Journal of World History

Conventionally, piracy has been defined as seafarers operating outside the laws of any sovereign power, referred to in Europe since the Early Modern period as "hostes humani generis," or "enemies of all mankind." Most histories of piracy take this as their starting point, incorrectly regarding piracy as a European concept that was applied to foreign mariners in the context of colonialism. This edited volume on piracy questions that assumption with twelve original essays that cover case studies of maritime violence and encounters in Europe, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, the Ottoman Empire, China, and Vietnam between 1500 and 1900. In their introduction, the editors write that their aim is to write a global history that "[unsettles] the conventional oppositions between piracy and sovereignty" (p. 11). To do this, the authors represented in the book move beyond the bounds of western historiographies, legal systems, and linguistics to explore how piratical activity was categorized, understood, exploited, and resisted all over the world. The collection explores the myriad meanings of the word "pirate" and other colloquial terms that refer to maritime violence, as well as the encounters between these different concepts and understandings in colonial contexts. Covering the globe and engaging in 400 years of history is a big promise, but the collection [End Page 143] delivers as each author contends with different political, economic, and diplomatic contexts. Perhaps unsurprisingly, half the book engages with piracy from a European perspective, taking European nations, intellectuals, politicians, and sailors as their starting point. Yet while it seems as though these authors will cover familiar ground, the book has stayed away from rehashing the narratives of the so-called "Golden Age of Atlantic piracy." Its authors also avoid writing only top-down histories of how European state actors defined piracy and they often actively challenge Eurocentrism in the way that piracy was defined by those engaged in such activity.

Many authors begin with the concept of pirates as "hostes humani generis ," showing how it was used to develop the first international legal system. For example, using English, French, and Dutch examples of maritime court cases, international treaties, and political philosophy, Michael Kempe argues that piracy provided common ground in policing seas that were theoretically the only space open to all nations. Bruce Buchan's standalone essay in Chapter 3 also starts from the political philosophy of "hostes humani generis ," but uses the works of Englishman John Locke to show that "pirates were merely one among a pantheon of archetypal enemies of good order" (p. 27). Locke, and others like him, argued for not only a legal definition of piracy, but also a moral and political definition based on "political order and the legitimacy of sovereignty," making the maritime pirate and "terrestrial tyrant" symbols of insecurity in all parts of the globe (p. 79). Buchan's co-authored piece with Joachim Östlund, Chapter 10, looks at a 1716 Swedish dissertation which functioned like Locke's works. Magnus Thelaus's Dissertatio gradualis de piratica brought together moral, philosophical, and historical arguments to consider a more pragmatic approach to piracy: could pirates be useful to the Swedish state? Buchan and Östlund argue that, although the dissertation ultimately concluded that pirates were the common enemy to all, Thelaus was also realistic in debating how negotiating with pirates could strengthen the Swedish state. Buchan and Östlund in these two chapters thus showcase how conversations about piracy were dynamic and contingent on political and economic context in European nations.

Many of the essays in the Piracy in World History deal with piracy in the context of imperial expansion but take non-Eurocentric views of piracy in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. For example, Hans Hägerdal's "The Bugis-Makassar Seafarers" does a masterful job at wading through the Dutch perspective of all non-European seafarers as pirates to uncover the "range of their socio-political roles" in the region...