Chapter 1601: The Rise of East Asian Pirates

The development of Andong basically unfolded along the Yazi River basin, but was mainly concentrated in the western plains centered on Suihua City (Harbin), which was also the primary gathering place for the Great Han officials, civilians, and merchants pioneering Andong.

To the southeast, Shuaibin Prefecture was specially established, but due to the difficulty and complexity of overland transportation, Han civilians and merchants mainly traveled by sea route, and maritime merchants played a major role in Shuaibin Prefecture's development over these past few years.

Of course, this was not because Shuaibin Prefecture had any great economic benefits, but rather for the expansion of trade routes and sea lanes to Goryeo and Japan—the Eastern Sea Navy even dispatched a small fleet to be permanently stationed at Shuaibin Prefecture.

And the waters of Northeast Asia today are, without question, the Great Han's backyard—naval vessels and official, merchant, and civilian ships pass freely, without any fear or restraint.

Of course, there is no person or force that can raise any objection to this. The only two independent countries along the shipping routes—Goryeo has been thoroughly frightened by "sanctions" and is now incredibly well-behaved, docile as a kitten. Especially after Wang Zhou succeeded to the throne, its attitude toward the Eastern Capital has become even more servile and fawning.

The absurd Crown Prince of the Eastern Capital, after becoming King of Goryeo, aside from his private life remaining as dissolute as ever, actually showed great strategic vision on matters of major principle—namely, blindly licking up to the Han and submitting to the Han.

In the years Wang Zhou has been king, aside from building his "Kaesong of Joseon" in Kaizhou, his main energy has been devoted to maintaining Han-Goryeo relations, sending tribute to the Eastern Capital almost once every three months on the small scale and once every half year on the large scale.

When Han merchants come, he welcomes them with open arms and grants them preferential treatment. When the Han army comes, he opens the ports wide, provides food and drink, and even hosts fellowship events, offering Goryeo beauties to share their beds.

As for Japan, it has always known how to read the times. In this era, there is no real concept of territorial waters, and of course, for the Great Han, wherever official, military, merchant, and civilian ships can reach is the Great Han's sphere of influence.

And the rise of maritime trade in Northeast Asia is not solely the achievement of Han merchants—Goryeo and Japanese merchants also participate, just not with the same swagger and carefree ease as the Han merchants.

In these years, the political and economic ties among the three countries are probably the closest in history, and may become even closer in the future. After all, in this Northeast Asian region, there are only these three countries. The Great Han is a behemoth—even when dormant, it is a presence that suppresses everything. The two younger brothers, Goryeo and Japan, can only tremble in fear and curry favor with twisted flattery.

The rise of maritime trade inevitably gave birth to a new group and a new maritime activity, commonly known as piracy. It must be said that some of the earliest pirate activities were private actions by portions of the Great Han navy—taking advantage of mission execution or open-sea training opportunities to rob passing merchant ships. Of course, at first this targeted foreign vessels, especially the wanton plundering during the period of Han-Goryeo hostility, which was utterly without any bottom line.

Seeing that there was profit to be made, they later went so far as to rob even Han merchant ships. When this was reported to the court, Emperor Liu flew into a "rage," charged the Bureau of Military Affairs and Guo Tingwei with lax military discipline, ordered rectification, and dealt with a batch of naval officers. Only then was this plundering trend started by the navy somewhat corrected.

And in fact, the court also took a cut of the spoils from the navy's plundering—it just really couldn't be brought out into the open.

The reason the court promptly halted and rectified this was also because such conduct truly did not befit the nation's dignity, and its impact was genuinely harmful. Of course, the most critical factor was that it severely suppressed and damaged maritime trade, which did not serve the court's interests.

And so, the official robbery ended, but private pirates grew increasingly rampant day by day. The Great Han navy also transformed from robbers into protectors, beginning to focus on striking pirates along the north-south shipping routes.

This was both to guard the shipping lanes and ensure the safety of maritime trade, and also as training. At the same time, striking pirates became an opportunity for the Great Han navy to earn merit and promotions during peacetime. Additionally, the navy came to realize one thing: exterminating pirates was also a path to profit—they got military funding and also rich plunder.

However, those ten thousand li of maritime frontier, and the even longer and more complex sea trade routes, were more than the Great Han's seventy-thousand-man navy could cover. The sea was too vast, and there were too many places to hide. Pirates simply could not be wiped out entirely—as long as maritime trade continued, as long as those ships laden with cargo kept sailing.

And the pirates active in East Asian waters, without question, also came mainly from three countries: the Great Han, Goryeo, and Japan. On the Han side, sometimes you simply cannot tell whether a maritime merchant is a merchant or a pirate. Some who lost everything in trade simply took their own ships and turned to robbery.

As for Goryeo and Japan, their countries had even more impoverished populations, and taking up business with no capital cost carried no psychological burden for them. It's just that the pirates of each country seemed to have reached a certain tacit understanding, each having their own "sphere of influence."

Han pirates were mostly active in the southeast and the South Seas, while Goryeo and Japanese pirates operated in Northeast Asian waters. However, in the past two years, some wokou from Japan had also begun expanding southward to the South Seas, even causing conflicts and bloody battles among pirates.

Pirates originating from the Great Han mostly maintained a certain restraint, styling themselves as righteous bandits, upholding a principle of robbing without killing. In the vast majority of cases, when conducting robbery operations, they robbed but did not kill.

Wise thieves never exterminate their prey completely. The pirates from the Great Han had the most basic and simple understanding of the phrase "draining the pond to catch all the fish." Unless necessary or provoked, they tried as much as possible to avoid killing—after all, robbing ships plus killing people was enough to invite relentless pursuit and attack from the Great Han navy.

In many cases, as long as the target merchant ship paid enough toll money, it could pass through smoothly. After all, for pirates, robbing cargo still required a process of selling and converting to cash—better to just take ready money.

Of course, at some ports of the Great Han, especially certain commercial ports in Liuqiu and Annam, there were also merchants active who specialized in handling goods of dubious origin.

An industrial chain and interest chain naturally formed. Even for the Great Han navy, the rise of pirates could not be considered a bad thing—otherwise, how could they demonstrate the value of their existence?

In the past, there were always people within the court proposing to reduce the navy. After all, the Great Han was a continental empire. In the view of many court officials, maintaining a seventy-thousand-man navy and several hundred warships was truly unnecessary, and the annual expenditures on personnel, training, and vessels were far more expensive than maintaining cavalry and infantry.

It was only with the rise of maritime trade and Emperor Liu's support that the Great Han navy was able to maintain its current scale, and in the military reform, its strength was not reduced much either.

But even so, compared to its big brother the army, the navy remained the little brother—not highly regarded, and even somewhat miserable. Previously, why did Guo Tingwei, the great naval admiral, tacitly permit his subordinates' plundering? Wasn't it to make up for the shortfall in naval military funding and give the navy officers and men some benefits?

Therefore, even with the taboo suspicion of "nurturing bandits to justify one's own importance," the Great Han navy truly needed pirates to exist—for training, for earning merit, and for profit. And what the Great Han navy primarily hunted down were precisely those pirates who killed people and robbed goods.

And compared to the Great Han's "civilized bandits," pirates from Goryeo and Japan were far more reckless and far more brutal. They were crueler, more bloodthirsty, and had created numerous tragedies across the vast oceans.

This was something the Great Han navy absolutely could not tolerate. In recent years, their strike targets had basically been focused on these "Goryeo bandits" and "Japanese slaves."

The Great Han pirates also looked down greatly upon their Goryeo and Japanese counterparts, considering these people utterly lacking in foresight, only scheming for momentary gain. Therefore, when Japanese pirates expanded southward, they met with dual suppression from both the authorities and their fellow pirates.

Because pirate activity was rampant in Northeast Asian waters, at Emperor Liu's direction, the Great Han court also issued a directive to both countries on "eliminating pirates and cleansing the seas," urging them to suppress their own pirates.

Having the two countries send their navies out to strike pirates was clearly unrealistic. Goryeo's navy—let's not even mention it—had long been destroyed during the Han-Goryeo conflict, had not yet recovered its strength, and had even given up on recovery. To this day it only has two or three large and small ships, roughly equivalent to the naval forces deployed at Shuaibin Prefecture.

As for Japan's navy, with small ships, few men, and poor training, it also lacked long-range navigation capability. If they went to exterminate pirates, setting aside whether they could even find and destroy the pirates, if they encountered a fierce and large pirate group, the likely outcome would be their own destruction.

Therefore, even under pressure from the Great Han's directive, both countries' so-called pirate suppression plans remained merely on paper. However, to give the Great Han an accounting, both countries did expel and suppress some pirates who operated with the backing of their home ports, driving them away from their shores to fend for themselves.

Clearly, in the past, the pirates of Goryeo and Japan also had a certain degree of official backing...