Gregory Smits, “Pirate Den to Fantasy Islands: Five Different Ryukyus, Fourteenth through Twenty-first Centuries”

The Asian History Working Group is excited to welcome Prof. Gregory Smits, Professor of History and Asian Studies at Pennsylvania State University, to campus to speak on his research about the Ryukyu Islands.

The Ryukyu Islands extend in an arc between Kyushu and Taiwan. Today they comprise Okinawa Prefecture and part of Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. Journalistic treatments of this region commonly claim that the islands comprised an “independent” kingdom that lasted 500 years, from the 1370s to the 1870s. However, the idea of a single “Ryukyu Kingdom” persisting over centuries is inaccurate. In this talk, a leading historian of the region describes five different Ryukyus: the abode of pirates during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a de facto shipping corporation for the Ming dynasty during the fifteenth century, a maritime empire during the sixteenth century, a theatrical state during the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, and fantasy islands in the imaginations of many contemporary people. Bringing together recent work by historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, this talk highlights the complexity and dynamism of the Ryukyu Islands and East China Sea region over time.

Gregory Smits is Professor of History and Asian Studies at Pennsylvania State University. His books include Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics (1999), Maritime Ryukyu, 1050-1650 (2019), Early Ryukyuan History: A New Model (2024), and The Ryukyu Islands: A New History, Stone Age-Present (2025).