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Explore the weird, beautiful, and sometimes unsettling side of history. 🌚 Because the story of the past is also the story of us, of humanity.
The videos are made by a small, very excited group within kurzgesagt, powered not by AI but by curiosity, craft, and a nightshift… or two. 😅 A true passion project, built with the same care you know from us.
Flames light the sky over the Pearl River Delta as war junks swarm the banks of Sanshan, a fishing village in Southern China. It's eighteen o nine. The attacker's captain has promised 10 silver coins for every village's head. By now, the villagers know it was mistake not to pay the pirate confederation protection money. They've built a wooden palisade and armed every man between 16 and 60, but now everything goes wrong.
Speaker 1:Their only cannon explodes in their faces, and their leader gets stabbed in the back in the turmoil. One man makes a last stand from a rooftop, hurling dust onto the attackers until they bring him down with spears. The looting lasts three days. Two thousand are dead. And when the pirates finally sail away, they set the village on fire and leave 80 severed heads hanging from a banyan tree, staring blankly across the water as a warning.
Speaker 1:The Southern Chinese coast is living in fear, and no one comes to help. The Chinese empire, the largest and wealthiest state on Earth, can't protect its people. How? The Middle Kingdom. Around 1800, China governs 300 to 400,000,000 people, a third of the world's population, and its economy is the largest on Earth.
Speaker 1:While European powers fight over colonies and trade routes, imperial China has been running the same operating system for over two thousand years. When their western contemporaries were still hacking at each other with swords and holding chests of gold, they had already invented gunpowder and used paper money. Their compass helped Europeans discover already inhabited lands and eventually led them back to China for tea and porcelain. China sees itself as the Middle Kingdom, the center of civilization, while everybody else are barbarians, slowly learning what it has known for centuries. The current dynasty running this ancient machine is the Qing, but to most people, they're still outsiders.
Speaker 1:They're Manchu, descendants of horse riding warriors from the North who smashed through the Great Wall in 1644, realized the Chinese system was too sophisticated to replace, and simply kept it running with themselves in charge. Imagine this realm as a gravitational field. At its center sits the emperor in Beijing like a supermassive black hole, bending the fabric of society around him. His pull extends through a vast bureaucracy of governors, magistrates, and inspectors, keeping hundreds of millions of people in their place in the cosmic hierarchy. But the further you get from Beijing, the weaker that gravitational pull becomes.
Speaker 1:2,000 kilometers south lies Guangdong, a subtropical province between the mountains and the ocean. Here, the empire fractures into the Pearl River Delta, a maze of channels, swamps, and islands that with trade, people, boats, and markets, some so crowded they spill onto the water. China's population has tripled in a century, and land is running out. The size of the bureaucracy, however, remains almost the same. Its grip is slipping and corruption spreads.
Speaker 1:The first to feel it are those already on the edge, like the boat families who live season to season. Fishing only works half the year, and when the nets come up empty, they haul cargo, ferry passengers, or smuggle rice or salt. And some turn to piracy part time, raiding along the coast until the monsoon season turns. The difference between fishermen and pirate sometimes is simply seasonal employment. Somewhere in this drifting world in 1775, a girl is born.
Speaker 1:Nobody pays much attention, but one day, empires will know her name. She'll grow up to become the most powerful pirate in history. Waterworld. It's likely she's part of the tanker boat people living on a wooden junk patched with tar and cloth. A few meters of creaking planks in a cluster of boats with floating kitchens, markets, and temples.
Speaker 1:Some families go years without touching land. By the time she can handle a paddle, she's working, fishing, or ferrying, whatever pays. While landwomen crush their feet into lotus buds to attract husbands, she hops barefoot from plank to plank. Boys on shore spend years memorizing ancient texts for a shot at becoming officials. But the tanker can't own land, take imperial exams, or marry into shore families.
Speaker 1:They're classified as mean people, impure like actors and prostitutes. And so, like many before her, as she gets older, she finds work on a flower boat, a floating brothel. These boats serve sailors, merchants, and pirates. Most are poor, but lately, more and more show up with serious silver and military weapons from Vietnam. For years, the Taishan rebels there fought in a civil war and handed out ships, cannons, and military ranks to Chinese pirates to raid the Qing Empire and share the profits.
Speaker 1:Now they're losing, and the jobless pirates are returning to China. One night in eighteen o one, a pirate named Zheng Yi visits the flower boat. He's powerful and commands his own fleet. The record gets vague as to how, but within months, the girl is his wife and sails with his fleet. From here on, she's known as Zhengyi Cao, literally wife of Zhengyi.
Speaker 1:The confederation. She's entering the pirate world at the perfect moment. With veterans flooding back from Vietnam, the sea is swarming with more pirates than anyone has seen in living memory. Also, the Delta has become one of the world's most valuable trade corridors with Guangzhou called Canton by Europeans as the only legal port for foreign trade. An open buffet of silver, tea, silk, opium, and porcelain for pirates.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, the empire is having what you might call a bad century. In land, they're fighting bloody uprisings like the White Lotus Rebellion, and on the corruption is rampant, patrols are underfunded, and their navy is a joke. By eighteen o five, the pirates are fighting each other more than robbing merchants, which is bad for business. So they do what any sensible criminal would do and incorporate. Six main fleets share loot, settle disputes in a central court, and are led by Zheng Yi, captain of the most powerful red flag fleet.
Speaker 1:To keep control, he uses the methods of mafia and aristocracy. His brother commands squadrons, his sister marries an ally, and promising young pirates are adopted. And beside him is Zheng Yi Cao, running the numbers and managing alliances. Together, they command one of the largest naval forces in the world. They even dominate government monopolies.
Speaker 1:Salt merchants start paying pirate convoys instead of imperial ones. A silver fee gets you a pirate passport and real protection. When some convoys resist, pirates torch 100 of government ships to make it clear who's boss. Portugal and Britain would love to send their warships since their profits are evaporating too. But the Qing refused to let foreign gunboats pass the Tiger's Mouth, the entrance to the Pearl River.
Speaker 1:They're more afraid of British help than pirate domination, which is probably fair. By now, even fishermen need a pirate signed pass. The waterways belong to the confederation. They're fast, brutal, and operate with military precision. The pirate playbook.
Speaker 1:Let's board one of their ships, a former cargo junk 12 meters long and never built for war. Now it sails under patched canvas and a black and white hull, taunting a dozen cannons. Below deck is a village compressed into a dark wooden tube. Some pirates share a mat with their wife and children, while new recruits and prisoners fight for space. 200 people in total.
Speaker 1:Only the captain lives with any comfort in the raised stern cabin with his wives. Scouts spotted a convoy, their escorts imperial banners proving they haven't paid for protection. At a signal, dozens of pirate war junks explode from behind the rocks surrounding the convoy. When their guns erupt, grapeshot made from nails and coins shreds through wooden flesh. Three man teams work the massive gingival guns, while others hurl nine meter long bamboo pikes.
Speaker 1:From the masts, pirates fling stink pots full of liquor and gunpowder. They leap from boat to boat with long handled knives, tridents, ratton shields. Some sailors try to surrender while others jump overboard. But captured navy crews get no mercy. The pirates nail their feet to the planks and hack them apart.
Speaker 1:One pirate steps forward and cuts open an officer's chest, pulls out the heart, and bites into it like a fruit. To him, it's practical magic. Consume the enemy's courage, steal his strength. The merchant ships surrender instantly. Once their convoy's silk, and opium is taken, a squadron sails upriver to strike the nearest town.
Speaker 1:The strategy is similar. Spread fear and name a price. If they refuse, everyone dies. Some bargain, others pay early, sending silver, rice, and roasted pigs for the fleet's floating temple. As it grows, the confederation opens protection offices along the coast and even a tax bureau in Guangzhou, where you can pay your pirate fees like renewing a license.
Speaker 1:They set up supply deals across Guangdong for food, fuel, and ammo, paying above market and sparing their merchants. By eighteen o six, fishermen with empty nets and peasants with no land are signing up en masse. The floating state. But on November '7, pirate captain Zheng Yi dies, either in a storm or struck by a cannibal, leaving a power vacuum. Before anyone else can make a move, his widow Zheng Yi Cao takes control.
Speaker 1:Unlike most rivals, she already has legitimacy. She sailed alongside her husband, helped lead campaigns, has children with him, and is widely known in the fleet. First, she secures the family's loyalty. Then comes her boldest move. She marries Zhang Bo, a young captain who had become Zheng Yi's adopted son and puts him in charge of the Red Fleet.
Speaker 1:By Confucian standards, a widow marrying is absolutely scandalous, let alone her stepson. But by marrying Zhang Bo, she makes the chain of command unmistakably her own. Her next step is to tighten discipline, so she issues a new pirate law. Loot has to be registered and inspected. The original captor keeps 20%.
Speaker 1:The rest goes into a common treasury to support the fleet. Anyone disobeying a superior is decapitated, and pirates who rape captives are executed. She runs the confederation like a CEO with cannons. Nothing moves without her signature. Injured pirates get health care, brave ones get bonuses, and the accounting is impeccable.
Speaker 1:The confederation has become a parallel state complete with law, welfare, and a strategy of violent wealth redistribution, a floating shadow empire alongside the Qing. At her peak, Zheng Yi Cao commands about 70,000 pirates on 1,800 ships dwarfing the Spanish Armada, while Blackbeard, the most feared pirate in Western history, had maybe four ships and 300 drunk men on his best day. Somehow, a former sex worker has constructed a floating pirate state more efficient than the government trying to destroy her. Endgame. In eighteen o nine, the Qing imposed a coastal embargo, reroute salt shipments over land, and prevent ships from leaving ports to starve the pirates out.
Speaker 1:But these fleets are full of fishermen who built their own state because the official one had nothing to offer anyway. When the same empire now tries to take this band aid away, they turn to revolt. Raiding squadrons pour inland like floodwater into rivers and creeks, overrunning garrisons, looting markets, and clashing with militias funded by the Qing. Zhangbo's red flag fleet creeps close to Guangzhou, disrupting trade, blocking river traffic, and sending cannon fire echoing into the city on a daily basis to extort silver and supplies. This hits the Qing where it hurts.
Speaker 1:Losing Guangzhou's customs office would be like losing the empire's credit card. After centuries of treating foreign powers like annoying tribute states, they're running out of options and turn to the barbarians for help. They don't trust the British who just recently landed troops in Macau and pushed warships up the Pearl River without permission, claiming to protect it from the French in a sort of proxy of the Napoleonic Wars. So they turned to the Portuguese, who've been squatting in Macau since the fifteen hundreds under lease from China. For a mountain of silver, they send warships to patrol alongside Qing junks and play whack a mole with pirates of the tiger's mouth and fail.
Speaker 1:In December, the Qing switch strategies. They offer full amnesty, government jobs, and silver for any pirate leader who flips. Now cracks start to show. The black flag commander Guo Padai smells opportunity. He has spent years resenting Zhang Bo.
Speaker 1:He envies his rise, his victories, and the fact that Zheng Yi Cao picked him. So when the red flag calls for backup, he ghosts them. Then the two fleets clash, and the black flag wins. A thousand pirates are killed and 16 ships captured. Within weeks, Guo Budai surrenders to the Qing, waving his trophies like a job application.
Speaker 1:Other leaders follow, hoping to cut a deal before it's too late. Zheng Yi Cao reads the room perfectly. In early eighteen ten, she walks to government officials in Macau, leading thousands of followers behind her. Entire families who've spent years living aboard pirate ships now come to ask for peace. Their petition reads like this.
Speaker 1:We are insects and ants. Save us from the flood and fire, pardon our former crimes, and open for us a new way of life from this day forward. We solemnly promise to sell our swords and buy cows. If we dare to act with duplicity, you may kill us at once. Beneath the humble tone is sharp timing.
Speaker 1:Zheng Yi Cao is still holding the cards. The Qing need the violence to stop, so they accept a remarkable deal. She keeps her ships, 17,000 pirates are granted amnesty, and Zhang Bo is made a naval officer. The two are allowed to marry legally and turn to legal maritime trade. Zheng Yi Cao retires near Guangzhou, runs a gambling house, possibly dabbles in smuggling.
Speaker 1:She outlives Zhangbo by two decades and dies peacefully around 1844 at 69. The end of a dynasty. Zheng Yi Cao was a remarkable woman and a ruthless killer. Her pirate state could rise because rich trade lanes met weak defenses, and famine turned hungry sailors into an army on sea. When the empire left a vacuum on the water, she filled it.
Speaker 1:For the Qing, it's a disaster. They had to borrow foreign gunboats, offer amnesty, and call it a win. But when British warships return thirty years later in 1839, they force open China's markets. Foreign powers carve out treaty ports, run their own trade zones, and antipiracy becomes their favorite excuse. Their merchants even sell weapons to pirates, fueling the problem to justify colonial expansion while Beijing's control of the coast keeps shrinking.
Speaker 1:The Qing fall in 1911, and it takes their successors decades to undo the damage. Most legal privileges for foreigners are only abolished during World War two, while the last European colony in China, Macau, isn't handed back by Portugal until 1999. All this time, piracy never disappeared. It's still happening in crowded chokepoints like the Singapore Strait and the Gulf Of Aden. In the late nineteen nineties, attacks spike after the Asian financial crisis, and a decade later, Somali fishermen fill the power vacuum left by a collapsed state.
Speaker 1:Pirates were never only bandits. They tax trade, enforce rules, and redistribute wealth, but they also take hostages, use terror, and enforce control through violence whenever the state leaves space for someone else to step in. Zheng Yi Cao was not the first to take advantage of this, and she wasn't the last. This is the kind of video we've wanted to make for a long, long time, telling stories that bring forgotten people and distant eras to life. We're creating this channel on top of everything else we do because we have so many stories we want to tell.
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