Pirates Roam the World

Currently, Makoto Yukimura's manga "Vinland Saga," which deals with Vikings from the 10th to 11th centuries, has been adapted into an anime and is attracting a lot of attention. Last summer, in parallel with the International Saga Conference held in Iceland, Minoru Ozawa of Rikkyo University and I invited Makoto Yukimura and collaborated with the staff of the University of Iceland to hold a manga symposium, which was a great success. Professor Atsushi Iguchi from the Faculty of Letters at the Juku was also one of the panelists.

In that work, there is a very cool scene where Knútr—the King of Denmark who was later also called "Canute," King of England—says, "I am a Viking King." In this way, I think there is an image that pirates are perhaps "cool" and "terrifying."

Indeed, I feel that there is a mysterious charm to the existence of pirates. In writing my book "A World History of Pirates" (Chuko Shinsho), I researched pirates from various eras, and I found the diversity of pirate types to be extremely interesting.

I was originally interested in the history of international relations in the early 19th century when Algeria was colonized by France. Under the Vienna System of that time, European countries reached an agreement to ban the so-called Barbary pirates of North Africa. Piracy was banned as a form of civilization, coinciding with the ban on the slave trade.

At the time, North Africa was part of the Ottoman Empire, but they had their own side of the story. Therefore, I started researching because I thought it would be interesting to look at history from the perspective of the conquered North Africans.

I am researching social transformation in a certain region of Indonesia. When the Dutch expanded their influence into Banten and Lampung—the westernmost part of Java and the southernmost part of Sumatra—in the 18th century, there were many discourses regarding pirates.

Later, from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century in the West Kalimantan region, the Dutch again recorded a lot about pirates. By then, it had shifted from the East India Company to direct colonial rule, but even when writing about the same pirates, the discourse differed slightly.

Even if the act of piracy itself is the same, I am currently researching because I find it interesting that the "way of writing" by the state or those in power who are observing it is different.

When humans venture out to sea and trade develops, people emerge who attack that trade. That is likely the beginning of pirates.

In the Mediterranean, pirates using man-powered galleys appeared, targeting sailing merchant ships that would stop moving when the wind died down. I believe such things existed even before recorded history. The historian Philip Gosse said that piracy is "one of the oldest human activities."

However, I think it is easier to understand if we temporarily separate "pirates" as people from "piracy" as an act. What I just mentioned refers to the act of piracy, such as attacking ships or plundering coastal towns.

On the other hand, when asked "What is a pirate?", it is quite difficult to answer. Whether everyone who commits acts of plunder at sea can be called a pirate becomes a very difficult problem as soon as you try to define it.

That is a matter of "who names them and calls them that," isn't it? In the Malay waters, there were few full-time pirates; people who usually engaged in commerce or conducted politics as members of royalty would perform acts of piracy at certain times.

It was a part of their lives, a part of their political or economic activities, but when a narrator emerged who called such people "pirates," they were positioned as if they were professional pirates.

You cannot define it by whether they do it for a living or not; rather, I think the existence of the pirate emerges through the appearance of people who call them that.

As Professor Ota said, even if someone is engaged in agriculture as a member of a powerful family or royalty, going out to commit acts of piracy like seasonal labor—or, according to the discourse of later people, to prove one's manhood—can itself be called "Viking."

The word "Viking" itself exists in Old English, and there has been a long-standing debate over its meaning. Since "vík" (Old Norse) means "inlet" or "bay," I believe that "some action performed by entering an inlet" was called "viking," and the people who did it were called "víkingr," which became the English "Viking."

Then, around the 9th century, the people of Northern Europe suddenly became able to build fast Viking ships. Navigation techniques had already been quite developed before then, and Viking ships with very shallow drafts were built, leading them to commit acts of piracy using iron tools.

They would go to foreign lands, and if the opponent was strong, they would barter with items brought from Northern Europe. But if the opponent was weak, they would attack with weapons. That was business, and there was likely little pang of conscience involved.

Later, people began to call them Vikings. At the time when Viking activities were actually taking place, the basic names were "heathens" or "Northmen," and the name "Viking" is thought to be a naming by people of a much later period.

What makes the perception of pirates difficult is that alongside the anti-social aspect of being roughnecks who commit acts of violence, there are also acts of piracy that were socially recognized depending on the era.

Attacking one's own kind makes one a mere roughneck, but when the target of the attack is a hostile "other," there is an aspect where attacking them is socially accepted.

I think the way this line is drawn between self and other characterizes the perception of piracy in each era.

In the literature called "sagas," which were later told as historical novels, episodes appear about how kings dealt with the Vikings within their own countries. In short, as kings expanded their royal authority, they incorporated these kinds of people into their own systems. They incorporated those whose perception of "self and other" was ambiguous as a force to attack the "others" that Professor Momoi mentioned.

Alternatively, there is a legend that a base for a legendary Viking army called Jomsborg was established in what is now the Polish region, and the people belonging to it were said to be very fearsome and strong; in later legends, they are called the "Jomsvikings." I feel that naming is very important.

In the Malay world, by around the 16th century, laws generally called Malay Laws were established to determine various rules at sea. However, these laws have absolutely no rules regarding royal succession.

Therefore, anyone—whether an uncle or a younger brother—could claim to be the successor to the throne, and royal succession always resulted in battle. Then, the defeated group would usually go to another part of the Malay waters to establish a new power.

The Malacca Sultanate also began when a prince named Parameswara, who lost a succession struggle in Palembang, crossed the Strait of Malacca and settled in the land of Malacca.

By declaring "I will oppose the King," attacking merchant ships heading toward that King is justified. They threaten merchant ships, saying "If you don't want to be attacked, trade at my port," and lure them in. Then, if they overthrow the original King, they can become the legitimate King themselves.

In this way, many small kingdoms were formed. In countries that left behind royal histories, the Malay word "perompak" (literally meaning raider), which refers to pirates, is never used for the King's actions. They justify it with all sorts of words, such as "The King secured a means of livelihood" or "He took action to feed his people." No matter the act, it is no longer written about using negative terms.

That's interesting. Is that from the 16th century onward?

That's right. The royal histories I just introduced were written in the 19th century, but since similar events were occurring around that time, it is highly likely they were perceived that way from then on.

It is interesting that this overlaps with the era when Britain, centered around Queen Elizabeth, condoned acts of piracy.

Yes. Pirates appeared in the Caribbean region almost during this period (the 16th century). This happened in several stages, but first, when Spain discovered the "New World" and ruled it exclusively, English and French ships began illicit trade, and later they started attacking Spanish ships transporting treasures.

This is the period when Drake flourished with the support of Queen Elizabeth, isn't it?

Yes. Eventually, as England established colonies in North America, pirates became a nuisance that hindered commerce and conversely became targets for elimination. This is the period of pirates as roughnecks and defectors from the state order, as depicted in Disney movies like "Pirates of the Caribbean."

Also, pirates played a role like the vanguard of the navy. During the era of Elizabeth I, the navy's power was weak, so private ships were also given official permission to attack the ships and territories of enemy countries if a war began. Those are the so-called privateers.

In the era before the international order based on the modern sovereign state system was established, piracy was justified in various forms.

For the state, it must have been very helpful in terms of cost compared to maintaining a large-scale navy. For the pirates, they usually operated as merchant ships and had the great advantage of being able to obtain permission for plunder in times of need. So, it inevitably tended to be a symbiotic relationship.

Indeed. However, ultimately, the state's control over pirates began to fail. Even after a war ended, pirates could not forget the taste of profit and continued their piracy. Sometimes they even began attacking their own country's colonies. I believe the movement to eliminate pirates from such situations emerged from the late 17th century to the 18th century. This is the period when Britain established things like the Piracy Act.

In any case, changes in the global power balance and the nature of pirates are linked. In an era of rival local warlords, various forces commit acts of piracy and accuse each other. In Western history, ancient Greece and the medieval Mediterranean correspond to that.

On the other hand, once hegemony is established in a sea area, pirates become targets for elimination. In the era of the Pax Romana in ancient Rome, piracy became an evil. As Cicero said, "A pirate is the common enemy of all." Even Rome conquered various countries in the process of expanding its hegemony in the Mediterranean, but that gets justified.

Of course, the act of violence itself is not good, but I feel that the "pirate" as an absolute evil, as spoken of after hegemony is established, is in a sense a kind of labeling.

In Southeast Asia, discourse regarding pirates as an absolute evil emerged from the beginning of the 19th century. When both the Dutch and the British appeared in this land as the power of colonial governments, they were by no means accompanied by hegemony, yet they began to say things like, "Pirates who bring harm to all people must be eradicated," or "We bring peace, civilization, law, order, and free trade here, and those who hinder them will be eliminated."

Before that, the East India Company called all rivals who interfered with their trade pirates, but the idea of speaking of absolute justice was almost non-existent. However, by the beginning of the 19th century, Europeans began to use such discourse.

I see. In the early 19th century, the so-called North African pirates were banned under the Vienna System for two reasons. One was the humanitarian issue of Christians being enslaved in North Africa.

The second was exactly the issue of free trade that Professor Ota mentioned. It was the idea that pirates who threaten commercial activities in the free space of the sea are evil.

These two ideas clearly emerged in the 19th century, and I think that overlaps with Europe's transition from the era of so-called mercantilism to the era of free trade.

The reason North African pirates were preserved until the 18th century was that the powerful nations of Britain, France, and the Netherlands permitted it. If there were pirates in North Africa, other countries could not enter the region for commercial activities, so it was actually convenient for their own commerce.

The emergence of the concept of the high seas in modern times is also linked to the idea of free trade, isn't it?

Yes. I think the concept of the high seas basically has a background where latecomer countries rebelled against Spain's monopoly on commercial activities in the New World.

Current territorial waters come from the idea of claiming the sea as one's own as far as a cannon can reach, but the principle of freedom of navigation, which holds that anything beyond that belongs to no one, was established in the 19th century under British hegemony.

Until the 18th century, the struggle for hegemony between the Netherlands, France, and Britain was quite intense, but then free trade was encouraged, and that ideology took root.

In reality, even in the 19th century, pirates were not easily eliminated in Southeast Asia. Even in the 1820s, cooperation between European powers and local pirates frequently occurred. The British, who went to take Singapore, brought a local lord named Temenggong—who was clearly engaged in piracy—into the system for the purpose of suppressing pirates.

The Dutch also took those they knew were pirates and put them into the Dutch Navy as heads of pirate suppression, giving them the naval rank of Majoor and eventually even appointing them as Sultans.

Even though they knew they were committing acts of piracy, there were many examples where they deliberately left it to them to conduct governance without spending money. Even if they made declarations in their discourse to "eliminate pirates," in reality, they did not do so and instead tried to successfully fuse the local systems with their own.

I see, that's interesting. There are periods of including and utilizing pirates and periods of excluding them, and these do not necessarily proceed simultaneously worldwide.

In the Mediterranean, were they able to eliminate pirates quickly?

In the case of the Mediterranean, European hegemony had progressed quite substantially, so the North African pirates were suppressed in the early 19th century. The period of inclusion likely ended and moved toward exclusion at a relatively early stage.

It's not that "history repeats itself," but I think that since the era of ancient Greece, a cycle of inclusion and exclusion has ultimately been occurring. When considering why Vikings attract so much attention, I think they have a special place even within the long span of world history.

Unlike the Dutch who utilized Singaporean pirates for pirate suppression, late medieval Danish kings like Canute led pirates themselves to conduct conquest and invasion.

Similarly, as a result of a Viking leader going to Paris and negotiating with the King, he became the Duke of Normandy and conquered half of England, and the Northmen who headed to Eastern Europe established the Kievan Rus'. I thought the fact that kings and leaders went out themselves is what makes them different from other pirates.

Did the state leader, the King of Denmark, utilize external military force?

Rather than external forces, they gathered forces from within their own country to conduct invasions. The King of Norway did the same thing. He gathered those who committed acts of piracy to attack England.

Ultimately, King Harald III of Norway, called "the last Viking" and "Harald Hardrada," was defeated in 1066 in a battle near Yorkshire against King Harold II of England. That is considered the last battle of the Nordic Vikings. After that, royal authority was established, it became the so-called feudal era, and it became an era where people were rooted in the soil.

Thinking about it that way, the Viking Age might have been an era when many people appeared who were not rooted in the soil but were active through the sea. That seems to connect a bit with the story of Malacca that Professor Ota mentioned.

I think they are very similar. This is true for 16th-century Malacca, but around the 18th century in West Kalimantan, Malaya, or throughout the Indonesian archipelago, the activities of people not rooted in the soil became very strong.

In Southeast Asia, the 15th to 17th centuries are called the "Age of Commerce," and very rare products such as high-grade spices like nutmeg, mace, and pepper, and high-grade wood like agarwood, were important export commodities. Since the production areas and shipping ports for such high-grade products are limited, kings who could control them became very strong. Then, states emerged aiming to dominate the areas around the production sites and the ports.

Such independent kingdoms were once weakened by the Dutch East India Company, but soon after, many small states appeared again in Southeast Asia. Then, from the middle of the 18th century, the middle class expanded in China, and people who became wealthy strongly desired Southeast Asian products. The targets were slightly unusual things like edible bird's nests, shark fins, and sea cucumbers from Southeast Asia.

You mean high-end ingredients?

No, it's a bit different; they are called "middle-class luxuries"—items that are high-end but not priced so out of reach as nutmeg or mace. However, they were rare because they could not be obtained within China, and until then, they had only been eaten in the imperial court.

However, since these products can be found truly anywhere in Southeast Asia, monopolizing the production areas or shipping ports had almost no meaning. The people who harvest these products do not settle down but move from port to port. Moreover, since they are often harvested in inconvenient, remote areas, they cannot expect protection from a king, so they arm themselves and create small political forces. This became very active from the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century.

I see. So that's how it was.

Collecting such products required a lot of manpower, and since there was competition and conflict, rowers and military force were also necessary, so it became an era where many pirate-like groups emerged.

Sometimes they created states, and other times they cooperated with states while maintaining a delicate relationship, receiving benefits such as tax exemptions or being given land to live on. I think there are eras when groups that maintain a certain level of autonomy or distance find it easy to flourish.

When you consider that a situation like being in a geographical transportation dead-end gave birth to those seafaring people, it makes sense why Northern Europe produced the Vikings.

In Norway and Sweden, transportation between villages was extremely inconvenient. A key geographical feature of Northern Europe is that while traveling by water is relatively easy, traveling by land is very difficult. That is exactly why small groups were scattered about; they possessed military power and formed small fleets of three or four ships.

Furthermore, by moving freely and swiftly in small ships with excellent mobility, they generated economic or commercial advantages. About 60 people would row a small, light ship, and on land, they would carry it to move.

That is amazing.

In Southeast Asia, the islands are quite close to each other. Is there no sense that "if this waterway is cut off, this region will be held by the throat"?

That is actually quite difficult. If you try to control a point near the mouth of a river system downstream, the people upstream will simply cross the watershed and go to a different river system.

It is the same in that pirate ships are small and have excellent mobility. they hide in inlets or river mouths immediately and cannot be found. Europeans, frustrated by this, created detailed maps of coastlines and river mouths. There is an aspect where cartography developed as a byproduct of anti-piracy measures.

I think one of the charms of pirates lies in the fact that they are thieves of the "sea." Because the stage of their activities was the sea, they are elusive, with power being decentralized or mobile.

Today, the ocean is a finite world, but before the modern era, it was an infinite expanse where you couldn't be caught if you escaped. I suspect the image of pirate freedom was cultivated from that. I think one reason modern people are drawn to pirates lies in that kind of pirate freedom.

Going out into unknown seas by ship is also the theme of the work I introduced at the beginning, "Vinland Saga." "Vinland Saga" is a story based on records and legends of Norsemen settling in North America about 500 years before Columbus.

The protagonist of that manga asserts, "I don't want to kill people anymore, so I will flee from King Canute. I want to create a peaceful paradise where I escape to."

Legends frequently appear from the early Viking Age stating that "Icelanders are the descendants of powerful clans who fled from the tyrannical rule of King Harald Fairhair, who tried to impose oppression on Norway, to create a free country in Iceland."

So, while the act of Viking-ing may certainly be evil, there is always the element of going out to sea and aiming for freedom. That is likely why people are fascinated by them across eras.

Are there no stories or legends in Southeast Asia that glorify such pirates?

Nothing local comes to mind, but there are stories created by Europeans that idealize Malay pirates. Joseph Conrad's "Almayer's Folly" (1895) and Emilio Salgari's "Le Tigri di Mompracem" (The Tigers of Mompracem, 1900) both highly idealize pirates.

In "Almayer's Folly," a British ruler rescues and raises a pirate's daughter, but she believes all along that she is a prisoner rather than being protected, and dreams of being rescued one day. Then, a local Malay pirate actually comes to rescue her, and she goes with him.

"Le Tigri di Mompracem" is a story where a beautiful white woman, forced to live a very secluded life, falls in love with a Malay pirate who tries to take her away, and she follows him. Again, the pirate is idealized as a symbol of freedom and a figure who rescues a woman forced into a confined life.

That's interesting. I think it's a theme that today's feminists might enjoy (laughs).

There are several versions of "Le Tigri di Mompracem"; it originated in Italy, but it has been made into movies, novels, and TV series in places like the UK, and is quite famous among Europeans.

I suppose humans just love adventure.

When you go on an adventure, there are "things to be gained." For example, it might be women, gold and silver treasures, or high-end products like nutmeg and pepper, but in the case of Northern Europe, I feel it was, above all, the high level of culture, including treasures, that Southern Europe possessed.

Another thing is that rum is inevitably associated with Caribbean pirates (laughs). For Vikings, mead is very famous.

I wonder if there was anything for Southeast Asia. Probably palm wine (arrack) was involved.

Regarding pirates and alcohol, it seems that because water would spoil during long voyages on the open sea, alcoholic beverages like wine were loaded.

In addition to such habits, it seems it was a daily occurrence in the Caribbean for pirates to return to port after a job and have a boisterous party.

After all, the sea is surrounded by water, but you can't drink it.

Yes. Also, I think the element of freedom I mentioned earlier is related to the image of pirates being optimistic and hedonistic.

Certainly, adventure involves risk, so I don't think people would venture out unless there was a benefit somewhere. When Islamic pirates attacked Christian countries, while there were certainly religious aspects, there were also practical aspects like acquiring new land for themselves. I think piracy was actually quite profitable.

In Southeast Asia as well, the things carried by ships are far more valuable than what can be taken from the land. Therefore, if you can attack and take them, you can gain great wealth. And if you can go to a new land, build a port, and make it a commercial hub, it also becomes political power.

And adventure always comes with the element of "risking one's life." The aspect of being side-by-side with death might be something that modern people living in cities rarely get to experience.

That's true. Also, in the records of the 18th-century pirate Bartholomew Roberts, there is something called the "Pirate Code," which shows there was an equal order that would have been impossible in the class-based society of Europe at the time, such as choosing the captain by vote.

In that sense, I think once you became a member of the pirates, it was a matter of competing on merit.

It was an opportunity to escape a class-based society.

The sea has become something completely managed in the 21st century, but in modern terms, I think places like cyberspace are where pirate-like things are likely to be born.

I wonder if hackers and others are performing pirate-like acts in cyberspace against the existing order.

I see. It's the world of "Ghost in the Shell."

Of course, even today, pirates appear in unmanaged waters. Somali pirates are famous, but Somalia is a so-called failed state, and it cannot crack down on pirates that a state should normally regulate.

They approach tankers in fishing boats loaded with automatic rifles and mortars, board the stopped tankers, and take the crew away. In the modern era, where violence is state-managed under the sovereign state system, pirates who theoretically should not exist are being born from the "fraying" of the political order.

They still appear at the borders around the Strait of Malacca, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

The reason they can't be cracked down on is that local bosses are involved with the pirates. And the ones who attack are really fishing boats. So they can hide immediately, or they can insist they are just fishing boats.

As long as there is this much disparity between rich and poor, and there are ships carrying wealthy cargo passing in front of poor fishermen, I feel it is quite difficult to completely crack down on them.

That's true. In the world of imagination, we can idealize and imagine pirates as much as we want. Human imagination expands infinitely, so I think if people advance into space in the future, pirate-like things will be born there.

If so, just as pirates were born over and over in the Mediterranean, being included and then excluded, does it mean that pirates will never disappear every time humans go to some unknown territory?

For pirates, this is the first time in history that the sea has been so thoroughly managed, so there is no doubt the situation is different than before.

In the world of literature, one archetype that depicts pirates as villains but always as "attractive enemies" is Captain Hook in "Peter Pan."

That became famous through the Disney movie, but the fact that there are pirates on the island where children want to have adventures means that a story isn't interesting unless you assume an enemy that you must defeat.

But if such beings exist, people will be kidnapped or suffer damage. I think we must objectively and calmly acknowledge that humans are always seeking such things.

In a sense, that might be close to the essence of what pirates possess. They are attractive, but they remain enemies nonetheless.

Yes. Even if pirates as realistic entities decline, I think pirate stories will continue to fascinate us.