The first squadron was about the size of the entire earlier expedition. The second
was even more immense, with 100,000 troops on board, dwarfing any European
naval operation for centuries to come. But Mongol success ultimately proved to
be only in the logistics of the operation.
The invaders fought on shore for two months, but most of the Chinese
soldiers were not Mongols and had little appetite for the struggle, whereas the
Japanese were fighting for their own land. Storms again—the divine wind, or
kamikaze,as the Japanese called it, thinking the gods were responsible—smashed
both of these squadrons, destroying much of the fleet and stranding many
troops on shore where they were abandoned to the mercies of the defenders.
The remaining ships sailed home. Nonetheless, the Japanese could not feel
entirely secure. The threat lingered, but Khubilai, preoccupied with other
matters, spared Japan.
Another large Mongol expedition, this one directed southward against Java,
also failed. The Mongols’ willingness to venture out to sea in a serious way at
least opened the eyes of Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese to a new dimension of
power projection. Three centuries later the Japanese would invade the Asian
continent, as they had not for a millennium—giving Yi Sun-sin his moment in
history. But long before that, pirates began to turn the brown waters of Pacific
Asia into an arena for combat.
Piracy in East Asia
Low-level maritime violence became a common, persistent phenomenon in
brown-water East Asia. Using the sea as a springboard, pirates not only harassed
the coasts but also fought on land in China and Korea. They even built bases and
lay siege to towns, taking ruthless advantage of any local weakness. Pirates
pillaged even on the outskirts of Kaesong, the inland Korean capital.
Smuggling and piracy erupted from a desire to break the trade-inhibiting
confinements of an official order that frowned on commerce. This gave rise to
an international maritime culture in which Chinese, Korean, and Japanese
seafarers enthusiastically took part. Pirates became a prime fact of Pacific Asian
oceanic life for centuries, a plague in the eyes of the establishment.
Pirates are like nomads; they leave few written records, and so we know
little about them. Their history must bepieced together from outside, usually
hostile sources. We do know that piratical activity was sporadic and intermittent,
but also widespread and continuing. Sometimes pirates began as smugglers. Often
they began as fishermen; catching ships was not a big step from catching fish.
Piracy provided a professional opportunity for aggressive individuals of
extraordinary talent, but it did not result in the creation and coalescence of
independent political entities like, say, the city-states of the Mediterranean world.
Pirate bands did not aggregate into something larger. Heavily dependent upon
Imperial China and the Sea 27