Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-qfg88 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-11T23:01:30.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Even in the remotest corners of the world’: globalized piracy and international law, 1500–1900*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2010

Michael Kempe
Michael Kempe
Affiliation:
Center of Excellence ‘Cultural Foundations of Integration’ and Department of History and Sociology, University of Konstanz, Universitätsstrasse 10, Box 213, D-78457 Konstanz, Germany E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

As a phenomenon accompanying European expansion, piracy and privateering spread globally, beginning in the sixteenth century. These activities, and their handling within transnational relations, shed light on several issues of modern international law, then under formation. They reflect different basic problems that both challenged and structured central aspects of legal relations on an international level: the transformation of ocean spaces into areas of colliding legal strategies, the use of privateers (‘legalized’ pirates) as a tool for extraterritorial expansion, the involvement of non-state players in international legal relations, the fragmentation of maritime sovereignty, and the application of international law to criminalize political resistance as piracy. That said, the international management of piracy shows that international law had the potential to resist its abuse as a mere instrument of politics and special interests. By focusing on piracy and privateering in early modern times, this article suggests a tension within modern international law, between its instrumentalization by particular interests and its status as an independent normative authority to correct or regulate such interests.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , November 2010 , pp. 353 - 372
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Jürgen Osterhammel, ‘Weltgeschichte: ein Propädeutikum’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 56, 2005, pp. 452–79.

2 See Randall Lesaffer, ‘The Grotian tradition revisited: change and continuity in the history of international law’, British Yearbook of International Law, 73, 2002, pp. 103–39.

3 See for example Alexandrowicz, Charles Henry, An introduction to the history of the law of nations in the East Indies (16th, 17th and 18th centuries), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967Google Scholar; Ram Prakash Anand, Development of modern international law in India, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2005. See also Christoph A. Stumpf, ‘Christian and Islamic traditions of public international law’, Journal of the History of International Law, 7, 1, 2005, pp. 69–80.

4 See also Michael Kempe, ‘Seeraub als Broterwerb: bewaffnete Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Freibeutern und Kauffahrern aus völkerrechtlicher Perspektive’, in Eberhard Schmitt, ed., Indienfahrer 2: Seeleute und Leben an Bord im ersten Kolonialzeitalter (15. bis 18. Jahrhundert), Dokumente zur Geschichte der europäischen Expansion, vol. 7, Wiesbaden: C.H. Beck, 2008, pp. 387–412; idem, ‘Teufelswerk der Tiefsee: Piraterie und die Repräsentation des Meeres als Raum im Recht’, in Hannah Baader and Gerhard Wolf, eds., Das Meer, der Tausch und die Grenzen der Repräsentation, Zürich and Berlin: Diaphanes, 2010, pp. 379–411.

5 Rubin, Alfred P., The law of piracy, Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1988Google Scholar.

6 Heller-Roazen, Daniel, The enemy of all: piracy and the law of nations, New York: Zone Books, 2009Google Scholar.

7 Benton, Lauren, A search for sovereignty: law and geography in European empires, 1400–1900, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010Google Scholar, pp. 104–61.

8 See Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II, vol. 2, London: Collins, 1973Google Scholar.

9 Ritchie, Robert C., ‘Government measures against piracy and privateering in the Atlantic area, 1750–1850’, in David J. Starkey, ed., Pirates and privateers: new perspectives on the war on trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997Google Scholar, pp. 10–28.

10 Pérotin-Dumon, Anne, ‘The pirate and the emperor: power and the law on the seas, 1450–1850’, in James D. Tracy, ed., The political economy of merchant empires, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991Google Scholar, pp. 196–227.

11 Thomson, Janice E., Mercenaries, pirates, and sovereigns: state-building and extraterritorial violence in early modern Europe, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994Google Scholar.

12 De Meij, J. C. A., De watergeuzen: piraten en bevijders, Haarlem: Fibula-Van Dishoeck, 1980Google Scholar.

13 See Heinz Duchhardt, ‘Westfälischer Friede und internationales System im Ancien Régime’, Historische Zeitschrift, 249, 1989, pp. 529–43.

14 See Pagden, Anthony, European encounters with the new world: from Renaissance to romanticism, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993Google Scholar; Edward Keene, Beyond the anarchical society: Grotius, colonialism and order in world politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Antony Anghie, Imperialism, sovereignty and the making of international law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

15 Cicero, De officio, 3.29.107: nam pirata non est ex perduellium numero definitus, sed communis hostis omnium; cum hoc nec fides debet nec ius iurandum esse commune (‘For a pirate is not included in the list of lawful enemies, but is the common enemy of all; among pirates and other men there ought be neither mutual faith nor binding oath’).

16 Gentili, Alberico, De iure belli libri tres (1612), 2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon PressGoogle Scholar, 1933, vol. 1: the photographic reproduction of the edition of 1612, l. 1. ch. 25, p. 202.

17 See Heller-Roazen, Enemy. See also Gerry Simpson, ‘Piracy and the origins of enmity’, in Matthew Craven, Malgosia Fitzmaurice, and Maria Vogiatzi, eds., Time, history and international law, Leiden: M. Nijhoff, 2007, pp. 219–30.

18 Coke, Edward, The third part of the institutes of the law of England, LondonGoogle Scholar: M. Flesher for W. Lee and D. Pakeman, 1644, p. 113.

19 See Emily Sohmer Tai, ‘Marking water: piracy and property in the pre-modern West’, in Debbie Ann Doyle and Brandon Schneider, comp., Seascapes, littoral cultures, and trans-oceanic exchanges, Washington DC: Library of Congress, 2003, www.historycooperative.org/proceedings/seascapes/benton.html (consulted 17 August 2010), n. 9.

20 Joel H. Baer, ‘The complicated plot of piracy: aspects of the English criminal law and the image of the pirate Defoe’, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 23, 1, 1982, pp. 3–26. As the pirate’s semantic descendant, the international terrorist has taken up the mantle of hostis humani generis. On this point, see in more detail Michael Kempe and Olivier Gänswein, ‘Die Rückkehr der Universalfeinde: Terroristen als hostes humani generis – und was Piraten damit zu tun haben’, Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte, 32, 2, 2010, pp. 91–106.

21 Rubin, Law.

22 Gentili, De iure belli, l. 1, ch. 25, p. 202.

23 See Michael Kempe, ‘Beyond the law: the image of piracy in the legal writings of Hugo Grotius’, Grotiana, 27–28, 1, 2005–07, pp. 379–95.

24 Loccenius, Johannes, Jo. Loccenii ius maritimum (1650)Google Scholar, Halle, 1740, ch. 3, § 2, p. 963.

25 See R. G. Marsden, ‘Early prize jurisdiction and prize law in England’, English Historical Review, 24, 97, 1909, pp. 675–97; 25, 98, 1910, pp. 243–63; and 26, 101, 1911, pp. 34–56; see also Frederic L. Cheyette, ‘The sovereign and the pirates’, Speculum, 45, 1, 1970, pp. 40–68.

26 Adolf Rein, Gustav, ‘Zur Geschichte der völkerrechtlichen Trennungslinie zwischen Amerika und Europa’, Ibero-Amerikanisches ArchivGoogle Scholar, 4, 4, 1930, p. 536.

27 Schmitt, Carl, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum, 2nd edition, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1974Google Scholar.

28 Between 1536 and 1568, there is evidence for at least 74 coastal attacks and 189 vessel plunderings by French corsairs, 152 of them in the western Atlantic. See Manuel Lucena Salmoral, Piratas, bucaneros, filibusteros y corsarios en América: perros, mendigos y otros malditos del mar, 2nd edition, Madrid: Ed. Mapfre, 1994; pp. 51–2.

29 See Kris E. Lane: Pillaging the empire: piracy in the Americas, Armonk, NY, M. E. Sharpe, 1998, p. 12.

30 See Pieper, Renate, Die Vermittlung einer neuen Welt: Amerika im Nachrichtennetz des Habsburgischen Imperiums 1493–1598, Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2000Google Scholar.

31 See Muldoon, James, ‘Christendom, the Americas and world order’, in Horst Pietschmann, ed., Atlantic history: history of the Atlantic system 1580–1830, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002Google Scholar, pp. 65–82.

32 See Guénin, Eugène, Ango et ses pilotes: d’après des documents inédits tirés des archives de France, de Portugal et d’Espagne, Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1901Google Scholar, pp. 71–2.

33 See Lyon, Eugene, The enterprise of Florida: Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Spanish conquest of 1565–1568, Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1976Google Scholar, p. 10.

34 See Archivo General de Simancas (henceforth AGS), MS. Guerra y Marina, legajo 35, documents 152 and 153.

35 This distinction is particularly stressed by Rubin, Law and Heller-Roazen, Enemy.

36 See N. A. M. Rodger, The safeguard of the sea: a naval history of Britain, 660–1649, New York: W.W. Norton, 1997, p. 345.

37 See Benton, Search, pp. 104–41.

38 See Lamborn Wilson, Anton, Pirate utopias. Moorish corsairs & European renegadoes, 2. ed., Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2003Google Scholar.

39 The ‘English and the pirates from Algiers’: AGS, MS. Guerra y Marina, legajo 208, document 239.

40 Matar, Nabil, Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689, Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005Google Scholar, pp. 21.

41 See Antony, Robert J., Like froth floating on the sea: the world of pirates and seafarers in late imperial south China, Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2003Google Scholar, pp. 21–4.

42 Ibid., p. 22.

43 See Peter Borschberg, ‘The seizure of the Santo António at Patani: VOC freebooting, the Estado da Índia and Peninsular Politics, 1602–1609’, Journal of the Siam Society, 90, 2002, pp. 59–72.

44 ‘Als piratten en slijmer als zeerovers’: Pieter van den Broecke, ‘Journaal, Oktober 1621’, in W. P. Coolhaas (ed.), Pieter van den Broecke in Azië, vol. 2, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963, p. 263.

45 See Tonio Andrade, ‘The Company’s Chinese pirates: how the Dutch East India Company tried to lead a coalition of pirates to war against China, 1621–1662’, Journal of World History, 15, 4, 2004, pp. 415–44.

46 Ibid., pp. 441–4.

47 ‘Capitulos das pazes que se fizeram entre os vassallos de El-Rey Jahanguir e os Portuguezes, por Nauabo Mucarreb-Xhan e Gonçalo Pinto da Fonseca, 7 Junho 1615’, in Júlio Firmino Júdice Biker, ed., Collecção de tratados e concertos de pazes, vol. 1, Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1881, p. 191.

48 See Clements, Jonathan, Coxinga and the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Stroud, Glos.: Sutton Publishing, 2004Google Scholar.

49 Anon., News from sea or, the takeing of the cruel pirate, being a full and true relation how Captain Cewsicke, alias Dixon, alias Smith, an Irish-pyrate took an English ship of 500 tuns called the Saint Anne, London: R. W., 1674, p. 1.

50 Anon., The grand pyrate: or, the life and death of Capt. George Cvsack the great sea-robber, London: Printed for Jonathan Edwin, 1676, p. 29.

51 Ibid., p. 29.

52 See Ivo van Loo, ‘For freedom and fortune: the rise of Dutch privateering in the first half of the Dutch revolt, 1568–1609’, in Marco van der Hoeven, ed., Exercise of arms: warfare in the Netherlands, 1568–1648, Leiden: Brill, 1998, pp. 173–95.

53 See Calendar of state papers, colonial series, America and West Indies, 1661–1668, London: Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1880 (New edition, Vaduz 1964), 20 February 1665, p. 280 (no. 942).

54 See Bradley, Peter T., The lure of Peru: maritime intrusion into the South Sea, 1598–1700, Houndmills: Macmillian, 1989CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 136.

55 [Alexandre Exquemelin], Bucaniers of America, London: William Crooke, 1684–85, pp. 33–9. On cooperation between pirates and the native Indian population, see also Ignacio J. Gallup-Diaz, The door of the seas and the key to the universe: Indian politics and imperial rivalry in the Darién, 1640–1750, New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, pp. 53–74.

56 See Reginald G. Marsden, ed., Documents relating to law and custom of the sea, vol. 2: 1649–1767, Colchester: Printed for the Navy Records Society, 1916, introduction, pp. xi–xii.

57 ‘Tractatus Navigationis & Commercii inter Carolum II. Regem Angliae & Ordines Generales Uniti Belgii per Commissarios sex ab utraque Parte, in sequelam Articuli VIII. Tractatus Pacis, initus; quô certis Legibus, Terrâ Marique observandis, cautum est, ut in posterum Discordiae & simultates omnimodè cessent ac penitus extinguantur. Actum Londini, I. Decembris 1674’, in Jean Dumont, ed., Corps universel diplomatique du droit des gens, vol. 7, part 1, Amsterdam 1731, no. 132, pp. 282a–5a; Art. 5–7, pp. 283a–b.

58 ‘Commissions pour des Armements particuliers ou Lettres de Represailles des Princes et Estats Ennemis desdits Seigneurs Estats Generaux, et moins les troubler ny endommager d’aucune sorte, en vertu de telles Commissions ou Lettres de Represailles, ny mesme aller en course avec elles, sous peine d’estre pour-suivis et chastiez comme pirates.’ Art. 2, NA Den Haag, Staten General, Inv. Nr. 12587.186, http://www.ieg-mainz.de/likecms/likecms.php?site=transliteration.htm&dir=&ieg2sess=c8t5di1babfl4323d8l12kqqb5&treaty=234 (consulted 18 August 2010).

59 See the documentary collection of the East India Company concerning witnesses and interrogated piracy suspects, in British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections, India Office Records (henceforth BL, IOR), MS Home Miscellaneous, IOR/H/36. See also Robert C. Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the war against the pirates, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.

60 See Arne Bialuschewski, ‘Between Newfoundland and the Malacca strait: a survey of the golden age of piracy, 1695–1725’, Mariner’s Mirror, 90, 2004, pp. 167–86.

61 See Barendse, René J., The Arabian Seas: the Indian Ocean world of the seventeenth century, Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 2002Google Scholar, pp. 460–86.

62 See Keene, Beyond the anarchical society.

63 BL, IOR, MS. Home Miscellaneous, IOR/H/36, Robert Blackborne, ‘To the R. Hon. The lords commission for executing the office of L: High Admlt. of England, The humble petition of the Governour & Comp: of merchants of London trading to the East Indies’, 26 February 1696/97, fol. 228r; and idem, ‘To their excell: the lords justices of England. The humble petition of the govern: and company of merchants of London trading into the East Indies’, fol. 291r.

64 Molly Greene, ‘The Ottomans in the Mediterranean’, in Virginia H. Aksan and Daniel Goffman, eds., The early modern Ottomans: remapping the empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 104–16.

65 Clarence-Smith, William G., Islam and the abolition of slavery, London: Hurst, 2006Google Scholar, pp. 28–30.

66 See Paul A. Silverstein, ‘The new barbarians: piracy and terrorism on the North African frontier’, New Centennial Review, 5, 1, 2005, pp. 179–212.

67 See Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Ministero Affari Esteri, MS. Fascio n. 4212, Trattato 1783–1787.

68 See Giovanna Fiume, ed., La schiavitù nel mediterraneo, Quaderni storici 107, 2, Rome: Il Mulino, 2001; Christian Windler, La diplomatie comme experience de l’autre: consuls français au Maghreb (1700–1840), Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2002.

69 See Alain Wijffels, ‘Alberico Gentili e i pirate’, in Alain Wijffels, ed., Alberico Gentili Consiliatore: atti del convegno quinta giornata gentiliana 19 settembre 1992, Milan: Giuffrè, 1999, pp. 85–131.

70 See Cornelius van Bynkershoek, Quaestionum juris publici libri duo (1737), vol. 1: The photographic reproduction of the edition of 1737, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930, p. 124.

71 See Bono, Salvatore, I corsari barbareschi, Turin: ERI, 1964Google Scholar, pp. 101–3.

72 See Bishop, William W., ed., International law: case and materials, 2nd edition, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1962Google Scholar, p. 211.

73 The National Archives, London, CO 2/10, Joint British and French mission to the Barbary states for the suppression of piracy, 1819, Sir Thomas Francis Fremantle to the Pascia of Tripoli, 9 October 1819, fol. 119r.

74 P. Grandchamp, Documents relatifs aus corsaires tunisiens (2 octobre 1777–4 mai 1824), Tunis 1925, p. 87, cited in Taoufik Bachrouch, Les elites Tunisiennes du pouvoir et de la devotion: contribution a l’étude des groupes sociaux dominants (1782–1881), Tunis: Publications de l’Université de Tunis, 1989, p. 525: ‘Qu’on nomme voleur et pirate celui qui se rend maître de bâtiments et d’effects sans motif, sans justice et hors de toute règle, abolit tous les usages et annule aussi les traités.’

75 Georg Friedrich von Martens, Essai concernant les armateurs: les prises et surtout les reprises: d’apres les loix, les traités et les usages de puissances maritimes de l’Europe, Göttingen, 1795; idem, Versuch über Caper: feindliche Nehmungen und insonderheit Wiedernehmungen; nach den Gesetzen, Verträgen und Gebräuchen der Europäischen Seemächte, Göttingen, 1795.

76 Georg Friedrich von Martens, An essay on privateers, captures, and particularly on recaptures, according to the laws, treaties, and usages of the maritime powers of Europe, to which is subjoined a discourse, in which the rights and duties of neutral powers are briefly stated, London, 1801.

77 See the document files of this trial in two boxes in The National Archives, London, High Court of Admiralty (=HCA) 32/834.

78 Martens, Caper, pp. 194–7.

79 See Stark, Francis R., The abolition of privateering and the declaration of Paris, New York: Columbia University Press, 1897Google Scholar; Francis Piggott, The declaration of Paris 1856: a study – documented, London: University of London Press, 1919; H. W. Malkin, ‘The inner history of the declaration of Paris’, British Year Book of International Law, 8, 1927, pp. 1–44; Olive Anderson, ‘Some further light on the inner history of the Declaration of Paris’, Law Quarterly Review, 76, 1960, pp. 379–85.

80 See Piggott, Declaration, pp. 154–69.

81 See Wehberg, Hans, Land- und Seekriegsrecht: internationales Privat- und Strafrecht, erste und zweite Abteilung besonderer Teil: das Seekriegsrecht, Berlin.:Kohlhammer, 1915Google Scholar, p. 44.

82 See Christoph Sattler, Die Piraterie im modernen Seerecht und die Bestrebungen der Ausweitung des Pirateriebegriffes im neueren Völkerrecht, Bonn, 1971.

83 See e.g. Tina Garmon, ‘International law of the sea: reconciling the law of piracy and terrorism in the wake of September 11th’, Tulane Maritime Law Journal, 27, 1, 2002, pp. 257–75.

84 On the following, see above all Charles E. Davies, The blood-red Arab flag: an investigation into Qasimi piracy 1797–1820, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997.

85 ‘General treaty between the East India Company (Great Britain) and the friendly Arabs (trucial sheikhdoms of Oman and Bahrein), signed at Ras al Khaimah, 8 January 1820’, in Clive Parry, ed., The consolidated treaty series, vol. 70: 1819–1820, Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, 1969, pp. 463–8.

86 ‘There shall be a cessation of plunder and piracy, by land and sea, on the part of the Arabs, who are parties to the contract, for ever’ (ibid., p. 464, art. 1).

87 Ibid., art. 2.

88 Ibid., p. 465, art. 7.

89 Leoline Jenkins, ‘Charge given to an Admiralty session held at the Old Bailey’, c. 1669–74, in William Wynne, The life of Sir Leoline Jenkins, judge of the High-Court of Admiralty, 2 vols, London 1724, vol. 1, pp. xc–xci.

90 Nicholas Tarling, Piracy and politics in the Malay world: a study of British imperialism in nineteenth-century South-East Asia, new edition Nendeln: Kraus, 1978; Alfred P. Rubin, Piracy, paramountcy and protectorates, Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya, 1974.

91 Robert Ibbetson to the Chief Secretary, Fort William, Singapore, 25 April 1832, in The Burney papers, vol. 3, part 1 (March 1827 to June 1833), Bangkok, 1912; new edition Westmead, 1971, p. 309. See also the letters of Edward Owen in BL, IOR, IOR/F/1331/52585, 52586, and 52588.