1.
Jiajing Emperor
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The Jiajing Emperor was the 11th emperor of the Chinese Ming dynasty who ruled from 1521 to 1567. Born Zhu Houcong, he was the former Zhengde Emperors cousin and his father, Zhu Youyuan, the Prince of Xing, was the fourth son of the Chenghua Emperor and the eldest son of three sons born to the emperors concubine, Lady Shao. The Jiajing Emperors regnal name, Jiajing, means admirable tranquility, born as heir apparent of a vassal prince, Zhu Houcong was not brought up to succeed to the throne. However, the throne became vacant in 1521 with the death of the Hongzhi Emperors son, the Zhengde Emperor. As the Jiajing Emperor, Zhu Houcong had his parents posthumously elevated to an honorary imperial rank, custom dictated that an emperor who was not an immediate descendant of the previous one should be adopted by the previous one, to maintain an unbroken line. Such a posthumous adoption of Zhu Houcong by the Hongzhi Emperor was proposed and this conflict is known as the Great Rites Controversy. The Jiajing Emperor prevailed and hundreds of his opponents were banished, flogged in the imperial court, among the banished was the poet Yang Shen. The Jiajing Emperor was also known to be a cruel and self-aggrandizing emperor, ignoring state affairs, the Jiajing Emperor relied on Zhang Cong and Yan Song to handle affairs of state. Ministers such as Hai Rui and Yang Xusheng challenged and even chastised Yan Song, Hai Rui and many ministers were eventually dismissed or executed. Only Yan Song, a few handful of eunuchs and Daoist priests ever saw the emperor and this eventually led to corruption at all levels of the Ming government. However, the Jiajing Emperor was intelligent and managed to control the court, the Jiajing Emperors ruthlessness also led to an internal plot by his concubines to assassinate him in October,1542 by strangling him while he slept. A group of maids who had had enough of the emperors cruelty decided to band together to murder him. Meanwhile, some of the palace maids involved began to panic. The Ming dynasty had enjoyed a period of peace. In 1550, he reached the suburbs of Beijing. Eventually the Ming government appeased him by granting special trading rights, the Ming government also had to deal with wokou pirates attacking the southeastern coastline. Starting in 1550, Beijing was enlarged by the addition of the outer city, the deadliest earthquake of all times, the Shaanxi earthquake of 1556 that killed over 800,000 people, occurred during the Jiajing Emperors reign. The Jiajing Emperor was a follower of Taoism and attempted to suppress Buddhism
2.
Junk (ship)
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A junk is an ancient Chinese sailing ship design that is still in use today. Junks were used as seagoing vessels as early as the 2nd century AD and they evolved in the later dynasties, and were used throughout Asia for extensive ocean voyages. They were found, and in numbers are still found, throughout South-East Asia and India. Found more broadly today is a number of modern recreational junk-rigged sailboats. The term junk may be used to cover many kinds of boat—ocean-going, cargo-carrying, pleasure boats and they vary greatly in size and there are significant regional variations in the type of rig, however they all employ fully battened sails. The term ultimately stems from the Chinese chuán, also based on and pronounced as in the Min Nan variant of Chinese, or zhōu and it entered the English language in the 17th century through the Portuguese junco from the Malay jong or Javanese djong. The modern Standard Chinese word for a wooden cargo vessel is cáo. That said, there are divergent views on this, Pierre-Yves Manguin, amongst others, most scholars consider it was the early Song Dynasty before the fully developed hull forms and rigs were in regular use in offshore trade. The fully developed junk design exhibited innovative, though very little further developed sail plans. There is no evidence that these were adopted in Western shipbuilding by direct emulation, in this case, as in so many others, parallel invention, often in response to quite different hydrodynamic, aerodynamic or technical stimuli, is the historically better evidenced explanation. The structure and flexibility of junk sails make the junk fast, the sails of a junk can be moved inward toward the long axis of the ship. In theory this closeness of what is called sheeting allowed the junk to sail into the wind, in practice, evidenced both by traditional sailing routes and seasons and textual evidence junks neither could nor sail well into the wind. In the typical junk these were both ill-adapted to windward work because, put simply, junks were neither intended to nor designed to work to windward. The sails include several members, called battens, which in principle could provide shape and strength but in practice, because of the available materials and technology. The sails can also be easily reefed to accommodate various wind strengths, the battens also make the sails more resistant than other sails to large tears, as a tear is typically limited to a single panel between battens. In South China the sails have a curved roach especially towards the head, the main drawback to the junk sail is its high weight caused by the 6 to 15 heavy full length battens. With high weight aloft and no keel, junks were known to capsize when lightly laden due to their high centre of gravity. The top batten is heavier and similar to a gaff, in principle junk sails have much in common with the most aerodynamically efficient sails used today in windsurfers or catamarans
3.
Tanegashima
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Tanegashima is one of the Ōsumi Islands belonging to Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The island,444.99 km² in area, is the second largest of the Ōsumi Islands, access to the island is by ferry, or by air to New Tanegashima Airport. Administratively, the island is divided into the city, Nishinoomote, the towns belong to Kumage District. Tanegashima is the easternmost and the second largest of the Osumi Islands and it is located approximately 43 kilometres south of the southern tip of Osumi Peninsula in southern Kyushu, or 115 kilometres south of Kagoshima. The Vincennes Strait separates it from Yakushima, the island is of volcanic origin, however, unlike neighboring Yakushima, it presents a flat appearance, with its highest elevation at only 282 metres above sea level. The island has a length of 57 kilometres and a width ranging from 5 kilometres to 10 kilometres, Tanegashima has a long history with Kofun. Other burials on Tanegashima, namely the Yokomine and Hirota sites, the artifacts include magatama, an engraved pendant, and emblems with apparent writing. During the Nara period, the state of Japan began to contact Tanegashima, according to the Nihonshoki, the imperial court banqueted islanders of Tanegashima in 677. In 679, the court sent to the island a mission, other missions to the island mentioned in the book were of 683 and 695. According to the Shoku Nihongi, people from Tane, Yaku, Amami and these activities resulted in the establishment of Tane Province on the island in 702. Tane Province lasted until 824 and was merged into Ōsumi Province, sometime around 1140, the whole island of Tanegashima became part of the Shimazu Estate, the largest medieval shōen of Japan. In the early Kamakura period, the positions of the steward of the Shimazu Estate. However, the clan lost these positions to the Hōjō clan, the Hōjō clan sent the Higo clan as deputy governors. A branch line of the Higo clan made itself autonomous on Tanegashima after the Hōjō clan was annihilated, the Tanegashima clan ruled the island until the Meiji restoration. The Tanegashima clan enjoyed a degree of autonomy until Shimazu unified southern Kyūshū in the late 16th century. Following the Meiji restoration, the island has been administered as part of Kagoshima Prefecture, Tanegashima is traditionally known as the site of the introduction of European firearms to Japan in 1542. Until modern times, firearms were known in Japan as Tanegashima. However, Mendes Pinto does appear to have visited Tanegashima soon thereafter, the Europeans had arrived to trade, not only guns, but also soap, tobacco and other goods unknown in medieval Japan, for the Japanese goods
4.
Huangshan City
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Huangshan, is a prefecture-level city in southern Anhui province, Peoples Republic of China. Huangshan means Yellow Mountain in Chinese and the city is named after the famously scenic Yellow Mountains which cover much of the citys vast geographic expanse, the prefectural city of Huangshan includes three urban districts and four counties. The urban center of Huangshan was originally the city of Tunxi, locals still call the city Tunxi to distinguish urban core from other parts of Huangshan. Huangshan occupies the southernmost part of Anhui and it is bordered by Chizhou to the northwest, Xuancheng to the northeast, Jiangxi Province to the southwest and Zhejiang Province to the southeast. Huangshans history dates back to the time of the First Emperor, the citys current jurisdiction covers much of the historical and cultural region of Huizhou, which together with Anqing formed the name of Anhui Province. Huangshan is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Mount Huangshan and Hongcun and Xidi, the ancient villages of southern Anhui and it is a leading tourist destination in China. The prefecture-level city of Huangshan administers 7 county-level divisions, including 3 districts and 4 counties, keemun tea is produced in Qimen County, and the tea is named for the county. Mao feng, a tea, is also produced in neighboring counties. Tourism, centered on Mount Huang but also including other scenic and historic sites, is also an important part of the Huangshan economy, due to rugged terrain, Huangshan was traditionally a secluded region. The Xinan River provided an outlet to the east, winding, narrow roads through Huang Mountains made trips to Xuancheng, Wuhu, Guichi and the Yangtze River slow and arduous. In recent decades, improvements to the infrastructure have made the city. The Huangshan Tunxi International Airport, also referred to as the Tunxi Airport, is located in Tunxi District and is known by the IATA abbreviation TXN, the airport was built in 1958 and was expanded in 2000. It offers daily flights to Beijing, Shanghai, Hefei, Guangzhou, and weekly flights to Chengdu, Chongqing, Xiamen, Hefei, Nanjing, and Hangzhou will all be accessible by rail in about one hour of travel time. Huangshan is now a junction city. The Huizhou-Hangzhou Expressway runs east to Hanghzou, the Hefei-Tongling-Huangshan Expressway heads north to Tongling on the Yangtze River and then to Hefei, the Anhui provincial capital. The Huangshan-Taling-Taolin Expressway extends southwest to Wuyuan in Jiangxi Province, the Huangshan-Quzhou-Nanping Expressway, currently under construction, will run southeast through Zhejiang Province to Nanping in Fujian Province. Until the expressways were built in the first decade of the 21st century, Huangshans main roads were National Route G205 and Provincial Route S326, which follow the Anhui-Zhejiang Railway. In the Ming dynasty, Zheng Zhizhen 鄭之珍, a native of the Huizhou, Anhui, according to local legend, Zheng was blind when he wrote the opera and was restored to full sight by a grateful Guanyin
5.
Piracy
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Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship- or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable items or properties. Those who engage in acts of piracy are called pirates, the earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilizations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, a land-based parallel is the ambushing of travelers by bandits and brigands in highways and mountain passes. While the term can include acts committed in the air, on land, or in major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against people traveling on the vessel as the perpetrator. Piracy or pirating is the name of a crime under customary international law. They also use larger vessels, known as ships, to supply the smaller motorboats. The international community is facing challenges in bringing modern pirates to justice. In the 2000s, a number of nations have used their naval forces to protect ships from pirate attacks. The English pirate is derived from the Latin term pirata and that from Greek πειρατής, brigand, in turn from πειράομαι, I attempt, from πεῖρα, attempt, the meaning of the Greek word peiratēs literally is one who attacks. The word is cognate to peril. The term is first attested to c, spelling was not standardised until the eighteenth century, and spellings such as pirrot, pyrate and pyrat were used until this period. It may be reasonable to assume that piracy has existed for as long as the oceans were plied for commerce, the earliest documented instances of piracy are the exploits of the Sea Peoples who threatened the ships sailing in the Aegean and Mediterranean waters in the 14th century BC. In classical antiquity, the Phoenicians, Illyrians and Tyrrhenians were known as pirates, the ancient Greeks condoned piracy as a viable profession, it apparently was widespread and regarded as an entirely honourable way of making a living. References are made to its perfectly normal occurrence many texts including in Homers Iliad and Odyssey, by the era of Classical Greece, piracy was looked upon as a disgrace to have as a profession. In the 3rd century BC, pirate attacks on Olympos brought impoverishment, among some of the most famous ancient pirateering peoples were the Illyrians, a people populating the western Balkan peninsula. Constantly raiding the Adriatic Sea, the Illyrians caused many conflicts with the Roman Republic and it was not until 229 BC when the Romans finally decisively beat the Illyrian fleets that their threat was ended
6.
Golden Age of Piracy
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The Golden Age of Piracy is a common designation given to usually one or more outbursts of piracy in the maritime history of the early modern period. The modern conception of pirates as depicted in culture is derived largely, although not always accurately. The colonial powers at the time fought with pirates and engaged in several notable battles. Powell uses the only once. Its golden age may be said to have extended from about 1650 to about 1720, Pirate historians of the first half of the 20th century occasionally adopted Fiskes term Golden Age, without necessarily following his beginning and ending dates for it. This idea starkly contradicted Fiske, who had denied that such Elizabethan figures as Drake were pirates. Of recent definitions, Pringle appears to have the widest range, as early as 1924, Philip Gosse described piracy as being at its height from 1680 until 1730. Bottings definition was followed by Frank Sherry in 1986. In a 1989 academic article, Professor Marcus Rediker defined the Golden Age as lasting only from 1716 to 1726, angus Konstam in 1998, reckoned the era as lasting from 1700 until 1730. David Cordingly, in his influential 1994 work Under the Black Flag, defined the age of piracy as lasting from the 1650s to around 1725. Rediker, in 2004, described the most complex definition of the Golden Age to date, most of these pirates were of Welsh, English, Dutch and French origin. This involved considerable seaborne trade, and an economic improvement. The buccaneers migration from Hispaniolas mainland to the more defensible offshore island of Tortuga limited their resources, the growth of buccaneering on Tortuga was augmented by the English capture of Jamaica from Spain in 1655. In the 1660s, the new French governor of Tortuga, Bertrand dOgeron and these conditions brought Caribbean buccaneering to its zenith. A number of factors caused Anglo-American pirates, some of whom had cut their teeth during the buccaneering period, the fall of Britains Stuart period had restored the traditional enmity between Britain and France, thus ending the profitable collaboration between English Jamaica and French Tortuga. The devastation of Port Royal by an earthquake in 1692 further reduced the Caribbeans attractions by destroying the pirates chief market for fenced plunder. Furthermore, much of the Spanish Main had simply been exhausted, at the same time, Englands less-favored colonies, including Bermuda, New York, and Rhode Island, had become cash-starved by the Navigation Acts. This set the stage for the piracies of Thomas Tew, Henry Every, Robert Culliford
7.
Cossacks
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Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic-speaking people who became known as members of democratic, self-governing, semi-military communities, predominantly located in Ukraine and in Russia. The origins of the first Cossacks are disputed, though the 1710 Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk claimed Khazar origin, the Zaporizhian Sich were a vassal people of Poland–Lithuania during feudal times. Under increasing pressure from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in the century the Sich declared an independent Cossack Hetmanate. Afterwards, the Treaty of Pereyaslav brought most of the Ukrainian Cossack state under Russian rule, the Sich with its lands became an autonomous region under the Russian-Polish protectorate. The Don Cossack Host, which had established by the 16th century. Together they began a systematic conquest and colonisation of lands in order to secure the borders on the Volga, the whole of Siberia, and the Yaik, Cossack communities had developed along the latter two rivers well before the arrival of the Don Cossacks. By the 18th century, Cossack hosts in the Russian Empire occupied effective buffer zones on its borders, the expansionist ambitions of the Empire relied on ensuring the loyalty of Cossacks, which caused tension given their traditional exercise of freedom, democratic self-rule, and independence. By the end of the 18th century, Cossack nations had transformed into a special military estate. The government provided only firearms and supplies for them, Cossack service was considered the most rigorous one. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Tsarist regime used Cossacks extensively to perform police service and they also served as border guards on national and internal ethnic borders. During the Russian Civil War, Don and Kuban Cossacks were the first nations to open war against the Bolsheviks. By 1918, Cossacks declared the independence of their nations and formed the independent states, the Ukrainian State, the Don Republic. The Cossack troops formed the core of the anti-Bolshevik White Army. With the victory of the Red Army, the Cossack lands were subjected to Decossackization, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Cossacks made a systematic return to Russia. Many took a part in Post-Soviet conflicts and Yugoslav Wars. In Russias 2010 Population Census, Cossacks have been recognized as an ethnicity, there are Cossack organizations in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Poland, and the United States. Max Vasmers etymological dictionary traces the name to the Old East Slavic word козакъ, kozak, the ethnonym Kazakh is from the same Turkic root. In written sources the name is first attested in Codex Cumanicus from the 13th century, in English, Cossack is first attested in 1590
8.
Privateer
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A privateer was a private person or ship that engaged in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Captured ships were subject to condemnation and sale under prize law, a percentage share usually went to the issuer of the commission. Since robbery under arms was common to trade, all merchant ships were already armed. During war, naval resources were auxiliary to operations on land so privateering was a way of subsidizing state power by mobilizing armed ships, the letter of marque of a privateer would typically limit activity to one particular ship, and specified officers. Typically, the owners or captain would be required to post a performance bond, in the United Kingdom, letters of marque were revoked for various offences. Some crews were treated as harshly as naval crews of the time, some crews were made up of professional merchant seamen, others of pirates, debtors, and convicts. Some privateers ended up becoming pirates, not just in the eyes of their enemies, william Kidd, for instance, began as a legitimate British privateer but was later hanged for piracy. The investors would arm the vessels and recruit large crews, much larger than a merchantman or a vessel would carry. Privateers generally cruised independently, but it was not unknown for them to form squadrons, a number of privateers were part of the English fleet that opposed the Spanish Armada in 1588. Privateers generally avoided encounters with warships, as such encounters would be at best unprofitable, for instance, in 1815 Chasseur encountered HMS St Lawrence, herself a former American privateer, mistaking her for a merchantman until too late, in this instance, however, the privateer prevailed. The United States used mixed squadrons of frigates and privateers in the American Revolutionary War, the practice dated to at least the 13th century but the word itself was coined sometime in the mid-17th century. England, and later the United Kingdom, used privateers to great effect and these privately owned merchant ships, licensed by the crown, could legitimately take vessels that were deemed pirates. The increase in competition for crews on armed merchant vessels and privateers was due, in a large part, because of the chance for a considerable payoff. Whereas a seaman who shipped on a vessel was paid a wage and provided with victuals. This proved to be a far more attractive prospect and privateering flourished as a result, during Queen Elizabeths reign, she encouraged the development of this supplementary navy. Over the course of her rule, she had allowed Anglo-Spanish relations to deteriorate to the point where one could argue that a war with the Spanish was inevitable. By using privateers, if the Spanish were to take offense at the plundering of their ships, some of the most famous privateers that later fought in the Anglo-Spanish War included the Sea Dogs. In the late 16th century, English ships cruised in the Caribbean and off the coast of Spain, at this early stage the idea of a regular navy was not present, so there is little to distinguish the activity of English privateers from regular naval warfare
9.
Geuzen
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Geuzen was a name assumed by the confederacy of Calvinist Dutch nobles, who from 1566 opposed Spanish rule in the Netherlands. The most successful group of them operated at sea, and so were called Watergeuzen and they can be considered either as privateers or pirates, depending on the circumstances or motivations. On 5 April 1566, permission was obtained for the confederates to present a petition of grievances, called the Request, to the regent, Margaret, about 250 nobles marched to the palace accompanied by Louis of Nassau and Brederode. The regent was at first alarmed at the appearance of so large a body, but one of her councillors, Berlaymont, allegedly remarked Nayez pas peur Madame, ce ne sont que des gueux. At a great feast held by some 300 confederates at the Hotel Culemburg three days later, Brederode in a speech declared that if need be they were all ready to become beggars in their countrys cause, the name became henceforward a party title. The original league of Beggars was short-lived, crushed by Alva, in the Dutch language the word geuzennaam is used for linguistic reappropriation, a pejorative term used with pride by the people called that way. Eighteen ships received letters of marque, which were equipped by Louis of Nassau in the French Huguenot port of La Rochelle, by the end of 1569, already 84 Sea Beggars ships were in action. The sea beggars were powerful military units that made capturing coastal cities easy, at first they were content merely to plunder both by sea and land, carrying their booty to the English ports where they were able to refit and replenish their stores. However, in 1572, Queen Elizabeth I of England abruptly refused to admit the Sea Beggars to her harbours, encouraged by this success, they now sailed to Vlissingen, which was also taken by a coup de main. In 1573 the Sea Beggars defeated a Spanish squadron under the command of Admiral Bossu off the port of Hoorn in the Battle on the Zuiderzee, mixing with the native population, they quickly sparked rebellions against Duke of Alba in town after town and spread the resistance southward. Some of the forefathers of the Dutch naval heroes began their careers as Sea Beggars, such as Evert Heindricxzen. William I of Orange sought Ottoman assistance against the Spanish king Philip II, the Geuzen were expressing their anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic sentiments. They considered the Turks to be less threatening than the Spaniards, during the years between 1579 and 1582, representatives from Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Paşa travelled several times from Istanbul to Antwerp. There were, in fact, objective grounds for such an alliance, at the same time that the Dutch rebels were conducting their raids on Spanish shipping, the Ottoman Empire was involved in its own naval war with Spain, culminating in the 1571 Battle of Lepanto. The slogan Liever Turks dan Paaps seems to have been largely rhetorical, the Dutch hardly contemplated life under the Sultan. Moreover, there was no contact between the Geuzen and the Turkish authorities. The Turks were considered infidels, and the heresy of Islam alone disqualified them from assuming a more central role in the rebels propaganda, in English they appear in Cecelia Hollands novel The Sea Beggars. Dutch Revolt Sea Dogs Kervyn de Lettenhove, Les Huguenots et les Gueux, Renon de France, des Pays-Bas, Jurien de la Gravìere, Les gueux de mer in Revue des Deux Mondes
10.
Uskoks
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The Uskoks were irregular soldiers in Habsburg Croatia that inhabited areas on the eastern Adriatic coast and surrounding territories during the Ottoman wars in Europe. Etymologically, the word itself means the ones who jumped in in Croatian. Bands of Uskoks fought a war against the Ottomans, and they formed small units. Since the uskoks were checked on land and were paid their annual subsidy. The exploits of the Uskoks contributed to a renewal of war between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, an extremely curious picture of contemporary manners is presented by the Venetian agents, whose reports on this war resemble a knightly chronicle of the Middle Ages. These chronicles contain information pertaining to single combats, tournaments and other chivalrous adventures, many of these troops served abroad. At the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, for example, a Dalmatian squadron assisted the allied fleets of Spain, Venice, Austria, after a series of incidents that escalated into the Uskok War, the Uskok activity in their stronghold of Senj mostly ceased. Large numbers of Serb fugitives from Bosnia and Serbia fleeing the Ottomans, in 1522 the border territory of Senj was taken over by the Habsburgs under the authority of Archduke Ferdinand, forming a state-controlled Militärgrenze, or Military Frontier. The Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I instituted a system of planting colonies of defenders along the Military Frontier, moreover, the Uskoks were promised an annual subsidy in return for their services. Numerous refugees from Ottoman areas began settling along this territory, crossing the border to escape Ottoman attacks. Christian guerilla resistance in Ottoman-occupied areas of Dalmatia and Bosnia caused these people to flee and settle down, first at the fortress of Klis along the Military Frontier, then at Senj. A body of these uskoks led by Croatian captain Petar Kružić used the base at Klis both to hold the Turks at bay, and to engage in marauding and piracy against coastal shipping. Although nominally accepting the sovereignty of the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand I, after Petar Kružićs death, and the lack of water supply, the defenders of Klis finally surrendered to the Ottomans in exchange for their freedom. They may have started to gather around Senj as early as 1520, the Ottoman raids and destruction brought Senj natives together with those from the Habsburg lands, Dalmatians, Ragusans and Italians. At Senj, the Klis Uskoks were soon joined by refugees from Novi Vinodolski in northwestern Croatia, from Otočac on the Gacka River. The new Uskok stronghold, screened by mountains and forests, was unassailable by cavalry or artillery, however, the fortress was admirably suitable to the lightly armed uskoks who were excellent in guerrilla warfare. The Martelossi were employed by the Ottomans to discourage Uskok penetration of Turkish territory, since the uskoks were checked on land and were rarely paid their annual subsidy, they resorted to acts of piracy. Large galleys could not anchor in the bay of Senj, which is shallow, so, the uskoks fitted out a fleet of swift boats, which were light enough to navigate the smallest creeks and inlets of the shores of Illyria
