Daejeon, July 27–31
Henri Lefebvre’s theory of social space holds that space is not a neutral “container” for social relations but a product of power operations—power produces order through space, while space in turn shapes the forms of social organization (Lefebvre 1991; Soja 1996). However, the conceptual apparatus of existing spatial theory (territory, boundary, center and periphery) has been constructed almost entirely from terrestrial experience, and its implicit “terrestrial bias” renders it ill-equipped to explain the operational logic of maritime space. Maritime space is characterized by high fluidity, ambiguous sovereign boundaries, and fragmented power distribution, constituting a “gray zone” fundamentally different from land—neither under the substantive jurisdiction of state power nor a complete power vacuum (Steinberg 2001). How social space theory may be extended to this fluid, non-terrestrial environment remains to be fully explored in both theoretical discussion and digital humanities empirical research.
Existing Historical GIS research—represented by the China Historical GIS (CHGIS) and related spatial studies of East Asian maritime history (Castells 1996; Foucault 1980)—has demonstrated the potential of spatial methods in Chinese historical research. Yet most of this work treats maritime space as a “conduit medium” for trade routes rather than as a space actively produced by social forces. Substantial Chinese-language historical scholarship has accumulated on South China piracy during the Qianlong–Jiaqing period (Chen 2025.; Zhang 2012; Chen 2022), yet a systematic digital humanities spatial-analytical perspective remains largely absent. This study intervenes precisely in this gap, treating the South China Sea as a social-spatial field of competing and reconfiguring powers rather than as a mere backdrop to research.
During the Qianlong–Jiaqing period of the Qing dynasty, the South China Sea and the waters beyond the Pearl River Estuary served as a pivotal hub for East–West trade and a peripheral zone of Qing maritime order. In the tenth year of the Jiaqing reign (1805), seven pirate leaders—including Zheng Wenxian, Guo Podai, and Wu Shier—concluded a formal pact and established the “Guangdong Maritime Pirate Alliance”, comprising six flag-gangs distinguished by red, black, white, blue, yellow, and green banners, commanding thousands of vessels and tens of thousands of members—an informal maritime organization governed by stringent contracts and a hierarchical structure (Murray 1987; Antony 2024; Zhang 2016; Zeng 2004). This study takes the pirate alliance under Zhang Baozai’s command as its core case, investigating how power produces maritime space, how spatial structure shapes organizational form, and how the alliance’s spatial practices in turn reconstruct the maritime power order.
Given that historical sources concerning pirates are characterized by extreme fragmentation, concealment, and unofficial provenance, this study constructs a composite data system centered on "text–space fusion."
First, deep mining and structured processing of textual data. The study systematically organizes primary sources—including the palace memorials and Grand Council archives in the National Palace Museum collection Compilation of Historical Materials on the Suppression and Pacification of Zhang Baozai—supplemented by the Pirate Code (Haidao Lvli), the Record of Pacifying the Sea (Jinghai Fenji), and related secondary scholarship, extracting approximately one thousand event records pertaining to pirate activity. Temporal alignment is then performed, and named entity recognition and event extraction techniques are applied to derive structured information—including place names, personal names, event types, and behavioral patterns—from the source texts.
Second, construction of a Historical GIS basemap and spatial coordinate conversion. Using the nineteenth-century Chinese historical administrative boundaries and coastline data provided by CHGIS as the foundational spatial framework, each recorded event in the textual corpus is geocoded to yield a spatiotemporal dataset covering the study period 1790–1810. The dataset encompasses multiple layers—pirate activity locations, Qing naval patrol deployments, and key ports and island-reef nodes—providing a precise spatial basemap for subsequent overlay analysis.
Third, integration of spatial and textual analysis. Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) and spatial hotspot overlay are employed to reveal the geographical clustering of pirate activities and their spatial correspondence with zones of absent official patrol coverage. Combined with textual and network analysis, this approach quantifies the spatial logic embedded in institutional documents and verifies, from a micro-level perspective, the core hypothesis that "space determines organization." Through comprehensive processing—from text to map and from qualitative to quantitative—scattered historical fragments are assembled into a visualized panorama of "space–organization" dynamics, providing a robust empirical foundation for mechanism argumentation.
This study systematically investigates the intrinsic relationships among power, space, and organization—mediated by institutions—across three levels: theoretical framework, macro-spatial pattern, and a detailed case study.
Theoretical Framework. The Qing court produced specific maritime governance spaces through patrol deployments, administrative boundaries, and coastal defense systems, while pirate organizations, as informal forces, embedded themselves within the interstices of existing power (Antony 2010; Tagliacozzo 2005). This study proposes a “Power–Space–Organization (Institutional Mediator)” triadic analytical framework. The governance space produced by official power constitutes zones of permitted action and regulatory blind spots; material space and flow-space elements jointly constrain the accessibility and concealment of organizational action, thereby shaping the generative pathways of organizational structures; organizations then consolidate their spatial capacities through institutionalized practices and reversely shape the maritime order, constituting de facto alternative authority. The internal logic of this framework is not confined to the maritime domain and offers methodological reference value for other “gray spaces” characterized by sovereign ambiguity.
Macro-Spatial Pattern. This study maps the full-period spatial network of Qing-dynasty South China Sea trade and pirate activities, employing KDE and spatial hotspot overlay to distinguish between the normative space covered by official power and the gray space in which informal forces were active (Yang 2024; Kleinen / Osseweijer 2010). Preliminary analysis reveals a systematic spatial correspondence between the geographical clustering of pirate activities and the blind spots in Qing naval patrol coverage—a structural characteristic wherein the South China Sea during the Qianlong–Jiaqing period presented a distinctive pattern of official withdrawal and the concurrent rise of informal civilian forces.
Case Study: The Guangdong Maritime Pirate Alliance. Tracing the Guangdong Maritime Pirate Alliance, this study conducts a detailed analysis of its internal spatial-shaping mechanisms, arguing that the organizational form of the alliance was essentially a rational adaptation to and institutionalized response to the external spatial structure. The research deploys a causal argument across three logical strata: ① Space (structural independent variable), encompassing three dimensions—material space, comprising the natural barriers and channel conditions constituted by the island-dense waters at the Pearl River Estuary and the inner–outer ocean boundary; power space, comprising the zones of permitted activity and regulatory blind spots defined by Qing naval patrol deployments; and social space, comprising the information-transmission and logistical-supply network formed by the Tanka communities—whose documented settlement distribution closely overlapped with the operational range of the alliance, constituting the informal social infrastructure on which the alliance depended (Antony 2023). ② Organization (shaped dependent variable): the organizational form and institutional system that the alliance developed to adapt to the foregoing spatial structure, including the territorial demarcation among the six flag-gangs, the tribute system, and inter-gang coordination rules. Spatial analysis indicates that each flag-gang's operational range was geographically concentrated and corresponded to maritime units with distinct degrees of controllability and concealment; a clear correspondence exists between the delineation of gang boundaries and the logic of controlling geographical channels. ③ Mechanism argumentation, examining the coercive shaping of organization by space across three aspects: material space shaping organizational structure—geographical configuration determining the ceiling on gang scale and the layout of bases; power space shaping organizational institutions—the territorial allocation and tribute clauses in the Pirate Code directly encoding spatial boundaries as institutional rules; and informal power reacting upon official space—the alliance's institutionalized spatial practices establishing a de facto alternative order within the blind spots of Qing governance, while this same structural dependence on a particular spatial configuration ultimately became the vulnerability that enabled the Qing court's successful pacification in 1810 (Murray 1987; Antony 2003; Chen 2017; Chen 2011; He 2019).
By integrating text mining, Historical GIS, and spatial analysis methods, this study systematically introduces social space theory into empirical research on Chinese maritime history, proposing a “Power–Space–Organization” triadic analytical framework suited to the fluid maritime environment. Spatial reconstruction based on approximately one thousand documented event records demonstrates that the organizational form of the Guangdong Maritime Pirate Alliance was not contingently generated but was a rational adaptation to and institutionalized response to the external spatial structure; the failure of Qing maritime governance owed substantially to a structural deficit in official spatial production rather than to mere military inferiority. The spatial record restored by this study—gang base distributions, informal trade networks, and power-blind-zone boundaries—constitutes a layer of maritime cultural heritage recoverable through “text-to-map” methodology, offering a methodological reference for digital humanities research on the governance of non-terrestrial gray spaces (Liu / Liu 2026; Zhang et al. 2025).
Social Space Theory; Maritime Power Structure; Guangdong Pirate Alliance; Historical Geographic Information System; Text–Space Fusion