This morning is the first time I have read this thread, which I have found to be of some interest, however, there are a couple of things I would like to comment on.
Firstly, there is the question of exactly what a pirate is:- how do we define a "pirate"?
In the sense implied by this discussion, Oxford tells us that a pirate is one who attacks and robs ships at sea.
This raises the question of whether we can refer to the Iban as "pirates".
The Iban raided coastal and inland settlements, principally of Land Dyaks. They raided for two reasons:- heads and slaves; the heads were an integral part of their culture and tied into tribal continuity, the slaves were necessary labour to assist with rice farming--- the Iban were rice farmers, not forest dwellers.
Because the primary targets of the Iban were more often than not the Land Dyak, this put the Iban on a collision course with James Brooke.
The Iban would raid in fleets of hundreds of war canoes, Brookes had no army, and unless he could gain the backing of the British government his attempts to carve a minor kingdom for himself would fail. Suddenly the rice farmers of several different river systems became "Sea Dyaks", and "pirates". Up to this point they had been known as Skrang, Undup Dyak, Saribas, Balau---but because Brooke needed British government backing these people suddenly became "pirates", and "Sea Dyaks". The British government latched on to this terminology and the Royal Navy jumped in to give Brookes a hand at subduing these evil 19th century terrorists.
By any reasonable measure the Iban were not pirates. They were rice farmers whose culture demanded heads, and whose economic survival demanded slaves. Their targets were not ships at sea, but settlements where they could obtain these necessities.
Yes, there were pirates in maritime South East Asia. They were for the main part coastal Malays , usually fishermen, who had struck trouble in making a living from fishing. When the fish started to run again, they would leave the pirating and go back to fishing. This is, I understand, still the case today
|