of Ningbo on the mainland. Shuangyu's days as a smuggling hub and pirate haven began as early as 1524 and lasted until its destruction by the Ming navy in 1548, an event that was greatly exaggerated (and wrongly dated) by the 16th-century Portuguese travel writer Fernão Mendes Pinto. Illegal trade in the 16th century In the 16th century, a global demand for Chinese products like silk and porcelain coincided with a high demand of silver in China. However, the premier suppliers of silver in East Asia, the Japanese and the Portuguese, could not legally trade in China to meet the massive demand. At the same ti ...
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Jiajing Wokou Raids
The Jiajing wokou raids caused extensive damage to the coast of China in the 16th century, during the reign of the Jiajing Emperor (r. 1521–67) in the Ming dynasty. The term "wokou" originally referred to Japanese pirates who crossed the sea and raided Korea and China; however, by the mid-Ming, the wokou consisted of multinational crewmen that included the Japanese and the Portuguese, but a great majority of them were Chinese instead. Mid-Ming wokou activity began to pose a serious problem in the 1540s, reached its peak in 1555, and subsided by 1567, with the extent of the destruction spreading across the coastal regions of Jiangnan, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong. Historical background Maritime trade in 16th century China Up until the establishment of the Ming dynasty in 1368, China had had a great maritime trading tradition that extended the Chinese trading network by sea all the way into the Indian Ocean. In 1371, the Ming founder Hongwu Emperor implemented the "Haijin, m ...
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Wang Zhi (pirate)
Wang Zhi (), art name Wufeng (), was a Chinese pirate lord of the 16th century, one of the main figures among the ''wokou'' pirates prevalent during the reign of the Jiajing Emperor. Originally a salt merchant, Wang Zhi turned to smuggling during the Ming dynasty's period of maritime prohibitions banning all private overseas trade, and eventually became the head of a pirate syndicate stretching across the East and South China Seas, from Japan to Thailand. Through his clandestine trade, he is credited for spreading European firearms throughout East Asia, and for his role in leading the first Europeans (the Portuguese) to reach Japan in 1543. On the other hand, the Ming government blamed Wang Zhi for the ravages of the Jiajing wokou raids, for which they executed Wang Zhi in 1560 when he was ashore in China trying to negotiate a relaxation of its maritime prohibitions. Early life Wang Zhi was a native of She County of Huizhou (in present-day Huangshan City, Anhui). His mother ...
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Lu Tang
Lu Tang (), courtesy name Ziming, was an army officer of the Ming dynasty in China. He participated in the suppression of the Jiajing wokou raids from 1547 to 1562, during which he fought the Portuguese smugglers who settled in pirate havens on the outlying islands of the Chinese coast. The Portuguese called him Luthissi, a combination of his surname Lu and the position he held, "dusi" (), or regional military commander. As a seasoned general, Lu Tang was a skilled strategist but suffered many setbacks on the battlefield. His career was not only affected by his military fortunes, but also the fates of the numerous commanders that he served. Raze of Shuangyu A native of Runing, Henan, Lu Tang began his career by inheriting a minor military position from his father. By 1548, he rose to the post of Regional Military Commander () of Fujian, where he gained the confidence of the Zhejiang grand coordinator Zhu Wan. On 15 April 1548, Zhu Wan ordered Lu Tang and Ke Qiao () to lead a fle ...
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Zhu Wan
Zhu Wan (; September 29, 1494 – January 2, 1550), courtesy name Zichun () and art name Qiuya (), was a Chinese general of the Ming dynasty. He was known for his uncompromising stance against the Jiajing wokou pirates (so named because they raided during the Jiajing era) and the gentry members who secretly supported them. Early life and career Zhu Wan was born in Changzhou (), now a part of Suzhou, to the schoolteacher Zhu Ang () and his concubine surnamed Shi (). Throughout his upbringing, Zhu Wan and his mother were subject to various abuse by his father's principal wife and his half-brothers. The abuses started three days after he was born when they tried to starve him to death and lasted as late as 1546. His mother shielded him from the abuse when she could and once, an uncle and a cousin intervened to save him from death. Zhu Wan did not mention his father's role in the abuses, but wrote that his father was patient and strict when he taught him the classics and history. Th ...
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Haijin
The Haijin () or sea ban were a series of related policies in China restricting private maritime trading during much of the Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty. The sea ban was an anomaly in Chinese history as such restrictions were unknown during other eras; the bans were each introduced for specific circumstances, rather than based on an age-old inward orientation. In the first sea ban introduced in 1371 by the Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang, Ming China's legal foreign trade was limited to tribute missions, placing international trade under a government monopoly. Initially imposed to deal with Japanese piracy amid anti-Ming insurgency, the Ming was not able to enforce the policy, and trade continued in forms such as smuggling. The sea ban was counterproductive: smuggling and piracy became endemic periodically (though not continuously), mostly perpetrated by Chinese who had been dispossessed by the policy. Piracy dropped to negligible levels upon the end of the policy in 1567. Th ...
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Ningbo
Ningbo is a sub-provincial city in northeastern Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. It comprises six urban districts, two satellite county-level cities, and two rural counties, including several islands in Hangzhou Bay and the East China Sea. Ningbo is the southern economic center of the Yangtze Delta megalopolis. The port of Ningbo–Zhoushan, spread across several locations, is the world's busiest port by cargo tonnage and world's third- busiest container port since 2010. Ningbo is the core city and center of the Ningbo Metropolitan Area. To the north, Hangzhou Bay separates Ningbo from Shanghai; to the east lies Zhoushan in the East China Sea; on the west and south, Ningbo borders Shaoxing and Taizhou respectively. As of the 2020 Chinese national census, the entire administrated area of Ningbo City had a population of 9.4 million (9,404,283). Ningbo is one of the 15 sub-provincial cities in China, and is one of the five separate state-planning cities ...
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Maritime Prohibition
The Haijin () or sea ban were a series of related policies in China restricting private maritime trading during much of the Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty. The sea ban was an anomaly in Chinese history as such restrictions were unknown during other eras; the bans were each introduced for specific circumstances, rather than based on an age-old inward orientation. In the first sea ban introduced in 1371 by the Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang, Ming China's legal foreign trade was limited to tribute missions, placing international trade under a government monopoly. Initially imposed to deal with Japanese piracy amid anti-Ming insurgency, the Ming was not able to enforce the policy, and trade continued in forms such as smuggling. The sea ban was counterproductive: smuggling and piracy became endemic periodically (though not continuously), mostly perpetrated by Chinese who had been dispossessed by the policy. Piracy dropped to negligible levels upon the end of the policy in 1567. The p ...
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Yuegang
Yuegang () was a seaport situated at the estuary of the Jiulong River in present-day Haicheng, Fujian, Haicheng town in Zhangzhou, Fujian, China. Known as a smuggling hub since the early Ming dynasty, Yuegang rose to prominence in the 16th century as the Ming government cracked down on other hubs of private maritime trade, deemed illegal at the time due to the isolationist ''haijin'' laws. When the prohibitions were lifted in 1567, Yuegang was designated as the port in Fujian from where it is legal to trade overseas. Since then, it flourished as the Chinese terminus of the trans-Pacific trade carried by the Manila galleon through its trade with the Spanish Philippines until it was overshadowed by Xiamen in the 17th century. Smuggling trade The coastal province of Fujian was home to a long maritime tradition, giving rise to many great ports during the Song dynasty (960–1279) such as Quanzhou and Fuzhou, from where sea trade abroad to Southeast Asia, the Hindu world, the Islamic wo ...
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Grand Coordinator
A ''xunfu'' was an important History of China#Imperial China, imperial Chinese provincial office under both the Ming dynasty, Ming (14th–17th centuries) and Qing dynasty, Qing (17th–20th centuries) dynasties. However, the purview of the office under the two dynasties differed markedly. Under the Ming dynasty, the post originated around 1430 as a kind of inspector-general and ad hoc provincial-level administrator; such a ''xunfu'' is usually translated as a . However, since the mid-17th century, ''xunfu'' became the title of a regular provincial governor overseeing civil administration in the Qing dynasty. Under both dynasties, the ''xunfu'' was subordinate in military affairs to the multi-provincial ''zongdu'' (wikt:總督, 總督), usually translated as "supreme commander" under the Ming and "governor-general" or "Viceroys in China, viceroy" under the Qing. The Nguyễn dynasty of Vietnam also established the position (known as ''tuần phủ'' or ''tuần vũ'' 巡撫) bas ...
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Gallows
A gallows (or less precisely scaffold) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sacks of grain or minerals, usually positioned in markets or toll gates. The term was also used for a projecting framework from which a ship's anchor might be raised so it is no longer sitting on the seabed, riverbed or dock; "weighing [the] anchor" meant raising it using this apparatus while avoiding striking the ship's hull. In modern usage the term has come to mean almost exclusively a scaffold or gibbet used for execution (legal), execution by hanging. Etymology The term "wikt:gallows, gallows" was derived from a Proto-Germanic word ''wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/galgô, galgô'' that refers to a "pole", "rod" or "tree branch". With the beginning of Christianization, Ulfilas used the term ''galga'' in his Gothic language, Gothic T ...
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Pillory
The pillory is a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, used during the medieval and renaissance periods for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse. The pillory is related to the stocks. Etymology The word is documented in English since 1274 (attested in Anglo-Latin from ), and stems from Old French (1168; French language, modern French , see below), itself from medieval Latin , of uncertain origin, perhaps a diminutive of Latin 'pillar, stone barrier'. Description Rather like the lesser punishment called the stocks, the pillory consisted of hinged wooden boards forming holes through which the head or various limbs were inserted; then the boards were locked together to secure the captive. Pillories were set up to hold people in marketplaces, crossroads, and other public places. They were often placed on platforms to increase public visibility of the person; often a placard deta ...
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Portuguese India
The State of India, also known as the Portuguese State of India or Portuguese India, was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded seven years after the discovery of the sea route to the Indian subcontinent by Vasco da Gama, a subject of the Kingdom of Portugal. The capital of Portuguese India served as the governing centre of a string of military forts and maritime ports scattered along the coasts of the Indian Ocean. The first viceroy Francisco de Almeida established his base of operations at Fort Manuel in the Malabar region, after the Kingdom of Cochin negotiated to become a protectorate of Portugal in 1505. With the Portuguese conquest of Goa from the Bijapur Sultanate in 1510, Goa became the major anchorage for the Armadas arriving in India. The capital of the viceroyalty was transferred from Cochin to Goa in 1530. From 1535, Mumbai (Bombay) was a harbour of Portuguese India, known as '' Bom Bahia'', until it was handed over, through the Marriage Treaty, dowry o ...
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