This chapter examines robbery at sea as a long-standing global phenomenon, tracing patterns of waterborne violence as they developed in eastern and western seas from ancient to modern times, with an emphasis on the early modern period.
Piracy, as this practice came to be known in the West, took many forms and provoked various reactions, from self-arming and convoys to formal naval campaigns seeking permanent suppression.
Our focus is on the circumstances that gave rise to violent theft at sea, such as relative poverty, cultural imperatives, new technologies and increased ship traffic, as well as the discourses of justification and violent suppression that surrounded piracy in different historical and cultural contexts.‘Piracy is not a victimless crime.' So we learn from digital media. Today's piracy typically entails unauthorised distribution of copyrighted data. It is a costly nuisance, but not a violent crime. Yet real piracy - robbery at or by descent from the sea - also persists. Unlike intellectual theft, maritime piracy is as violent today as it was in ancient times. It frequently involves kidnapping, battery, rape and murder, although its aim is pecuniary. Pirate violence might include sadistic brutality and heartless executions, but its terror is a means to an end: gain. This chapter treats pirate violence thematically, then regionally.
More on the topic This chapter examines robbery at sea as a long-standing global phenomenon, tracing patterns of waterborne violence as they developed in eastern and western seas from ancient to modern times, with an emphasis on the early modern period.:
- The modern Chinese translation of ‘violence' is the word baoli, combining the characters bao, literally ‘fierce, sudden or drastic', and li, literally ‘force, strength or power'.
- As the colony that gave Europe its archetype of tropical cannibalism and consumed more African bodies than any other American slave system, Brazil warrants a central place in the history of early modern racial violence.
- Antony Robert, Carroll Stuart, Pennock Caroline D. (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 3: AD 1500-AD 1800. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 710 p., 2020