Pirates And Privateers - New Perspectives on the War on Trade in the 18th and 19th Centuries

It is hardly surprising that privateering and piracy are so often confused since both shared the same aim: the plunder of other vessels and cargo. Yet, despite Admiral Nelson's objection that "the conduct of all privateers is, as far as I have seen, so near piracy that I only wonder any civilised nation can allow them", the fact remains that privateers did at least operate within a legal framework.

Historically, pirates have often been associated with a swashbuckling age inhabited by such figures as Captain Kidd and Henry Morgan. Both fictional and non-fictional accounts of their exploits have long featured in the annals of literature. But, as David Starkey, one of this book's co-authors and contributors makes clear in his introduction, while pirates have always preyed on trade "the privateers predatory operations were restricted to specified targets and subject to the due process of law."
The fourteen chapters really comprise an anthology of essays on a wide variety of piracy and privateering aspects, beginning with a review of the measures taken by various governments against piracy and privateering in the Atlantic between 1750 and 1850. Robert Ritchie explains how it was the need to control the excesses of the pirates that helped create the legal basis for privateering since commerce-raiding was regarded as a legitimate wartime activity.

Four chapters deal with piracy in the Atlantic and Pacific. Two are devoted to the living and working conditions of Chinese and Phillipine pirate communities in the 18th and 19th centuries, providing a particularly fascinating insight into the organisation of the Chinese pirate gangs some of which included, and were even led by, women.
But it is the chapters dealing with privateering in The Atlantic and European waters that will be of particular interest to maritime historians. David Starkey's brief study of British privateering enterprise between 1739-1815 adds to his previously published account of this period, while Patrick Crowhurst examines the elements of skill and luck in French privateering expeditions during the Napoleonic wars. Others deal with aspects of Canadian and American privateering during the 1812 war and the effects of Danish and Dutch privateers on trade, all contributing to a thoroughly comprehensive and scholarly study of an important, but often misunderstood, aspect of maritime history that offers several new perspectives to the subject.

As with other Exeter University Press publications, this is a book that will earn a place as a standard work of reference and certainly repays careful study.

Reviewed by Jeremy Rowett Johns

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