Resumo:
"After pirates abducted seventeen school children and dozens of other men and women
on the island of Coloane to the south of the Portuguese enclave of Macao in the
iv journal of world history, june 2017
summer of 1910, the Portuguese government sent a military expedition to rescue the
hostages and exterminate the pirates. Although a minor footnote to the larger events
of the republican revolutions that were unfolding in both Portugal and China at this
time, this incident on Coloane nevertheless attracted local, national, and worldwide
attention and has been the subject of debate ever since.
While the Portuguese viewed
their success over the pirates as a great victory of Western civilization over barbarism,
the Chinese viewed the event as another expression of Western imperialism that
resulted in the massacre of countless innocent Chinese. Based on historical and literary
sources as well as ethnographic fieldwork, this article takes the events on Coloane
in 1910 as a point of departure to explore larger issues of Portuguese and Chinese
representations and perceptions of piracy in Asian waters and of one another over the
last four hundred years."
In 1985 the Portuguese journalist Luís Ortet interviewed residents of
Coloane regarding the Portuguese attacks against pirates and villagers
on the island in July and August 1910. One elderly Chinese lady named
Cheong Tai Lao recalled that when she was five years old she and her
family were aboard their fishing boat in the harbor when a Portuguese
gunship suddenly began firing shots at them. Her mother and auntie,
she said, screamed out “Friends! We are not pirates!” (amigos! não somos
piratas!) But too late, her fishing boat had already been hit and was on
fire. (...)
This article, which is based on historical and literary writings, as
well as fieldwork conducted in Macao between 2009 and 2015,
examines the socio-cultural ecology of piracy in Asian waters, as well as
the representations and perceptions of Chinese and Portuguese
regarding the nature of piracy and of one another over the past four
hundred years. The focus of this study, however, is on Coloane island
and Portuguese Macao at the start of the twentieth century. (...)
The years 1910 and 1911 were momentous for both Portugal and
China. Both countries experienced massive groundbreaking revolutions that overturned centuries’ old monarchies and established
republican governments, the repercussions of which were felt around
the world. The Portuguese revolution occurred in October 1910
and one year later, also in October, China had its revolution. More
specifically in China, for at least a decade before 1911, revolutionaries,
such as Sun Yat-sen, had been actively fomenting revolution in south China, and particularly in the area in and around Macao.4 In between
these two revolutions on the smallisland of Coloane, situatedjust south of
the Portuguese city-state of Macao on south China’s littoral, there
occurred a much smaller event, but nonetheless one of local and
international importance. This incident involved pirates who kidnapped
for ransom Chinese school children that they held on Coloane and the
intervention of the Portuguese military stationed in Macao in July and
August 1910. The events that unfolded attracted world-wide attention
and have been the subject of much controversy ever since.
The initial kidnapping took place in mid-June 1910, and was
unfortunately an event not out of the ordinary, as gangs of pirates for
ages in this part of the world would leave their boats and go ashore to
kidnap people to hold for ransom. In this particular instance the pirates
were based on Coloane. As they had done on other occasions, they
sailed their junks up the West River where they first plundered the
villages of Tong-hang, Pac-seac, and perhaps several others in Xinning
county. Besides robbing the villagers, however, the pirates also
abducted seventeen school children and a cook whom they brought
back to their island stronghold.
It was reported that at that time some
fifty or sixty men, women, and children were held hostage by the pirates
on Coloane.6 As publicized later in a Macao newspaper, two pirate
leaders, Leong-tai-chan and Leong-ngui-vá, wrote three ransom letters
that they sent to the lineage elders, who were surnamed Chan, of Tonghang and Pac-seac villages.
Based on the content of the letters it was
obvious that these pirates had been active in the area for some time, for
they justified the abductions as revenge against the villages that had
dared to resist them earlier in the first lunar month. The pirates, who
took the appellation Society of Perfect Justice (Ang Ngui T’ong) demanded $35,000 from the villagers to rescue their children; if the
money was not forthcoming “without delay,” they said, the children
would be mercilessly killed “without leaving any trace.”
As reported in theMacao newspaper A Verdade (The Truth) on July 21,
1910, the Portuguese government in that city got involved in this case
only after a wealthy Chinese merchant named Chan-Chat, who resided
inHongKong, requested help to rescue the children, one ofwhomwas his
own son. According to other accounts, because several of the victims
were Catholics, it was actually the bishop of Macao, after being informed
of the incident, who requested help from theMacao government.9At the
same time the events unfolding on Coloane quickly attracted world-wide
attention andwere reported almost on a daily basisinmajor newspapersin
Canton, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Europe, and the United States.10
Governor Edurdo Marques acted quickly to the request or requests,
and on July 12, he declared martial law on the two islands of Taipa and
Coloane, which were ostensibly under Macao’s administrative
jurisdiction. The Portuguese presence on both islands actually dated
back to the early nineteenth century, if not earlier. (...)
The piracy incident on Coloane provided Portugal with a reason or
excuse to fully incorporate the island into its enclave of Macao, and as a
result of the military campaigns in 1910 the Portuguese presence on the
island became more stable and permanent. Despite protests from the
Qing government, Portugal insisted that its presence on Coloane was
needed to protect the island and surrounding areas from pirates. The
Portuguese stayed and the island became a part of Macao. Today on the
island at the head of St. Francis Xavier Square is a stone monument that
was erected by the government of Macao sometime after the events of
1910 to commemorate the victory over the pirates. (...)
Conclusion
“We are not pirates.” These four words rendered both by the Portuguese
poet Camões and the Coloane boat woman Cheng Tai Lao reveal much
about how we understand and view pirates and piracy not only in its
Asian but also world context. The very fact that they uttered “we are
not pirates” presupposes the assumption that others regarded the
Portuguese explorers and Chinese boat people as pirates. Did they
deserve such a reputation? Judged by their actions it would appear that
in many cases they did act as pirates—robbing, kidnapping, and
murdering for personal gain. Their pleas of innocence simply did not
ring true to the ears of others, especially those people who were their
victims. In declaring “we are not pirates” the Portuguese envoy and
Chinese fisherwoman both implicitly acknowledged their quilt through
association.
Yet were the pirates discussed in this article villains or heroes? Much
of this answer, as I have argued, depends on one’s perspective. One man’s pirate is another man’s hero. Our conceptions and even
definitions of piracy are in constant flux, continuously changing to suit
contingent political, social, and cultural circumstances and agendas.
Certainly Vasco da Gama deserves his reputation as a hero, but should
this preclude him from also being a pirate and villain? Lam-kua-si was
certainly an unscrupulous pirate, but does this fact preclude him from
also being a hero? At home both men were heroes, men who brought
honor and some advantage to their respective countries or villages, but
to outsiders, people and areas that fell victim to their abuses and
misdeeds, they were criminals and nothing more.
The various perceptions of piracy, of the Chinese, and of the
Portuguese in one another’s eyes colored the sensitive issue of
Coloane’s sovereignty and international relations in general. These
constructed images developed over several centuries of interactions,
often marred with suspicions and misunderstandings, between Chinese
and Portuguese. Both sides bolstered their respective claims of
sovereignty not solely on political considerations, but also on claims
of intrinsic righteousness that the forces of civilization were on their
side. To many Portuguese, most residents of Coloane were viewed as
pirates, a scourge that needed to be cleansed for the preservation of the
state and sanctity of Western civilization. China was seen as a “sleeping
giant” just waiting, and needing, a “civilizing” awakening from the
West. The suppression of piracy justified imperialistic expansion. To
many Chinese, however, the Portuguese in Macao were violent
barbarians and interlopers, not any better than pirates, who encroached
on their lands and therefore should be driven away. Their violent, cruel,
and arrogant conduct violated Chinese assumptions about appropriate
civilized behavior based on respect for authority and hieratical social
relationships.
The suppression of Coloane pirates also involved larger issues
important in world history. Piracy, indeed, was a global problem, a
concern not only to China and Portugal, but to the wider international
community in Asia. Britain, France, the United States all watched very
closely the events unfolding in the waters around Macao and Coloane
at the start of the twentieth century. Careful examination of the
military campaign to suppress piracy shows that it was a fiercely
contested issue of empire in places where overlapping spheres of
influence between colonial, national, and local authorities existed. The
contest for Coloane between China and Portugal, when seen in the light of pirate suppression, marked a critical moment in a much longer
history of Sino-Western relations and imperial conquests.
Sometime after the suppression of the Coloane pirates in 1910 the
Macao Portuguese government erected a stone monument in one of the
bombarded villages on the island to commemorate their great victory
over the pirates. The monument was a tangible symbol of Portuguese
authority and superiority, as well as the triumph of law and order and of
civilization over barbarism. For many years after these momentous
events the Macao government declared July 13 a public holiday that
was celebrated on the island.
Local islanders, however,
regarded this holiday as the day when Portuguese soldiers and gunships
massacred hundreds of innocent fisherfolk and villagers. As a sort of
counter monument and remembrance of their piratical heritage (and
perhaps too of their resistance to the Portuguese gunboats and
colonizers), in Coloane village the local residents have named a narrow obscure lane (mostly known only to locals) as “Pirate Alley” (zei zai wei
賊在圍).
Street names, like monuments, are deliberate acts that
reflect the agendas of their creators and construct their perceptions and
understandings of the past.
With a certain twist of irony, today Macao, China, and Portugal
each purport a public image, often repeated in scholarly writings on the
city’s history and heritage, depicting Macao as a unique place of
multiculturalism and a bridge between East and West, a place of mutual
toleration and harmonious blending of diffuse world cultures and
civilizations. This message, however, largely ignores, indeed
obfuscates, the past experiences of Macao as a place of mutual distrust,
misgivings, misunderstandings, and confrontations between China and
Portugal. Since its inception more than 450 years ago the Portuguese
and Chinese in Macao have for the most part maintained their own
separate identities, customs, and cultures. Piracy serves as a window
through which we can observe the conflicting perceptions and
representations of the alien other not only in Macao but in other places
around the world.
