Maritime Asia: A Classroom Simulation Exercise for Teaching about Global Piracy

Abstract

Classes about the global history of piracy are perennially popular, drawing sustained interest from students. While students are eager to learn more about pirates, they often bring with them a set of entrenched assumptions that can be difficult to dislodge. This article introduces a classroom simulation activity called the Maritime Asia exercise. We detail how the exercise works and the key lessons about piracy and maritime violence that it aims to impart to students. The exercise is designed to simulate the complex, multipolar maritime world of East and Southeast Asia in the second half of the seventeenth century. For teaching purposes, it collapses together a series of events spanning the decade from roughly 1663 to 1673. It places students in different roles as the representatives of armed maritime powers like the Zheng maritime network or the Dutch East India Company, continental agrarian powers like Tokugawa Japan or Qing China, and continental trading powers like Ayutthaya (Siam). By the end of the exercise, students discover that East Asia was a highly active hub for global piracy, but that these pirates – even if they committed brutal acts of maritime violence – look nothing like the lawless mariners that populate the popular imagination.