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European states and the problem of maritime piracy, 1450-1750: two historical studies.

European states and the problem of maritime piracy, 1450-1750: two historical studies. [to come out as a monograph in the Research in Maritime History series, Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada]. Piracy as a feature of European history: Mediterranean villages perch é s.

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European states and the problem of maritime piracy, 1450-1750: two historical studies.

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  1. European states and the problem of maritime piracy, 1450-1750: two historical studies. [to come out as a monograph in the Research in Maritime History series, Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada]

  2. Piracy as a feature of European history: Mediterranean villages perchés Vrisnik, Hvar, Croatia. Fayence, Var, France.

  3. Fortified church of Sveti Marija, Vrboska, Otok Hvar dating from 1580s.

  4. Pirates (from top left clockwise): Barbary corsairs, portrait by Pier Francesco Mola, 1650; Sir Henry Morgan, Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, 1674-1688; Luso-Indian pirates flying Siamese flag with Malay crew, Ananda Ok-Kyaung temple murals; Anne Bonny, an Irish-American tearaway (1697-1720).

  5. Portuguese maritime world, 1500-1800.

  6. Janjira sea fort, western India (one-time base of Kanhoji Angria, `pirate’ or `Lord High Admiral of the Maratha fighting fleet’, 1690s).

  7. The Portuguese failure to address piracy. • Monopoly rights to `navigation’ granted by papal bull of 1455, but contested both legally and in practice by jealous European powers like England and Spain and privateers operating under `letters of marque’ in the mid-Atlantic, off West Africa and on the trade run up to Antwerp. • Indiscriminate violence in the Indian Ocean only stirred a violent response, which was allowed to consolidate piratic societies (the Mappilah). • Office of `Provedor das Armadas da Índia, Brasil e Guiné’ established at Angra (Azores) in 1520, but threadbare by the time of the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585-1604. Convoys for private traders had to be self-organised; royal licensing scheme well-intentioned but offered little practical support; viagens de rota batida becamethe norm. • International tribunals (Bayonne, 1535) ineffectual; pay-offs of well-placed French admirals and court officials led nowhere.

  8. A more successful example: the Royal Navy and the end of the `Golden Age of Piracy’(1690-1725) • A global approach to piracy from a self-conscious global trading power. Pirates were apprehended and brought back to London, not tried in the colonies, where there were often special interests present. • Royal Navy became a sizeable (48.000 seamen in 1713), regular, professional body: part of government (via Admiralty), with its own courts, paid from regular subsidies voted through Parliament. • Legislation: `Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Piracy’ (1700); bounties for pirate-hunters; tough penalties (Execution Dock, Wapping & gibbetting), alternating with royal pardons, conditional on pirates entering the armed forces in lieu of trial. • Propaganda war so that other European nations became allies against a `common enemy’, especially after Treaty of Utrecht (1713). • Localised regime change (e.g. Adolf Esmit of Danish Virgin Islands removed, 1684). • Piracy did not affect British trade growth over the `long 18th century’

  9. Ships and tonnages, 1680-1715.

  10. The 18th century growth in English trade. Source: Walter Minchinton, The growth of English overseas trade in the 17th & 18th centuries, London: Methuen, 1969.

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