Peter Leeson's P.Lesson: The InvisibleHook – TheHiddenEconomics of Pirates is a highly readable "odd book". Before talking about its content, let's take a look at the tricks played by the author. On the "dedication page" at the front of the book, the author usually writes words of respect or gratitude to parents, teachers, and spouses, and Li Xun is ingenious to propose to his girlfriend: "Aniah, I love you; Will you marry me? He arranged for the publisher to give the first book to Aniah, and according to the March 29 issue of Publishers Weekly, she was so moved and overjoyed that she agreed to marry on the spot...... Obviously, this lace news has played a promotional role to some extent.

In the blank space after the "dedication page" (I don't know if there are "proper nouns"), the author usually writes some "good sayings" that have an important role in outlining the content of the book, and the author has a habit of browsing this without "delving" into it, however, Li Xun quotes two lines of poetry by Sir Samuel Garth (1661-1719; doctor, politician, poet), which arouses great interest to the author: "Little Villainsoft'submittoFate, ThatGreatOnesmayenjoytheWorldinState.” The meaning is very interesting, isn't this exactly "the thief of the hook punishes the thief of the country"? Zhuangzi's "胠箧" (meaning to cut the leather bag) contains the sentence "those who steal the hook are punished, and those who steal the country are princes", which has long become an "everyday language", and the British (Scottish) sinologist James Legge (1815-1897) translated it into a plain and easy-to-understand "vernacular": "Hereisonewhostealsahook (forhisgirdle)-heisputtodeathforit; Hereisanotherwhostealsastate-hebecomesitsprince.” (Button hook refers to the ring hook of the waist bundle.) However, it is still the two lines of Jiasi's poems that are more quaint and expressive. Zhuang Zhou (c. 369-286 BCE) and Jia Si were separated by nearly two thousand years, and it is rare that their cynical ideas are so similar.

Li Xun's quotation of these two poems is intended to reflect that his purpose in writing this book is to change the world's impression of pirates as a brutal and unbenevolent rabble. In fact, the pirates of the 17th and 18th centuries (referring to the golden age of piracy from 1670 to 1730) did not kill innocents indiscriminately, the pirates were well-managed, and the leadership was produced under a democratic system, i.e. a system of one thief, one vote (they also had the right of veto!). Some scholars have called the pirate ship a "floating republic on the sea" (see the article "Male Thieves and Female Prostitutes Have Their Own Ways", in Trackless Train, Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House, January 2008, pp. 157-167), and the material on which this old work is based is partly indirectly from Li Xun's paper "Anarchism: Pirate Organizations from the Perspective of Law and Economics" published in the famous Journal of Political Economy of Chicago University, which becomes the main content of the second and third chapters of this book. In the "Preface" of this book, Li Xun especially thanked Livid, who is familiar to readers with the book "Grotesque Economics". As the editor-in-chief of the journal, Livid made an exception to publish Li Xun's paper without a measurement program, which made Li Xun, who has attracted the attention of the academic community for this article, very grateful. As soon as the news came out, Li Xun had been invited by Levid to be a visiting fellow at the Gary Bega Institute at the University of Chicago, which he chaired, and it seemed that he had become Levid's Protege.

Born in 1979, Li Xun received his Ph.D. in 2005 and then worked as a teaching assistant at his alma mater, George Mason University, where he was promoted to full professor and awarded the BB&T Chair in just two years. In 2006, BB&T was a regional bank in the United States that set up a fund of 250,000 dollars (US$, the same below) to "sponsor the promotion of the spirit of capitalism, especially the philosophy of Ayn Rand's objectivism". Whenever this kind of "small profit is big" design (according to Professor Zheng Shusen, taking the University of California in the 80s as an example, the "minimum consumption" of such lectures is 500,000 yuan, that is, enterprises or individuals donate this amount to have the "right to name"), the author's first reaction is that this must be a wonderful method for the Jews! Whether BB&T is a Jewish cause or not, I don't want to track it down; In any case, the 30-year-old Li Xun won this honor, which should help his development inside and outside the ivory tower.

Perhaps because of his responsibility to promote capitalism, Richson named the pirate's "conventional weapon" Iron Hook as Adam Smith (with the usual profile bust) "The Invisible Hand". In the first chapter, he begins by writing that, according to the doctrine revealed by Smith in The Original Wealth, most people are self-interested, and they derive the greatest benefit from the division of labor; As for the public good and self-interest, it seems to be guided by an "invisible hand" towards harmony and consistency. For the criminal syndicates in the "underground world", although the illegal activities of their members are induced by self-interest, the division of labor and cooperation is also the only way to obtain the maximum benefits. Li Xun pointed out that "one-man pirates" do not do much, and only when they are organized can they achieve "great causes", and it is the "invisible hand" that prompts these Seadogs to cooperate in the division of labor and loot.

However, Li Xun believes that the "invisible hook" and the "invisible hand" are different, and the main reason is that the "invisible hand" makes the majority of the battalion service members pursue profits, and constantly try to improve the quality of products and services, and at the same time have to keep prices down, all of which are all aimed at avoiding being eliminated in the fierce competition, and ultimately benefiting all mankind; However, although pirates also grew through "division of labor" under the guidance of the "invisible hand", they were unable to create wealth or increase productivity, so they were not beneficial to society.

Hollywood movies have left a bad impression on pirates, such as the irrational thugs who loot and kill people. In fact, although pirates are not upright men, they are very rational, they are not only guided by material incentives, most of them have done a cost-benefit assessment before plundering, when the government targeted legislation and the enhancement of naval power to make them constrained everywhere, the pirates do not rashly confront the authorities, but come up with ways to avoid risks; The pirates take the "stolen goods" and distribute them fairly, in order to increase the incentive to work, boost morale (like a bonus or commission for a business), and make them loot at risk, and they will also spread their eyes to find and identify their next target prey. Li Xun believes that piracy can definitely be explained by the "rational choice theory", which reflects the self-confidence and arrogance of economists who believe that everything in the world, whether big or small, public or private, can be explained rationally by economics - the so-called economic imperialism (Economic Imperialism) is also - however, Li Xun's application of economics is inevitably ridiculed and abused, Harvard economics professor E. Glaeser (E. Glaeser) in the New York Times on June 30 in a brief review of the book, Let's call pirate economics "Aaaargh-onomics"!

The English classification of "sea gangsters" seems to be more refined than Chinese, and the common words are (1) Pirate (generally referring to pirates), (2) Buccaneer (West Indian pirates), (3) Privateer (armed merchant ships, can be called part-time pirates) and (4) Corsair (North African pirates), these four words, the three or two English-Chinese dictionaries I have seen have added a little explanation to distinguish them, but the translation is "pirates". In fact, they are quite different - (1) they are ordinary pirates (originally meaning "sea travelers") who ride merchant ships. (2) is a synonym for (1), and its name is derived from the fact that the French hunters operating in the area of present-day Haiti were "assimilated" by the natives and used to smoke the meat of animals on wooden frames, which are called Buccan in the Araw* language of the Indians scattered in the Caribbean, boucanier in French culture, and buccaneer in English culture (these amateur pirates smoked meat on deck, hence the name). The above is the explanation of the wiki, and Li Xun is more fascinating. In the first half of the 17th century, the French who hunted in present-day Haiti (then known as Hispaniola) had a sideline business of robbing merchant ships passing through the Haitian waters, and in 1630, these hunters moved to the nearby island of Tortuga, which is no longer named on modern maps, probably because the island was "rich in produce", and various "mobs" operating in this sea area came to forage for food and make a fortune. This "island country" was occupied by Spain at that time (it was not called a colony at that time), and the various gangs "grabbed food" and fought for territory, so that the island was smoky and orderly, and the Spanish governor adopted the method of drawing wages from the bottom of the kettle and sent troops to exterminate the wild animals on the island for the sake of "social tranquility". The Governor's intention was to force these "illegal immigrants" who "had no means of subsistence" to move elsewhere to "earn food", but the rabble had a new prey, the Spanish merchant ships, and Buccaneer became a natural synonym for pirates.

Surprisingly, the British, who were more strategic than the Spaniards, were fighting with the Spaniards for the "ownership" of Jamaica, and the British saw that the Buccaneer was "brave and good at fighting", so they took fame and fortune as bait, took it for their own use, and gave it the heavy responsibility of defending Jamaica; Because the Buccaneer plundered the Spanish merchant ships that traveled between their ancestral homes and the Americas, which were loaded with gold, food and spices, and the bandits that the Spanish government was determined to annihilate, it was equivalent to saying that they were the "old enemies" of the Spanish navy, and the encounter with the Spanish army was a life-and-death battle, so they worked particularly hard to let Britain gain the upper hand and finally control Jamaica. In 1494, the "Treaty of Tordesillas" convened and signed in Spain in order to carve up the many uncultivated virgin lands after Columbus discovered the New World (000997, Co., Ltd.), and granted Spain a monopoly on the New World (600628, Co., Ltd.) (North America), which was broken, and Britain, France, and Spain were evenly divided, each taking what they needed under the cover of strong ships and artillery.

Privateer is more complex in that privately owned vessels—merchant and fishing vessels—are temporarily commissioned by the government to attack enemy ships in wartime, with the incentive that they can take possession of enemy ships. Because of their "military exploits", the government turned a blind eye to their sometimes plundering of enemy merchant ships, which was certainly lucrative business, which was why the Privateer was a popular investment project in the late 16th and early 19th centuries. Economists believe that this form of attack and plunder is the most effective, because the privateer will try not to sink the target, but simply "crash-land" the opponent and then loot the ship, in other words, this practice will not cause heavy casualties, and the least destructive and most economical. However, social progress and international cooperation made this disguised form of "government-registered piracy" a no-brainer at the end of the 19th century.

The most romantic pirates were Corsair, the royal officer of the French king in the Middle Ages, whose name comes from Letttredecourse, which means "driving power of attorney" (racingletter), that is, some privately owned ships were commissioned by the French king to "drive" enemy ships, in other words, they were essentially the same as Privateer; According to the decree of the French king, Corsair could not plunder its own and neutral ships and be punished illegally, but "theory" and "practice" were two different things, which was the cause of the many accidents in French waters between the 12th and 15th centuries. In any case, because of the profitability, the Corsair fleet grew rapidly, and the seas of the countries that were enemies of France, especially England, were dealt a big blow. After Corsair robbed merchant ships, the proceeds were divided into three parts, the Admiralty (which is said to be the main source of funding for the Admiralty in those years), the king, and the "pirates". The French king's actions aroused "opposition from various countries", and the parliament also considered it "degrading to the national body", and the royal permission to hijack ships was not until the Congress of Vienna passed a ban in 1856, forcing the French king to abandon this lucrative business.

The British and Spanish women were fascinated by the agile and masculine French pirates, and the great poet Byron wrote a long poem in his name, according to the little girl, the protagonist of the pirate Conrad (Conrad) was personable, handsome and dashing, full of mystery, often confident, broodingintense, because of the love of the bandits, is a "woman's soup pill" with excellent interpersonal relationships. Byron's poem was composed into an opera of the same name by the famous Italian composer G. Verdi in 1848, and the story of the "fragrant and exciting" of the French pirates has been spread all over the world, and it has not faded to this day......

Li Xun's book covers the period from 1670 to 1730, with a special focus on piracy around the world from 1716 to 1726, the so-called "heyday of piracy". According to the "Chronicle" of Sir Nicholas, British Governor of Jamaica in the early eighteenth century, about 35 per cent of the pirates operating in the Caribbean from 1715 to 1725 were British, 20 per cent American, 20 per cent indigenous to the West Indies, and a few more Scottish, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Scandinavian, Greek, and indigenous to the East Indies; Unlike land bandits, this is a group of "UN bandits". The number of this vast pirate force operating in the Caribbean, the Atlant 600558 ic, and the Indian Ocean is not counted, but in 1717 the British Governor of Bermuda estimated it at 1,000, and in 1722 the Plantation and Trade Commission "counted" 3,000. Regardless of whether these figures are accurate or not, they are indeed a force to be taken lightly at sea in approximate numbers. Because the total number of British navy at that time was more than 13,000, and the "census" of the North American colonies in 1680 was only 152,000, the number of pirates was relatively staggering. Judging from the data of the surviving "logbooks", the average number of pirates in the 37 pirate ships from 1716 to 1726 was 80, and the sailors of a 200-ton merchant ship were generally 13 to 17.

Like the Corsairs, the Privateers were given a share of the stolen goods by the government, the shipowners and pirates, and in 1708 the British passed the Prize Act of 1708, which allowed shipowners and pirates to divide equally.

Viewers of Hollywood pirate movies may have the question, why did the pirate ship raise the skull flag (made up of a skull and crossed thigh bones, also known as the pirate flag)? Because when they see this flag from afar, unarmed merchant ships will make a detour to avoid it, and the pirate ship pulling the flag is not equivalent to "driving away passengers", and there is no reason why pirates should not know this "truth". So why would Corsair do this?

In a 2007 article on piracy, the author pointed out that Hollywood pirate movies were exaggerated and untrue, but it is a fact that pirate ships fly pirate flags, and A. Konstam: The History of Pirates (Lyon Press, 1999), director of the Ordnance and Armor Museum of the Tower of London, talks about "The History of Pirates" (Lyon Press, 1999), there is a special chapter "FlyingtheJollyRoger" based on the origin of the pirate flag. Illustrated and detailed, the skull flag is introduced in detail (some with naked men with knives, and some with time leaks, which look more nervous and scary).

The description of why the skull flag is called Jolly Roger is a lively description of Li Xun (see pages 90-102), and it is said that the name may have been derived either from "Old Roger" (another name for the devil) or from the "Jolierouge" (the pirate flag of the French corsair). In any case, Li Xun pointed out that Jolly Roger's message was that the pirates had a "kind" desire to avoid a big fight with their "prey"; However, this interpretation is contrary to the original meaning of the French pirates' red flag as a blood flag, that is, a warning to the "prey" that if they do not obey, there will be a massacre. It was precisely because the red flag was so bloody that the British pirates changed to a skull flag (also known as a black flag) with white bones on a black background; The Jolly Roger, as it was first seen in 1700, was not "popularized" until 1717. Wikipedia's explanations are very detailed and comprehensive, and interested readers should not let them go; In order not to go further and further, I will not repeat it here.

The purpose of pirates is nothing more than money, so after determining the "prey", there are two things to avoid as much as possible: one is not to let the "prey" escape; The first is that it can be subdued without the use of force, especially artillery. If the "prey" escapes, the pirates will be in vain, and if there are casualties, the authorities will go all out to arrest and besiege them; if it is so serious that they will fire at each other, they will lose both people and money, and at the very least, they will damage the stolen goods, resulting in what economists call "loss of profits." Not only is the looting futile or half the effort, but the two sides exchange fire, the goods may be damaged or even sunk in the sea, and the pirate ship may sink and there may also be losses. It is very obvious that the sinking is a total loss, and there is no need to talk about it, even if there is a catch, the ship is injured by artillery fire, and the maintenance costs must be deducted from the proceeds of the plunder, which is equivalent to a decrease in the income of the thieves. For all these reasons, pirates believed that the best raiding strategy was to bluff so that their "prey" could neither escape nor surrender without a fight (Hence the call of the pirates "lovers of peace"?). In other words, pulling up the skull flag is a practical, cunning, rational business practice! It is completely different from the irrational behavior that ordinary people think will drive away the "prey".

In order to "encourage" merchant ships to "drop sail and donate money," the pirates also tortured the captains of merchant ships who refused to surrender, truly implemented the "strict resistance to resistance," and arranged for the release of seafarers in several seaports so that they could spread the "propaganda of piracy" in various places in order to set an example for the chickens and monkeys. Li Xun's book and "A History of Pirates" and the 2007 reprint of "P. Gosse: The History of Pirnacy, Dover" (A History of Pirnacy, Dover) (1932) contain shocking accounts and images of how pirates brutally tortured captains who refused to surrender, and the legends about the inhumanity of pirates and the demonization of pirates in Hollywood movies inspired them. On the other hand, the pirates all "surrendered leniently" to the captains and crews of the merchant ships who cooperated, and gave material rewards, in the hope that the seafarers who would survive the catastrophe would spread widely the news that the pirates would not kill people or even extend a sympathetic hand. Obviously, since the "rewards and punishments" of pirates are clear, the chances of automatic contributions to pirate merchant ships in the future are far greater than those of stubborn resistance.

Of course, the pirate ship only raises the pirate flag after discovering the target "prey"; Because most of the pirate leaders were calculating and cost-effective, the equipment of the average pirate ship in the seventeenth century was superior to that of merchant ships, both in terms of sails and armament, which is why the targets identified by the pirates were not easy to escape!

In addition to the cargo, many of the slaves on the slave ship, as well as the seafarers in general, were corrected to evil and turned into thieves after being robbed, because the slaves were treated as goods and lived an inhuman life on the ship; In those days, it was very common for merchant captains to withhold seamen's food and salaries, and to treat them as hard labor, and most of them, whether black or white, regarded the robbery as "liberation". In the 17th century, the pirate ranks grew rapidly, and for this reason.

The career of piracy is in line with the "risk-reward ratio" of investment science, that is, there is a positive relationship between risk and reward in normal times - in extraordinary times with emergencies, high risk will have zero return (total annihilation) - as we all know, in peacetime, governments around the world are pursuing pirates at sea and land (before 1536 England had a "maritime court", and in 1536 passed the "Maritime Crimes Act" to deal with pirates), and will impose harsh punishments, it is common to hang pirate lords. Under the strict punishment and strict law, pirates still follow one after another, which shows that pirates are indeed a lucrative "livelihood", and under the lure, pirates are constantly supplied, which is the underlying reason for the number of pirates in their heyday. However, in the final analysis, it is the material inducement that is the important factor that leads to theft. In 1695, the notorious pirate leader Henry Ever rode a merchant ship and captured 600,000 pounds worth of gold and silver. After the news spread, "the piracy industry boomed", which is not difficult to understand. Li Xun obtained a lot of detailed information from the logbooks of the pirate ships and the notes made by the pirate "geniuses", detailing the achievements of various famous pirates; After sharing the spoils, many pirates choose to work as "residences" in Caribbean island countries and even Madagascar in Africa.

Regarding pirate organizations, democratic elections, discipline, and the division of stolen goods according to rank, the humble article "male thieves and female prostitutes have their own ways" has been clearly explained; It can be added here that pirates were not only the first to create equal pay for men and women for equal work (Li Xun discovered that there were four "recorded" female pirates in the eighteenth century), but also pioneered racial equality (this was by no means the white pirates who were particularly benevolent, but the "liberation" of black slaves to make them free men, so that they would plunder and fight desperately against naval encounters or merchant ships that refused to surrender without a fight, which was extremely important to the safety and profitability of pirate ships), Li Xun cites from historian Kennis Kinko's book "Negroes under the Black Flag". The author's statistics on the number of pirates on twenty-three pirate ships from 1682 to 1726 show that black pirates accounted for a considerable proportion, averaging between 20 and 30 percent, with the highest being more than 90 percent; And Li Xun has researched in many ways and concluded that black pirates are no longer slaves, but free people who enjoy all the rights of white pirates. Considering that Britain abolished slavery only in 1772 (its colonies did not follow until 1833), and the United States did not "abolish slavery" until 1865, white pirates should take the lead in emancipating black slaves!

Otherwise, the world today would regard pirates as sadists (harshly punishing merchant ships who refuse to surrender) rather than as lovers of peace (tearing pirate flags to achieve the goal of subjugating their opponents without fighting), only knowing how to plunder gold and silver goods by brutal and irrational means without commending them for their fair and rational distribution of spoils, they seem to be a lawless rabble, but there is definitely "rule of law" on pirate ships (pirate ships have no prisons, no police, no lawyers, Judges and parliaments, but there is a "code of conduct" that everyone must abide by) and a system of elections and recalls, and the pirates seem to be hungry and forced to join the group, but in fact they do a meticulous field investigation, and raff gives preference to surgeons, carpenters, ironworkers, etc. Within the framework of rational choice, pirates were able to run amok all over the world, and merchant ships saw them (see the Skull Banner) and made them rich, so that many pirates were able to live the rest of their lives in places beyond Dili's reach.

In the novels and Hollywood films, pirates are a group of thugs who kill people without blinking an eye and are often in a state of irrational euphoria, or silver sticks who engage in homosexuality without being a poor woman, but because their selfishness remains unchanged and their behavior is guided by material incentives, they are completely rational in the face of cost-effectiveness, that is, they are always committed to reducing costs and improving efficiency, which makes them, like businessmen, also strive to make the highest profits. Their experience is that democracy, equality, and the combination of hard and soft against the "enemy" have been the most effective.

In the final analysis, pirates are illegal after all, and there is no shortage of perverted fanatics among them, and Li Xun's collection of "documents" not only preserves the pirates forcing a merchant captain they don't like to "eat a plate of candles" for fun; A pirate leader, believing that "he was dancing in the fire in a wonderful position," burned a captive sailor alive while the thieves watched and amused...... For the most part, however, the pirates acted according to the guidance of the "invisible hand", but they were lonely at sea, and they did anything deviant in Dili's circumstances.

In order to "live and work in peace and contentment" for the people of the colonies and to ensure the safety of its merchant ships, Britain tried its best to deal with pirates in the early 18th century. In fact, in dealing with the problem of piracy, the spirit of "pragmatism" of the British was fully revealed.

In 1702, Britain was involved in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), and in order to strengthen its maritime power, Britain, like other countries, also requisitioned pirate ships to serve the country. This expedient measure not only increased the strength of the British navy, but also solved the problem of piracy and plundering of its own merchant ships. The pirates became the "assistants" of the navy, on the condition that the navy turned a blind eye to them, allowing them to plunder the enemy's merchant ships and all the "spoils" to be divided among the pirates. In the face of this "force majeure" inducement, Privateer is more active in looting enemy merchant ships and attacking enemy ships. Obviously, with security assured, Privateers are rapidly expanding; However, when the war ended, the agreement was no longer valid, and they had to go back to the old days and continue their pirate careers, which was equivalent to a sudden increase in the pirate ranks.

How to solve the problem of piracy, the British finally came up with a clever plan. In 1717, the British appointed Woodes Rogers, a former privateer captain who had made a name for the Bahamas (the British had set up camp here in 1647; In 1783, he officially became a British colony) Governor-General, whose mission was to sweep away the pirates entrenched in the islands dotted with the region to facilitate British shipping; By the time he was called back to China in June 1721, the pirates in the waters of the Bahamas had been largely wiped out, meaning that the pirates had lost their land bases and had no logistics to call them home. Rogers is not only famous in the history of piracy, but he is also famous in literary history for rescuing A. Selkirk, the captain of a merchant ship stranded on a desert island due to a shipwreck, because the protagonist of Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe is based on Selkirk.

After the war, in order to make the best use of their talents, the British court sent naval elites to overseas colonies to replace the "reluctant and inefficient" colonial officials. Like Rogers, their mission is to sweep up pirates; However, due to the fact that the war had just ended, the treasury was empty, and the navy was short of supplies and manpower, for example, the ships sent to the West Indies had to return to Britain to replenish food, and the West Indies grain was several times more expensive than that of the British mainland; Because of the supply difficulties, the British ships were understaffed by the regular staff, and the maintenance required them to return to the dockyards, the result was that the corsairs were better than the navy in terms of equipment and morale, and the navy's results in suppressing bandits were not satisfactory.

The navies of various countries grew stronger and stronger, and pirates turned from unscrupulous and rampant all over the world to "day and night" to carry out sneak attacks, but although the prosperous era of piracy was a thing of the past, they continued to operate between the non-coastal and Caribbean islands, during which Britain was determined to become the supremacy of the seas, raised enough military funds to expand the navy, and finally drove the pirates into the "poor alley" in the twenties of the eighteenth century; Looking at the history of piracy, the golden age of piracy in the above-mentioned waters is less than 50 years, but piracy has never been extinct on the world charts, and even in the 21 st century, piracy in the waters of Africa and Asia is still so serious that the "naval powers" have to send ships to the "disaster areas" to protect their merchant ships.

In the afterword, "The Rise and Fall of Maritime Raids," Li Xun mentions Chinese pirates in the 18th century, followed by Chinese pirates operating in the South China Sea in the 19th century. Unlike Western pirates, Chinese pirates numbered in the tens of thousands, and he estimated that they could number as many as 150,000.

Li Xun can be said to be completely ignorant of Chinese pirates, not because he cannot read Chinese, but probably because he cannot link Chinese piracy with economics and deliberately ignores it, because there are many relevant English works, he will not be unaware, in fact, there is no difficulty in writing a chapter on Chinese pirates.

Some of the "Western books" about Chinese pirates are Gauss's 1932 History of Raids at Sea, which has a chapter on "Japan and China (Piracy)"; The subtitle of "Pirates" (D. Cordingly: Pirates, JPPress, 1998), edited by the famous pirate historian Cirdinary, is "...... Terrorism on the High Seas of the South China Sea", Chapter 10 on "Chinese Pirates"; As mentioned above, Kang Shitan wrote about the History of Piracy (with a long preface written by Curdten) and "Piracy in the Far East" in Chapter 10, which has the most ink on Chinese pirates, including "The Thief Ship" (The Junk; Detailed information on the number and armament of the pirate ships) and the "Pirate Profile" (PirateProfile), the three great thieves surnamed KuoHsingYeh, Ching Yih (Cheng I), and Shap'ng-Tsai, who they don't know. The description of Zheng Yi's wife, Zheng Yi's sister-in-law, in these books aroused the interest of the great Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges and wrote a short story "The Female Pirate Zheng Widow", which the author has not read and has nothing to say.

The national surname is Zheng Chenggong, because the Tang king Zhu Yujian gave the surname Zhu Yin the national surname Ye, but with the surname as the personal name, it is the "masterpiece" of Zhang Guan Li Dai, a foreigner who does not understand Chinese, and the book is indexed and takes Yeh as the surname, which makes the author confused, and only after reading his line carefully can he know that it is Zheng Chenggong. As for Zheng Yi, his original name was Zheng Wenxian, the son of Zheng Lianchang, the pirate boss of Xin'an, Guangdong, and his cousin Zheng Qi, both of whom were famous pirates in the South China Sea around 1800; The Zheng cousins originally acted together, but Zheng Qi was killed in a raid in his early years, and the old department was brought under Zheng Yi's banner; Zheng Yi facilitated the Guangdong Pirate Alliance and established the Red Flag Gang. In the twelfth year of Jiaqing (1807), Zheng Yi's pirates anchored in the waters of Lei Yue Mun in Hong Kong, with a total of about 600 ships of all sizes, which was unimaginable to Western pirates. That year, Zheng Yi drowned in a typhoon shipwreck during a sea robbery!

The author doesn't know much about Zheng Yi, but the deeds of his wife Zheng Yi's sister-in-law (Mrs. Cheng [Ching] I [Yih] Sao) are scattered in the above-mentioned books, "The History of Pirates", with Zheng Yi as the sub-title, and Zheng Yi's sister-in-law is the protagonist. A sister-in-law, formerly known as Shi Xianggu, was an egg household (on board)*, and they married in Donghai Village in the southern part of Guangzhou Bay. It is said that she had studied martial arts, and that she was resourceful, making her one of the few pirates in both civil and military affairs. After Zheng Yi was buried in the sea, a sister-in-law coerced her husband Yu Wei to lead the "whole army" of the Red Flag Gang (which is divided into black, white, yellow, blue, and blue flags, and each has hundreds of dozens of thief ships under its name), but the leaders are eyeing each other, and they don't want to take advantage of the leaderless group of dragons to expand their own power and even try to replace Zheng Yi's sister-in-law. So far, the familiar Zhang Baozai has appeared.

Zhang Baozai, formerly known as Zhang Bao (1786-1822), was Zheng Yi's "Qi Zai", originally a fisherman's son, when he was young, he went to sea with his father to fish, and was captured by Zheng Yi's men. When Zheng Yi's sister-in-law was worried and troubled by the division of her subordinates, Zhang Baozai gave advice to her stepmother, because she was quite a general and knew people well, and was gradually accepted by the thieves, and under the support of Zheng Yi's sister-in-law, Zhang Baozai finally replaced Zheng Yi as the leader of the Red Flag Gang. It is said that Zheng Yi's sister-in-law is dark-skinned but naturally beautiful and charming, and she and Zhang Baozai are called Qima Qizai, but they are actually husband and wife. When Zheng Yi died, his sister-in-law was thirty-two years old and Zhang Baozai was twenty-one years old.

Under the leadership of Zhang Baozai and Zheng Yisao, the Red Flag Gang had more than 800 large ships and more than 1,000 small boats in its heyday, and there were as many as 100,000 thieves, specializing in robbing official ships, grain ships and foreign ships; The gang of pirates is active in the eastern coast of Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta, based in Hong Kong, its "Shuai Ying" is located on Lantau Island, Sai Ying Pun is located at the foot of Tuqi (Taiping) Mountain, and Tung Ying Pun is located in Causeway Bay. These caves are said to be the place where Zhang Baozai kept his gold, silver and jewelry. At that time, the momentum of the Red Flag Gang can be imagined.

Zheng Yi's sister-in-law and Zhang Baozai "governed the army very strictly", and the disciplines formulated included beheading those who violated the order, beheading those who dared to dictate power, beheading those who secretly hid booty, cutting off their ears to show the public when they retreated, and beheading those who raped female tickets (hostages); The Red Flag Gang also "collected insurance (protection) fees from commercial fishing, salt and rice vessels", under the names of "No. Tax", "Port Regulations", and "Foreign Tax"; "Whoever goes out to sea shall be taxed four hundred dollars of silver, and shall return to the ship twice as much, and shall be spared robbery." Because of the clarity of the provisions, tens of thousands of pirates lived an illegal life in a disciplined manner.

Western painters put pen to paper based on their words, and their group portraits of Chinese pirates are strangely shaped and unbearable; Ko Dingli's Pirates contains a rare frame of "Zheng Yi's sister-in-law in the robbery" (p. 230; Originally published in 1836's "History of Global Piracy" [History of the PiratesofallNations]), Zheng Yi's sister-in-law in the picture, neither male nor female, wearing a dress and armor, wearing a helmet shaped like a beauty pageant champion crowning laurels, holding a scimitar in her right hand, a dagger in her left hand, and slashing at the officers and soldiers who were forced to retreat with her right hand. The unknown painter certainly never met a Chinese woman.

Around 1330 A.D., Japan was in civil strife, Emperor Daigo and the great feudal lord Ashikaga Zun attacked endlessly, defeated the army and died on the island, formed gangs, smuggled and looted, killed people and set fire along the coast of China. In order to prevent the slightest deterioration, the Ming Dynasty imposed a sea ban, which not only organized a new army to severely damage the Japanese pirates, but also strictly prohibited Chinese merchant ships from going to sea to avoid collusion between lawbreakers and the Japanese pirates. In the 15th year of Jiajing (1536), the plague of the Japanese was finally solved, but the foreign shipping along the southeast coast since the Han and Tang dynasties was also severely damaged, and the maritime traders who could not change their business had to do business illegally, and in the eyes of the rulers, they became pirates. In the early days, in order to defend themselves against the pirate equivalent of Western colonists, these merchant ships were self-armed...... Most of them later accepted the Ming Dynasty's "Zhao'an", the most famous of which were Zheng Zhilong (1604-1661) and his son Zheng Chenggong (1624-1662). Zheng Zhilong was later killed in the Qing Dynasty, and Zheng Chenggong retreated to Taiwan; Zheng Jian, the general of the Zheng family, missed the opportunity and failed to follow Zheng Chenggong to Taiwan, so he traveled to Mirs Bay, Hong Kong, and became a rampant pirate; The above-mentioned Zheng Qi and Zheng Yi are Zheng Jian's grandchildren.

Zheng Yi's sister-in-law later formed an alliance with Zhang Baozai and broke into a vigorous piracy career, killing Xu Tingxiong, the admiral of the Zhejiang Navy and Sun Quanmou, the commander of the Guangdong Navy in the thirteenth year of Jiaqing (1808); In the following year, he plundered the merchant ships of the British East India Company, captured the owner of the ship as a hostage, and "obtained a ransom of 10,000 yuan and two boxes of tobacco and gunpowder", so he inspired the Qing court to join forces with the British army to encircle and suppress, this "campaign" was commanded by Zheng Yisao, she used the strategy of "encircling Wei to save Zhao", and sent the thieves to raid Guangzhou, and then Zhang Baozai led the fleet to trace the river into the Pearl River Delta, defeating the "Sino-British combined fleet"...... By the end of the year, the Qing court, with the assistance of the British army and the foreign-aided Portuguese navy (at the cost of 80,000 taels of silver), drove Zhang Baozai back to Lantau Island; In April 1810, Zhang Baozai saw that the general trend had gone, and accepted the "Zhao'an", and the official was from the second rank of the thousand generals, and he was appointed as the deputy general of Penghu, and Zheng Yi's sister-in-law was awarded the title of wife. In 1822, Zhang died in office and died at the end of Chinese New Year's Eve six; Zheng Yi's sister-in-law settled in Macau, opened a casino, and enjoyed her life