"We are Not Pirates: Portugal, China, and the Pirates of Coloane (Macao), 1910"

Na edição do "Journal of World History, Volume 28" de Junho de 2017, Robert J. Anthony assina o artigo intitulado "We are Not Pirates: Portugal, China, and the Pirates of Coloane (Macao), 1910".

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."

Excertos:

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.