Since the end of the Yuan Dynasty, due to the sharp turbulence of the Japanese political situation and the Ming Dynasty's policy of sea ban, so that the Japanese Ronin colluded with the Han smuggling syndicate and frequently invaded the coastal areas of Korea and the Ming Dynasty, the Wukou Rebellion became more and more serious, and reached its peak during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, but as a major external problem of the Ming Dynasty, the Wokou were basically extinct during the Qing Dynasty. Personally, I think it should be mainly due to the following four reasons.
One of the reasons: In the late Ming Dynasty, the Jialongqing switch was suppressed by force, and the inland plague was basically solved
As we all know, the Ming Dynasty's Wokou were divided into "True Wo" and "False Wo", of which "True Wo" naturally referred to those Japanese Wokou, while False Wokou referred to some Han Chinese who were mixed into Wokou and even pretended to be Wokou, such as Xiao Xian, Deng Wenjun, Lin Bichuan, Shen Men in Fujian, He Yaba in Guangdong, and some pirate subordinates, such as Xu Hai under Wang Zhi.
Due to the long-term prohibition of the sea in the Ming Dynasty, in order to survive and get rich, some people engaged in smuggling trade, some people ganged up to become pirates, and some people joined the Wokou or led the Wokou to attack the interior as a guide, which was the "fake Wo", and their number and harm were even far more than the "real Wo".
As far as the "false Wokou" is concerned, in fact, it can be roughly divided into two categories, one is that they live in the coastal areas, they are no different from the people on weekdays, but they will provide intelligence and guide the Wokou at critical moments; the other is the pirates, who usually occupy the island to rob passing ships, and often dress up as Wokou, or cooperate with the Wokou to plunder the interior. For the former, it was often only left to the local government to carefully screen and arrest, while for the latter, the Ming Dynasty mainly attacked.
During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the coastal plague became more and more serious, and it was time for the imperial court to have to solve it. Therefore, the Ming court first cooperated with the pirate Wang Zhi to eliminate Chen Sipan, Lu Qi, Shen Jiu and other maritime armed forces, after which Wang Zhi and the Ming government maintained a honeymoon period, until Yu Dayu and Hu Zongxian arrived successively, wang Zhi and the Ming government began to break with, and finally booby-trapped. Since then, although the large armed pirates along the coast have been eliminated, the scattered pirates have also led to the rapid spread of the plague.
Therefore, starting from the fortieth year of Jiajing (1561), Qi Jiguang led the Qi family army to begin to vigorously eliminate the Wukou, so the pirates and the Wukou had not yet formed a huge group again, so Qi Jiguang first annihilated the Taizhou Wukou in nine battles and nine victories, and then joined hands with Yu Dayu to eliminate the Fujian and Zhejiang Wokou. By the forty-fourth year of Jiajing (1565), with the elimination of Lin Daoqian and Lin Afeng in Guangdong and Nan'ao, the southeast coast of Wukou was basically wiped out.
At that time, many people of insight saw the relationship between the "sea ban" and the sea curse, and strongly advocated the opening of the "sea ban", for example, Tan Lun, the inspector of Fujian, actively advocated the opening of the sea and asked the imperial court to allow Fujian merchants to trade with foreign countries in the coastal sea. As a result, there was the "Longqing Switch", and as the coastal people had a way to live, the number of "false widows" was greatly reduced, so that the inland woe plague was basically eliminated.
The second reason is that the situation in Japan has calmed down after the Warring States period, and the closure of the country has led to a decrease in the number of "true warriors"
In addition to a large number of "false Woes", another source of the Ming Dynasty's Wokou plague was a large number of "True Woes" from Japan. During the more than two hundred years of the Ming Dynasty in the Central Plains, Japan was in the midst of war for a long time, and the turmoil in the domestic situation led to a large number of Japanese people having to go to sea to make a living, which was the main source of the Japanese Wokou.
After the fall of the Kamakura shogunate in Japan at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Japan was first in a period of confrontation between the north and the south, and then entered the Warring States period due to the Yingren Rebellion, and the long-term chaos led to the unemployment of a large number of samurai, who could only choose to go to sea to earn a living. In addition, in order to obtain war resources, some daimyo also chose to secretly support Japanese pirates to help them plunder their wealth, coupled with the desperate risks of some smuggling merchants, which formed a large number of "true warriors" who were active in the coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty.
At the end of the sixteenth century, the Japanese Sengoku period entered the end of the period, the domestic situation gradually stabilized, and in order to maintain its own rule, Japan also began to crack down the Wokou, coupled with the impact of the Hachiman Ship Prohibition Order (prohibition of piracy) issued by Toyoko Hideyoshi, the number of Japanese samurai began to gradually decrease, coupled with the loss of the Ming Dynasty's internal response, the phenomenon of Wokou looting began to gradually decrease.
Missionaries preach in Japan
At the same time, as the Western powers began to infiltrate into East Asia, a large number of missionaries began to enter Japan, which initially did not attract the attention of the Japanese ruler at that time, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, but with the many uprisings in Japan, the figure of Spanish missionaries appeared behind the many uprisings in Japan, especially the many uprisings during Tokugawa Ieyasu's unification of Japan, which eventually led to the Edo shogunate issuing several national lock-up orders.
Of course, the original lockdown was only aimed at Catholic missionaries in Spain, while Tokugawa Ieyasu had friendly relations with Protestant countries such as England and the Netherlands. However, with the death of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the difficulty of his later rulers to distinguish between Protestantism and Catholicism led to the full implementation of the policy of lock-in between Tokugawa Hidetada and Tokugawa Iemitsu, which made it difficult for Japanese to go to sea to make a living.
As mentioned above, due to the gradual stabilization of the political situation in Japan, as well as the restrictions and suppression of the "True Wo" in Japan, the Wokou in Japan lost their foundation of survival, and coupled with the strict closure of the Tokugawa shogunate after the today, it was difficult for the Japanese people to go to the sea to survive, and the number of "Makoto" naturally decreased sharply.
The third reason: the Qing Dynasty strictly implemented the relocation of the border and the prohibition of the sea, resulting in the loss of the target of the Wukou
After the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, out of the need for rule, it once again implemented the policy of closing the country to the outside world, and even in the early days of the Qing Dynasty, it implemented the policy of "moving the border and prohibiting the sea", moving all the coastal people into the interior, even if the Wokou invaded the coastal areas, they could not find a target that could be plundered, and naturally there was no Wokou to attack again over time.
Schematic map of the relocation of Wenzhou in the eighteenth year of Shunzhi (1661).
After the Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains, although it quickly eliminated the anti-Qing forces in the interior, the anti-Qing forces of Zheng Chenggong on the southeast coast were still there, and in order to isolate the connection between the coastal people and the Zheng clan of Taiwan and prevent the people from gathering at sea, it was ordered that the coastal people were strictly prohibited from going to sea. In June of the twelfth year of Shunzhi (1655), the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, Tun Tai, even called for a strict sea ban on the coastal provinces of "entering the sea without allowing sails", and violators set up a heavy code.
During the Kangxi Dynasty, in order to cut off the supply of Taiwan's Zheng clan, a coastal area was demarcated in the coastal area (ranging from 30 to 200 or 300 miles of the coastal area), boundary monuments were set up, and even boundary walls were built, and the coastal residents within the migration range were forced to migrate to the interior, directly creating a no-man's land in the coastal area.
Due to the vigorous implementation of the "ban on the sea" and the "order to move the sea", the southeast coast was desolate within thirty to fifty miles, and not only was it impossible for the people to go to sea, but even the Wokou had lost their targets, so that the Wokou were naturally greatly reduced.
After the Taiwan Zheng clan was eliminated, the Qing court revoked the "Ban on the Sea" and the "Order to Move the Sea" in July of the 23rd year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1684), and the sea ban was opened to a certain extent.
However, during the Qianlong period, the Qing court once again opened the sea ban, and the reason was the increasingly frequent trade between foreigners, and the imperial court was worried that foreigners and Han Chinese would unite against the Qing Dynasty, so in the twenty-fourth year of Qianlong (1759), the "Regulations on Guarding Against Foreign Yi" was promulgated, and only officially authorized merchants were allowed to form "public banks" to trade with foreigners (the thirteen lines of Guangdong were formed), and it was still difficult for coastal people and merchants to go to sea to make a living.
Later, the Qing court promulgated the "Minyi Trade Charter" and the "Eight Articles of Defense" in the fourteenth year of Jiaqing (1809) and the fifteenth year of Daoguang (1835), respectively, although the maritime trade was opened to a certain extent, but strict regulations were imposed on the trade between foreigners and the Qing Dynasty, as well as for the coastal people to go to sea to do business.
Due to the Qing Dynasty's strict policy of closing off the country to the outside world, the economy of the rest of the southeast coast, except for a few treaty ports, suffered a disastrous blow, which was also an important reason for the decline of "real and false" and "false".
Reason four: Western powers infiltrated Southeast Asia, and the number of pirates increased
From the end of the sixteenth century, the Western powers began to infiltrate Southeast Asia, and the maritime trade in Southeast Asia was rising, so a trade route flowing with gold naturally bred pirates. Therefore, although the Qing Dynasty lacked Wokou, piracy was extremely rampant, and the most famous pirate during the Qing Dynasty was probably Zheng Yiyi' sister-in-law.
As early as after kangxi regained Taiwan, some of Zheng Chenggong's remnants came to the mouth of the Pearl River as thieves, and evolved into the red, yellow, blue, white, black, and purple six gangs in the early Qing Dynasty. During the Jiaqing period, the people of the coastal areas of Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong struggled with the government because of the forced life, and as a result, many of the wanted people went to sea and fled to southeast Asian waters, resulting in the increasingspread piracy in the region.
At this time, with the efforts of Zheng Yi, the leader of the Hongqi Gang, and his wife Zheng Yi, the Hongqi Gang formed an alliance with the Pirates of Guangdong, with Zheng Yi as the leader of the alliance, and by the ninth year of Jiaqing (1804), this alliance had developed extremely strongly, and had become the premier pirate fleet at that time, known as the "Red Flag Team". Three years later, Zheng Yi died, and his wife Zheng Yi became the leader of the Red Flag Gang.
Under the command of Zheng Yiyi, the Hongqi Gang, with Lantau Island in Hong Kong as its main base, once had 500 or 600 large and small ships, a large number of 30,000 or 40,000 people, not only had its own shipbuilding factory, but even equipped with a considerable number of Western weapons, and its strength was extremely strong.
However, since the main western powers active in the southeast coast and Southeast Asia at that time, the Hongqi Gang rarely fought with the Qing court sailors, but instead fought with the Western powers. Not only did it severely damage the Portuguese-Australian fleet and besiege Macau to the point of nearly starvation, but in the fourteenth year of Jiaqing (1809), it attacked British ships on the inland river in Guangzhou, killing dozens of British troops and capturing a British warship.
At that time, whether it was the Six Flags Alliance or the South Chinese pirates active in Guangdong's coastal and inland waterways, they preferred to rob passing merchant ships and kidnap foreign merchants. For example, Zheng Yiyi kidnapped the East Indian official Richard Glasspoole, and after being redeemed and returned to London, he also wrote a memoir called "The Terrible Pirate", which made Zheng Yiyi famous overseas.
As mentioned above, due to the infiltration of Western powers into Southeast Asia and the rise of maritime trade, the robbery of merchant ships and the kidnapping of past merchants are not only more profitable than plundering the inland and coastal people, but also relatively less threatening, but they exist more in the form of pirates. However, it was precisely because of the infiltration of the great powers, under the encirclement and suppression of the Qing court and the great powers, the living space of the pirates was also greatly compressed, and they were either eventually encircled and eliminated by the two sides, or finally forced to accept the recruitment due to the situation.
To sum up, due to the Ming Dynasty and Japan's wanton suppression of the Wokou, the relaxation of the domestic political situation in Japan, coupled with the Qing Dynasty's policy of moving the border and banning the sea and the rise of maritime trade, the Wukou that had been rampant in the Ming Dynasty had basically disappeared by the Qing Dynasty.